Stay healthy and well. Edited.
28
What had happened on Ceres, according to Alan R. Tracy-
Their situation dropped south like a frickin' lift car with shredded cables, not even kidding. First, because the Mechanic was somehow shaking off the effects of a dang stasis patch. Maybe the combo of flesh and robotics was just too much for the patch to handle at once? Whatever, the hulking machine-man would not stay frozen for long, meaning that Alan, Kayo and John had to dump his psychotic butt in a hurry, then scramble. Bad enough, right?
It only got hairrier, from there.
John had transferred control of Thunderbird 3 to Al, thinking (maybe): what the heck, let the kid get some practice. After all, the disaster arks were perfectly quiet and safe, visited once an Earth year by primitive roving security drones. Landing and getting inside of one should have been a dang cakewalk.
John handled the approach and docking figures, leaving actual flight, capture and lock-down to his youngest brother. The physical part was tougher than it sounded, because Ceres was a loose, rubbly mess with very low gravity and crap-all for atmosphere. Nothing like flying on Earth.
Alan had to reverse the Bird's orientation and blast retrorockets a hundred miles out, in order to slow them down to survivable docking speed. All this while cloaked and unable to access the Ark's nav system.
Not, y'know, that he needed any actual help. Alan was hardcore on top of it, for real. No problem at all… until their landing pad caved in like thin ice on a Kansas skating pond. Thanks to super low gravity, Thunderbird 3 didn't just lean the heck over and crash… but she also couldn't touch down directly. Had to sort of skip-hop like a flat stone on water, to reach a second, smaller emergency hatch, way the heck across Ceres.
(Nice thing about having a computer-nerd older brother? He could hack the crap out of the Ark system's dormant locator files. What was Kayo doing at the time? Laughing her butt off, enjoying the ride, because Tanusha.)
Anyways, the tall crimson rocket scraped and bounced her way over that gravelly, rock-and-ice landscape, creating this weird, float-y blizzard of stones. Alan flinched every time the shields got hit, but 3 didn't take any actual damage. Sounded and looked like a frickin' tornado, though.
Following John's instructions, Al bounced their stolen ride halfway around the boulder-strewn planetoid. There, in a broad, canyon-like trench, lay a second docking tower. (This one, he guessed, for sneakier refugees.) He'd fully expected his older brother to take over control at that point, but John shook his head, no.
"Try again," said the astronaut. "Slower, this time, with less rocket, more impeller."
They were all wearing helmets and strapped in tight by then, because S.O.P. was full safety gear for uncertain landings. Alan could not see his astronaut brother's face very well. John's voice didn't reveal much, either. Alan wanted to ask: Are you sure? He didn't, though, because he was a Tracy. Dad wouldn't give up, and neither would anyone else in the family. Not his brothers, not Grandma, not Lee.
So, nodding seriously, Al took a deep breath, grabbed those controls and flew like his life depended on doing this right. Like the time for sims was over and gone.
Came in sort of slanted. Might've scraped the trench wall once or twice (creating noise like a screeching, grinding, slow-speed car crash) but didn't harm the Bird… that you know about.
Got in there, though, docking tight with a spindly metal access tower at the very end of the trench. Didn't take a normal breath until the monitor flashed green and John announced,
"Capture."
Seconds later, Kay unstrapped to float free of her back-cabin crew seat.
"Well, that was… exciting," she drawled. "For a minute there, I thought we were just going to blast through Ceres while tossing our 'passenger' out a window."
John snorted a brief, dry chuckle.
"Sorry I didn't think of that, myself," he joked… maybe. Then, "Twenty minutes, tops. In, out, gone. The less time we spend cloaked, the less GDF suspicion we'll arouse."
Made sense, so, once he'd settled Thunderbird 3, Alan pushed up out of his seat to join his sibs floating at mid-cabin. Ceres had no real gravity to speak of, giving them just the faint ghost of "down" and "up". As for his brother and sister…
John looked tired. Kayo sparkled with sarcastic "oh, this'll be fun" amusement. Surprisingly, they let him keep leading the way, like the mission was still all his to not screw up. Inside his helmet, Al nodded, saying,
"Okay, let's get this party started," or something equally cringey. (He preferred not to think about it.)
Kay rolled her green eyes hard enough to cause measurable seismic activity, but kept her mouth shut, following Alan and John off the flight deck. They'd left the frozen Mechanic back in a much-altered aft head, and there he still stood, magnetically locked to the deck. Parts of his armour were buzzing, and he seemed to be heating up, as did some of those flickering, organic bulkhead monitors.
"We may need to hurry our time frame," John suggested, after scanning whatever he could of the cyborg's stored data. "He's overwhelming the patch."
Only, those stupid magnetic boots would not come free of the ferric deck, and they wouldn't come off his feet, either. Might've been actually part of him, for all Alan knew.
Switching to plan C, Kay fetched a plasma torch and they just cut a circle of decking around him, making the Mechanic look like the world's largest, scariest action figure. (Not poseable! Completely unsafe! Not recommended for anyone, any age! Don't get yours, today!)
Maneuvering his clunky butt through the Bird's narrow passages turned out to be a real joy, because no gravity did not equal no inertia. Once you got him drifting in the right general direction, he was crap-hard to turn, or slow down.
Kay ended out riding on top like a paddling surfer, using a pole to push that frozen behemoth away from the bulkheads, while John shoved at the circle of chopped decking and Al led the way.
Long story short: it took a while to get him through Thunderbird 3 and out the handiest airlock. Next, they had to switch positions, so John could power up and then hack the dock tower's security panel. Add, say, six awkward more minutes.
Alan had been holding his breath while John worked. He'd expected blaring "gotcha" alarms, but the hatch cooperated, grinding open with just a low groan, then getting stuck halfway. His astronaut brother wrestled it open, stepping inside for a cautious look around before signaling Alan and Kayo to follow.
Lights should have come on in the docking tower. An instructional welcome message ought to have played. Only, none of that happened. The screens were there, lining walls of silvery metal and plastic, but no evident power. Not a good sign.
John brightened his helmet lamp, sending a beam of golden light lancing in every direction he looked. Kayo and Alan quickly did likewise, stabilising their drift against the hulking Mechanic.
"What's wrong?" Alan whispered, as all those years of creepy videogames and late-night slasher films rose up like clammy fog in his head.
John shrugged, as best he could in a spacesuit.
"Power outage would be my guess. Stick with the plan. Find the deepest, least accessible bin, lock him down, then get the h*ll out of Dodge."
"Yeah, okay. Just, y'know…" Al would really have liked a nuclear war-hammer or stack of explosive barrels, right then. Even a really stout tree branch.
John was already scanning the place, using that portable keyboard and screen of his.
"No licorice or lima beans," he remarked, "but I've located a storage area tagged: dried protein broth- high calorie."
"Sounds amazing," said Kayo, hoisting a slim, dark eyebrow. "First place I'd go for a meal."
Right. Alan shoved at Sarcasti-lass, sending both of them bouncing around the dark corridor. Meanwhile, John mapped a route, breaking concentration only to twist out of their way, whenever his flailing young siblings shot past.
"Got it," he announced at last. "Shouldn't take too long… but I'm picking up a weird energy signature. Something's trying to switch on."
And not, as it turned out, Ark-12.
