Chapter Five
Predictably, Jason was the first to storm out of Center Neptune. Keyop followed him without a word, and Princess hurried after the boy. Mark gave Anderson an angry look.
This was not the time to try to debrief the team. This was the time for them to be together. Drawing strength from one another because, God knew, they had little enough on their own.
Anderson raised a hand in a gesture of dismissal, as unable as Mark was to find the right words.
Mark's red convertible eased its way between the city blocks, its vibrant paint seeming a blood-dark scarlet in the dim streetlights. Dawn and sunset had come and gone while G-Force was away. Mark didn't care. The shadows matched his mood. He seemed to be moving in a bubble of light, the world outside it faded into darkness.
He wasn't surprised to find lights blazing in Princess's bar, or to see the 'Closed' sign that adorned it. He pushed the door open without pausing, and took his place between Jason and Keyop at the bar. Princess poured him a soft drink without a word, and he sipped at it without so much as acknowledging her presence.
There was silence. The first rush of tears had passed long before. Now there was simply nothing to say. No one wanted to acknowledge the reality of it.
"I don't believe it."
Of them all, Jason was the last one Mark would have expected to break the silence. Keyop looked up sharply, and Princess almost dropped the glass she had been absently wiping free of water marks. Mark raised his eyes slowly from his drink to his friend's face. Jason was still staring at his own glass - one that held something rather stronger than Mark's.
"Jason - "
"I agree." Keyop's interjection cut Mark off. He gave an insistent warble. "We would know."
"That's it!" Jason's grip tightened, and the glass in his hand cracked under the strain. Princess yelped out a protest, hurrying to take it from him before the liquid remaining inside could spill. Jason leaned over the bar and grabbed a towel to wipe the stickiness from his hand. He looked around at the rest of them. "That's it. We were still at least half connected to the Fiery Phoenix. So was Tiny. We'd have known if he was still aboard when ..." His voice trailed off, and the certainty in his initial assertions wavered in the face of the explosion they'd all seen.
Mark turned helplessly to Princess, glancing at her torn expression before turning back to Jason, not sure what to say. Not even sure what he believed. The sense of wrongness that permeated his memory of the day's events was too powerful to isolate any one of its causes. He rubbed a hand over his cheeks remembering the burning sensation he'd felt on waking. The Center Neptune medical staff hadn't been able to find any cause for it. He'd guessed rather than been told that they thought it might be a psychosomatic symptom of his link to the dying Phoenix.
"What do you want me to do, Jason? Tell the chief that we have a funny feeling?"
We. There, he'd admitted it.
"Yeah!" Jason twisted the bar towel between his hands, wringing it into a tight knot. His expression was almost a snarl, instinctively attacking to cover his own doubt. "Exactly that, Mark! Because the chief might have a parcel of scientific geniuses working for him, but I don't believe any of them knew what the hell they were doing when they built the Phoenix. They don't know what she can do ... what she feels like. Only we know that." He paused, struggling for words as his anger faded. His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. "We know."
Princess seemed torn. "I want to believe it." She looked from Jason to Keyop. "But the chief had people searching - surely they'd have - "
"Found him?" Keyop demanded. He spread his arms wide to indicate the huge swathe of mountainous terrain the Phoenix had covered in its dying minutes. "Big place!"
"We all felt Tiny shift something in the Phoenix." Jason stood, dropping the towel on the bar-top, and began to pace the limited confines of the room. "He could have used the top bubble. He could have got out."
Mark stood too, reaching out to grasp Jason's arm as the other man passed him, and stopping Jason in his tracks. He spoke quietly, hating himself for saying this. "Even if he got out. What are the chances that he survived the fall?" He released Jason, striding away from the bar himself now and pausing in front of the windows. Blinds kept the night outside, and the shared grief of the team private inside. He stared into the pitch darkness that spilled between their slats. "You felt what the Phoenix crash did to all of us. What it would have done to Tiny. He didn't answer his communicator, Jason." His voice cracked. "In that terrain, we'll probably never even find his body."
Princess started to sob quietly behind him, and he heard Keyop's gulping tears too. Jason came forward, wordlessly laying a hand on Mark's shoulder.
The door bursting open was a profoundly unwelcome intrusion into their enclosed little world. A wave of cold air blew a figure in through the doorway, and carried with it the noise of the traffic outside to break the grief-filled silence.
Princess's hands slammed down on the bar, the forceful side of her personality coming to the fore in the light of this trespass.
"We're closed!"
The newcomer brushed her wind-blown blonde hair out of her face as the door closed behind her. She raised blue eyes that flashed with a fury equal to Princess's.
"Don't give me that! I know you must know. Where is he hiding? Where is the bastard?"
"Katie," Keyop whispered, shocked.
Katie hesitated, her anger waning as she began to pick up the thick emotion in the atmosphere. Even so, she rallied, and railed, "If he didn't have the guts to explain to me, he could at least have returned the link. He didn't have to throw it out of his 'plane!"
They stared at her, and then Jason took a step towards her, his grey-blue eyes liquid with tears he would never shed in company.
"Katie - "
This time it was Mark who touched Jason's shoulder, stilling his words with the gesture. He was the commander. This was his task. Well, Anderson's technically, but the chief had never known about Katie. Now, he never would.
Katie was looking from one of them to the other uncertainly. She took a step backwards towards the closed door, wrapping her arms around herself.
"What's happened?" she asked nervously.
What could he tell her? What would she believe?
"You know Tiny's a pilot?"
Katie nodded, her own face pale now as she took in the tears on Keyop's face. "The link I gave him. It came on mid-afternoon. I thought ... I thought he'd changed his mind. But when I checked the location ... He must have tossed it out of his 'plane, flushed it, something ..." Her voice trailed off as Mark's deep blue eyes met hers for the first time.
"Tiny's plane crashed today." Simple words, if he could keep to simple words he could get them out. "He's still missing."
Now why did he say that? Why didn't he add the 'believed dead' that Anderson would have used without hesitation?
Katie's face drained of blood. She swayed and would have fallen if Jason hadn't moved faster than any man should to catch her. She was hardly in a condition to notice. He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her to a table seat, and lowered her into one of the soft chairs. Mark followed, standing beside the table, and Princess and Keyop came from around the bar to join them. United in grief.
Tears streaked her cheeks. She gazed into nowhere. "When he didn't come this evening, I was so angry. I was ready to hate him for leaving me like that." She buried her face in her hands. "I thought he hated me already."
"Never!" The exclamation burst from all four of them simultaneously. No one who knew Tiny could doubt that he had been hurting since he realised he must let her go.
Keyop stepped forward, tentatively touching her hands where they covered her face and forcing her to lower them.
"He kept your link with him."
Mark frowned, the repetition of the term finally registering. "Link?"
Katie reached into her handbag, pulling out the small back cube and holding it up for them to see. Mark felt a sudden surge of anger, not sure himself who it was directed at.
"Tiny had a homing beacon on the Phoenix?"
"It was off! I checked!" Keyop hastened to chirp. "Nothing to see from outside."
"It would have shown up on our sensors if it was on, Mark," Princess added, equally quickly. She brushed a hand over her dark eyes, wiping away the tears that trembled on her long lashes. "If it had been sending out any kind of signal, we would have known about it before anyone else did." She sighed, shaking her head. "This time they just got the better of us, Mark. It's happened before."
Mark was torn between irritation and sorrow. Okay, so perhaps the presence of the link hadn't changed anything, but even so... "Tiny knew better."
Katie was looking from Mark to the others in confusion.
Jason frowned. "This doesn't make sense."
"None of this makes sense," Katie wailed, and Keyop started sobbing again, unable to maintain composure in the face of her distress.
Mark hesitated, torn between wanting to comfort her and not knowing how to go about it. He put an arm around Keyop's shoulders instead, shifting the boy aside to allow Princess to slip in beside Katie and give her a one-armed hug.
"No," Jason's voice was firm. "I mean it." He reached down and picked the link out of her hand. "Katie, you said this thing lit up mid-afternoon?"
She nodded miserably. "I guess it must have been triggered by ... by the crash."
Jason tossed the link to his commander, and Mark caught it instinctively, oblivious to Katie's gasp of concern for the delicate device. Mark weighed it in his hand, looking down at it doubtfully. In his mind, he saw the fireball which the Phoenix had become. "It doesn't look very robust."
Jason rolled his eyes. There was a new light in them which baffled his friends. "It would have been fine if Tiny kept it inside his uniform. Look, I know we're all jet-lagged, but think about the timing. Mid-afternoon here." He paused meaningfully. "Five hours after the crash."
Mark's eyes widened. Princess was on her feet and headed towards the bar's computer unit even before he tossed her the link. She snatched it from midair, plugging it into the console and pulling up the information on its twin from the satellite network it answered to.
Mark turned back to Katie, his expression intent and in his tones the clipped voice of G-Force's commander. "How far can this thing be localised?"
"A square kilometre or so. Why - ?"
"Still a lot of ground to cover in that terrain," Mark noted grimly.
"A hell of a lot better than tracing our entire flight path," Jason pointed out.
Mark nodded. "It's been a long, cold night there," he cautioned, worried by the grin that had split Keyop's face and by the relief on Princess's. He couldn't let them build up false hope. "We still don't know what we're going to find."
Princess turned from the console to face him. "But we have to go look, don't we?"
"Yeah." Mark lifted his wrist communicator to his lips. "Chief, we have new coordinates. Princess is sending them to you now. Can you have a fast jet meet us at headquarters in five minutes?"
"Mark - " Anderson's voice was thick with weariness. Mark cut him off.
"We're going with your say so or without it, Chief. But it'll be a lot quicker if you lend us a plane."
Anderson gave in, confused no doubt, but recognising that Mark was not prepared to argue the point.
"Five minutes, Commander."
Mark heard the click of the channel closing and turned towards the door, resisting the urge to transmute there and then.
A slight cough from Jason stopped him. Katie was staring at them with wide eyes, her gaze scanning each of them in turn. The personnel of G-Force were the stuff of news reports and playground fantasies alike. Tiny had boasted that his girlfriend was intelligent, and it would have taken a true idiot not to have made the connection after all she had seen and heard.
She looked towards Mark, recognising G-Force's invincible commander.
"You're not just Tiny's friends, are you? You're his team-mates."
Mark nodded, silently.
"And I can never tell anyone. Just as he never told me." It wasn't a question. She looked down at her hands, struggling to cope with all she'd just learnt. "I understand. Just go find him, Commander."
The cotton sheets and thick mattress felt comfortable under Tiny's bulk. Of course, he'd grown heartily sick of them nonetheless in the two weeks since he'd been brought back to headquarters.
Even for someone with his accelerated healing, a broken arm and two broken legs were not a laughing matter. Not to mention the concussion injuries to his tissues, and the deep shock that had originated not only from his untreated wounds, but also from the mental contact he had held with the Phoenix until almost the last moment.
The new Phoenix was finished already, he knew. She would rise from the ashes, transcending her physical shell, and born as much from the collective will of G-Force as from mere technology. The team was eager, raring and ready to go. Okay, so they'd suffered one of their occasional defeats, but as it always had before, that only made more determined to take the fight back to Spectra. All they needed now was their pilot, fit and back on the team.
Tiny had been more dead than alive when the newly-concentrated search teams had peered down the crevice and spotted him unconscious there. He hadn't even been aware of small Keyop jumping down beside him, wings flaring in the confined space to slow his fall. And he'd completely missed being winched out of the hole, his lover's link safely tucked into Keyop's utility belt.
It had been on the table beside his bed when he woke. Dark and deactivated, but there. He'd barely noticed, with the rest of the team around him, cheering his return to consciousness.
It was only later that Keyop had told the story, and Tiny learnt that Katie, the woman he had hardly considered when he should have been thinking of her the hardest, had saved his life. And suffered a full two day investigation and interrogation for her troubles.
Mark and the others had remained tight-lipped about how they felt about her. On the one hand, that was probably a good sign. If they, or the chief for that matter, had disapproved then he would certainly have known about it. On the other hand, Tiny couldn't help getting the impression that Katie herself had been silent on the matter. What did that mean?
The confusion had been bad enough when he'd known he must leave her for her own sake. Now ...
But today was the day. The day he found out. The first day that the medical staff had agreed he could spend the evening out of bed, and that Anderson had agreed that he could leave the base. On the proviso that one of his team-mates would drive him and remain close, of course. But if he couldn't count on G-Force for confidentiality, who could he count on?
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the crutches he still used for balance, just as Mark and Jason wandered into the hospital room without knocking. Tiny rolled his eyes at them, knowing that a protest would do no good. "So, you're both coming to watch the catastrophe?" he joked weakly.
He didn't fool them for a moment, but he saw the decision in both faces to ignore his nerves and play along. Jason slipped behind him, giving him a careful shove to help him get his weight over the crutches.
"How on Earth do the nurses manage to get you up and down without a strong arm around, big guy?"
Mark smiled. "He just bats those big eyes at them, and they would shift Heaven and Earth for him."
Usually it would have been the right thing to say. Tiny prided himself on his ability to charm the opposite sex. Today though ...
Mark sensed his hesitation, and his expression became less mischievous and more apologetic and serious.
"Jason and I will drop you at the restaurant and go lounge in the bar downstairs for a while. Call us if you need us." He clapped his hands together, and his tone became brisk. "Well, we'd better get moving if we don't want to make Tiny late for his dinner date. so, Jase, I guess we've got to the big question of the evening - are you driving, or do I get to take us all for a spin?"
Jason snorted. "In your dreams, Mark."
Her eyes were the clearest blue Tiny had ever seen. At times they reflected the vibrant blue of the sky, at others the cool depths of the ocean around Center Neptune.
He'd never seen them grey with caution.
She'd run to him when she'd seen him in the door to the restaurant, almost knocking him off his crutches. She'd kissed him with as much passion as they'd ever shared, and he had known it was the real thing. This time they were in love.
But then she'd hesitated, nodding wary acknowledgements to Mark and Jason as they waved goodbye, and he'd realised that perhaps love wasn't always enough.
They sat in silence as the waiter came with their menus and hovered until they'd placed their order.
Tiny sipped nervously at the water in front of him, more for want of anything else to do than out of any particular thirst.
"So, I hear you got to see where I work." It was a lousy opening gambit, but it was the need to break the silence had become overwhelming.
Katie sniffed, her quick temper flaring - not with him but at the massive construct of World Security. "If you call a two day interrogation in a single guestroom 'seeing'."
Tiny winced. How did you respond to a statement like that?
"I'd already told Mark that I could keep a secret - they obviously couldn't take my word for it." Katie brushed a stray lock of blonde hair back behind one ear. Her face was a picture of indignation. Then she looked up at Tiny and her voice softened. "All I wanted was to see you. And at the end of it all, they wouldn't even tell me if I passed muster."
Tiny blinked, his mouth running away with him before his brain could tell it to stop. "Of course you do. You wouldn't be here if - "
He stopped suddenly, hearing himself speak. Katie was staring at him, horrified.
"You mean if they'd decided I was a security risk, they'd have kept me ... What about my life? I have things to do. Responsibilities."
"Think of their responsibilities." Tiny lowered his voice, and he spoke wearily, sadly. For once he was struggling to be articulate, all pretence fallen away. "Think of one life weighed against those of the team, and everyone the team will save. This is total war."
Katie nodded, but with reluctant understanding rather than agreement. She sipped at her fruit juice, clearly trying to decide what to say.
The waiter interrupted her, bringing their food and forcing them both to silence once more. Tiny dismissed the man with a brisk shake of his head when he asked if he could bring them anything more. Katie was already picking at her food disconsolately.
"The team," she said eventually, keeping her voice quiet. "Your team."
"Yeah."
"And all those times you backed out on me?"
"I was needed."
"And when you said you couldn't see me any more?"
Tiny felt stricken by the memory. His face folded into an expression of misery. "It was unfair to keep leaving you at home, never knowing if I'd come back. It was unfair to put you in danger from Spectra by being with you." His voice lowered to little more than a hoarse whisper. "It was unfair to the rest of the team to worry about ruining your life, when I should have worried about costing them theirs."
She laid down her fork, and now her blue eyes met his. Held them. She'd had time to think about this. Time to go through all the arguments a thousand times. Now she challenged him to think on the spot, asking the one question he'd not dared ask himself since he'd woken.
"Has any of that changed?"
"No. Except that now you know." He broke eye contact, knowing that what he had to say would hurt her. "And now I know that, when the chips are down," - he fiddled with his food, chasing a pea around the plate with his fork - "the team is the most important thing in my world." He heard a stifled sob from across the table, and looked up wretchedly, forcing himself to finish. "And always will be."
There were tears on her face.
"I love you, Tiny. I think I always will." She stood, moving around the table so she could plant a kiss on his forehead. He leaned back in his chair, looking up helplessly into her achingly sad face. She almost whispered the words into his ear. "But you made the right decision."
He didn't turn to watch her as she left. He wouldn't have chased her, even if he had been capable of doing so. He stared at his barely-touched food, her final words ringing through his head.
The waiter's discrete cough brought him back to reality. "Will the young lady be returning?"
Tiny looked up, sadly. He reached up, and took the leather folder containing the bill from the man's unresisting hands. With a sigh, he signed the receipt there and handed it back with a sense of closure.
"No. No, she won't be."
The End.