Chapter Two
Easier said than done, he thought to himself for the thousandth time that evening. He stared into her deep blue eyes, and his will simply faded to nothing. Even when his resolution returned in brief bursts, the thought of hurting her was almost physically painful.
It had been a wretched two days. Tiny's team-mates had been the model of compassionate support since he made his decision, but then first one date and then a second had fallen victim to Zoltar's whims. The delay tore at Tiny. Until he told her, he couldn't think of it as being over. But how could he send her a 'Dear John,' or even tell her by 'phone? No, he owed it to her to tell her in person, even if he couldn't ever explain to her why it was necessary.
So he just got more and more nervous, more and more tense, until even a word from one of his team-mates made him jump and jerk the Phoenix into a sudden climb. Mark had been sympathetic as a friend, but in the field - with all their lives in the balance - the commander had snapped out a stinging rebuke. Tiny had just nodded and mumbled an apology, knowing that Mark would have been well within his rights to pull him up a lot sooner.
Only one small thought consoled him. Perhaps if this went on long enough, Katie would dump him first. That would hurt, but it was a pain he was accustomed to. Even now, he wasn't sure he could inflict such agony on her instead.
Finally though, Spectra granted them a lull. He called Katie with trepidation, asking her to join him for their twice-postponed date. For a moment the irritation in her voice gave him a kind of ambivalent hope, but there was no hesitation in her agreement, no sign that his unreliability was a terminal flaw in their relationship. Numbly, he gave her a time and place - a restaurant, not Princess's bar. No, he couldn't face associating the team's haven with this.
She had kissed him almost before he registered her presence, taking his breath away in more ways than one. He was lost for words as she virtually pulled him into the restaurant. He sat in silence as she asked what he had been doing, then interrupted herself in irritation, knowing from experience that he would have no coherent excuse.
And he gazed, enchanted, at the mischievous smile on her face. It wasn't until she reached into her purse and pulled out a wrapped gift that he found his voice.
"Katie, I can't!" he protested desperately.
She laughed. "Open it," she urged. "I have one too," she added with a smile.
One what? Tiny felt his heart sinking, wondering if Jason had been right all along. Even someone who routinely wore a numbered T-Shirt would draw the lines at matching clothes with their girlfriend. Still, the package seemed too compact to contain a sweater, or anything much larger than a jewellery box. If anything that thought was more alarming.
He tore the tissue paper away with a quick, nervous action, and stared in bemusement at the small device lying within. Oh, he recognised it, of course. A few years ago these things had been all the rage. A "lover's link" it was called - one of a pair of small beacons designed to allow a couple to feel in touch even when they were apart. A few commands in a computer, a code from one beacon, and the partner beacon's location would be displayed on screen. In practise the position returned was vague - narrowing the area down to no less than a square mile or so - and the devices soon fell out of vogue.
Tiny looked up to see a smiling Katie holding the second link, and despair at the concept warred with a certain admiration that she'd managed to track a working pair down. Her smile faded at the dismay on his face. She reached across the table to run a caressing finger down his cheek.
"Tiny? What's wrong? Aren't you pleased? This way even when you have to be far away, you can see I'm thinking of you."
He swallowed hard, imagining how Mark or the chief would react to the idea of him carrying a homing device. "Katie, I can't take this."
Her confused expression turned cold.
"What?" she demanded.
"Katie ... my work ... I just can't." Tiny stammered the words, seeing the dismay on her face. Now, he knew. He had to tell her now or he'd never have the strength again. "Look, er Katie. I can't see you any more!"
He almost shouted the words, his voice become high pitched and abrupt as he squeezed the phrase out.
The blood drained from her face, and she actually swayed in her seat. He'd rarely seen anyone look so shocked.
"Katie ..."
Of all the times for his wrist activator to come alive, this was the worst. It pulsed against his wrist and he knew from the pattern of the vibration that it was an emergency that couldn't wait. No matter how much it hurt, he had to leave - now.
He turned away from her horrified, accusing blue eyes, and pushed his chair back from the table.
"I've got to go."
Her hand grabbed his wrist, and there was a burning anger now beneath her shock.
"What? You think you can dump me and leave without a word of explanation? Think again, Tiny. I know what we have here - I know it's real! What's wrong? Are you in some kind of trouble? Let me help!"
She caught him with her eyes, and he saw the incisive, intelligent woman he loved.
"You still love me, Tiny. I can see it in your eyes."
His wrist activator pulsed again, its rhythm more urgent still. He had to get to the Phoenix, or let the entire team down.
"Tomorrow," he said impulsively. "8 o'clock. I'll ... I'll try to explain."
He pulled himself free of her as gently as he could, and ran for the door. He didn't notice until it was too late to turn back that the lover's link was still tightly gripped in his hand.
It was a scramble to get to the Phoenix and get her into the air - it always was when he was in the city. Or anywhere, in fact, but sitting waiting in the ready room. Sometimes he dreamed of the science fiction stories of teleportation. Wouldn't it be a gift to simply snap his fingers and appear at his console with the mighty Phoenix roaring around him? But as incredible as the team's cerebronic superpowers were, it looked like instantaneous transportation was just a little beyond what Center Neptune's science could deliver.
Instead he was red-faced and harried by the time he caught up with the rest of the team. He'd had little time to stop and think about that last painful conversation, no time really to do anything except make sure the link was safely deactivated and shove it in a pocket.
Princess looked windblown from her long bike ride when she slid down into the control room. She eased into her seat with barely a glance at Tiny, beginning the process of checking her scanners while he lined the Phoenix up on Keyop's bubble.
"Mark sounds like he's in a hurry," she noted as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Tiny winced, remembering the commander's somewhat terse response to his launch report. "Yeah, well. I'm here now, aren't I?" He nodded in satisfaction as the G-4 space bubble lifted free of the ground, and turned to line up on Jason's G-2 even before the starboard nacelle began to close. "He should try doing this without me sometime. I'd like to see him trying to fly this baby flat out."
Even to himself the words sounded angry and unhappy. He was aware of a pause in the rhythm of Princess's typing, and of Keyop hesitating in the doorway. Wordlessly, G-Force's youngest member came to sit beside Tiny at the co-pilot's position, redirecting his checks to the forward consoles with a few commands to the computer. Tiny kept his eyes forward, watching the screens carefully as Mark lined up his jet on the Phoenix's rear bay. Once, when they were all still new at this, he might have raised his seat to the bubble to improve his view for this procedure. The visibility from the cabin was lousy at the best of times, and it had taken time for them to learn how to judge distances and speed from the two dimensional viewscreens alone.
They were long past such need now. Mark docked with all the grace and precision Tiny expected of their Commander. Tiny nodded in satisfaction, flicking the switch which sealed her compartments and reset the ship to her in-flight mode. The Phoenix was up to full speed, and following the course Mark had set, before Jason and Mark made it to the cabin from forward and aft respectively. Tiny squinted at the coordinates displayed on his screens, adjusting the ship's height and altitude to optimise her speed to destination.
There was a heavy silence behind him in the cabin and he knew without turning to check that the rest of the team were using hand signals, Princess warning her commander that Tiny was in something far from his usual cheerful mood. Tiny kept his eyes resolutely forward. He didn't need to know, didn't want to know, what his friends were saying about him.
It seemed an age before Mark displaced Keyop and slipped into the co-pilot's chair.
"Tiny - "
"ETA at target forty minutes," Tiny snapped before Mark could continue. He so did not want to discuss this at the moment.
He felt Mark studying him, assessing his behaviour. The commander gave a sharp nod, accepting that Tiny wouldn't let his emotions interfere with his work. There was a general relaxation in the Phoenix's cabin, Keyop letting out a small sigh. Despite that, Tiny knew that his team would be looking out for him on this mission, making sure it didn't all get to be too much. After all, they'd done it for one another before.
His launch checks completed, Jason stretched and leaned back in his chair. The motion was reflected in Tiny's monitors, and drew the eyes of all four of them to him. Tiny couldn't resist a small smile, grateful for the distraction. Jason didn't so much as glance in his direction.
"So what's the jazz, Mark?"
Mark chuckled briefly. Somehow Jason made it sound like they were out for a stroll in the park. The young commander didn't lose his edge of tense anticipation, but he did lean back in his own chair.
"Actually, I'm not sure. I got a red alert scramble from Zark, and the coordinates were in my 'plane before I was! The coding was all marked double urgent." He glanced up at the cabin's upper bank of monitor screens - currently blank. "I guess the chief will - "
On cue, the upper right-hand screen brightened. Security Chief Anderson's shaggy hair and thick moustache concealed most of his emotion; his mask of calm efficiency hid virtually all that remained. Like Jason, Anderson had the gift of making the extraordinary seem mundane.
"Good evening, team." Anderson nodded in his normal polite greeting. They knew him well enough to recognise that the courtesy masked his anxiety. He never enjoyed sending his protégés into the field, least of all at short notice or with little information. "I am sorry to have to interrupt your plans for tonight." He paused briefly, although whether he was expecting them to protest or accept his apology wasn't clear. In either case, he continued before they could reply. "As you will have noted, your destination is in south-east Asia. To be precise, it lies amid the Khmer temples of Laos. In recent weeks, a mysterious monster has been terrorising the villages of the region. The first incident was attributed purely to local superstition - the monster takes the form of a local serpent deity, or perhaps wyrm would be a better term."
"We're fighting a worm?" Keyop burst out, wide-eyed with astonishment.
Princess clapped the boy lightly on his shoulder. "He said 'wyrm' - sort of like a dragon."
"But longer and more wriggly," Tiny added, mostly for the amusement value in Keyop's expression.
The Chief gave them all a quelling look, stilling Keyop's dismayed burble.
"However a pattern has now emerged. This creature targets the infrastructure of the villages it attacks, causing more material damage than would seem reasonable given chance, or attack by a wild animal, alone."
"And it's targeting the Laotian agricultural developments?" Mark guessed, making it more a statement than a question.
Anderson's lips quirked into a slight smile. "Good, Mark. Yes, the attacks do indeed appear to focus on villages servicing the International Science Organisation's rice cultivation and agricultural research centre, and on outlying portions of the centre itself. As you aware, more than a third of the world's population is dependent on rice as a staple food. Improving the yield and cultivation methods for the crop is a vital component of the ISO's efforts to deal with the region's overpopulation."
"A prime target for Spectra," Jason grated. His face was shadowed by his visor, giving him an ominous look as his hands tightened into fists.
Tiny was frowning now too. "Okay, so I guess this is important, but what's so urgent that we had to be dragged ...?" His voice died away as he recognised his own uncharacteristic outburst, but Mark was nodding thoughtfully.
"That's a good point, chief. If these attacks have been going on for a while, why send us out -now- with no notice?"
The chief nodded too. "The attacks have been steadily escalating in severity. We cannot afford to allow them to continue, but responding to them sufficiently rapidly has been problematic. The timing of attacks is erratic. However one consistent element of the incidents is their duration. Each of the attacks has lasted between 62 and 65 minutes from first sighting to withdrawal of the 'wyrm'."
Mark glanced quickly at the ship's chronometer, calculating the time it had taken them to get to their vehicles and rendezvous, and then adding in their time to destination. All five of them were running through the same analysis. Assuming Zark had been primed to summon them immediately ...
"We'll only have seven minutes to find it when we get there," Mark concluded. His white-winged cloak flared behind him as he shifted restlessly in his chair.
"But when we do find it, we'll make sure it doesn't get away," Jason added in a satisfied tone.
"Yeah!" Keyop exclaimed.
"No!" Anderson responded with equal vigour. "The rapid withdrawals indicate that the wyrm construct must have a limited power supply - "
" - And return to its base to recharge." Now Mark's fists were the ones that clenched. "You don't want the wyrm. You want its base."
"So," Jason asked as their destination approached. "Do we have a plan?"
Mark looked up slowly. He had spent the last twenty minutes in silence, his head bowed over his monitors. If there was a clue about this monster's origins in the information Anderson had forwarded, he had failed to see it. And, judging by the silence from his team-mates, so had everyone else. It looked like they'd have to do this the hard way.
"We find it, we follow it," he said simply.
Princess giggled at his matter-of-fact tone, but her face was suitably sombre by the time the rest of the team turned to her. "Switching to infrared sensors," she reported. "If this thing is using up energy at such a rate, it has to be hot."
Tiny nodded, turning without enthusiasm back to his own instruments. He glanced up as the infrared display came up on the main screens. "Setting up a standard search sweep."
"No." Mark's hand came down on top of Tiny's, stopping him from moving the controls. He peered through the red-tinted viewscreen. Below them the thick forests of Laos concealed the ground from view. Rising from them like some bizarre crop of toadstools, the roofs of high-domed Khmer temples provided the only visible evidence for human occupation. Mark selected a large one, indicating the clearing that surrounded it. "Down there, Tiny."
"You want us to land?" Tiny asked, startled out of his brooding. His eyes flew in confusion to the chronometer. They had five minutes at best.
"No, just hover between the trees - out of sight." Mark turned back towards Princess, his motions rapid and decisive. "Get the local authorities on the radio. Just for a change, let's ask someone who knows what's going on around here. We -want- this thing to head back to its base, not fight us 'till it runs out of juice. The last thing we want to do is let it know we're here."
The tension in the Phoenix's cabin was palpable. The only sound was that of Jason dismantling and cleaning his multipurpose gun - that and the relay from the local police radio frequencies. With the help of the locals on the ground it had taken barely a minute for the Phoenix's sensors to locate the alien wyrm monster, and chart its course.
Even with 7-Zark-7's assurance that the region had been evacuated of civilians, it was hard to watch as the wyrm thrashed its way through fields and buildings alike. Its sinuous body seemed almost to undulate as it walked, its centre of mass kept low on short stubby legs.
"It feels wrong just to sit back and wait," Jason burst out, snapping the last element of his weapon back into place. He holstered the gun with a smooth action, twirling it around his fingers before sliding it back into its tight pouch.
Tiny chuckled at his impatience. "Now you know how I feel."
The commander had been gripping the arms of his chair tightly, clearly as impatient as Jason. Nonetheless, Mark smiled at them both, before a gasp from Princess turned all their attention back to the screen.
"It's moving off!"
Tiny's hands moved towards the Phoenix's controls, only for Mark to stop him once again.
"Wait! Princess, Jason, track it! Make sure it's staying on one course. It's not faced any significant opposition. There's no reason for it not to head straight back to base - unless we show our hand too early."
"Sneaky," Keyop approved with a grin.
"Yeah," Tiny muttered gloomily. "I guess I'd just have gone blundering in."
Mark patted him on the shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with being a straightforward kind of guy, Tiny. It's just that today calls for something a little different that's all."
Tiny forced a grin. With a show of nonchalance, he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head like a pillow. "Just shout when you want me."
Mark seemed uncertain how to react to that, saying nothing until he gave the order to move. Tiny kicked himself as he lifted the Phoenix and followed, keeping in the narrow margin of safety just outside the standard Spectran sensor range, just within his own. He was trying too hard, he knew. Usually he knew just when to lighten the mood with a little humour, and when sombre determination was called for. Today, his judgement had gone to pot. Thoughts of Katie intruded constantly, the hurt in her eyes when he told her it was over, her certainty that he still loved her. Oh, it wouldn't affect his determination to fight Spectra - if anything his resentment of the relentless invasion force was growing by the moment. But it was small wonder that his mood was swinging violently; small wonder that Mark was about to leave him behind again.
Tiny knew it as soon as the wyrm undulated its way through the forest and into a mountain lake. Keyop gave one look at the clear blue snowmelt and shuddered. The contrast between the tropical climate of the forest and the cold water promised to make the mere idea of a dip in the lake unpleasant.
"It's not stopping," Mark noted, standing and leaning forwards as if that could improve the view projected by the overstretched sensors. Even through the snow of interference that the sensors picked up at this distance, it was clear that the ripples the submerged wyrm generated were heading arrow straight towards a lake-front temple.
The building was huge, its tallest halls capped by domed roofs that seemed curiously bulbous and misshapen to occidental eyes. The Khmer temple architecture was unmistakeable, and oddly fitting for the ornate serpent deity Spectra had chosen as the subject of this masquerade.
"No place to land the Phoenix there," Tiny noted gloomily. "There's not a clearing large enough for five miles in any direction."
The sun was climbing towards noon. Its heat pounded the forests, and the metallic skin of the Phoenix, rippling the air into a vague haze. Tiny sighed, perhaps it was the middle of the day here but his body still felt that it was late evening. They were all accustomed to dealing with jet-lag, but today, with his thoughts flying to Katie with each available minute, he felt as if he hadn't slept for weeks. The outlines of the domes seemed to waver in front of his eyes and he shook his head. Slowing the Phoenix, he brought her to a hover, barely above the tree line, and just outside the standard Spectran sensor radius.
"Let's bomb this thing and get out of here," he suggested abruptly.
"Hey!" Jason protested with a startled look at Tiny, "That's my line!"
"Not without knowing what's in there." Mark's eyes scanned the ornate building, his analytic mind working at top speed. "Besides, for all we know that's a genuine sacred temple. We can't destroy it unless there's no other choice."
Tiny and Jason both nodded reluctantly, acknowledging Mark's point. In the practicalities of their life and death struggle, it was too easy to overlook the importance that many placed on their faith. But Spectra was using the beliefs of these people against them, G-Force had to be better than that. G-Force had to understand that their battle was as much to protect the right to freedom of belief as it was to protect lives.
"We go in underwater?" Princess suggested.
Mark should his head sharply.
"They'll be watching the lake carefully, and it's too small to hide the Phoenix's, or even Keyop's bubble's, approach." He frowned, clearly reaching a decision. "I think this is one of those times when a direct approach is called for. We're not going to be able to sneak around in broad daylight."
"So we'll be tourists, and walk in from here?" Jason guessed.
"You got it in one, Jase," Mask nodded. He turned to the front console, his cloak flaring around him in a smooth arc. "Tiny - "
"Yeah, I know. Stay with the ship," Tiny muttered unhappily.
The commander nodded, trying to make a joke of a decision he would have made even if there had been another option. "It does look like you get to put your feet up again, Tiny. If we have to leave the ship this far away, I want someone with her in case we need a lift out of there in a hurry."
Keyop had pulled out his bola and was idly swinging it so the two weights - hopefully not armed - were clacking together rhythmically. He burbled sympathetically, his head tilted to one side. "Bring you a souvenir!" he joked.
"Not today you won't." Mark's comment stopped Keyop's fidgeting. The boy turned to stare at his older friend. The flick of Mark's eyes to Tiny would have been imperceptible to anyone outside G-Force. Tiny pretended he hadn't seen it. "That base has approaches by air, land and water. Your vehicle is our most versatile. I think it would be a good idea for you to stay with your bubble car. Keep an eye open for anyone trying to escape. But come running when I shout!"
Keyop's glance at Tiny was rather less subtle than the commander's. Finally, G-Force's youngest team member threw himself down in his chair, swinging it back on its mount. He tossed his bola into the air and caught it. "Fine," he snapped after several seconds of irritated warbling. "But call nicely," he added in a display of pique. "Might decide I'm too busy."
No one took his threat seriously. Jason smiled a tight little smile, mussing up Keyop's brown hair. Then Princess, Jason and Mark were standing on the Phoenix's platform and it was rising, taking them to the ship's top bubble. There were no goodbyes, there never were between this team. No one wanted to be reminded that each parting could become final.