Hi, guys. =) Starting to see the end of the story. Thank you for your kindness and patience. I've had fun. Hugs to Tikatu, Bow Echo, Whirl Girl, Thunderbird Shadow and Creative Girl! Edited even more.

20

Mars Base, deep in the underground hangar complex-

On the one hand, infiltration was pitifully simple, when the Typicals depended so much on all their machines. On the other hand, the Mechanic wasn't accustomed to sneaking. What he wanted, he took. Whoever he hated, he killed. As easy as that. But, there was another edge to the blade, now. A new development. He had allies, and… however grudgingly… he wanted to keep them.

This meant that, instead of creating an army of swarming battle drones to destroy the base and the Hood, he had to be subtle. Avoid open conflict. Beech proved helpful, because he could 'see' the path of least sh*t, and muscle whatever they couldn't avoid onto somebody else. So, the toilets backed up and the showers ran cold, all over Mars Base; made no difference to Kane, who stalked onto an open, unwatched freight elevator, riding it half a mile down to the hangar floor.

The Mechanic did not enjoy crowds, and would cheerfully have slaughtered all of the vermin infesting that big, noisy cavern, just to bring peace. Only, that would end the accord he'd forged with the Tracys. For some reason, they cared for the Typicals. Protected them. Bred with them. He just didn't get it. But he didn't start shooting, either.

With the derelict now beyond Mars and headed for Earth, the base had come back to life. Machines were turned on, ships roared in and out of the hangar, and people were everywhere. Their own means of transport was powerful enough to move tons of cargo from hangar to surface and back again. At a pinch, it could handle a pair of closely-packed Interceptors.

A hundred feet to an edge, with a floor of scratched and abraded green metal, heavy tie-down clamps and low, open sides, it was slow, but passenger-free. A key point in its favor, since Kane could not disguise himself, even if he'd bothered to try. There wasn't a spacesuit bulky enough.

Instead, they stole a ride on the rumbling cargo elevator. It crawled along like a very large metal spider, clinging to a heavy steel railway bolted onto the cavern's stone wall. Cameras were no concern; the Mechanic easily dealt with those. As for human observers, circumstance was nudged in such a way that the workers were always busy, completely distracted, or suddenly yawning, just when the massive, clattering lift crossed through another pool of floodlighting.

Kane and Beech had dropped aboard from a ceiling spar, landing in the shadow of a massive, plastic-wrapped crate. The mechanic could feel what was inside of there; machinery called to him, always. Service bots, brought here to clean and maintain Martian spacecraft. Just his near presence alerted the robots, bringing them nearly to life. If, decades later, there was a machine revolt on Mars, it dated to that moment, that waking, right there.

Beech crouched in the shadows, tense as a rodent crossing a multi-lane highway. Kane just leaned against the big, yellow crate, arms folded across his muscular chest.

"Why," he wondered aloud, "are there so many more of them, than of us? We're stronger. We have powers they can't match. Why are they winning?"

The chaos-adept shifted position to look at him; pale as a wraith in the crate's changing shadow.

"There were always more of them, I think. They breed faster than we do… plus, they have a lot of technologies, including some to let them control us."

The Mechanic grunted. Having been collared, himself, he could not deny that it worked.

"Right now," he speculated, "I could open every hatch and airlock on this base. Send their atmosphere screaming away, faster than they could put on a spacesuit. I could summon the rest of our kind and build a new stronghold, on Mars."

Cody stood up. As the giant lift clanked its way slowly downward, the crate's dense black shadow slid, grew and shrank, over and over. Multiplied, too, when they crossed the beams of more than one floodlight.

"I like Earth," Cody objected. "Life here would be nothing but struggle, Kane. Besides… the Typicals would launch an attack fleet to wipe us all out. Now, they only halfway recall our existence. Do what you've threatened to, and they'll know. They'll react in kind."

"They created us," growled Kane, amber eyes narrow and hard. "They have a 'God'. We have that," and he jerked his thumb at the sweating, cursing, hurrying vermin, below.

Mouth quirking humourously, Beech said,

"So, maybe their 'God' is our grandparent, and we have a right to petition; just like another accord."

The Mechanic snorted rudely.

"You think too much. Slows you down. I'd rather just shoot out the lights, then order my drones to attack. Get faster results, that way."

Cody raked a slim hand through his icy-pale hair. Almost, they'd reached the hangar floor. Glancing sideways at Kane, he said,

"You know why there are no more large predators left on Earth, right? Not the gen-mod copies, I mean. The real thing. Lions, grizzly bears. Like that."

The cyborg said nothing, so Beech went on with his thought.

"They were too dangerous, Kane. They got in the way. So, they were exterminated; every last one." Nodding out at the busy Typicals, Cody said, "Get enough of their kind together, and even the strongest of us gets put down."

Kane straightened, the noise of his motion lost in the general clatter and buzz that surrounded them.

"Only if they find us alone," he rumbled. There was power in alliance; maybe, power enough to be free of the vermin, forever.

About twenty feet from the hangar floor, the cyborg motioned to Beech. Together, they vaulted off the elevator and onto a metal catwalk. Too many workers, below.

"I've got the sensors," the Mechanic told his companion. "You keep the d*mn roaches distracted. Want to save lives? Keep them the h*ll out of my way."

Cody hesitated, then nodded. Cautiously, he followed the cyborg across the cavern floor. They kept to the sides and the shadows, mostly, moving always in the direction of Thunderbird 3. The giant rocket stood tall and erect in the distance, red as the ghost of a dying star. Inside it, locked in time, lay the Hood.

Took them about twenty-five minutes to cross the vast hangar, but they did it without attracting attention. At first, anyhow. Several maintenance bots came zipping up for a look, but were redirected with a gesture from Kane; back on the job, with a little something extra worked into their programming. Call it a time bomb.

For the Mechanic, communication and contact were everywhere. Each active machine and device touched his mind and pinged for attention, at once. Even Thunderbird 3 sensed his presence. It was an ocean of wi-fi chatter, generating more than usual receptivity. Maybe that's why Kane detected the problem.

"What is it?" Beech asked him, when the cyborg abruptly stopped walking. "Kane, what's happened?"

They'd stopped at the wall-side of a huge, green shipping container. Proxima Centauri, it's labels declared. Several humans stood talking at the other end, one of them a captain. The Mechanic seemed not to notice, having frozen in mid-prowl. Very quietly, the cyborg replied,

"I've been hacked. There's something here that doesn't belong in my systems. Not a virus… some kind of intelligence."

"Can I help?" asked Cody, coming nearer.

"No. Get to the rocket, and wait thirty minutes. If I don't join you, return to the Cruiser and go back to Earth. Warn your family... tell all of them about the impactor. Move."

"But…"

"Now, Beech." It came out as a guttural snarl, rasped by someone already frozen in combat

Cody nodded, feeling suddenly very alone. Reaching out with senses that had no human equivalent, he bent, twisted and yanked at the stuff of probability. Caused a giant crane to break down, nearly dropping its load on the workers below. Steel cables snapped with a sharp, hissing twang. Then, the massive pallet tilted, beginning to swing like a pendulum. As that mountain of packing crates twisted and spun, dangling by its last, fraying cable, humans cried out and ran to assist. Beech regretted their danger, but he'd needed a major distraction. So he crouched low, and then darted for Thunderbird 3, dodging cameras the entire way.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The Admiral's conference room, several levels away-

So, yeah… people in charge, doing their thing. A lot. Alan Tracy didn't much like meetings, pre-flights or debriefs. Never had. Found out that conferences with the Big Brass weren't a lot better. See, unlike his three oldest brothers, Al didn't have any childhood memories of "Uncle Pete", and didn't have much to add to the conversation. So, instead, as Scott, John, Virgil and the base commander talked strategy, Al wandered over to Gordon.

His brother was seated at the other end of that long black conference table, teaching Charlie to dunk chicken nuggets and french-fries in ketchup. The small boy was fascinated, having apparently never tried 'kid food'.

"Okay, so… everybody's got their own method, Buddy," Gordon explained, holding a crisp, golden nugget up for inspection, "but I like to put ketchup on the plate first, like this…" (Here, he squeezed a puddle of oozy red paste onto the dura-plast plate.) "Then, artistically, I swipe the nugget, like so. Aaaannd… bite. Ohm-nom-nom. See?" (That last bit came out sort of thickly, because he'd had food in his mouth.)

"Heh!" chortled Alan, leaning in to snag and dunk a french-fry. "He's an ohm-nom-nomnivore!"

"Dude! Back off!" Gordon snapped, batting Alan's octopus hands away from the food. "Get your own!"

"Bro," said Alan, pulling a chair over to sit down and join them. "Fries are communal property, and I'm hungry, too."

Charlie was wearing a bright-red "100% Martian" souvenir tee-shirt and overlarge khaki shorts, kicking his legs as he got used to gravity, and sitting in chairs. Looking shyly at Alan, he said,

"You wanna learn food with us? You gotta say 'thank you', first. This is chicken nidget. It goes in cashup. Like this. See? You want some, too? You could try. I let you."

Alan grinned at the boy, and accepted a hesitantly offered nugget.

"Thanks, Dudely. That's it. We're besties, now. You feed Alan, you've got Alan."

"Getting rid of him 's the hard part," Gordon confided, leaning closer to Charlie. The little boy frowned.

"That's not a Alan," he protested. "That's other-other brother! See, Gordon, look… you gots brother, other brother, other-other brother, and…" (turning to indicate John) "Nother-brother!" Here, the kid collapsed in a fit of laughter, then checked himself with a gasp, as if unsure that it was okay to make jokes. But Gordon and the food-brother were laughing, too. So… so he was okay? Not in trouble?

"Gotta admit," said Gordon, scooping him up to be held for a minute. "It's easy to remember. Now, enough talking, Big Guy. Finish your food. There's apple sauce, and a juice box, and if you let Other-other distract you, he'll steal it all."

… to which Charlie reacted by seizing chicken and french-fries in both hands (but leaving a little for Alan). Together, they cleaned up the plate, until even the ketchup was gone.

Meanwhile, at the conference room's business end, the base commander and Scott had narrowed their choices down to just two.

"As I see it, Sir," said the earnest young pilot, "we could put some giant engines on that alien ship, together with a remote-guidance device, and then fly it right into the Sun."

"Without waking the d*mn thing up?" Pete asked, openly skeptical. He was living on coffee and adrenaline, now… plus John's promise that Helen and Steph would be saved.

"Not only that," cut in Virgil, leaning forward, his elbows resting on the black table. "But how do we know that a trip to the Sun 'll finish that monster? If it really is from another universe, then…"

"Plunging into a G-type star might be no worse than taking a warm shower," John finished, frowning down at the patterns he was tracing on their interactive tabletop.

The conference room was an odd combination of lava tube cavern and high-tech command centre. Chancellor Shaw looked on from one holo-screen. The other three, which should have held 3-D figures of Colonel Casey, Brains and Dad, were blank.

John had been crunching numbers, of course. It's what he did, when needing to think. Wanted to mention his idea for using increased mass to rip space and eject the impactor… but something prevented him. Might've been Eos' non-stop shoulder squeeze, or the faint, spinning red circle on his wrist comm screen (meaning that Jaeger was occupied, elsewhere). Maybe he just didn't like talking in front of the Chancellor, who watched them all with shark-like intensity.

Neither he, nor his brothers mentioned young Charlie, who might have been able to time-lock the derelict or fast-age it, if boosted, somehow. After all, the boy had stopped that signal, and released Alan. Would do the same for that frozen Interceptor pilot, once they got the guy back here. Just… maybe Shaw oughtn't to know these things?

"How about this," suggested McCord, taking a different tack. "Earth and Mars build the biggest Goddam weapon ever created, and we blow the f*cker to kingdom come."

"I don't know, Sir," Scott hedged. "Unless you were one-hundred-percent sure you got every grain of that nanite dust, it could come right back."

"Yeah," added Virgil, brown eyes full of worrisome memory. "The nanites could lay low someplace… like an asteroid, or one of the moons, and just replicate, until somebody lands and gives them a free ride to Earth. With all due respect, Admiral, we've seen this stuff in action. You don't want it out of that ship."

Pete rubbed at the back of his own neck with one hand.

"Right," he snapped. "So, where's plan C? I need options, people. You shoot one strategy down, you d*mn well better have three in reserve. That's how we do things on Mars. Talk to me."

John hesitated. Almost, he said something. Then, the alarms went off, shrill and wild as a flock of harpies.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

High in the sky, over the big, northern island that now ran the world-

It was Lady Penelope who came up with the plan. As they traveled northward, swooping past tall Scafell Pike, her blue eyes had suddenly widened. Sitting erect, she thrust Bertie at Zara, and then began to explain; all in a tumbling rush.

"We must go to the Reservation, Colonel! Quite clearly, those poor unfortunates allergic to electromagnetic fields must have some sort of permanent jamming in place!" An excellent, lightning-strike notion, and exactly what they'd been looking for.

There were a growing number of 'Luddites' on Earth, who couldn't abide being pierced by microwave radiation. Even radio waves and electric powerlines set them off. For these unhappy few, WorldGov had set up a refuge. Located deep in the wild northwest, it lay in an out-of-the-way valley labeled simply "Reservation".

"You see," she told him, smiling with sudden, happy relief, "Any transmission device must have a tower or satellite through which to pass on its signal. As those wretched souls cannot tolerate the presence of EM radiation, other than daylight, they must dwell in a shielded enclave, far from any transmitter."

Jeff thumped his armrest with a clenched fist, grinning from ear to ear.

"Lady P, you're a genius!" he laughed, sweeping her into a quick, rough hug. "All we have to do is sneak in at night and hide FAB-1. Then, you three can carry on from the Reservation, while I head for Scotland. How far is the valley?"

Nobody answered. They were too busy watching something that looked like a faint, shimmering ripple. Like a moiré interference pattern in midair, the disturbance was pacing them.

"Milady…" said Parker, banking to starboard. Their pursuer decloaked before the driver could finish his sentence, revealing a sleek, bat-shaped dark plane. Someone waved from inside the canopy. Tanusha, looking relieved, and a little concerned.

Zara's grey eyes had gone bright, wonder-wide. She gasped, but Jeff said,

"Relax, Zara. It's Thunderbird Shadow. Not sure how she found us, but my daughter's a friend. She's here to help."

"I know, Colonel," the girl whispered, hugging Sherbert. "Just… it's so much more in real life. Grander than any image can show."

Jeff nodded. Very much, he wanted to trust this beautiful girl. Wanted to help keep her safe. Get her home. And now, thanks to Kayo, he might just succeed.

Turning back to the passenger window, he waved. Watched intently as Kay used signs to mime slowing down, opening car door and canopy, and then Jeff, coming over to Thunderbird Shadow. No transmissions, because they were trying to hide.

The colonel's bushy grey eyebrows shot up into his hairline, as he signed back: 'How?' Unless he was meant to wing-walk at two-thousand feet…

Even through two layers of glass and misty cloud cover, Jeff recognized Tanusha's 'Really, Dad?' look. Only just, she didn't roll her green eyes. 'Not that hard', she signed back.

"Just rig up a tether with seat-belting, shall we?" Penny suggested.

"That'd be great," he admitted, with a rueful smile and brief headshake. "Might want to slow down, some, Parker. I'm not the young dumbass I used to be."

Parker's blue eyes crinkled with laugh lines in the back-view mirror.

"Neither h-am I, Mister Tracy," he commiserated. "H-Age and wisdom ambushes us all in th' h-end, Sir."

"If youth and stupid don't get us, first," said Jeff, grinning fiercely. Then, the colonel made ready to go.