Thunderbird Two activated its VTOL thrusters and gracefully came to a stop about twenty metres to the right of Thunderbird One, facing some way clockwise of the former Van Arkel uranium mine. "Thunderbird Five was right, that storm is heading our way," Virgil commented from inside. "You nearly done, Thunderbird One?"
No answer.
"Scott?"
Dead silence.
"Thunderbird Five, what kind of mess has Scott gotten himself into this time?" The joviality in Virgil's tone masked the inescapable feeling of oh no not again that he felt.
John was also feeling it. "He's on the lowest level, I can tell you that much. You know how well the tracker signals work through that much rock."
"Any idea what he's doing down there?"
"Negative. I thought he was keeping you in the loop - hold on. His tracker just went dead!"
"I'm really hoping it just went out of range."
"The cutoff was too sudden for that."
"In that case, I'm really hoping my idiot brother turned it off for some stupid reason. Try and get in touch with him, will ya? I'm going down in a pod."
"Thunderbird Five, this is the Mole. I've reached Scott's last known location. No sign of him."
"Bother. We need to find him, soon."
"John, there is someone else down here who might be in trouble. I want to have a look for them."
"Sure. But be careful. Radiation readings are high down there. Not to mention the storm's on its way; you'll have to close up the mine within twenty minutes."
"Timer set. Now scanning for life readings. ... ...There's nobody down here. Nowhere close, anyway. And still nothing on Scott's tracker."
"And he's still not talking to me. Check his path for clues, would you? We need to find him."
"Thunderbird Five, this is Thunderbird Two. I'm at the top of the mine's lift shaft. Scott definitely went down here; his grapple pack's still tethered here."
"Can you retrieve it? Check it for damage?"
"I think so. Just - urgh - here we go. Check the camera; I'll run the cable past it."
Two hundred metres of cable later, "No dice. This grapple pack is as good as the day Brains fabricated it."
"I'd expect nothing less from Brains. Where to next, Thunderbird Five?"
"I'm not sure." Scott had never gone entirely missing before, and it was putting John on edge. "How's that lift?"
"Halfway up." Virgil paused. "That's a weird spot for a lift to be."
"And further down than that grapple pack went..."
"I'll take the Mole down and find the next pack."
About two hundred metres down
"This pack's good, Thunderbird Two. Take the Mole down again."
About four hundred metres down
"So he got here okay. Down we go again."
About six hundred metres down
"Stop." In the virtual face of command-mode John, Virgil stopped. "Run that section past the camera again." He did. "That... that's not good."
"What's the situation, Thunderbird Five?"
"That segment there," John highlighted a segment of cable on Virgil's HUD, "has been pinched. Hard. Harder than a human could have."
"Could I have done it by accident with the powersuit? Or could it have swung against the rocks?"
"Not without either of us noticing. Heavy-duty equipment was responsible, likely industrial."
Understandably, Virgil was having trouble wrapping his head around this. "What - or who - would have done that? And why?" were his next questioning words.
"I don't know. Hopefully Scott knows. We really need to find him."
"And be out of here inside ten minutes... Stay put, Scott, you great idiot. I can get to you faster that way."
"Okay, Thunderbird Five, I'm back on the lowest level. Still nothing here but us chickens."
"I don't know about that; you're certainly no spring chicken."
"Says my older brother. Wait, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"I think I picked up Scott's tracker for a moment there."
"Retrace your steps. Exactly."
"Sheesh, John, I know how to do this. ...There it is again. It's coming from over there."
"Signal strength is weak, so probably a ways away."
"That way lies an old storage locker. Shielded. If the tracker's in there, that could explain it."
"What about Scott?"
"I hate to think."
Virgil stared silently at the contents of the storage locker.
"Oh God," John managed to whisper out, eyes glued to his screen.
"Dear universe," Virgil announced to nobody in particular, "when I said, 'what kind of mess has Scott gotten himself into this time?'," his voice became particularly anguished, "I was joking!"
Before their eyes lay the worst possible scenario. Scott Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird One, had pushed his luck too far for the last time, and judging by the temperature of his mangled body, he'd done it some time ago. Neither John nor Virgil had needed to say anything for both to know that there would be no reviving him.
"Augh."
"Virgil."
Virgil didn't say anything.
"Virgil!"
One got the impression he was trying to suppress sobs.
"Virgil!" John's voice, as much as it ever expressed emotion, seemed laden with the same. "We've still got a mission. The living take priority."
"...'kay. Just give me a minute."
"Just be aware you're down to eight minutes now."
Okay Virgil. Breathe in. ...Breathe out. ...Breathe in, ...breathe out.
He frowned as that last breath sounded a bit hydraulic for his liking, even after accounting for his motion in the powersuit.
If he'd been a bit quicker with that realisation, he might have seen the mining mech swinging its claw at him. As it was, he just careened into the wall and blacked out.
Ugh. What had he done last night?
"Virgil, wake up. Virgil! Virgil, can you hear me?!"
Apparently he'd gone on a rescue and not come back. "Gah. John? What's going on?"
"I'm assuming you're not in the Mole."
"...no?"
"Get out of that godforsaken mine now. Someone's taken the Mole."
"Up to the surface. Without me." Virgil was certainly wide awake now. "...Aw hell, what happened to the elevator?"
Two of International Rescue's finest minds processed the shattered pieces of the lift platform, the absence of the Mole, the corpse in the storage locker, and the pinched grapple cable, and came to a conclusion they really did not like. At all. Virgil wasted no time hotwiring the lift mechanism and straddling it as it went up. "John, status of the Mole?"
"Approaching Thunderbird Two's module."
"Close the module, John!"
The lift went whirrrrr.
"Module closed and redocked."
Virgil breathed a sigh of relief.
"You'll reach the surface in four minutes. I've called the GDF; a squad will be here in five to take custody of the hostile."
It was one thing to arrive too late to save someone on a rescue; it was a feeling that all of International Rescue were intimately familiar with. It was quite another when the lost was one of their own. It would be hard on any organisation. On a family? With Virgil's relief came reflection, and with reflection returned horror. As the handicapped lift carried Virgil up to the surface, the scale of the events below began to sink in. "John," he whispered, his voice shaking. "We just lost Scott."
John didn't speak; he just breathed. In. ...Out. ...In. ...Out.
"John..."
"I... I know, Virgil. I'm, I'm just trying to get the mission done."
"Catch now, cry later...?"
"Yeah. ...Yeah."
The contemplative silence that followed was abruptly broken by the same alarm blasting at both of them. Virgil should have recognised it first, but was excused given his state of mind. John leapt to his virtual console, diagnosed the cause within three seconds, and ...well, it was his turn to feel dread.
"The Mole has breached the module. I'm dropping it now."
An icy rage ran through Virgil. How dare they? Whoever had killed his older brother should have stopped there. But no, now they'd desecrated his 'bird. Heads would roll.
"Oh no."
The icy rage was replaced with panic. "John? What's happening?!"
"Intruder triggered the lift before I could drop the module. They have access to the flight deck."
The panic was replaced with a plain icy feeling. Whoever was on the flight deck of a Thunderbird was the ultimate arbiter of control; they could lock out any attempt to remotely control it - whether from a wristborne remote, Thunderbird Five, or the island computer core.
"Virgil, we need a plan."
The fact that John Tracy, International Rescue space monitor, font of all knowledge (as Scott was always quick to complain (oh god, Scott)), was asking him for a plan somehow reinforced the bleakness of the situation. He'd considered this impossible, given that Thunderbird Two had been hijacked, but apparently it was possible.
So Virgil tried to pull himself together and plot something. It made his head hurt, but he eventually came up with a plan, which he outlined to John. It was unnerving how John didn't really argue with him over anything at all.
"Oh, and update the GDF squad."
"Will do."
This is getting way out of hand.
The military say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is a wise maxim for any plan, no matter the enemy.
The lift came to a stop at the top of the mineshaft right on schedule, and Virgil wasted no time hauling himself onto blessed surface dirt, clearing the shaft and shutting it down. For good measure, he set his laser cutter to weld and made a few quick gestures at the radiation door with it. "I hereby declare this uranium mine closed for business."
"And just in time, too. The storm's here."
Thank you, Space Monitor Obvious, Virgil thought as he ran through the control room and emerged into the chill wind of a storm in central Africa. Thunderbird One sat forlornly to his right, waiting for a pilot who would never return. Thunderbird Two powered up in front of him. Right. Someone needs a talking-to.
Exactly as arranged, John took remote control over Two, and it powered off again.
"International Rescue to whoever's in Thunderbird Two." For the first time since the storage locker (oh god, Scott), Virgil's voice over the radio was calm and clear. "We can still talk about this. We're not going to hurt you. Just come down from there, and we can work out what's going to happen."
Thunderbird Two overrode its remote control, powered up, and rose into the air, sans module. "Bite me," said its occupant.
Well, we weren't really expecting that to work, Virgil mused as he ran for his best hope of getting back into Thunderbird Two: Thunderbird One. John was even deploying the pilot's chair - all he had to do was get in.
Thunderbird Two apparently disagreed with this course of action, because it swooped at him and it was all he could do to duck under it.
"Gah!"
"Stop."
"Not on my watch!" Virgil yelled as he got up and kept running for One. "Nice try."
It was as something slammed him into the ground that things really started to go wrong.
"Aah! They grappled me!" said Virgil over the still-open comm line to Thunderbird Five.
John glanced at the live diagram of Thunderbird Two; sure enough, a grapple line had been fired into the dirt, and Virgil was on the other end. "Virgil, get it off. Now."
"Rrrrgh - I can't! It's magnetised to the Jaws!"
And in more bad news, the grapple line reeled in.
"Okay, this is - ow - not fun." Virgil repeatedly drove his armoured elbows into the magnetic grip, to no avail. "Wouldn't have done it to the Marianas rich idiot if I'd known -" The subtle sound of the firing mechanism charging. "Fly One outAAH!" The medical sensors said he'd blacked out upon meeting the ground again.
"Virgil!" John spoke frantically even as he ordered Thunderbird One to depart the scene with all possible haste. "Talk to me!"
Thunderbird Two fired another grapple line. This one very nearly kept Thunderbird One in place. Fortunately, One's main engine ignited at that very moment, and the blast of exhaust pushed the magnet away long enough for One to make good its escape.
It was probably for the best that Thunderbird Two's pilot couldn't feel anything as his craft descended into a precise hover over him, a VTOL thruster perfectly positioned to cook him. The medical sensors in the Jaws of Life failed at the same time as the rest of the suit, the delicate internal mechanism(s) melted to slag or burnt to a crisp.
As Thunderbird Two rose from its victim, John had other problems - he'd just now managed to get in contact with the GDF flyer. As its pilot saw Two grow larger in the windscreen, the frantic voice of Thunderbird Five blared across its speakers. "Thunderbird Two is hostile! Break off! Break off!"
It was a bit late for that. Grapple lines streamed out from Two and attached to the tail and port wing of the flyer. Seconds later, as Two charged in the opposite direction, the sudden jerk on the well-attached cables tore off three of the five aerofoils (and one of the two engines) like squares from a chocolate bar. Without horizontal stabilisers or balanced lift (or VTOL thrust) the craft was doomed, and Thunderbird Five could only watch helplessly as it nosedived into the landscape.
"Computer, call Colonel Casey. Maximum priority."
"John. Status update."
"Send interceptors."
The look on his face told her everything she needed to know.
A/N: Well, that took a while. Sorry. I wanted it to be ...well, can't do perfect, but I wanted it to be good.
Also, rest assured that this fic will continue all the way into Season 2 (when I get there). That's a promise.