Hi there, all! The weekend and spring break/ Easter Vacation are here, which means lots of freedom to write. Except, y'know, life and stuff. Still, warmest thanks to Bow Echo, Whirl Girl, Tikatu and Akimakel for their kind reviews.

5

Stalking out of a cramped, red-lit tunnel-

What he wanted was air, and escape from the family crowd scene. His emotions were too complex and mixed-up to bear looking at, right then, and he wouldn't have wanted to meet any of the dark, twisted things in an alley, alone.

He was being followed, and he knew it. Thanks to Jaeger, the suit could communicate the location and movement of others, using points of shifting pressure on his skin. Formed a handy, three-dimensional touch map, but John Tracy was too agitated to care. Just needed out, and away. So, somebody wanted to stop him, and talk things over? Yeah. Good luck keeping up. Nobody home. Not interested. Piss off.

Maybe Jaeger tried to warn him. There was certainly a lot of pressure at the front of his red-lined environment suit, all at once… but the astronaut kept moving, anyhow. Saw wan, pale sunlight; oddly directionless, as though bouncing off ice or snow. Felt cold, gusting wind. Smelt the ocean, and sea life.

Had to blink a few times at the tunnel's mouth, letting his vision adjust. Unfortunately, those bulbous airships, broken drones and glittering people (?) did not vanish along with the spots in his eyes. Neither did the obviously crash-landed Thunderbird 2.

Well… sh*t. Before whoever-the-h*ll-wanted-to-talk made it that far, John used a Morse code of fist clenches to tell Jaeger: Seal the tunnel. No one gets in. No one comes out.

Ought to have paused to study the situation more thoroughly. Only, at this point, he actually welcomed the distraction of physical danger. Nice thing about risking your life; it did tend to narrow your focus. All at once, the whole world collapsed to just bare survival, and kicking somebody's arse. Therapy, in other words.

Jaeger projected a screen before him, showing the scene below at several orders of magnification. Suddenly, all those glittering figures resolved into cyborgs. Like the Mechanic, but not. All female, for one thing. Not causing any apparent trouble, for another. Dammit.

Then again, Grandma and brains were down there tending to wounded victims, inside of a flickering blue force bubble. Reason enough to jump into the mix in a quick d*mn hurry… with intent.

The suit at augmented power allowed him to leap down the volcano's flank from crag to outcrop, like a mountain goat. Lost his balance once, but the gecko gloves meant that he didn't have to grip, only touch, to arrest himself. On the bright side, that savage-cold wind wanted to pin him to the rock face, rather than tear him off of it.

Took about four long, grunting hops to get down to ground level; landing in calf-deep snow and icy scree, with a grey, light-prickled ocean heaving and muttering away to his left. Could smell it more strongly, now. Sort of rancid and weedy fish stew, with plenty of guano thrown in for added tang. Yeah, so, one of the things he actually liked about Earth was the ocean. Its presence here threatened to unbalance his mood, like a card and stuffed bear on the pitcher's mound. Also, yeah… females.

They were well-armed, but less hostile than he was feeling, just then. So, reluctantly, John didn't bust in there, swinging. He simply strode for the transparent blue environment bubble containing his grandma and friend; weaponless, but far from unarmed. For one thing, he was 'wearing' Jaeger, and those partly mechanical cyborgs had no idea how much danger they'd landed in.

One of them, slightly taller than the rest, and flanked by six guards, came forward to meet him. His first impression was that she was quite beautiful. The second, that she was stiff with distaste and… regret, maybe? He wasn't much good at reading emotions, but she didn't act like the one who'd caused all those casualties. Fifteen victims laid out like cordwood, said his automatic number sense.

Grandma and Brains were working on one, now, binding a broken leg. The old lady glanced up, saw John, then gave him a quick wave and thumbs-up. Brains was too busy with quick-clot to notice.

Between the ocean's rough music, and his family's evident safety, John felt his tension ratcheting down a few notches. The cyborg leader had reached his position by this time, so he stopped moving, and so did she. Something like Eos' scanning wave pulsed from the woman, as though she were pinging with sonar. Jaeger bounced most of it back at her, but not before she'd learnt a few things.

Shifting position, slightly, the beautiful mech-woman placed a wind-proof force shield around the two of them, and spoke. Her voice was part human, part electronic distortion, and somewhat amplified.

"You are a Tracy, of sorts." A statement of fact, not a question. Only, she had said it like 'Tracy' was his species, not his name. John replied with a brief, cautious nod, saying,

"Yes. I am."

Her colouring… dark hair, tanned skin, amber eye (one of them; the other was laser-sight red) … put him to mind of the Mechanic. John would have asked what she was doing there, except that he wasn't altogether certain of his own role in all this, being that he'd literally zapped to this place from Eos, and the testing center. Didn't like to admit it, though.

Fortunately, she entirely mistook the cause of his reticence. Gesturing around them at all of that wreckage of drones and broken people, she said,

"I am the Kane. As great harm was done to these Kyranos by one of my people, it is incumbent upon me to deal with him, and to repair the damage he's done to their stronghold. Your arrival has saved many lives. For this, I thank you."

Her head inclined, briefly, causing natural and fiber-optic hair to swing forward past a face that was part flesh, part gleaming metal. Then, seeming to grope her way through an issue of deference, or protocol, she added,

"I do not believe that your… facility… is equipped to deal with large numbers of injured psions. Unconscious or delirious, they can be terribly dangerous. No 'hospital' would survive the attempt to heal them. I shall take responsibility for the remaining Kyranos. With your permission, of course, Tracy."

A few things rolled around loose in his head, then, pushing his earlier rage, confusion and pain to the back.

"The Mechanic is one of yours?" he asked, folding both arms across his chest. Didn't add: And you expect me to trust you?

Again, she sketched a slight nod.

"Regrettably, yes. The first surviving male infant in fifty-one batches. All of this was done without my consent or support, however. He must be caught and restrained from causing further harm. I intend to do so, with dispatch. I thank the Tracys for their timely arrival and assistance, but require no further aid. What do you wish, in return for your efforts, here?"

She'd been studying him rather closely, with a slightly cocked head and narrowed amber/ red eyes. Watched and listened, as John indicated the tilted green hulk of Thunderbird 2, off to their right.

"We could use a hand righting the Bird, and getting her clear of debris," he suggested, cautiously. Didn't want anyone going aboard, though, and didn't like to just hand off the wounded, without consultation. Except that she was right; no regular hospital could handle sixteen Hoods. Sixteen Tanushas.

"You have been implanted," the cyborg cut in, in a different, less electronic voice. "But I do not recognize the cyber-strain. Too late for full integration, clearly. Still, most interesting. The Tracy genome appears able to accept and augment other cell lines."

Umm… sure. Whatever that meant. Yeah, he had some circuitry; in order to make him strong and tough enough to operate on some of the exoplanetary rescues he'd performed, the suit had to access his skeleto-muscular system, heart and nerves. Not much good, otherwise, was it? Illegal as h*ll, of course, but sometimes you had to break laws to save lives.

Meanwhile, everyone had stopped at the front of the tunnel, balked by Jaeger's unbreakable force seal. He could feel them bunched up in there, on the 'skin map' the AI had drawn against his back. So, on the one hand, his sister. On the other, her cousin, who needed much more than first aid. Didn't want to see or speak to her, just then. Did need to get this "Nikorr" to help. Tough call, any way you looked at it. Was about to suggest something risky, when hell gaped even wider.