Technically, John lives his life at speeds of 17136 miles per hour. Thunderbird One tops out at about Mach 20, which is about 2000 mph slower than the speed at which John orbits the Earth.
It doesn't seem like that counts, though. It seems like the difference between John's life, lived at a passive speed, and Scott's, lived at an active one—is that Scott can still think at Mach 20. The speed and the G-forces and the weight of his exosuit and the fact that he's been buzzing around the high-altitude equivalent of an obstacle course for the past eight hours—they combine into a suite of factors that leave John vaguely disoriented and thrown off kilter by his current rate of travel. He'd rather be flying solo back to Tracy Island, interfacing with TB5 on the way, and managing this mission instead of actively being a part of it. Apparently the only thought he's able to string together is childish and overly simplistic, the black and white mantra of "Scott Is Actually The Worst."
But apparently it's time for some on the job training, and with a man's life hanging in the balance, it's not like John had the option to politely (or impolitely) decline.
It's not like he can't do it, either. And maybe this will be the proof that Scott needs that he should back the hell off, and give him some credit for actually knowing what the hell he's doing. Worst pilot in the family is a title that his big brother has invented, as though it's meant to be something shameful, when really it's just an objective fact that John's always going to have less flight experience than the rest of his siblings. Alan's the prodigy and Gordon's the polymath. Virgil's the expert and Scott's the hotshot. Kayo's the acrobat. And John—
That he's the amateur is probably the most charitable description. The theorist. Three hundred hours of sim training. He likes sims, he's good at them, and they've taught him a lot. What they haven'ttaught him, and what he refuses to admit to Scott, is just how much work it is to really fly. He runs his sims in a carefully crafted virtual reality within his commsphere, with all manner of scenarios projected on the interior of the space around him, and he's taught himself all of the principles of flight, become practiced at the practice of flying.
He just hasn't had a lot of actual practice, and six minutes is a long time to become uncomfortably aware of the fact.
"Thunderbird One calling Flight G-NZ42, this is International Rescue. We're on approach to you now, preparing to match speed for intercept. G-NZ42, do you copy?"
"Pilot's lost consciousness," John reports, changing back to the primary channel just as Scott hits the brakes and is about to hail the flight again. "Gordon's getting us clearance at the nearest major hospital, we're going to have to go for medical evac."
Scott shakes his head and sighs. "Damn. Is the cockpit sealed?"
"Should be."
"Then you're clear to get aboard through the cargo bay. Opening the auxiliary hatch."
The roar of wind fills TB1, though it's muted and muffled by the soundproofing of Scott's helmet, it's still loud enough that he almost doesn't believe it, when he hears the note of doubt in his brother's voice, "Scott, I'm not sure—"
It makes a change from the belligerent attitude of only ten minutes ago, and gives Scott the slight satisfaction of knowing that his brother was just being difficult, just pitching a tantrum. It's hardly the moment for smugness, so instead he reverts to radiant positivity, a pep talk for the worst pilot in the family. "John, you've got this. This is just a simple jump from one vessel to another, we've been working on this all day. Come on. I do this all the time, it's a cakewalk. Get aboard, and I'll talk you through evac procedure."
Time isn't on their side, and there's a pilot in medical distress who needs their assistance. So whatever John's objection might have been, he stifles it, and his tone is crisp and professional as he answers, "—FAB."
"Atta boy, Johnny," Scott approves.
His brother's last words, before he drops through the open hatch, are a disapproving, "Don't call me Johnny."
Scott just rolls his eyes, watches as his brother makes the simple jump from TB1, engages his thrusters, and matches speed with the plane to fly alongside. It's a simple enough maneuver, and there's a hiss of static over the comm as John opens the channel again. "I'm not seeing an exterior override for the forward hatch. Can you pull it open?"
"Yeah, but I'll want you well clear before I do. Get over to the other side of the vessel, do a quick pass over the cockpit and see if you can get a visual on the pilot. I'll pop the door for you."
"FAB."
There's an exterior hatch near the front of the plane, and Scott watches as his brother pulls ahead, then executes a neat pass across the nose, skirting around to land on the wing of the plane. Despite himself, as he lines up his shot with the grappling hook, Scott's rather impressed with the tidiness of the move. "See? Practice makes perfect! You're coming along just fine, John."
"If you think that had more to do with your eight hours of nagging and nitpicking than it did with my three hundred hours of sim time—"
"Did you get a look at the pilot?" Scott interrupts, and taps briskly on the trigger button for his forward grapnel, feels the satisfying jerk of the line as this connects, a perfect bullseye in the center of the door. He tweaks his thrusters just slightly and the magnet at the center pops the door neatly out of its frame.
"No," John answers, and there's that note of slight trepidation in his voice again, the sort of unspoken concern that Scott's all too used to breezing past. "I didn't see anyone."
Scott double checks the call sign he's been given against the numbers stenciled on the fuselage of the jet. Prudently he pulls TB1 up above the vessel, so better to supervise and to lower a rescue harness once John's ready for it. "It's not like we could have the wrong plane. Maybe he fell out of his seat."
"Should've been strapped in. Gordon would've told him so."
"Well, the door's open, anyway, you'll find out soon enough. Get aboard, John. Whatever happened, obviously the guy's in bad shape."
"…Right."
From overhead, Scott watches as his brother performs another neat, nimble bit of aerobatics, moving from one wing of the plane to the other, matching speed with the jet the entire time, and landing lightly and easily, as though this entire process isn't happening at altitude, at cruising speed. And it occurs to him, a little reluctantly, that maybe he's been a little hard on his brother. Maybe the reason John's been so prickly and resistant is because Scott has been nagging and nitpicking, inventing faults where he can't actually find them, and holding his brother to an impossible standard. The way Scott does things isn't necessarily the only way things should be done. John's not a bad pilot, not by any stretch of the imagination. He's just a little inexperienced.
He makes a note to apologize, once they're back to base. For the moment, he watches as John disappears into the open hatch on the side of the plane, and then hears that same note of nervousness in his voice again, as he comments, "…I really wish I'd been able to patch through to TB5 and pull up the shipping manifest on this flight. We don't know what's back here, what're we gonna do about this thing once we evac the pilot? We can't just leave it flying."
"One problem at a time, Johnny. Get to the cockpit."
The only answer is silence, presumably as John follows through on the order. Scott's not sure why, but gradually something about this particular silence starts to send a creep of anxiety up his spine. He's been micromanaging his brother for the past eight hours, and usually that's John's job. He's been listening to John's grumbling backtalk all day, and hoped for an end to it. But this is a different sort of silence, and as the moments continue to stretch past, he doesn't know why he doesn't like it.
Until—
"There's no one here."
In an age of drones and remote manning, when telepresence is as important an aspect of their own work as it is of industry at large—to find a plane flying without a pilot isn't a remarkable thing. But to find a plane flying, its cockpit empty of a pilot who was supposed to be in distress, on the line with one of their own and waiting for rescue—
The note of quiet dread in John's voice is the same as what plays across Scott's nerves like a knife drawn over glass. They both think the exact same thing, though neither of them needs to say the actual word:
Trap.
And below him, as if on cue, the nose of the jet dips suddenly, in a way that has nothing to do with failing engines or the interference of gravity. Scott knows it immediately as the deliberate action of a pilot, putting his plane into a steep dive. And his brother shouts in response, startled, cut off abruptly by a grunt of impact, as he's thrown back against the rear wall of the cockpit. Through the forward window, John's suddenly going to be staring down at the tops of wispy cirrocumulus clouds, and these are a good thirty thousand feet down from their current altitude, seventy-five thousand feet above the Coral Sea.
And spiraling downward.
Scott probably doesn't need to yell at his brother to get the hell out, and he doesn't actually get the chance, because the cargo hatch at the back of the plane blows open, erupts into a roiling mass of black and orange. Almost immediately the sky below him swarms with insectoid mechs, already sparking with blue-white arcs of plasmic electricity, as they begin to orient themselves, organize, and then swerve in unison, to converge on his ship.
"Mechs!" he shouts over the open channel, because his brother needs the warning. "Shit!"
Suddenly John's a lot safer than Scott is, even in a plane driving forcefully downward towards the sea. As there's a reverberating impact and then cracking frrzzzt of electricity across his forward display, Scott's acutely aware that he's got problems of his own to worry about. "Tracy Island, we need back up, now! Thunderbird Shadow, we are in open skies with multiple hostiles. Deploy immediately, Kayo, we're in trouble here! I've gotta—"
"Scott, go!" John's voice over the comm is sharp, stern as steel, and Scott's response is automatic. He has to bank and roll and put his maneuvering thrusters into overdrive, evading the swarm of mechs He can't go too far, can't just blast to full throttle and lose the lot of them, because he can't let John out of his sight. Brotherly instinct is a force like magnetism and he feels the pull in his chest as he leaves his brother behind, but he needs to get clear of the swarm before he can hope to help. There are still seventy-thousand feet between John and real trouble, and they've had far narrower misses than that.
Besides, whatever Scott's opinions on John's relative skill as a pilot, the fact remains: John's got wings of his own, and can take care of himself.