37
On a damaged and reeling GDF troop ship, rocketing back into orbit-
The slanted bridge was a riot and chaos of blaring alarms and snapping electrical fires. Hull plates and engine parts were still peeling away, as bolts failed and welds came rending apart in midair. Half of the crew were unconscious or stricken with some sort of metamorphic… spasming; howling and writhing from one shape to the next. Like fast-changing vid-channels, they shifted from their own scrawny forms to lumpy sections of decking, or the shapes of missing crewmen and the captain, himself. Bad enough, but on top of all that the computer system had suffered a near-total meltdown, permitting no other course but emergency launch
Captain Clarke was a veteran of the Space Corps; an academy grad who'd been brought up on heroic tales of Colonel Jeff Tracy. He'd been dispatched to New Zealand to find and subdue the dreaded Mechanic, because he was the finest officer in the Southern Cross Fleet. Given a target, Clarke had gone in with a trusted crew and a solid plan, only to have it all unravel, seconds from first engagement.
To say that things had gone wrong in a hurry, would have been utterly laughable. What should have been a surgical strike; a simple "smash and grab", had devolved into a violent confrontation with dozens of unlicensed 'specials'. Clarke had been prepared for one murderous cyborg, not a whole Goddam army of shape-changers, mechanicals and chaos magicians.
Now, with his half-crewed ship spiraling violently upward, the captain focused on damage control. Wading right in there with Meeks, Barron and Ivanenko, he fought to manage the situation and contact HQ. Over shrieking alarms, braced on that tilted and bucking grey deck, the dark-haired officer shouted,
"Meeks, fire and engine repair! Barron, round up the Marines and get these… things collared and down to the brig!" Kicked at a writhing, flickering Special as he said this. Then, turning to face his second mate, "Ivanenko, make contact with Colonel Ca… No. Belay that. Not sure she isn't one of these, too. Get me International Rescue and order local traffic the h*ll out of our way!"
Because the engines wouldn't shut down or reverse, and his stricken ship was blasting straight for one of Earth's busiest space lanes.
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Yokosuka, Japan, in a rain-hammered tent hospital, at nearly the same time-
A package was delivered from Tracy Island to the relocated treatment bed of one Tycho Reeves. Inside the box, nested in many layers of sheltering bubble-wrap, lay a heavy, chromed and beeping neural stabilizer.
The medical techs on staff had never seen such a device and hardly knew what to make of it. Fortunately, lifting the bulky head-gear out of its packaging caused a holographic instruction video to play. There on the folding steel lab table, a miniature Hiram Hackenbacker appeared, explaining the stabilizer's function and use. Wouldn't shut off or quit talking, either, until Doctor Shiro was summoned to place the Mark II stabilizer on Tycho Reeves' bandaged head.
They had to pull their patient out of a deep VR trance to do it, removing his implanted neural chip in the process. This dragged Reeves from his well-stocked internet workspace, back to that deaf-and-blind body. Startled and angered the genius, at first, until a faint flicker of greyish light gave him some hope of recovery.
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Earth, 700 FN, far under glacier and rock-
Colonel Jeff Tracy was the first man out of the Mole, of course. The huge digging machine had come to rest in that ripped-open chamber with its port-side hatch about seven feet in the air. Down below lay slabs of buckled, cracked flooring; unstable and shifting, still, as the treads fought for purchase. Jeff wore his helmet and space armour because the stale air was murky; swirling with dust and debris. Above him, the Mole's silvery drill lanced from its chassis like a tapering, spiral-edged tower, its tip skewering the rock overhead.
Chunks of stone and showers of muddy pebbles clattered down from its still-hot edges, striking what seemed to be upended lab gear and splintered furnishings; making a noise like tyres on gravel. Hard to see in the darkness and dust, so Jeff cut on his helmet lamp; turning this way and that for a better view. Could've launched a few recon drones, first… but Jeff Tracy was an explorer, not a d*mn technician. If he wanted to know, he got out there and looked.
After taking a few moments to get his bearings, Jeff started moving. He climbed out onto the yellow hull, which was streaked with mud and grey lubricant. Deep gouges scored clear through the paint job and into the metal, beneath; where talons of much denser rock had bit, hard. Jeff shook his head, took a few stills for Brains, then continued examining his surroundings.
The helmet lamp and Heads-Up Display revealed what looked like one of their own labs, long abandoned, and now with major structural damage. Over a hundred feet long and fifteen feet high, crumpled steel door to the south.
"Dad?" came Scott's tense voice, over his helmet mic. "Situation report?"
The elder Tracy launched a tiny comm relay, linking his HUD-feed to the drill's main system and Thunderbird 7's. Turning a cautious three-sixty, he transmitted visual data.
"It's a mess," he replied, "but I can see what looks like a doorway, and some banks of, um… non-functional computer gear." (Hopefully not too vital.) "You getting this, Lee?"
"Loud n' clear, Jeffery," came the astronaut's flat, drawling voice. "Looks like ya drilled through one a' Doc's labs. H*ll, he's got a hunnert of 'em. Won't hardly notice one less."
"I b- beg to, ah… to d- differ, Captain T- Taylor," Brains cut in, sounding cross. "If I am expected t- to achieve f- feats of engineering genius in th- this barren and ice-locked place, it must b- be with the equipage in laboratories such as, ah… as th- this one. Pray d- do not cause f- further damage!"
Jeff grimaced. He liked engineers and scientists as a whole and valued their contribution to IR… but had never been much of a bean-counter, himself. Owed his tremendous financial success to courage, popularity and a river-boat gambler's instinct for when to bluff, bet or fold.
"We'll do our best, Brains," he promised. Then, speaking more generally, "Come on out, a few at a time, bringing hover boards and jetpacks. Flooring's unstable. I'll find a way through to the door. Lee, keep that tractor warm, or those clamps will crack in half as soon as we try to re-engage." It was that cold, out there.
"Way ahead o' ya, Jeffery," responded his old friend and drinking buddy. "I've set up a localised energy field ta keep 'er from freezin' solid. Most likely take an ass-load o' charge from th' batteries, though. Might wanna pick up th' pace."
Inside his helmet, Jeff nodded.
"Understood. Stay alert, out there, and listen for signs of life. This may not be the only outpost on Earth." Then, "Alan, I don't know if you can hear me any better, now, Son, but we're here. I'm cutting the beacon on."
All it took was a tap to his suit's wrist-mounted transponder. A new window flared in his Heads-Up Display, just below suit-status. Any IR equipment in the area, including Al's space armour, ought to pick up and respond to the signal, which was proprietary. The GDF had long since reserved FM 120 for International Rescue, alone. Only now, not just the Birds, but their pilots' suits carried a high-gain transponder, which could be triggered remotely.
Almost losing Scott had taught them how much tracking mattered. Naturally, rock and ice interfered with the signal, but now that they'd gotten inside and launched a comm relay…
As Scott, John and Piper came up to join him, Colonel Tracy made room on the ticking and settling hull, all the while watching his HUD for pings. Got, surprisingly, not just Alan and Caleb (about 127 yards away and closing) but two… make that three…? No. Two definites, one barely-flickering other. These last did not move. Merely echoed his signal.
"There's something else down here," he told the boys and Piper, adding, "Maybe the Birds," on a sudden, strong hunch.