Shannon Locke: Back to Earth

From Cape Canaveral to Pittsburgh by USAF C137. Everything looked so different from this cockpit. So close you could reach out and touch it. Not just patches of green in blue. The great cities of the continental USA. It was true what the old hands at NASA said; everything was so radically different now. Major Shannon Locke was pretty familiar with this feeling; she'd lived with it since she was 15, and along with her friends from her hometown she’s saved the world, the multiverse, and this universe what they called Garrett Prime was forever changed. 
Shannon just wanted to go home, see her folks, to hold them and her husband close. To go to the Garrett Ren Fair this coming weekend with all her friends. She knew that the new Mayor would want to throw her a ticker-tape parade. So Shannon was planning on sneaking back into Garrett undetected. She’d flown the B-2 stealth bomber as a test pilot. It was all about speed. Shannon supervises the offloading of a large military crate with USAF NASA and IASA stamps on it. It contained her custom Harley Flathead. Shannon quickly ditched her flight suit and swapped out her leather jacket for the one she’d owned for a lot of years. The soft broken-in leather fit perfectly.         
There were two familiar Motorcycles at the security checkpoint of the Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station. It took her back to Stonehenge, on that fall day with Dutch and Knee, who were not themselves, and those three brand new Honda's. One machine was large and American, much like her own, but ten years older. The other was small and European customised in a Bobber style. Though It wasn’t Dutch and Knee waiting for her. Not this time. Though she was sure she’d see them at home. It was her riding friends Agent Madeline Bozzio of the FBI and Mads wife Captain Joannie Wynne of the DC Metro Police Vice Squad. Joannie was an army brat just like Shannon. Her Dad and brother were Marines and so was she, before she’d become a cop. Shannon had really changed the kind of people she rode with. A couple of old cops hang out with the far from “straight-laced” Air Force Major. These women had her back. Had done it for almost thirteen years. 
Shannon embraced them both. It had been a long time. She'd been in Australia then back at the Cape in Florida, where she lived for far too much of the time. Felt good to be so close to home. She didn’t need a ticker-tape parade with her Mum and Dad waiting for her overflowing with pride. Then she’d sneak out later and go to the county’s only biker bar, The Rusty Sprocket and get drinks with the boys. It had been so long since she’d been able to touch alcohol. Most of her friends didn’t fit with the places rough and ready aesthetic, The New York Saab owning Architect. The Tech millionaire. The heir to one of Garrett’s premier businesses. The Grease monkey turned engineer, and Roadie turned logger who really did fit in with the other clientele at the Sprocket. Then Dutch and Knee who were regulars there. With their own stools and parking spaces. Shannon hoped that her other friends would show up too. Was it really a homecoming without all nine of the group? Her phone had exploded with texts as soon as she’d turned it on again. Still, there would be the Ren Fair as well. Chill events where she didn’t have to be the centre of attention, and the town’s conquering hero. At the Ren fair, she could wear a helmet, no one would recognise her. Her job made her kind of glad that hardly anyone knew they had saved the multiverse as kids. Just Tyler, Bozzio and the ALTA folks.        
She felt closer to her nine friends than most people she’d ever served with, other than maybe her shuttle crews. At least a couple of the IASA types believed what she’d been taught as a kid. What they’d all been through. So it was good to be working with them at ground control. Maybe that’s why she’d sort of drifted apart from Dutch for a time, he’d been pretty much her best friend for a lot of years. Then knowing there was something, mutual romantic interest, something more than friendship, that was a lot of pressure and had made things kind of awkward. For a time. That and returning to a Garett where her father approved of Dutch. Real Twilight Zone stuff! Knee was also still around. Even if a lot of people were calling him Barney, his given name now, it sounded more professional for a veterinarian. Knee was probably a better name for a Chiropractor. Chris was altogether different, he’d lived another life that Shannon had only begun to comprehend after she’d seen combat herself. That was different though from up in the cockpit of her F-15 Eagle or F-22 Raptor. To be beyond our world of petty conflicts is one of the reasons she’d joined NASA in the first place.  
Coming down the mountains on the 219 a somewhere almost parallel to Friendsville, Maryland Shannon caught an old cab over Freightliner trying to keep pace with them. The Truck always made her think of Optimus Prime Though it was black. The truck's air horns blared. To make its presence felt.  
Shannon signaled that they should pull into the 219 rest area. The Truck slowed and indicated, following suit. It had an empty bail trailer behind it. Holland Trucking and Carting of Garrett Maryland was sign written upon the cab door as it drew level with her motorcycle. Animal by Def Leopard escaped from the cab. Shannon’s heart raced. Five months had been too long. 
A handsome young man a little older than Shannon leapt from his cab wearing sand coloured overalls and dusty harness boots. Shedding his Logistics Corps Veteran hat and shaking out his long sandy hair, he held the leather clad Shannon close to him. His simple steel wedding band standing out on his tanned calloused hands. 
“I dropped off the hay from the Lewis place outside Morgantown, then I heard you were ahead on the freeway. Well my trucker buddies let me know.”    
He almost whispered in her ear. Not wanting to let go. 
“Dutch, how about you tell that to the Highway Patrolman behind you, that? You were speeding to see your wife. Great excuse.”
Shannon jokingly chided her big idiot. So that she didn’t have to tell him how much she had missed him, and his dumb smile. Made him look, though. There were no state police cruisers in sight. Just a perfect stretch of blacktop cutting through the mountains of Maryland. Looking out over the forest, farmland and grain silos. Mads and Joannie gave the other couple some space as they took in the view. 
“Which other guy in this town has a wife who just came back from space?” 
He looked at her with those puppy dog eyes, of his. What was she going to do with this former criminal recidivist?  Kissing him sounded like a really good idea right now. It had been five long months on the International Space Station. They’d married quickly when Shannon had gotten the ISS mission. Just them, the essential family, and a few friends at their tiny tumbledown beach house outside Ocean City. Then he’d waited patiently for all these months. Throwing himself into his work, and his growing small trucking empire as she had hers.      
“Let’s go back home, I want to show off my wife Mission Commander Locke”
He was so proud of her. So supportive. Never questioned that she wanted to go to space.
“A little while longer”   
They held each other in silence. Then Dutch said those six little words that every girl wants to hear. 
“I got us Joan Jett Tickets” 
Shannon just looked up at him. 
“Don’t go to space again before November okay? Your friend Jerry knows a guy at the venue and got us backstage passes. They’re in the truck.” 
Dutch went to move and Shannon wouldn't let him. So he stayed put. She didn’t have to see the tickets to know they were there held by a magnet to the dash of the Freightliner where Dutch kept important things along with their wedding photo. The Most recent photo he had of her. The same one she had on the ISS. 
“I’d come back every day if you keep buying me Joan Jett and The Blackhearts tickets. I love you.” 
Shannon reached up and tousled his hair. 
“ I love you too.” 
She couldn’t believe this was her life a lot of the time. Eventually, all four of them embraced each other. Yes, Dutch being best pals with the cops. That was something Shannon never thought she’d live to see. Her Husband was even close to her father. Plus he didn’t have a criminal record of any sort. Apart from a few speeding tickets, and parking infractions. An occupational hazard. That had been a shock to the system when she’d first gotten back to Garret Prime Dutch and Sean being able to stand the sight of each other. Once again, Shannon, Mads and Joannie fired up their motorcycles, and with Dutch, in the Truck behind them, they headed in convoy back towards Garrett.