I do not own the characters to The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. They are owned by Hanna-Barbera. I did create the other characters and this story is entirely fictional. Enjoy.
30 August 1942, the destroyer, USS Comet, departed New Hebrides island of La Santa, bound for Australia. It left alone and disappeared in the waters of the South Pacific. Its disappearance, during the start of the Guadalcanal Campaign, was largely forgotten by the larger fighting. By the end of the war, the ship was stricken from the Naval Registry and the crew declared missing in action. For 70 years it remained that way.
There was little interest in finding the ship. That changed when rumors circulated that the Comet was carrying a bountiful cargo of precious goods. Every attempt to locate the ship was thwarted. In 2009, a Chinese research vessel, the Xiangyanghony 8, disappeared off the coast of New Caledonia while searching for the Comet. The weather was calm and the ship had been transmitting daily reports when it abruptly stopped with no alarm. After three days and no contact, a massive search operation was conducted. After a month, no trace of the ship was found or its crew of 100 people. At least two aircraft have also disappeared in the search for the Comet. Rumors circulated that many more were also lost to the depths of the ocean.
That's where the Quest Team came in; Dr. Benton Quest head the team with teenage son Jonny. Their friend, ex-operative, Race Bannon, his daughter Jesse, and Dr. Quest's personal assistant, and Jonny and Jessie's friend, Hadji. They received a personal message from the leader of the Barnard Undersea Recovery headed by Dr. Simon T. Barnard, with his younger brother, Emil as vice-president. The two had spent twenty years exploring the world's oceans looking for wrecks to solve the great mysterious of modern time. In one of their first major successes, they recovered a Spanish galleon in the Caribbean loaded with 200 tons of gold. It made the brothers world famous and millionaires. However, since then they had a series of clunking expeditions. They went searching for Amelia Earhart in the South Pacific and Flight 19 off the east coast of Florida. Both yielded nothing. It was thought that the search of the Comet would be the same ending.
Dr. Quest took up the request partly due to a need for a vacation and because of a need to satisfy an old debt. The two doctors go back many years. Dr. Barnard was once a student of Dr. Quest when he was earning his Ph.D in Bangor, and gone on several expeditions together. The two parted away to expand upon their fields of expertise.
Dr. Barnard forwarded copies of all the documentation and photos of the Comet and its final journey. There wasn't much to go on. As the Quest team crossed the Pacific, the three teens sat in the back of the Dragonfly, pouring themselves over the photos and photo-copies of documents. They were seemingly infatuated with the mystery.
Hadji sat calmly while looking upon a copy of an manifest of the Comet, said by Dr. Barnard to have been lost during the war. It had been allegedly found in a packet of other unrelated documents deep within the National Archives. On the manifest the Comet departed the island loaded down with a heavy assortment of various items; 100 tons of gold in bars and coins, 150 tons of silver bars, 50 million dollars in American silver certificates, aircraft parts, 80 sacks of mail, and eight undocumented passengers. At the time this manifest was drafted, judging by the date on the paper, the items came from the island itself, not from another ship. It was listed simply as 'La Santa'. Hadji formulated the easy question, what was so much precious metal and currency doing on an island that was uninhabited? This cast doubts on the integrity of the manifest, as well as Dr. Barnard's other claims to have found other evidence of the Comet. Ever the detailed researcher, Hadji had compared the alleged manifest with other documentation and found several flaws that he showed to Jessie and Jonny, "The signatures at the bottom of the page are from people I cannot find in any US Navy personnel database," said Hadji.
"You thinking it's a forgery?" Jessie asked as she carefully took the page and looked it over.
"I am thinking that this is a manipulated one," Hadji said as he looked at a second page, copies of orders sent to the Comet ordering her to return to Brisbane, Australia. "Look at this one here..." turning the printed side to his friends, "There is also a discrepancy in the official story. See here..." pointing to a second printed paragraph, "It says that a 'gunboat' escorted the Comet for, perhaps, a quarter of the journey before returning to New Hebrides." He was referring to was the USS Asteroid, an Asheville class gunboat. Hadji sat silently and pondered.
Jonny knew that look. He waited intently as his Indian friend raised a finger. "If," Hadji began, "This ship was loaded with such precious cargo, why did it not have an escort for the whole voyage?"
Putting down the page onto the table, Jessie stood up to stretch her tired arms, "Yeah. That doesn't make sense. Some 200 tons of gold and silver and they just let it go on its own? I mean, I would have put it on a battleship or something, first. Not some old tin can."
"The journey gets even stranger, my friends," Hadji continued, "There were no Japanese reports of any engagements during that day that have survived the war."
"Yeah, but Hadji, there could have been submarines there, right?" Jonny scoffed slightly.
"Very possible. But, those that did survive say that no Japanese surface ships or submarines were within 300 miles of the Island," Hadji said as he pulled out the pieces of paper from the pile that were marked as such. He slid them over to Jonny who picked them up and read them.
"A ship like this doesn't just vanish," Jesse sighed as she sat down. "What are we thinking, another Bermuda Triangle?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not," Hadji replied. "While there were no weather reports stating a cyclone in the area, there are other natural events that could have occurred that swallowed the ship."
That tin can that Jesse referenced had a few pictures to its name, some of which she looked over with interest. They were all black-and-white, some of them grainy from bad film stock and storage after 70 years. Attempts had been made to digitally scan and enhance the image to SD level, however, the stock was simply too degraded. The Comet was a four-stacked, flush deck, Clemson-class destroyer. First laid down in 1919, it had missed the Great War and served in the peace time cruising off China and the Philippines. When war broke out on 7 December 1941, the Comet was with Destroyer Division 57 off the Dutch colony of Balikpapan. In comparison to destroyers around the time, and what came out towards the end of the war, the Comet wasn't all that impressive. She was 314 feet and 4 1/2 inches in length. At a full load she displaced 1,308 tons. Her armament; four-4" deck guns in open mountings, a 3" gun for AA defense, and 12-21" torpedoes in four-3 tube mountings, two on each side amidships.
In comparison, the Fletcher class destroyer, USS Kimberly, commissioned in 1943, was 376 feet 6 inches long with a 2,050 ton displacement. She carried 5 rapid firing 5"/38 caliber guns in armored housings, 10-40mm Bofors and 7-20mm Oerlikon guns for AA defense, 10-21" torpedo tubes, 6 depth charge projectors and 2 depth charge racks.
In comparing the two, the Comet was puny. Which begs the question, why would the Comet depart through hostile waters without an escort? Not only that, they were also troubled by the unlisted passengers that Comet allegedly took on. A ship's Captain is 'Second to God' when it comes to command of his ship. He must know everyone and everything that comes aboard and leaves his vessel. Why would Commander Edgar Wright Pound, a highly decorated and 20 year veteran of the Navy, not question this, at least officially? There were no reports or copies of wire transmissions of his or anyone else inquiring about these mysterious passengers. That is, if the manifest was real.
"What if they're aliens?" Jesse giggled, gently elbowing Jonny in his right hip.
Jonny rolled his eyes, "Come on, Jess. Aliens? I think we can keep our ideas here on earth for a change."
"You know, Dr. Barnard suggests that the passengers may have been high-ranking Japanese officials or officers that wished to surrender," Hadji said as he stacked the pages back in their proper order. Race from the cockpit that they were preparing the descent.
Thinking about it for a moment, Jonny cracked his knuckles, "Well, I'll believe it when I see it."
"It's so tragic, isn't it?" Jesse whispered. "A whole ship, it's crew...gone. God, I couldn't imagine what the family must've felt, not knowing what happened to them."
"That's what we're hoping to find out, Jess," Jonny nodded.
The last bit of information that was provided was an expedition carried out by Dr. Barnard years before. He located the last surviving crew-member of the Comet, Petty Officer 2nd Class Norman H.W. Walker. He departed the Comet the day it departed on its last journey when he suddenly fell gravely ill. It turned out to be a ruptured appendix that required the attention of a surgeon on a larger ship. Petty Officer Walker underwent the surgery, recovered, and continued his service through the war and into Korea. But he openly refused to discuss any aspect of his service on the Comet. When interest was sparked about the possible treasure, poor Walker was hounded day and night by amateur treasure seekers and conspiracy theorists to the point that he had a nervous breakdown and was checked into a VA facility. In reading about him, Jesse sat there and pondered greatly. Something wasn't right about it. She wasn't accusing Walker of anything sinister, but why would he refuse to discuss only his service on the Comet. "Something's telling me that something happened on the Comet and he wanted to get off the ship," she said as she looked at a grainy photo of Walker dated back to his induction into the Navy in '38.
"Like what?" Jonny asked, curiously.
"I'm not sure," her green eyes narrowing as she looked at the gray pupils of Walker's. "But something happened on that ship. Something so bad that he may have hurt himself just to get out of the situation."
Hadji starred wide-eyed at his friend for a moment, "That is a big accusation, my friend. I would be cautious about saying such things outside this group."
"I know, Hadji. This just doesn't sit right with me," combing a hand quickly through her red hair. "I can't explain it. Nothing about this is making much sense to me the more I think about it."
The Catalina flying boat circled the small harbor of La Santa, temporary base for the 'Deep Explorer' company. The harbor and its facilities were built during the War, after the Comet departed on her final journey. Race expertly landed the seaplane and taxied her towards the sandy shore where several men pulled her onto the beach with ropes. Opening the hatch and stepping down the ladder, the Quest Team found themselves on a tropical paradise; bright sandy beaches, lush foliage, bright blue water, and a clear sky. "Wow. This place is incredible!" Jonny exclaimed as he walked along the shore, bathing in the warm rays of the sun.
"Hard to believe that this place was part of the war," Dr. Quest sighed as he watched his son and Jesse walk along the beach in front of him, followed right behind by Hadji and Bandit.
"Yep. Sure does bring back memories," Race nodded as the two walk side by side. Their walking led them to a series of old, refurbished buildings. They were the last remnants of the US Navy base, several quonset huts-semicircular cross-section buildings made of corrugated, galvanized steel about 75 yards inland of the beach. Above the door of one of them was 'Dr. Barnard' on a simple wood sign. Dr. Quest knocked on the splintering wood door. Deep inside there was a rustle of papers and shuffling of feet. "Come in" was the groaned response.
"He seems chipper," Race sirly replied as they stepped in first, followed by the children. When they stepped in, the room was filled with the natural light coming in from many windows along the curved wall. A simple wood desk sat near the back wall where a single man sat, going through stacks of papers. As they approached, the figure paid no attention to them. Instead he looked at papers with a small magnify glass. Even from 20 feet away, Dr. Quest knew it was Dr. Barnard. He had long silver hair, even though he was only 39 and a strong physique. Standing in front of the desk, Dr. Quest looked down at Dr. Barnard who still wasn't reacting to their precense. It took Bandit to yelp that the silver haired doctor looked up with at first a scowl and then wide eyes, "Dr. Quest!" jumping up from his seat. "It's been a long time."
"Yes, it has," Dr. Quest nodded with a smile. "Five years, as a matter of fact. It was the wreck of Ichi Maru, as I recall."
"Yeah. A real bust on that one. Sure, got a lot of press. But, we didn't recover what we thought it had."
Standing behind Race and Dr. Quest, Jonny leaned over and whispered to Jesse, "What's the Ichi Maru?" Jesse could only shrug.
The adults continued to talk with Dr. Barnard saying, "You've come at a great time. We've been having all sorts of trouble."
"Trouble? Like what?" asked Race.
"All sorts of things," Dr. Barnard replied, sitting down with a grunt. His knees ached. The others couldn't see it but his legs were bandaged. He was one of the many casualties from a string of accidents. "Just yesterday, one of our submersibles was dropped into the ocean when a crane broke. No one was on board, thankfully. We had to spend the entire day recovering it and fixing the damage. Needless to say, we're behind schedule in our salvaging..."
"Salvaging?" Dr. Quest raised an eyebrow. The tone of the word caught him off guard.
Seeing this, Dr. Barnard was all smiles as it opened up a folder on his desk and pushed it towards the Quest Team, he said, "Take a look for yourself."
Hovering over the folder, Dr. Quest peeled off the first page, a colored-HD quality photograph taken by one of the submersibles. The photograph was of the bow of the ship, sitting upright and intact. Though there was a thin layer of marine life growing on it, the numbers '202' could still be seen clearly."You found it, you actually found it?!" Dr. Quest exclaimed. "After over 70 years, you finally found the lost ship?"
"We did," Dr. Barnard nodded firmly. "Dumb luck, or Divine Intervention. When that submersible fell into the ocean, we were heading back to port after a week of no luck. When we went down after it, boom, there she was. The sub missed it by just 30 feet. It's only in 100 feet of water, too. We're sending divers down there tomorrow, if the weather cooperates."
"I don't believe it," Dr. Quest smiled as he looked at the photo before passing it around to the others. "After all these years..."
"And three million dollars," Dr. Barnard tacked on. "Now we can justify the patience of our workers and our contributors."
"Well that sounds all fine and dandy," Race replied, "But I don't see how you guys need us, considering you already found it."
"That's where you're wrong, Mr. Bannon," Dr. Barnard slowly stood back up. "See, I need a man with the level of intellect as Dr. Quest and a man of such action as yourself to be able to help us in this recovery effort. There's a lot more going on than just the hunt for gold and silver. There's the hunt for answers. We can answer a lot of mysteries with this ship, like the identities of these unlisted people. And we can put these men to rest."