'Allo! Encore une fois, je suis ici, avec plus! ;) Seriously, though, "hi, there!" Thank you very much, Thunderbird Shadow, Tikatu, Creative Girl, Whirl Girl, Susan and Bow Echo. I enjoy your comments very much, and hope to improve as a writer.

13

London, former U.K., in the bowels of the WorldGov chancellery building-

From back here, in the servant's access corridors, it was quicker to travel, and easier to avoid unwanted encounters. Up to a point, anyway. Jeff surprised a few hurrying waiters and prowling security guards, but he was a Tracy; by definition, in just the right place, doing exactly what he was supposed to be.

Those few servants and employees who reacted at all, merely nodded politely, or offered their shy good wishes. The guards and their dogs paused to chat, or to have a nice ear-scratch. Jeff had always liked dogs, and they, him. He was, the Colonel realized, almost universally trusted, and always addressed with fondness.

As for any cameras and scanning equipment, WorldGov's tech was no match for IR's, and his wrist comm projected a quite handy jamming field. Had Jeff been up to no good, he reflected, they could never have stopped him.

Except that all that he wanted was out, and some space to think. That summons still drew at him. Should he go? What did those shadowy others want? And, why now?

He'd got nearly down to ground level, when Colonel Tracy encountered his first real obstacle, in the person of Chancellor Shaw, himself. Jeff simply rounded a corner, expecting to deal with a bored, desk-bound security guard. Instead, the Chancellor confronted him, standing poised and alert in front of the exit doors. He was oddly graceful for so large a man, and… like the Mechanic… produced a palpable aura. Not of fear, though; of power. Control.

Seeing the Colonel, he smiled in a way that did not reach his pale, streetfighter's eyes.

"Ah, Jeffery! Thought that I might find you here, after dear Zara's alarming whispers. A sweet child, but quite muddled. Best, I think, if she returns to her classes."

Jeff found his voice, felt his muscles beginning to bunch.

"What have you done with her, Shaw?"

The chancellor's heavy dark eyebrows lifted slightly.

"Done?" he repeated. "Why, sent the dear girl on home, of course. I have no need of fanciful, troublesome children among my interns. However, I am most pleased at this opportunity to speak with you, in private… man to man."

Jeff's brown eyes flicked across to a pair of wall-mounted security cameras, but Shaw merely smiled.

"Come now, Jeffery. We are both adults. Lies do not become us. That little contraption at your wrist jams all EM signals, on command. That is why I decided to wait for you here, alone. What I have to discuss is best kept just between us."

"What do you want?" Jeff asked him, feeling himself grow nearly electric with pre-battle tension; seeing dozens of ways to attack or escape. Chancellor Shaw seemed not to notice his agitation, saying,

"Merely an understanding, Jeffery. An accord, if you will. I have done a bit of research since taking office. Curious about the Tracys, and others of your… 'special status'. Quite intriguing, those files. Not electronic, and… in so far as I can determine… not reproduced, anywhere else."

Warily, Jeff said,

"We've always acted to uphold the law and defend public safety, Chancellor."

Sebastian Shaw nodded slightly, and shifted his stance. Subtle, but just enough of a change to block attempted flight, or assault. Quite clearly, he knew how to fight, and maybe he even quite liked it.

"I am aware of your record, Colonel. You and your family are heroes… because you have chosen to be. Not much that we could do about it, had you chosen otherwise, though. Your John is a particular concern, Jeffery. Bit of a loose cannon, isn't he? And Scott. Rather violent temper on that one. But… looking, as they say, at the 'big picture'… International Rescue works for the public weal. Yet, we both know how quickly and easily that mindset can be altered. Say… through captivity."

Jeff went suddenly cold, sensing that he faced a dangerous serpent of a man in Chancellor Shaw. Said,

"Still not getting your point, Sir. What are you after?"

Shaw sighed and shook his ponytailed head, like a schoolmaster disappointed in his brightest young pupil.

"Let us discuss the alien impactor, Colonel Tracy," he suggested. "Now, there are two ways in which this situation might develop. In scenario one, International Rescue succeeds in 'saving the day', lauded by all, and presided over by me. That is the preferred scenario. In the other, IR does not stop the alien artefact, and matters unfold as predicted by your time travelers. There is great loss of life, but a select group of carefully chosen survivors escapes this tragic culling, to establish civilisation elsewhere. Once again, presided over by me."

Shaw's smile broadened slightly.

"A strong, intelligent man can rise to the top in either event, Colonel… together with his most valued allies. I trust that I make myself clear?"

Jeff nodded stiffly.

"I understand what you want from us, Chancellor," he responded, in a very low voice.

"Good, good…" Said the other man, seemingly filled with nothing but gentle concern. "Because, it would be a terrible shame if our governing council felt the need to exert more control over International Rescue, perhaps pulling your two eldest boys back into service."

The wrist comm could jam electronic transmissions, while still recording. As though aware of this, the chancellor held out a big hand, palm upward, remarking,

"I shall have need of your communication device, Colonel Tracy. It will give the GDF tech crews something to puzzle over; perhaps even learn from."

Saying nothing at all in reply, Jeff unstrapped the wrist comm and handed it over. Not before he'd pressed 'send', though, on a highly encrypted line, to IR's most valuable secret operative.

XXXXXXXXXX

Thunderbird 5, at the maintenance airlock-

John glided in through that open hatch, looking shifty. She'd always been able to read him better than anyone else, and right now, everything about her tall, red-haired brother screamed "trouble".

"What are you up to, John?" she demanded, without more preamble than seizing his arm. Since they were up there in micro-G, this sent them into a spin. His answer surprised her.

"Simple. I'm planning to trick Captain O'Bannon into bringing me a ship fast enough to reach Mars in a hurry. Then, I'm going to swipe the new Mass Transfer field generator, and go help Scott with that derelict." (Might have understated the challenge, a little.)

Kayo's big green eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed again.

"It's gone pear-shaped, up there?" she guessed, just as her wrist comm received a transmission.

"A whole orchard's worth," said John, holding her arms while the station wheeled grandly around them. Tanusha scowled.

"You might just ask her for the ship," she suggested. "Captain O'Bannon, I mean."

"No," her brother replied, shaking his red-golden head. "If I ask her for the Mark IV and she says "yes", she'll A: want to come with me, and B: get in trouble with the GDF. No, I have to steal it. Need you to keep her distracted, looking at rings, or something. Eos 's dredged up over a million, and I can't waste time examining them all. You're females. You know what they like. Pick one."

Kayo blinked.

"Wait, John… you want a ring? As in, an engagement ring?"

"Yeah. Had no idea there were so d*mn many. Just… I dunno. Find a pretty one. Whatever you think looks good, Little Bit."

Her wrist comm was flashing an urgent demand for attention, at a frequency only she could detect. Her brothers could see pretty far into the infrared end of the spectrum, but were rubbish with ultraviolet. The tiny screen flared bright as a torch for her, and was perfectly blank, to John… who was apparently planning his engagement. Odd, but then, he never did anything normally.

Kayo squeezed his hard-muscled forearms, and got an affectionate press in return.

"I'll do my best to think like a love-struck female," she promised, with more than usual truth. "As long as you swear to be careful, and listen to Eos. You haven't got extra lives like a cat, John, and I only have five brothers. No spares."

The astronaut hauled her in for a quick hug, then launched his sister away through the air with a rough, playful shove.

"I'm always careful," he told her. "It's reality that keeps screwing up." Then, "Thanks, Tin-Tin," he called out, using his suit's maneuvering jets to fly off. "O'Bannon will be here in fifteen minutes. Keep her busy."

Tumbling through the cargo hold like a fallen leaf, Kayo wrestled with a very mixed bag of emotions. Decided, once she'd seized a bulkhead brace and halted her flight, to open that message. Heard Dad… and Chancellor Shaw. And then, all at once, John's little field trip was the furthest thing from her mind.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The space pod, near Mars-

They weren't going to make it. That alien ship was moving too fast; its gravity too powerful to escape from. Like a landslide, it hurtled down at the little string of fleeing vessels; a boot heel coming down on an ant.

Had he released his tow line, Virgil could have got free… alone. Saw the squadron commander angling in. She was trying to lend a hand, probably, but only managed to complicate the situation.

"C'mon, Baby," he urged the pod, throttling forward as far as its altered controls would allow. "Move. I got four people here who just want to get home to supper, and hug their families."

From this vantage, he could see far more of the juggernaut's black, cratered hull than he wanted to. Speckled with meteors and strange, shattered spacecraft, it was; ravaged, ancient, unstoppable.

Except for that targeted virus, he'd never been closer to death. He was thinking of Emma, wanting to hold her once more, as the dark, massive cliff hurtled down at his pod and those fragile Interceptors.

Then, Thunderbird 3 projected a sudden force shield, inserting it like a scalpel between the space pod and Interceptors, and that crushing black nightmare. The smaller ships were scattered like bugs caught in a sudden wind-gust; spinning and tumbling away in different directions.

On Thunderbird 3, Alan had raced back into the cockpit after first Gordon's alarm, then Scott's. Now, he was frantically trying to trim up his forcefield, and wishing for John.

He could push Virgil and those fighters out of the way, easy… but he'd created a butt-load of EM noise in the process, and…

"No, no, NO! C'mon!" Alan begged, struggling to shift his projected force-blade so that it heaved his brother, but did not touch the alien ship. John could calculate this crap on the fly, without even breaking a sweat. Alan was more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy, and his angle was all wrong. Worse, most of the scanning gear had been shut off, to keep things quiet.

Just barely, just for a second, his force shield brushed the tumbling derelict, causing a brief flare of greenish-pale light. Alan's gut clenched. In his mind's eye, he saw Earth and Mars wiped clean of life, because, when the crucial moment came, Alan Tracy hadn't been good enough.

Two more spacecraft shot into his field of view, then. One from Mars, the other torn loose of Thunderbird 3, trailing its boarding tube like a banner. The Chaos Cruiser, no longer cloaked.

The Martian ship was a fast-moving, silvery dart; a souped-up Mark IV Starliner. It arrowed right in, tractored the nearest Interceptor, then peeled off. Tried to, anyhow. More like a weary salmon, fighting torrential currents as it struggled upstream against gravity.

"Breaking silence, because I figure the cat's already out, and pissing all over the d*mn bag," snapped McCord, flashing onto their screens. "Do not respond to this call, and do not show fight. Grab whoever you can carry, then get back to the planet. McCord, Out."

Alan nodded, not pressing any switches.

"Yessir," he said, to a now-blank, empty screen. Meanwhile, the spot that he'd touched with his force shield was beginning to glow and send branches of circuitry flaring outward. That's where the Mechanic came in.

He and Scott were flying the Cruiser, cutting so close to that alien ship that they just about shaved it. The little guy, Charlie, was up there, too; a determined look on his face, gripping tight to Gordon's right hand.

"Okay, Kid," ordered Scott, unfolding a hasty plan. "You first. Time-freeze that impulse, before it spreads any further. Go."

Charlie looked up at his friend and protector for confirmation. Getting a nod, he said,

"Okay, go," and sent forth a wave of tightly directed power. The hull-lightning began to slow down, becoming a trickle of glowing pale syrup, then freezing icicle-still.

"Nice work, Buddy," Scott told him. "Ease up a little. We want it able to react, just… slowly." And then, turning to face the Mechanic, "You're on, Machine-man. Do your thing. Put that monster back to sleep."

Kane didn't answer directly. Just leaned forward in the tech seat, and stared hard at the epicenter of that time-frozen signal. Focused his power. Shaped it. He was Evan Kane, a Lord of Machines. Nothing with circuits or lone, spinning electrons could resist his will. He would command, and be obeyed.

Encountered… difference; a form of mechanical life unlike anything on Earth. The wakened circuits 'spoke' oddly, and they required convincing. Easier to do now, with less of them alerted, than to take on the whole vessel, though.

'Nothing', he projected. 'False alarm. Meteor strike'.

The cyborg did this, using the derelict's own idiom, and a signal strength that threatened to open his skull. Hurt like h*ll, but he'd mastered the dust. He could do this, too.

Meanwhile, the freed Beech had been instructed to stay back with their bungie-strapped prisoners. Now, though, drawn by a sudden explosion of chaos, the pale-haired young man drifted forward. He was not among his own folk, anymore. Wasn't sure how he'd got here, or what to do next. There'd been a command, a blow to the head, and now this.

The tangle of entropy looked like a nest of roiling snakes to his senses; something he could reach out, take hold of and twist. Except that shifting the stuff of chaos might only result in more trouble. Looking around didn't help much. He was in some kind of spaceship, with a couple of augmented Typicals, two oddly familiar Tracys, a cyborg, an outlawed Kyrano and a very young, rather shaken, time-bender. Looking outward made his flesh creep. Through the viewscreen, he saw something so implacably hostile that his mind couldn't stretch to encompass it. Still, Cody wasn't a coward. As the old saying went, "only a fool fights in a burning house". He'd do what he could.

Up front, Scott asked,

"How's it coming, Kane?"

The pilot was fighting that harrowing gravitational pull; trying to hold position, in somebody else's escape ship. Found himself staring at an eerie graveyard of smashed and corroded small fighters. Blackened and still, they protruded like teeth from the juggernaut's hull. Totally alien, incredibly old. And he realized… through at least two universes, for God knows how long, no one had ever beaten this thing. No planet had ever survived its assault. The thought was chilling, but he had problems closer to home.

"Piss off," growled the cyborg, like a man who was trying to concentrate.

Behind them, Gordon just waited, holding Charlie's hand and feeling very much out of his depth. The boy was shaking, struggling to maintain a grip on that slowly spreading alarm. The sandy-haired aquanaut patted his back, saying,

"You got this, Big Guy. Only, look underneath, too. Not just the surface. That alert might grow down, like a plant."

Charlie nodded, steadied by the swimmer's reassurance.

"Not scared," he whispered, drawing strength from Gordon. "Intermal Restew always stops bad stuff. We always win. Right?"

Gordon hugged the boy, mussing up his longish brown hair.

"Haven't lost one yet, Kiddo. Not about to start, now."

Charlie had pitifully little experience with smiling or hugs. The concept "love" was as foreign to him as it had been to Tanusha, fourteen years back. Nevertheless, he was learning. He held that signal almost stationary, barely allowing it to spread, as the Mechanic altered its message, and Beech shifted entropy.

Finally, the lightning-like signal sparked out and faded. Kane slumped in his seat, reeking like wet metal, and forbidding himself to tremble.

"Done," he grunted, as the time-bender relaxed his own grip, and Tracy cut hard away from that alien derelict. They were safe, for the moment. Had to find Crash-jockey, was all. Just needed to summon that hurtling pod.