Thank you. Edited.
23
Tracy Island, just offshore-
Maybe it was the shock of the crash, itself… brief, ragged unconsciousness, or a wildly inflating Pilot Survival System… but something shoved his attacker out of Scott's head. Those, slitted, yellow-green eyes vanished abruptly, replaced by a rolling, tumbling sensation; by the rumble and crash of titanic surf. Of light, sometimes tropical-bright, sometimes filtered and wavery-green. For a few confused seconds, Scott was unable to act; just watching as massive chunks of Thunderbird 1 plunged past into watery half-light, to strike coral and sand with a loud, grinding CRUNCH.
Glowing engines flared nova-star bright then extinguished, as their maintenance bots first hunkered down to the hull like barnacles, then rushed to contain any leaks. Thinking, 'Sorry, Dad,' Scott watched the shards of Jeff Tracy's Bird plummet past in a storm of bubbles and billowing fuel.
The Pilot Survival System would keep him safe till the rip current… always fierce, at this end of the Island… brought him round to shore. But that wouldn't help his family, back at Base with a psionic madman on the loose. Scott had just a few minutes to strategize, before his inflated survival pod ground to a halt against black, jagged lava.
There were access and maintenance tunnels riddling the extinct volcano; a tangled warren of them. Cleverly hidden from outside, accessible only by palm-print and retinal scan, the tunnels would let him within; giving Scott access to ersatz weapons and tech, unless… that wasn't his own thought, at all, but somebody else's. Someone still trying to break in and take over.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Aboard Thunderbird 2, preparing to touch down in Perth, Australia-
Virgil Tracy had ordered a crew of maintenance bots to deal with the mess in accessway 20. Might've gone up there, himself, except that he got a flurry of sudden calls, all of them priority one.
The first, from Island Base, stated that Scott had crashed Thunderbird 1 just offshore. Telemetry indicated that his Pilot Survival System had inflated, while suit biometrics pegged him as still alive and in mostly one piece.
The second alert came from Thunderbird 3, which had somehow been launched with Alan and Kayo aboard, to… go pick up John? More than that (and not surprisingly) the kids had run into trouble. Explosions, GDF threats and 'Trojan Horse', which meant hostile intruder.
On top of all that, Gordon was still unconscious, having been shot by the same troop of bitter old men who'd just staged a jailbreak on Thunderbird 2.
Well, h*ll… Virgil stood perfectly still in the midst of that bustling Med Centre, thinking hard. Captain Taylor would have gotten the same reports. Not Colonel Casey, though. Not yet. She was still busy sorting out orphaned refugee kids.
Virgil glanced across at the big, husky woman, watching her take scans and conduct lightning interviews, a drowsing puppy curled up on her lap. With the inertia-dampeners on, she hadn't noticed Thunderbird 2's wild aerobatics. Wasn't aware, yet, how badly their situation was plunging due south.
The tall, dark-haired young man could have asked for her help; for a few cadres of GDF troopers to be dispatched to commercial orbit, to Perth and to Island Base, itself. Only… that would as good as admit that International Rescue couldn't muddle along without Jeff Tracy.
Virgil shook his head, handsome face settling into fiercely determined lines. 'No help from outside', he decided, pressing the button to contact Lee. 'Not till there's no other choice.'
…Because, once WorldGov got in, they'd take right over and never let go.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Commercial space, near Pac Orbital-
The Mechanic wouldn't be fooled for very long, and John knew it. Had to act fast. Right now, the cyborg was trapped in an electronically induced, highly immersive nightmare, his body locked up as if dreaming. His half-human mind was enmeshed in Alan's Christmas present; a game scenario that had hacked the Mechanic's cybernetics and nervous system.
'A few minutes at most', John figured, already moving. As the game-master, he could see the Mechanic's choices; see him fighting to seal off and neutralize a deeply infected TinTin. The cyborg thought he was striding through Thunderbird 3, altering bulkheads and forging new passageways; battling an alien computer virus that was turning the crimson rocket into a toxic plague ship.
He could have chosen the escape option, just getting the h*ll out of Dodge through an airlock. Instead, surprisingly, the cyborg fought back, alerting the game-Tracys that they'd been invaded. Kind of admirable, that.
Snapping,
"Stay here and keep us away from Carling and Pac Orbital. Tell them a story, sing them a lullaby. Whatever it takes."
…John unstrapped from his seat and shot through the air, leaving Alan and Kay in the cockpit. Tried to, anyhow. His sister just wouldn't stay put, following him out to the rocket's main accessway.
"John, what's going on?!" she demanded, all at once big-eyed and tense
Right. There was no time to yell or get angry. The Mechanic wouldn't stay under for long.
"We have an unwelcome guest," John explained. "You want to help out, go get a med-kit and meet me down in the aft head. Hurry."
To her credit, his sister wasted no time at all on dumb questions. She only nodded, sending her ponytail fanning up and around her head like the tail of a raven-dyed peacock. Then, the girl kissed his cheek and shot off down-corridor.
As for John Tracy, well… weapons would do no good at all against the Mechanic, who could lock up their systems and prevent them from firing. Spacing the cyborg wouldn't work, either, as he could survive and maneuver quite handily outside of a ship. Drugs might sedate his biological components, but not the mechanical rest of him, so that was another no-go.
Fortunately, John's decision tree had many branches and hundreds of shimmering logic gates, letting his secret plans make plans of their own. Adapting on the fly, he soared through that narrow passage with bulkhead kicks and swift grab-holds, making his way to the distant aft head.
Got there in less than a minute, to find that the place had been converted to a sort of comm centre, with a cluster of organic looking viewscreens where the mirror and wash tap had been. Their former water closet had expanded wildly, making room for a massive, armoured figure standing braced at dead centre, magnetic boot soles locked to the deck. A cable connected him to a power outlet, feeding that tall, muscular cyborg as he dreamt of apocalyptic disaster.
Kayo zipped in just after John, med-kit in hand and already open. She would have sailed through the hatch and hurtled right into the hypnotized Mechanic, had John not reached out to snag her.
"No, you don't," he grunted, slinging his sister around to collide with himself instead of the bulkhead. "Unf… he's busy right now, and we need him to stay that way. No distractions."
Kayo nodded, fumbling through the med-kit for a can of trank-spray. Her wide green eyes never left the immobile, tattooed giant before them. Face mostly concealed by goggles and breath mask, head partly shaven, amber eyes glaring at nothing, the cyborg radiated menace like most people sweat. Even trapped in VR, he looked deadly.
John ignored the proffered trank-spray, taking the med-kit from Kayo. There was a false bottom, see, with a hidden compartment below. Inside of that lay a bit of illegal, last-ditch medical tech called a stasis patch. Call it plan D-27.
Not giving himself time to think, much less calculate unhappy odds, the tall, red-haired astronaut pried open that false bottom and fished out the only thing that might work. Next, John kicked off the bulkhead, crossing a few feet of space to their now-twitching stowaway.
(In game, the Mechanic had risked doubling back to take biological samples from alien-soldier Kayo; intending to find the Tracy's genius and make him develop a cure. Kept the freezing ammonia out of the cockpit, where game-John and Alan were working to save their ship.)
Lightning swift, John peeled the patch from its backing, eyes never leaving the straining Mechanic. Not breathing, fighting hard to make no sound at all, John slapped the stasis patch onto that hulking, distracted machine-man, and then switched it on.