Chapter One: All Aboard!
"And finally I'd like to thank International Rescue for being with us as we start our exciting journey today! I'm sure you'll give us an outstanding review when the week is over!"
The short, stout man continued to talk to the crowd of around fifty people, his eyes sparkling with anticipation and pride as he described the vessel they were currently on. It was a one of a kind cruise liner, never before had one been able to run on the particular environmentally friendly fuel that this one used and the short man wasn't shy of reminding the passengers of just that every few minutes. This was its maiden voyage and as investors, press and special guests were on this particular journey, he was determined to make it a week to remember.
Scott and his brothers had been invited to enjoy the new ship (and give a review to any press that might ask about it) and they were all currently feeling quite out of place amongst the group of highfalutin passengers. Movie stars, high-flying business men and women and even a rock star were just some of the rich and famous guests aboard the SS Swordfish.
"Why are we here again, Scott?" John asked as he tugged at his tight collar, not used to anything other than his form-fitting space suit.
Scott was equally as uncomfortable in his tuxedo but wore it a little better than his brother, or at least pretended to. He shrugged,
"Lady Penelope asked us to come in her stead. She never asks for favours so we kind of had to."
"Let me rephrase my question," John grumbled, "Why am I here?"
Scott smiled, "If we have to suffer, so do you."
"Wow, thanks big brother," the redhead wandered towards the buffet where Gordon and Alan were already piling their plates high.
Alan smiled through a mouthful of prawns when the astronaut approached and Gordon pointed a cocktail sausage in his direction.
"Where's Virg?"
John shrugged, "I saw him heading onto the deck in the middle of the speech. He looked a little… green."
"Sounds about right," Gordon plucked the sausage from the stick and popped it into his mouth, "He's a real landlubber that one."
In the cool evening air it was a little easier for Thunderbird 2's pilot to stop his stomach from rolling. As the ship cruised further out to sea, Virgil took one last glance at the shimmering lights of the mainland as it disappeared from view and wished he'd thought of a better excuse to stay back on Tracy Island. He'd tried to convince Scott that one of them should stay behind in case of emergencies but the eldest Tracy had insisted that Kayo and the GDF could cope without them for one week. It was probably true but didn't help ease his twisting gut.
"You'll be fine in a day or so."
Scott's voice made Virgil jump and he turned to face his brother, looking a little green around the gills. As usual, Scott was annoyingly correct; Virgil would be fine in a couple of days but the time leading up to that would be mainly spent leaning over the side of something, whether it be the railings of the ship or the toilet bowl. He nodded feebly and Scott grinned,
"Sure you don't want some lobster?" He thrust said shellfish into Virgil's pale face and chuckled when his broad sibling spun quickly to lean over the edge of the ship. "Maybe later then?"
Scott used the thumb print scanner on the cabin door to enter the room he and his brothers would be using for the week. For some reason unknown to the eldest Tracy, the organisers of the cruise had decided to give the brothers a family penthouse suite. Perhaps it was to win them over with its plush décor and free compliments or maybe it was one of the only finished rooms. Scott had noticed that quite a few of the rooms were still incomplete and cordoned off to the public. Whatever the case, he wasn't sure whether to be pleased or nervous that he would have to spend the entire week sharing a room with his four brothers. On the one hand, it wasn't often that they got to spend quality time as a family what with the rescuing and one of them being constantly in orbit, and it would be nice to just take a break and enjoy one another's company. On the other hand, however, they all had their own personalities and ideas and being forced to sleep in the same room together for seven nights could become problematic.
Scott was still deep in thought when the others joined him. Alan's eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw the size of the living area. It had two plush L-shaped sofas that faced a giant TV mounted on the wall, under which sat a state of the art gaming system. Off to the side of the sofas was a full sized pool table and a mini-bar and beyond that a kitchenette fully equipped with everything and anything a budding chef would require.
Through another door was the bedroom; five separate beds filled the room but it was such a large space that they didn't feel cramped or cluttered. It was more like an entire house than a cabin on a ship. Two of the beds backed onto a long rectangular window and the other three sat opposite. Gordon launched himself onto one of the beds next to the window where he could see the ocean and Alan claimed the one to his left. Virgil took the bed nearest to the en-suite for obvious reasons and Scott and John accepted the others, not really caring which they got.
"I could get used to this," Gordon had already changed into his pyjamas and was on his stomach on his bed, staring out into the moonlit ocean through the window.
"One day you're going to wake up as a fish," Alan quipped as he wrestled with his own pyjama top.
Scott popped his head into the bedroom and beckoned the blondes into the living area, "We're going to watch a movie, come on!"
He would never admit it but Scott was actually enjoying having his brothers around him and doing 'normal' stuff. Okay, so the setting wasn't exactly the norm but sitting eating popcorn, watching a movie and teasing each other was something they'd done much more when their father had been around and he missed it. Gordon and Alan plonked themselves on the long sofa – they had all silently decided to share the same one – and John pressed play.
"What're we watching?" Gordon asked, already throwing warm popcorn into his open mouth.
"A new movie, I haven't seen it yet," John answered. Although he spent 99% of his time in the vacuum of space, the redhead did sometimes find time to watch movies and relax a little and he was surprisingly up to date with the new releases.
Scott flicked off the lights as a blackness filled the huge screen and ominous music echoed from the surround sound. A woman in ragged clothes was running through a moonlit forest as some unknown creature pursued her whilst the dramatic music increased in tempo and volume, loud enough that the brothers could feel it in their chests. The femme fatal tripped and Scott rolled his eyes at the cliché as she stumbled to her feet to carry on running for her life. He was never really a fan of horror movies, or movies in general for that matter. His logical brain would never allow him to fully switch off and immerse himself in the narrative and he always ended up analysing every little thing the characters were doing. Alan, on the other hand, was always immediately absorbed into the screen, sometimes a little too much.
Huge claws scraped at the woman's back, drawing blood and she shrieked like a banshee. The youngest Tracy jumped out of his skin and knocked the popcorn from Gordon's hands with a flailing leg.
"Alan!" the aquanaut shook some popcorn from his hair and shoved his brother harshly.
"Oh, come on!" Virgil moaned as Gordon's debris shook onto his lap.
He flicked some of it away, hitting John square in the eye.
"Ow! Virg!" the spaceman slapped his hands to his face and flopped off the end of the sofa like a freshly caught fish making a break for freedom.
"Guys!"
Scott was aiming for his 'authority' voice but he was chuckling too much to fully assert himself. He wasn't even going to try and stop the squabbling, too many times had he stepped into the middle of a brotherly argument and ended up being the bad guy himself. Instead, he turned to Alan who was sitting in the middle of the chaos, knees pulled to his chest and big blue eyes pasted to the TV where the movie was reaching its climax.
The monster had revealed itself; it was a huge, hulking black creature with dripping flesh and long sharp teeth covered in blood. Not particularly realistic but just kind of gross looking. It reminded Scott of a dog he'd once rescued from an oil slick when he was younger. On screen, it cornered the screaming woman and started to eat her as she continued her wailing and the eldest Tracy smirked, so stupid. He turned to Alan to exchange a comment about how ridiculous the movie was but his littlest brother didn't seem to be finding it funny. With eyes as wide as saucers, Alan was staring at the screen slack-jawed, completely immersed in the stupidity. Even when the credits began to roll, he remained glued to it, like he was genuinely concerned for the woman's welfare. Perhaps it was because he'd been on so many rescues or maybe he just had really bad taste in movies, Scott thought.
From where he lay sprawled on the plush carpet, John flicked off the TV, plunging the room into total darkness.
"Get your foot out of my face, Gordo!"
"Don't call me Gordo, Virg!"
Something clattered and John cursed and then suddenly the lights were back on.
The astronaut stood by the wall holding his foot where he'd whacked it off the pool table as Virgil and Gordon untangled themselves. At some point during the commotion, Alan had shuffled next to Scott on the sofa and now had his arms looped around his brother's in a vice grip, almost to the point that it was painful. The eldest was about to ask him what was wrong but Gordon's exaggerated yawn interrupted him.
"Well, that movie sucked."
"Yeah, John," Virgil chimed, "That was pretty bad."
John sat on the adjacent sofa still rubbing his bruised toe, "It had great reviews! I thought it would be good! Alan looked like he was enjoying it!"
Four sets of eyes wandered to the youngest brother where he was clinging onto Scott's arm like a drowning man on a buoy. He seemed to suddenly realise what he was doing and unwrapped himself quickly before forcing a weak smile onto his freckled face. He shrugged nonchalantly,
"It was okay, nothing special."
Concerned brown eyes glanced down at Alan but Scott didn't add anything, he just let the conversation continue like everything was fine, like his little brother hadn't been totally freaked out by the movie and clung onto him for dear life in the darkness.
At around quarter to one in the morning the last of the Tracy brothers climbed into bed. Virgil had been the first to go, claiming that he would lose what little remained in his stomach if he stayed awake on the swaying ship any longer. Gordon had started to nod off not long after and Scott dragged his carcass into the bedroom before falling into bed himself. When the eldest didn't return to the living area, Alan shuffled off to bed, his usual buoyant demeanour a little deflated. That left John. The astronaut hadn't had a coherent sleeping schedule in years; being up in space meant no sunrise or sunset and even when he did sleep he was still on high alert for any distress signals. For the sake of trying to be awake at a reasonable time, however, the redhead forced himself into the bedroom and pulled on his pyjamas, which were much more comfortable than his formal wear.
As he was about to climb into the unfamiliar bed something shimmering on the ocean surface outside the window caught his eye. Granted, he didn't have the greatest eyesight in International Rescue what with his prolonged time in space but John was certain he'd seen some sort of craft about two hundred yards from the ship. He padded over to the window, shuffling between the youngest brothers' beds, and was about to investigate further when Alan's hand suddenly clamped around his. John opened his mouth to ask what the heck he was doing but snapped it shut when he saw his youngest sibling was still actually asleep. The blonde's eyebrows were pulled together tightly and he was mumbling something about monsters as he tossed and turned. The movie earlier must have affected him more than he would like to admit. Gently, so as not to wake him, John peeled Alan's fingers from his own and pulled the discarded covers a little tighter over him before turning back to the window.
Nothing.
The moon was full and bright, illuminating as far as the eye could see but whatever had been on the water moments earlier was now nowhere to be seen. There wasn't even a ripple to show that something had been there in the first place and John couldn't help but think that maybe he'd been imagining things with his sleep-deprived eyes.
"What're you looking at, Johnny?"
Scott's croaky tones whispered into the dark room as John made his way back to his bed. He shrugged as he climbed under the covers,
"I thought I saw something. Must have been my imagination."
The eldest was only half listening. He'd been woken up by some sort of sixth sense that told him his littlest brother was in some sort of trouble. It had happened a lot when they were younger; Scott would often find the toddler trying to put something odd in his mouth or climbing somewhere he shouldn't have been. More often than not it woke him in the middle of the night because Alan was having a nightmare or sometimes it was even the youngster himself who would poke his big brother in his dimpled cheek to wake him up and tell him about the monster under his bed. That hadn't happened in years, of course, but something had alerted him now to Alan's distress.
"Alan was having a nightmare I think," John mumbled as he turned onto his side to look over at Scott in the bed next to his, "He was talking about monsters in his sleep."
Slightly relieved that it wasn't anything actually dangerous, Scott lay back and closed his eyes, "I think that movie scared him, he was practically breaking my arm earlier."
A muffled laugh, "Yeah, he looked pretty freaked."
A sudden heaviness overtook the brothers then and they both drifted into sleep much faster than they usually would have in such an unfamiliar place. Perhaps it was the sea air making them so tired.
A few minutes passed and then a whisper came from the other side of the room,
"I was not 'freaked'!"
