Thunderbirds are Go: Hunter

Math Girl

1

Thunderbird 5, amidships, in high Earth orbit-

Mostly, he wanted a beer; cold, slightly bitter, and beaded with condensation, all down the dark bottle. Would have been nice, but alcohol and low-g conditions didn't combine very well. Too disorienting. So, instead, he just drifted, watching the Earth roll by underneath.

It was his favorite time, when Thunderbird 5 hung just over the terminator, and half of the world lay in darkness, glittering softly like Christmas, while half glowed with sunlight. As always, he thought of the world's worst, least edible candy, the jaw-breaker, in some odd sort of blueberry/ lime mashup. His earpiece buzzed like a sleepy hive, most of it not very important, some worth filing for later. Nothing urgent, though. Not for the moment.

"Looks like everyone's decided to play nice, this morning," he murmured, barely audible above the station's constant background hum. Eos picked it up, anyhow, responding with a brief, warm vibration through his earpiece.

Nodding slightly in reply, john became aware of his own reflection, and hers, in the curved perma-glass bubble before him. He saw a tall, rather lanky young man in a blue, form-fitting, cyber-linked space suit and orange International Rescue sash. Straight, red-gold hair drifted slightly around a face that had always struck him (when he saw it at all) as too pretty. Large eyes, neither blue nor green, but somewhere in between (as Grandma liked to rhyme) stared back, then darted aside, not enjoying the scrutiny.

Eos was a lens in the bulkhead behind him; a curving black eye surrounded by pale, starry lights. She was also a presence and a personality; shreds of gaming code he'd written once for something to do, now come to full conscious life… in a manner of speaking.

"Your breakfast is approaching the catch-all grid, John," she reminded him, managing to inject a note of martyred patience into her synthesized voice. He should never have let her binge-watch all those vids. "At its current rate of drift, I estimate that your bagel will reach the grid in approximately 12.2725 seconds, where it will be broken down into particles, swept away and recycled. As raisins, this time, I think."

"I hate raisins," he objected, executing an elegant half-roll and turn in midair.

"Then perhaps you should eat your bagel," she told him, sounding a lot like Grandma. Before he could stretch out and reach for the thing (lightly toasted, and just a little bit buttered), she altered the flow of the observation bubble's air vents, and blew it back his way. She liked to play catch, but tended to cheat by changing the ring's rotational speed to mess with the station's gravity. Despite this, he usually won, having, y'know, hands.

"Thanks," he said, fielding the low-skimming bagel, and taking a bite. He was never very hungry up here. Something to do with his inner ear, and the constant vibration. Food just didn't taste the same way as it did downstairs, which was why he liked his meals relatively simple.

The snatch-and-grab had altered his position. He was now head-downward relative to the station's deck, and rotating slightly, with that swooping, top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling that orbital velocity always gave him. Thunderbird 5 was back in full daylight, now, but that would change eight times in the course of his workday. Astrophysics, pure and simple, and very satisfying. That, of course, was when a shrieking distress call came through, and everything went to crap.

Tracy Island, mid-afternoon, the dry season-

Scott had a problem. More to the point, he had no ride, as Thunderbird 1 was in the shop for upgrades. Again. As always, thanks to Brains' incessant need to tinker.

'Patience', he thought to himself. 'I can be patient. I'm a level-headed guy. It's part of his job. It's what he does. Deep breath. One… two… three… four…'

Brains was enthusing away, gesticulating wildly over the holo-projector; wild-eyed passion rendered in miniature.

"…Over seventy-five percent more eh- efficient, and speed! You will break many times over the sound barrier!"

Which, strictly speaking, was already the case; but Dr. Hackenbacker chased lightspeed the way some men chased females, so back in the shop went Thunderbird 1, his particular baby. Scott forced a smile and held up both hands, palm outward, in a gesture of mock surrender.

"Whoa, okay… I get it, Brains. Zippy and cheap. Just, make it a quick upgrade, please? I hate being grounded."

He was pacing the living room, forcing Brains' holo to track him. The image flickered a lot in consequence. Obscurely, this made Scott feel better. Still damp from his post-run shower, wearing jeans and an old camo tank top, he looked like, and was, a confident young man, well accustomed to risk and command. Especially since his father's… Well, since dad had left the picture, Scott had had to take charge. He was handsome, too. Or, so they told him. Dark haired and blue-eyed, with a pair of exactly matched dimples, he was nevertheless somewhat awkward around women. Came of living on an island, surrounded by brothers, he supposed. Still, back to the issue at hand…

Brains had resumed talking, this time spouting a lot of physics mumbo-jumbo that John would have snapped up like candy, but was utter nonsense to Scott.

"Great. Sounds good," the pilot interrupted, somehow maintaining the smile. "So, what d'you figure, Brains? An hour? Two?"

The engineer's image paused in mid speech, looking hurt. Taking off his spectacles, Brains gave them a quick, nervous wipe on his shirt, cleared his throat and said,

"Th- there is no rushing the search for perfection, Scott. P- pulling a Ming vase from the flame too soon, yields nothing b- but shards."

Yeah… definitely hurt.

"Right. I get that, Brains, only no one's depending on a Ming vase to save lives and put the halt on chaos. Just…"

"Tracy Island, from Thunderbird 5."

A second, better focused image appeared beside Brains'. John, it was, oriented a bit sideways and bobbing slightly; one arm extended to brace himself against something that did not appear in the holo. Instantly, Scott forgot everything else.

"John! What's going on, Little Brother?" It had been just Scott, then the two of them, for four and a half years before the others came along. They had history. "A situation?"

"And then some. You'd better sit down."

Earlier, the Free States of Britain, former UK-

Nigel Plumber made a final adjustment to his instrument box, giving the battered device a fond, loving pat. He was depth-finding out in the field, searching for shielded rooms and bunkers beneath the ruins of Edinburgh. Old, savage conflict had brought down the city, if not most of its people. Unfortunately, it had also left behind stockpiles of fading tech and unstable ammo, and these had to be charted.

You wanted to look sharp, before you went about digging a foundation, here. You could never be certain of what lay beneath. Thus, Nigel, his assistant, Rayna, and their depth-finding gear. Rather a misnomer, that. Yes, the instruments scanned; producing a wide-band signal that would ping off of buried metals, echo in caverns, and vibrate against whatever was left of the poor souls who'd sought shelter below ground, all those raw, horrid years ago. But it also picked up and responded to binary signals, announcing the presence of any leftover self-willed mechanicals. Strictly against the law, those were, designed to stalk a battlefield and mow down whole armies, following nothing but their own mostly degraded AI programming. Monsters of sick legend, all blades, guns and power.

Not that he'd ever found such, himself. He'd heard stories, though. Old Lucky Ned, in the fifth quadrant, had once tripped off an unstable cluster bomb, getting away with his life by the skin of God's eye-teeth. Gladys had lost a few petals, though.

It had not been a very exciting day so far, apart from the auld fuel depot they'd turned up. Still, in their business, slow was good. The people with the best stories generally had the fewest whole limbs, and they deserved every free drink they got. Nigel was quite attached to each of his limbs, and intended to remain so.

A dry, chilly wind hissed around the slag heaps and girders, tugging at Nigel's bright orange work suit. Beside him, and a little before, Rayna tapped away at her specially shielded data pad. The earth here was cracked, grey and sere; as much melted concrete as soil and rust. A complete desert on the surface. Looks were deceiving, though. Lots to be found here, some of it useful.

Humming to himself, Nigel upped the gain on his signal.

"Prepare to log in a final series, Rayn," he called over his helmet comm to the other reclamation tech. "We'll do an additional hectare, then head…"

THUD. Zzzzt- clk. THUD.

"Oy, what was that?!"

Rayna turned round to face him, her eyes grey and wide behind the helmet glass.

"I dunno, Nige! Did you trip sumthin', then?"

"No!" he shot back, voice cracking with panic. "It's been nuthin' but bunkers and motor pools, all the way down! What could've…?"

THUD! Louder, this time, accompanied by a swelling bulge in the ground before them, and a trickle of loose, showering rocks.

"Nigel, I think we should…"

His assistant never completed her statement. A sudden blast of red light tore the ground open. Dirt and stone fountained hundreds of feet in the sky, and a tarnished, clattering, nightmare burst forth.