"Find Rigby and his team." Virgil instructed in a low voice, his eyes on the ceiling of the plant as he searched for Havoc. "Get them out of here."
"But Virgil…!" Kayo protested. Out of the two of them she was the fighter- dealing with Havoc was her job, not that of her gentle giant brother.
"You're stealthier than I am. I'll draw her attention and keep her busy." Virgil snapped out the order, stepping forward to where he was all but guaranteed to be spotted before she could object further.
"...F.A.B." Kayo reluctantly acknowledged, shading her comms unit with one hand to hide the telltale glow of the hologram as she scanned for lifesigns. There were three clustered just under the stairs on the east wall and she made her way there, as silent as a shadow.
Virgil deliberately stomped his feet as he crossed the factory floor, doing his best to keep Havoc's eyes on him and not Kayo. "Come on out, Havoc!" He bellowed, turning as he activated the motion tracker on his HUD. She must have had some kind of dampening tech because he could hardly detect anything, but he could certainly hear her moving around- the hiss and clack of her cables deploying and the whistle of air through her armour. What little light there was shifted and moved with her, and between it all he soon had a pretty good idea of roughly what path she was taking.
"Come on if you think you're hard enough!" Havoc sang out the old football hooligan's chant, her scornful, jeering laughter echoing off the walls.
Different strategies were considered and dismissed, then something occurred to him and he grinned coldly. Carbon was an excellent conductor of electricity and those integrated climbing wires had to involve carbon nanotubes or similar.
Virgil scanned the room, eyes narrowed as he tried to anticipate where Havoc was likely to try to swing to next. There! He ducked between the different pieces of equipment until he reached the spot, used his shoulder laser to cut a power cable as thick as his wrist from an injection moulding machine and pressed the wires to one of the bare metal interior supports. As Havoc's climbing wires connected to it and completed the circuit, electricity snapped, her suit shorted out, the wires detached and she shrieked as she fell from mid air, bouncing off one of the machines and landing with an audible crunch.
He isolated the power source to the injection moulder and was there in moments, coldly and clinically observing as she clutched her right arm, staggered to her feet and tried to back away from him but found herself boxed in between two stacks of pallets and the back wall of the factory.
Bullies were always the same as soon as the balance of power shifted, Virgil reflected as he approached. In charge they were arrogant, cruel and nasty, but when the proverbial bigger fish showed up they became cringing and servile. Her suit was nothing but expensive dead weight now, her tech gloves fried, climbing wires inoperative and holding what had to be a broken arm, Havoc was a very, very small fish and he was the much bigger fish.
"But… but I thought you were the medic!" Havoc sounded stunned that he'd done this to her, frightened by the coldness in his eyes. "Hippocratic Oath! Do no harm and all that!"
"Paramedic, actually." Virgil corrected with a precision that only John could have made more cutting. "Paramedics don't come under the Hippocratic Oath."
Before she could finish processing the implications of that statement he lunged, picking her up by the shoulder straps of her armour and slamming her into the wall of the factory, ignoring her yelp of pain as her arm was jostled. "I WANT ANSWERS!" He roared out the words, his face inches from hers. "What the hell is the Hood up to!?" His fury was roiling like lava and barely in check. She'd come within a hair's breadth of murdering his family and untold hundreds more! And for what? Money? Resources? The Thunderbirds? Lives were meaningless to these people and their callous disregard for others only served to stoke his temper higher.
"I won't say anything!" Havoc blustered, but Virgil wasn't tricked- he could see exactly how thin the veneer of bravado was over her undercurrent of fear. She'd crossed the line tonight and she knew it. What really scared her was not knowing exactly how far he would now go- his actions had surprised her, because of that she couldn't guess what he'd do in response.
The thick shoulder straps of Havoc's armour creaked as an infuriated Virgil clenched his fists tighter, held her gaze and leaned in, emphasising to her exactly how much bigger and stronger he was. "You will." He promised in a low snarl, brows drawn close and eyes narrowed dangerously, his lip curled and teeth bared. "Talk."
0o0o0
Kayo was helping the last of the soldiers out when two things happened at once- FAB 1 swooped out of the sky and purred to a halt by the main entrance to the factory, and an emergency door clanged as Virgil kicked it open, hauling a struggling and swearing Havoc with him. Her right arm was bound against her body with some duct tape in a rudimentary splint and sling and he marched her over, handing her over to two of Rigby's soldiers to take away as Lady Penelope and Parker emerged from the car.
"Good, you're here." He nodded to them as they approached. "I know exactly what Havoc did, give me thirty minutes and a link to EOS and it'll be fixed, but we have a bigger problem right now."
"What is it?" Lady Penelope asked, her demeanour becoming grim as she flicked her gaze over Virgil's face and read the expressions and emotions that warred there- anger, exhaustion, frustration, rage, and most alarmingly- fear.
"Someone get Colonel Casey on the line and call the island. I know what the Hood is up to." Virgil reported. "This is bad."
0o0o0
While Virgil was disarming the bomb, Thunderbird Three was settling into her silo. By the time Virgil had fried Havoc's suit, International Rescue's three formerly stranded operatives were gratefully sagging into the softness and support of the ring of sunken couches.
Alan had downed a hot chocolate and almost immediately dozed off, still in his uniform and sprawled in his launch chair. He roused just enough to make a small noise as Grandma draped a blanket over him, but he didn't fully wake. Scott and John looked about ready to drop, but the current situation still demanded their attention. The coffees that Gordon pressed into their hands were gratefully accepted and carefully sipped as they caught each other up on the current status of everything and everyone.
"...so that's where we're at." Gordon shifted on his feet, restless. "I still don't have a suit, but there's enough pieces out of everyone else's that Brains thinks he can rig up a flight suit for me so while I can't man Four yet, I'll still be able to fly."
"Mm, any ETA on when that'll be done?" Scott asked, nibbling on a cracker he'd taken from a packet that Gordon had brought along with the coffees. A thought occurred to him and he put his mug down to hold the rest of the pack out to John until their spaceman took a half dozen for himself.
"Maybe an hour, if everything goes well." Gordon reported, running a finger up and down the inside of one of his bracelets.
Virgil's portrait chiming for attention interrupted them before Scott could say any more. "We've saved the factory and I can fix what Havoc did after this call." Virgil started talking as soon as his hologram initialised. Lady Penelope and Colonel Casey's images popped up as well, the older woman looking drawn while Penelope was uncharacteristically grim. "I know what the Hood is up to." He announced, glancing at everyone in pick up range of the projector to make sure he had their full attention.
"What is he doing?" Scott asked, leaning forward and eyes intent.
"He did this to ground the GDF and empty Global One so he can take control of it remotely and use it to hold the World Council to ransom." Was Virgil's grim report. "If his demands aren't met, he's going to drop it out of the sky onto a major city, selected at random. He's already sent Fuse up there and rigged it with proximity charges. If any ships get close it'll blow."
"Global is massive, over 300 metres long." John's eyes widened as he ran the rough numbers through his head. "With that much mass… when it hits, it'll obliterate everything in the area for hundreds of square miles." He announced, shocked. "If it explodes, we can pretty much kiss Mid and Near Earth Orbit goodbye- the debris cloud will take years to clear, even with every available ship assisting."
"Do you know what his demands will be?" Colonel Casey was stone faced, but even though her voice was even, they could all sense the tumultuous emotions under the surface.
"No, he hadn't decided anything yet," Virgil shook his head. "But you can bet the Thunderbirds will be on his list."
"Agreed." Was Penelope's crisp response. "Do we have a timeframe for when he'll make his demands?"
"He'll make the announcement in the next hour, us finding his tampering and tracing it to Bayfield was what he'd been waiting for." Virgil explained. "He wanted everyone to know that the GDF wouldn't be able to intervene by destroying the factory after the sabotage was discovered."
"I see." Penelope's eyes hardened. "I'll contact the World Council and advise them immediately." Her image blinked out as she left the call.
"I'll set my people to finding something we can get into space that's got the stealth tech to get close enough, even if we have to requisition a suitable civilian craft or dust off a museum piece and throw it." Val advised. "We have to have a ship we can use somewhere."
"We'll work the problem from our end too." Scott promised. "John, get EOS to send a probe on a flyby at a safe distance, maybe we can pick up some information. Gordon, update Brains."
In amidst the different confirmations, coordinating and calls with people going hither and yon, no one noticed Alan slip out from under the blanket and make for the internal elevator to the lower levels.