May Portland - Would you be mad if I said this chapter doesn't tell you what happened- Just kidding! Its close to the begining, I wouldn't be that mean. Happy to see that you approve of the Virgil and Alan bit. I forget who made the comment about 'mean Tracy boys' but I had to show that Virgil isn't all that bad. Glad you're enjoying the story.
Queen of the Elven City - and another vote of approval for the Virgil/Alan interaction. Glad to see everyone is taking that well. And I wasn't being sarcastic with the last review. I really am having fun with this story even if it is a "little" bigger than I orginally planned. I'm really glad that you prodded me into starting this!
manders1953 - have you fallen off the chair yet? I hope not! This chapter explains what happens.
ILoveSam - and vote number four for the Virgil/Alan bit. I just thought John coming to the rescue was too predictable. As for the mission - read and find out.
Star-shimmered-dragon - well I got good news and I got bad news. The good news is this cliffhanger ends. The bad news is that this chapter ends with another cliff hanger. Sorry! Thanks for reviewing though.
AngelMouse5 - I haven't forgotten about your T-bird story - i'm in the middle of the last chapter you wrote. Glad you liked the last chapter. I just had to have Virgil redeem himself. Thanks for reviewing. Hope you enjoy this chapter.
thunderbirdgirl - well here's the answers to your questions. Thanks for reviewing
Iniysa - Alan has to learn sometime! glad you're enjoying the story!
bling lig- glad you're enjoying the story. As for Alan giving in so quickly I am trying to keep the weekend from dragging into twenty chapters by itself so sorry about that. Besides I didn't want Alan mopping around all weekend. That wouldn't be any fun.
Marblez - who could resist a request like that!
Gordon's POV:
"It was my fault," I said softly, mostly to myself. I was vaguely aware that Alan was sitting beside me. I could feel his hand resting on my shoulder. It was a small comfort. I also knew that those words would mean nothing to him but I couldn't form any other words. It had all happened so fast.
Everything had been under control. Those we had gone to rescue were safe, some receiving the medical attention they needed. We had been helping with the clean up when the second incident had happened. The incident that I had caused.
flashback
We had been called to a building collapse at a construction site. Several of the workers had been trapped and the rescue personnel had been unable to reach them. They had called for our help.
Dad had already been surveying the site when Virgil, John, and I had landed in Thunderbird 2. Using the equipment from Thunderbird 2, we were soon working on moving the debris to reach the trapped workers.
With our equipment it hadn't taken long to reach the workers. John and I had helped the two workers make their way over the debris that we hadn't moved and over to where the paramedics were waiting. The workers safe and receiving the medical attention they needed, we had started helping the other workers in clearing the debris so they could resume work on the partially built office building.
"And yet another miraculous rescue," I said in a reporter tone as I started helping Virgil move some of the metal supports that had fallen. "How do you do it."
"Please no applause," I resumed my little comic scene in my normal voice. "It's all just in a days work."
I heard Virgil and John snicker at my comment. Dad however, wasn't so amused.
"Cut it out Gordon. This is still a dangerous situation. Pay attention to what you were doing."
I hadn't replied. I had just been trying to lighten the mood up as everyone had seemed too tense. Before long though, I was back to my doing my little mock report at a lower voice. One that I was hoping my Dad wouldn't overhear.
Nearby, Virgil was trying not to laugh as he heard every word I was saying.
I guess Dad had been right though, I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing. I picked up a scrap of metal to carry out to the pile that was quickly forming. As I did so, I heard noises above me, and realized to late that I had loosened some unstable pieces up above me.
"Gordon," I heard Virgil's warning shout even as I looked up to see the falling metal.
I felt something run into me knocking me out of the way, and John's yell of pain as the metal fell nearby. I felt a weight on top of me, and soon realized that it was John who had knocked me out of the way.
Carefully easing my way out from under my brother, I tried to see how bad he was hurt. Dad and Virgil were already kneeling down beside us. John was clutching his left arm as blood oozed out of a nasty gash on his arm. I could see the pain on his face.
"Let's get him to the hospital," Dad had said as he and Virgil helped John to his feet. I followed heading straight to the cockpit of Thunderbird 2 once I was on board. I already had the rocket in the air by the time Virgil joined me up front, putting in a call to Dad's friend Dr. Harper so he would be expecting us.
end flashback
"My fault," I said again, still seeing the blood and John's face etched in pain in my mind. I hopped off the patio ledge to the level below and started waking toward the beach. I wasn't sure if I wanted Alan to follow me or not, I just knew I had to walk. Do something to try to clear my mind. To try and get the image that was haunting me out of my mind.
Alan's POV:
Gordon was silent for a few moments and then I heard him say it was his fault again. I watched as he left the patio ledge and headed for the steps leading down to the beach. I didn't know whether I should follow him or not. I wanted to help him but, how to do that I wasn't sure.
Before I could make up my mind I heard footsteps behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see my Dad walking toward me. I quickly got to my feet, sure I was about to get yelled at.
"Dad I'm sorry. I just . . ." I started saying, trying to explain why I had left the house when I was suppose to be grounded. Dad held up his hand though and I let my explanation trail off.
"It's okay Alan," he said. "You're not in trouble."
"How's John?" I asked.
"He'll be okay. He lost a lot of blood and has about twenty five stitches but it doesn't look like there will be any permanent damage."
"What happened?"
"Gordon got careless," Dad said, which still didn't tell me much but I figured it was the best I was going to get right now. "This is why I'm so hard on you Alan. Things might seem trivial right now but if you want to be a part of IR then you can't take things for granted. You can't let your guard down for a second while your on a mission or someone is going to get hurt or worse. I didn't want you to have to learn that the hard way."
I didn't say anything. I wasn't sure what to say. I had been just telling Virgil earlier how I thought Dad didn't love me and here he was telling me that he was so hard on me because he didn't want me to learn things the hard way. That definitely didn't sound like someone who didn't love me.
"Why don't you go back to bed, Alan," Dad told me.
I just nodded. Now was definitely not the time to argue. Especially, since technically I wasn't even suppose to be outside.
As I headed toward the house, Dad headed down the steps to the patio. I watched as he disappeared in the direction that Gordon had taken. When even Dad had disappeared into the night I went back into the house, and headed upstairs.
Walking past John's room, I saw that the door was still opened. Glancing in, I saw that the room was dark. In the moonlight that came in from the window, I saw Virgil sitting in a chair by John's bed.
I suddenly had a new reason for doing my school work this weekend and passing my classes. Failing classes only meant that it would take me longer to graduate. I might not care about school but I was sure of one thing. I wanted to get through school so that I could be at home more and not just because I was missing the action. I was starting to see how dangerous the missions were that my father and brothers went on. They weren't just cool.
The chem lab fire and tonight's incident had made me see something that I had been missing. There were no certainties in life. Anything could happen. One little mistake, like mixing the wrong chemicals because you were daydreaming, and you could easily lose someone you care about. I had gotten lucky. Extremely lucky.
I continued on to my room and climbed back under the covers. It took me awhile to fall asleep though, as I thought about things. As I wondered if Gordon was going to be okay. In a way, I knew exactly how he felt. He must feel like John's injury was his fault, just like I felt responsible for the fire. If Fermat or anyone had been seriously injured, I knew I would never be able to forgive myself.
In time I heard footsteps out in the hall and Dad and Gordon's soft voices. Then I heard Gordon's door close across the hall from mine. I just hoped my brother would be able to get some sleep.
My whole family, save for Scott up in Thunderbird 5, were now safely in the house. My mind at ease, I was finally able to drift off back to sleep.
Virgil's POV:
We put the planned test flight off until the afternoon as we had all slept late that morning. Brains had spent lunch telling me what I needed to know about the new autopilot software and some last minute instructions.
The new software was suppose to be able to process the information coming in from the sensors and make course corrections quicker. Right now, we mostly used the autopilot to switch pilots. If this new software worked then conceivably, we could use autopilot in flight with a relatively minimum risk of a collision.
I was on board the rocket right now, going through the pre-flight checks, and waiting for my copilot. After the events of last night, I figured it would be either Gordon or Dad joining me. Which was why when I heard footsteps come into the cockpit and looked up to see John I was surprised.
"Are you sure you're up for this?" The question had just slipped out without me really even thinking about it. The sun had been rising before I had left John's room for my own bed this morning and even though he looked better than he had last night, I was still worried about him.
"Don't you even start on me," John told me, the smile that had been on his face disappearing. "I already spent an hour this morning convincing Dad that I was okay to go on this test flight. I don't need to justify myself to you," he told me as he sat down in the co-pilot's chair.
"Okay, sorry!" I said quickly. I was a little surprise at John's reaction. John was usually the calm, level headed one.
I heard a sigh beside me. I knew what John was getting ready to say. He was getting ready to apologize for his uncharacteristic outburst but it wasn't necessary. I understood where he was coming from. Dad had a tendency to get a little overprotective of us at times even though, with the exception of Alan, we weren't really kids anymore.
"It's okay John, really. Let's just forget about it and get this 'bird' in the air," I told him looking over at him. He nodded, as I put the radio headset on. "Thunderbird 2 to Command," I said into the headset.
"Go ahead Virgil," came Dad's reply over the radio.
"We're ready to launch Dad," I told him.
"F.A.B., Virgil. We're ready here. Remember for this first test flight I want you to stay out over open water. We don't want to risk a collision. Once autopilot is engaged, Brains will start the test program that will feed false information to Thunderbirds 2 sensors and we'll be able to see how the quickly the autopilot is able to make course corrections. Scott's keeping an eye on what's going on from Thunderbird 5. He'll let us know if anything comes into the area."
"Copy that Dad," I said as I started up the flight sequence.
Soon, Thunderbird 2 was in the air and I was heading away from the island over open sea. A couple minutes out I radioed command again.
"Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 5."
"Go ahead Virgil," Scott's voice came over the radio.
"You ready to be our eyes up there?" I asked him.
"Ready whenever you are," Scott told me.
"Command, I'm engaging autopilot now."
"F.A.B. Virgil," Dad said over the radio.
I glanced over at John as I reached out to engage autopilot. He gave me a slight nod. We both hoped everything went okay with this test flight. Brains had been working on this program for the last six months.
"Autopilot engaged."
Things were quiet for awhile as the test program took over. John and I both watched the instrument panel in silence. However, the silence started to get to me.
"Did you get a chance to talk to Gordon this morning?" I asked looking away from the instrument panel and over at my older brother.
I hadn't seen Gordon this morning since lunch time and even then Gordon hadn't seemed like himself. He was uncharacteristically quiet. I had glanced over at him a couple times while I was listening to Brains explain things to me. He seemed to be pushing his food around the plate more than actually eating it.
I knew what had been on his mind. He was blaming himself for John's injury even though it had been an accident. Yeah, he should of been paying more attention to what we had been doing but even if he had been, it still could have happened. Besides, I was as much to blame as he was as I had been laughing along with him, not really paying complete attention to what I had been doing. If there was any blame to be placed about what happened the night before than we were both equally guilty.
"Yeah, I talked to him and I told him to stop blaming himself," John told me. He looked over at me and held my gaze. "And the same goes for you," he told me.
"What do you, read minds?" I asked him. Even though this wasn't the first time, it still amazed me when John managed to hit on what I had just been thinking about.
"I just know my brothers really well," John told me with a smile.
"Dad was right. We should have both been paying more attention to what we were doing."
"Maybe, but believe me Virgil, I was listening to Gordon's little comic routine myself. He was trying to break the tension of the situation."
"Well, he was successful in that for a little while," I said smiling as I remembered Gordon's little comic act from the night before. "How hard was Dad on him?"
"Gordon said he got a very long lecture from Dad last night," John told me. "I have a feeling that Gordon is going to leave the comedy back at the island for awhile."
"That's going to make mission a lot duller," I said. Gordon was usually the one who kept the missions from getting too tense. Flights to and from mission sites tended to be filled with jokes in between us getting the information being fed back to us from Thunderbirs 1 and 5.
"I don't think he'll last long," John told me.
I was about to say something else when I heard a small explosion. I looked down toward the instruments to catch a glimpse of the last sparks. There was also smoke coming from the area I had seen the sparks from. It didn't take me long to realize it was the controls for the autopilot.
John reached over and tried to disengage the autopilot.
"Autopilot engaged," the computer said again. That wasn't good.
"Command to Thunderbird 2 is everything okay. We're not getting any information from the autopilot system anymore," Dad's voice came over the radio.
"Negative. There's been some kind of malfunction with the system. Auto pilot won't disengage," I told him even as I tried again.
Beside me, John got out of his seat and knelt down on the floor of the cockpit. Taking off the front panel, he started looking at the system. More smoke came out of the open panel not to mention I could now smell burnt circuits. I knew that was a good sign.
"The area is still clear," Scott reported. I could hear a touch of panic in his voice. I knew it was killing him being stuck up on Thunderbird 5 while all this was going. Scott was use to being in control and taking action not sitting and waiting.
"Looks like the short circuit melted the part of the system together. I'm going to have to try and rewire this, bypassing autopilot," John said standing up and going for the toolbox. I was suddenly definitely glad it was John with me and not Gordon. As much as I loved Gordon, John had more experience and knew all the Thunderbirds better as he had been a part of designing and building all of them to some extent.
I relayed the information to Dad. Suddenly being over open water was a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that we were in open skies. There was no risk of collision with anything. The curse was, if this thing went down, I knew it wouldn't stay on the surface long. I just prayed it didn't come to that.