"Thunderbird One to Thunderbird Two, everything okay back there?"

"We're *still* fine, mister impatient. Thanks for asking."

As usual, Scott Tracy would be landing much sooner than his brothers, thanks to his Thunderbird's much higher cruising speed. This didn't usually happen on the way *back* from a rescue - usually on the way there - but there was a first time for everything.

"Gah." Gordon Tracy shifted uncomfortably in the copilot's seat on Thunderbird Two's flight deck. "I know he means well..."

"Gordon, after that little performance, you deserve the mother-hen treatment," Virgil Tracy admonished from the pilot's seat.

Virgil was right; Thunderbird Four had taken a beating this mission, and Gordon was showing some fresh bruises. The safety restraints were good, but not perfect - they often caused some injury in the name of preventing worse.

Thunderbird Two's crew were still musing on in-craft safety devices when several devices surreptitiously attached to the craft went beep, then ruined everyone's day.

Scott, meanwhile, was having a nice, relaxing flight back from the danger zone (no word on whether he was blasting Kenny Loggins), at least until EOS startled him out of it. He'd never quite gotten used to the AI that had tried to kill John, and had been very wary of leaving Thunderbird Five in its/her care while John took time off.

[[Scott, I have detected multiple explosions in extreme proximity to Thunderbird Two, and cannot contact it.]]

Some days, it bothered Scott immensely. Others, like this one, it got forced onto the backburner. "Any idea of a cause?" Hopefully, a sensor malfunction...

[[All available sensor data indicates a type of explosive similar to that found at the most recent rescue, probably delivered using a device attached to the craft. Alert: Thunderbird 2's occupants are unconscious and it is losing altitude.]]

Oh no. "Take control and hold her level!"

[[I have already attempted remote control, unsuccessfully.]]

"No." Scott swung his craft around, "No, no, no, no!"

"Damn it," Scott muttered to whoever cared to listen as he approached his stricken brothers' craft, "I thought you guys were done being in danger for today!"

This close, it was obvious that EOS had not been suffering a sensor malfunction. Thunderbird Two looked rather the worse for wear (moreso than when it took off, somehow). There were several breaches in the hull, smoke poured from one of the engines, and there was no sign of the comms array. ("Well," Scott mused, "that would explain the remote control failure.") Despite severe damage to the mechanisms holding the pod in place, it was somehow still hanging on. Makes sense. Brains built each pod clamp to work alone despite having four of them. I'm glad he did.

"EOS, how long have I got?"

[[Impact with the ocean will occur in six minutes.]]

"Not nearly as long as I'd like. All right, we need to stop its descent. I need options."

[[Repair the comms array?]]

"Not in six minutes. I'm good, but not that good."

[[Board and use the flight controls?]]

"Difficult to get on board, but it could work. Keep going."

[[Skythrust towing method?]]

"All the way back to the island? It's a long shot."

[[All other options are even longer shots. Those three are our best chances.]]

"In that case, let's tow." Scott matched Thunderbird Two's downward course. "Computer, activate grapple guidance system."

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep... It's taking this long? Must be worse than I thought. Beep, beep, [b]beeeeeeeep[/b] - the grapple locked on, and he pulled Thunderbird One out of its dive, dragging its sister craft with it.

[[Thunderbird Two and the grapple link appear stable. Return to base with cargo as soon as possible.]]

"Told you I could do it. Let's go."

Before he could, fate decided to punish him for getting on top of the situation. The sound of an explosion rippled through the air as the smoke from Two's damaged engine turned to flame. Worse, the shock caused further damage to the skin, and the plate that One had grappled onto peeled off the top of Two's hull like so much wrapping paper.

[[Grapple link is no longer stable.]]

"I can see that!"

Scott tried the grapple guidance system again. After the longest six seconds of his life, it told him that there was nowhere to safely attach. To make matters worse, Two had pitched another degree or two downward, reducing the timer in his head (and on his screen, thanks to EOS) to less than three minutes.

"Looks like I'll have to board after all. Please tell me my jetpack's recharged."

Thankfully, his jetpack was in the storage locker where he'd left it, somewhat recharged after the mission (which hadn't been a certainty, given how low he'd run it). Matching course with Two again, he stalked back to the recovery bay and steeled himself for the task ahead. He'd had enough trouble ziplining onto a train at two hundred kilometres an hour. The wind whipping him backwards here was more than twice as fast, and there was no zipline to help him.

Focus. Think of Air Terrainean. Managed that with only a safety line.

And magnetic boots. I wish I'd brought the magnetic boots on this one.

Taking a moment to attach One's grapple line to himself as a heavy-duty safety line, Scott tensed, aimed, and leapt into the wind.

He realised half a second later that he hadn't quite thought this plan through. For one, he had no hope of overpowering the wind with his jetpack.

Par for the course, then.

His quickest grapple gun draw-and-fire ever anchored him to Thunderbird Two's dorsal hull and stopped him sliding off the back entirely. Now he had to crawl forward eight metres against winds to put a hurricane to shame. Or maybe he didn't. If he could just reach his remote control...

Thunderbird One obediently dragged him forwards over the hull as he reloaded his grapple gun, and thus he came to the really insurmountable part of the problem: actually getting on board.

"EOS, what are my chances of opening the ventral hatch?" he shouted over the wind.

[[Nil. The mechanism will not operate in these conditions, even if you could safely access it.]]

"Has Brains automated the dorsal hatch yet?"

[[Negative.]]

Damn it all, how am I going to get that hatch open?

In the end, it took some of Scott's best creative thinking to get through the heavy dorsal hatch. He first anchored himself to the hull behind the hatch with his grapple gun. Suitably stuck in place, he carefully removed Thunderbird One's heavy grapple line from his back and attached it to the hatch. A jetpack-assisted downward push on the hatch convinced it to unlatch. Finally, he ordered One to drop behind Two, and the big grapple cable went taut, pulling the hatch open.

Scott swung through the hatch and directed Thunderbird One to drag it closed. "Hey guys, just thought I'd drop by for a visit."

Nobody laughed, mainly because they were unconscious. A quick check of the instrument panel told Scott that the flight deck had been depressurised for significantly longer than could be explained by the open hatch. Probably not long enough for brain damage. I hope. Nonetheless, after the ordeal of getting in, it was insultingly easy to replace Gordon in the copilot's chair and pull Two out of its dive. As an afterthought, he put Virgil's and Gordon's oxygen masks on (Gordon was a pain, sure, but not that much of a pain), and plugged in a bypass module that let EOS worm her way back into the flight computers.

Several anxious minutes later, as both Thunderbirds crawled back to base under EOS' capable direction, Virgil made a noise that indicated he was likely no longer unconscious. Scott immediately woke him fully, mainly because he did not feel up to dealing with Gordon solo.

"So," Kayo said, trying not to hide her relief at not being the recipient of the Scott Tracy Chew-Out this time around, "when will they be back on duty, and has anyone told John?"

"I called him just after we landed. He wanted to go straight back to Five, but EOS threatened to just lock him out if he got there." Scott tried not to laugh. "With oxygen! And they just have the aftereffects of hypoxia, and Gordon's bruises; Brains says they'll be fine for the day after tomorrow. Or tomorrow afternoon if there's a Code White."

Both of them were betting that Gordon would be released before then because Brains would be sick of dealing with the little terror.

Kayo slipped from concerned family member straight back to security chief. "I've compared notes with EOS about the damage to Thunderbird Two, and she's compared notes with Brains. Definitely explosives, and definitely the same kind as the charges you stumbled across on the rescue, and they definitely weren't attached when you arrived at the site. Which means we got sloppy. Virgil left Two alone, without a guard."

"Yeah, I called him down halfway through when I couldn't shift that pile of concrete. I didn't think we had a site security problem -"

"Scott, nobody thinks they have a security problem until it blows up in their face." (Scott cringed.) "Okay, bad wording. Point is, we should have been worrying about this before, and we really need to worry about it now. You left Thunderbird One nearby. A similar explosive charge would have breached the fuselage, and at the speed you were going it would have been ripped apart instantly."

Scott shuddered. "...Point taken. You're right, we need to worry about this. What can we start with?"

"Start with 'nobody touches the Thunderbirds without permission'. We authorise EOS to activate Defense Protocol Gamma on any of them."

Scott didn't object. This set the tone for the rest of the impromptu meeting, much to his later horror.