"…Well. I'm out of ideas. Ball's back on your drawing board, Johnny."

There's a testy silence from orbit. And despite the fact that he's currently facing up to a problem he can't solve without his big brother's help, Gordon grins as John's chilly huff of reproof, "We're working. Keep it clear and concise. And don't call me Johnny."

"You want me to cut to the mustard, you mean."

"I want you to shut up and standby while I touch back with the New Zealand Coast Guard and find out how much longer we're gonna need to wait for evac."

"Roger dodger, star command, that's a big ten-four. Over and out."

"Gordon."

Gordon feigns a polite cough through a grin. "I mean, FAB!"

The problem at hand is a forty million dollar yacht, taking on water off coast of New Zealand, and if they were anywhere else in the world Thunderbird 4 wouldn't have gotten there in time.

Because Thunderbird Two isn't available. Scott and Virgil are providing heavy lifting and evac after an earthquake in Sierra Leone, can't be spared. And TB4's range is impressive, and it's among the faster submersibles in the world, but anything more than a few hundred miles out of range of Tracy Island, and Gordon's response time dwindles out of the range of usefulness.

So it's lucky that the hapless crew of yachtsmen in question happened into trouble when and where they did—but the situation's still non-ideal.

When he'd first arrived on scene, he'd just popped right up under the ship, bolstered it back up off its side. Then he'd radioed the island and looped Brains in, advised him on the course of action he'd taken. The response had been a startled "Good heavens!" from the engineer and an abrupt disappearance in the name of running some numbers.

So you know. Not a great sign.

Because the other problem with TB4 in absence of TB2—not that Gordon likes to admit it—is that his capacity for heavy lifting is next to nil. Currently, as a stopgap, he's wedged his little sub up below the bow of the listing vessel, and his engines are countering the weight of the ship, preventing it from sinking any further, taking on any more water.

As a temporary measure, it's not a bad one, but he can't keep it up for too much longer. TB4's not designed to take weight from the top for extended periods of time,and he can't quite get the right angle to exert upward pressure. It's taking a lot of concentration and a lot of minute, consistent adjustments, and burning a lot of fuel, on top of what he's already blown getting out here at speed. At the moment he's basically balancing two thousand tons on the top of his head, while riding the equivalent of a unicycle married to a pogo stick. With a comm channel open to the panicky passengers and crew aboard the yacht, who are at least too terrified to be yelling at him for help.

So while he's damn impressed and damn proud of his perky little sub, he's also thinking about the damage being done to his sunny yellow paint job, and more importantly, the ratio of forces between his straining engines versus the load bearing capacity of a vessel not actually meant for this specific task. He's starting to have to ignore a host of warning lights, silencing alarms as he starts to lose power to a handful of moderately important systems.

Overhead there's a swell of a wave, and Gordon feels the roll of the ship almost before he hears it. There's a creaking groan and Gordon's forced to do a wiggly, undignified little manoeuvre, shimmying his ship back into position to prevent the yacht from sliding loose. It's getting a little nerve-wracking.

There's only one thing Gordon ever does to deal with nerves.

He thumbs his radio back on. "Hey, TB5? "

Crisply, "Status, TB4?"

"Time flies like an arrow."

"…did not receive, come again?"

"Fruit flies like a banana."

Instead of a roll of drums and a rimshot, there's a long, irritated pause. "Gordon, do you need something?"

"Yeah, I need evac, like ten minutes ago. What's the ETA on the damn Coast Guard?"

"Still about fifteen minutes out. Back off the language, we're working. What's going on?"

Probably shouldn't have broken his concentration, actually. It'spossible that John's right and this isn't any kind of time for jokes, because there's another roll of the yacht overhead, Gordon curses and overcompensates, and the vessel rolls over the top of Four's dorsal sail. There's a shrieking tear of metal and Gordon cringes "Aaaauuugh, fucking damn it. Yeah. I just…made the best of a bad situation a whole fuck of a lot worse. One whole fuck. A metric fuck, even, not the imperial kind."

The other problem with TB4 lacking TB2 is that it means Gordon lacks Virgil, and therefore lacks a universal translator between his particular brand of situational update and John's need for strict, accurate information.

"Clarify, please."

Gordon engages his rearward lights and cameras and patches John in, offers a view of the rainbow slick spreading on the surface of the ocean overhead, confirms what he was already afraid of. "Oh, shit—yup—shit and fuck and hell and also damn and fuck again, there goes the starboard fuel tank. This is a frying pan into the trial by fire sorta state of affairs, J-bird, and I dunno what I'm gonna do if anything sparks offa this whole fuel situation."

"Fuel situation? Your fuel situation? I've got an eye on—wait…leaking fuel, you run ion batteries you can't…Gordon, what does that mean?"

"Seas are rough! Rolled the hull off of the sharp pokey bit on the top of my sub! Punched a hole in the fuel tank! Currently leaking gasoline into the South Pacific!"

"…standby."

This is not a situation in which Gordon has a high tolerance for the the word "standby".

Gordon grinds his teeth at that as John puts him on hold again. Frustrated, he opens a line to Brains again. "Give it to me straight, Doc, am I ever gonna play piano again?"

Brains, at least, has the decency not to cuss him out and ignores him instead, jumping straight to the point. "Y-you're not going to have the p-power to sustain your current action for longer than 11.2 minutes, G-Gordon. You'll be dead in the water and you'll be caught beneath the ship when it founders; i-it'll force you under. Can you d-disengage and re-evaluate, or—"

"Negative, Brains, I gotta—shit—" The yacht slips slightly and Gordon twists the controls, banks up hard beneath the sub, flinches at the screech of metal and imagines the sparks that must fly. A glance at his camera feeds reassures him, but it's going to happen again. And again. "Nope. Nooooope, been another hull breach, I let this thing go and it'll be underwater in five minutes. Lemme get…I gotta get John back on the line—"

John flashes back up before he can put the call in, "They're pushing harder, still going to be about ten minutes. Can they bail overboard?"

"There's like thirty people aboard this thing, J. Currently I got all my eggs in one leaky imminently on fire basket, not really sure I can handle having 'em scrambled."

Gordon's peripherally aware that John's concurrently running dispatch for Virgil and Scott, and that he can't actually doanything to make the Coast Guard go any faster. And lacking Virgil—"Gordon, can you please use situationally appropriate language, because I have no idea what the fuck you mean."

"I mean that I don't have anywhere to put thirty fucking people. If I have to pull thirty fucking people outta the ocean in a half-powered craft, I'm gonna lose most of 'em! I mean shit is going to hell really damn quickly, Johnny, so if you could stop assuming I have this shit under control and start working the goddamn problem, I'd be much obliged."

"…stand—"

"If you say standby one more fucking time—"

"No. Stand them on top of your…you've got both recovery pods loaded? Launch both. They've got sufficient buoyancy to pull to the surface from a depth of two thousand meters, they can take—I don't know the figures exactly, but it's gotta be at least fifteen people each. It'll be crowded, but they're probably big enough."

That'll work. Gordon's already calculating the numbers on the fly, and keying in the sequence to launch, when John prompts, "Gordon, confirm?"

"FAB, J, working on it—"

"Roger, I'm transmitting the order to the crew—."

"—have 'em evac portside, not starboard,there's still a fuel leak spreading out on top of me and—"

"FAB."

Gordon finishes coding both launches, calibrated to get the two impromptu lifeboats just clear of the sinking ship. The pods launch, two pneumatic punches from behind him. The two pods jettison at a slight downward angle, achieve just enough distance to be clear of the yacht, but still within striking distance from the port side of the vessel.

Brains voice fills his cockpit, even as gauges that were in warning, warding yellow start to flash into the red, alarms beginning to rise in pitch. "—Th-thunderbird F-four; you've just taken a substantial bite of your f-fuel reserve, route a-all auxiliary power to engines and get clear—"

There's a sputter beneath him and Gordon curses, his hands clenching tight around the controls for his rearward jets, trying to adjust the angle far enough with failing power. Instead, he feels the weight of the ship rolling overhead, tilting further even as it starts to push him downward. The open comm channel to the radio fills with the sound of panicked shouting and mentally Gordon's starting to consider his own evac—

A woman's voice fills the cockpit, false and synthesized—"TB5 has engaged remote override. Operator: remain calm andstand by."

The controls die in his hands and the sub goes dark. Gordon's heart lurches against his rib cage and his fingers start to scrabble against the belt that crosses his chest. His brain is already running through the protocols for manual evac, even as TB4's nose tips downward, the weight of the yacht beginning to bear down on him from overhead.

Angled downward by the force of the ship above, Gordon's jolted forward by the pull of inertia and momentarily disoriented.

Lights flare around him again, a handful of critical systems coming back online, and he hears the whine of his engines firing back up, feels them thrust of them pushing forward through the water, jerking out from beneath the foundering ship as he's forced downward and out. He tips backward, and there's another long, agonizing scrape along the top of his hull, and then a brittle crunch clipping the back of the sub—but it slips clear. His controls go dark again, but the sub's natural buoyancy takes over, and it's a short distance back to the surface—TB4 bobs up like a cork, rolling on the surface even as daylight floods his cockpit.

He's outta power, but his suit comm has started to flare up. He taps into the radio line and the first thing he hears is John, tentative, "…did it work?"

"Commandeer my ship without warning me again, space brain, and I'll—"

"—be extremely thankful not to have drowned in the South Pacific," John cuts him off, with that raw, warding edge of tension that so rarely bleeds through. Gordon pauses, starts to catch on to the notion that his brother is extremely stressed outat the moment, and he's probably just had his ass pulled out of the fire by John, on the ball as usual. "The phrase you're looking for is 'thank you, Thunderbird Five!' or 'really appreciate it,Thunderbird Five!' But currently I'd like to hear 'going EVA to assist rescue victims, Thunderbird Five!' Copy?"

"…uh, copy. FAB. Yessir. What you said. Sorry, Thunderbird Five." An embarrassed pause, "Uh, thanks, Johnny."

"You're welcome, Gordon."

He's still going to need to engage the manual controls to get out, but he's already clambering out of his seat, and he's left the radio channel open as he proceeds. Not in the clear yet, but at least the situation's under control. "All's well that ends well?" Gordon offers hesitantly, hopefully apologetically, given the frosty, bitten off tone of the "you're welcome".

There's a long pause and then a sigh, something that might almost be the suggestion of a laugh. "Let's wait till all's said and done. Coast Guard are five minutes out. Be careful out there, Gordon. I've been led to understand that someone's poured oil on troubled waters."

And Gordon grins. "FAB, Thunderbird Five."