Last bit for the week. =) Thanks for reading, guys. Your reviews mean a lot!
28
Velvet-dark Space, between Mars and the fragile, unready Earth-
At the controls of Thunderbird 3, Alan Tracy strained bruisingly tight against his seat straps. Feeling totally helpless, he could only watch as the giant derelict completed its metamorphosis. From tumbling space junk, it had converted itself to a massive, arrow-sleek warship, with his brothers still trapped there, inside. Far from sending the thing to another dimension, John's plan had actually rushed its awakening.
"Eos, what's happening, in there?" Alan demanded, his voice cracking in mid-frantic-sentence. "Are they alright?!"
The A.I. did not respond directly, merely producing the annoying beep that he and Gordon called her "busy signal". The swimmer glided forward with Charlie, who was now wide-awake, and still holding Al's videogame player.
"We gotta go after them, Alan," his aquanaut brother urged fiercely. "Something's gone wrong. They need help!"
That's when the alien ship seemed to just come apart; as first a river of searing white light split open the hull, and then a long plume of star-blotting dust blasted forth.
"The heck with no comms!" snapped Alan, hitting his wrist-device. "Scott, John, Virgil? You there? Anyone listening?! Where are you guys? Where can we pick you up?"
Only, there was no answer, at all.
XXXXXXXX
Mars Base-
Down in the cramped, hive-busy command centre, meanwhile, Admiral McCord leaned past a subordinate's shoulder, watching events out in space. The alien death-ship had come fully awake, and some of those vomited nanites were turning. Like a swarm of black locusts, they were headed for Mars.
Pete straightened away from the console. In a calm, level voice, he said to his people,
"Evacuate the base. Not a drill. Dependents and civilian staff, first. Interceptors to fly escort. Move."
Alarms began sounding, signaling evac. All over the command centre, GDF personnel hurried to contact pilots and organize a rapid and total retreat.
"Sir," said one of those officers, gesturing toward the emergency airlock. But Pete shook his head, no.
"I leave last, if at all, Captain." Then, "You have a daughter, here, don't you?"
The taller man hesitated, briefly, then nodded.
"Yes, Admiral: Kaya. She's in kindergarten. They'd, uh… they'd be at lunch, right now."
Pete reached across to clap the other man's uniformed shoulder. See, he had a baby-girl, too. He'd had a wife once, even.
"Get the h*ll out of here, and find your kid, Mister. That's an order."
Clearly torn, dark eyes reflecting both duty and longing, Captain Buhari urged,
"Sir, come with us. The fleet needs…"
"The fleet needs exactly what it's got; good officers, who know how to run things, without a d*mn guidebook and babysitter. Now, go, Captain… before I bust you back down to your mama's womb!"
It was a skeleton crew... two Marines and an engineer... who remained on base with McCord, as the evacuation fleet began lifting off and away.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Tracy Island, at the ring, early evening-
Sharl-who-Waits-no-longer, Professor Moffat and Grandma Tracy stared in horror, as three precious icons flashed off their shimmering comm globe. Scott, John and Virgil had ceased to transmit… or died. Sally's right hand groped upward to cover her mouth. The other clutched tight to a padded armrest. Beside her, Max uttered a low warble, while Moffy reached over to clasp Grandma's hand, and wide-eyed Sharl touched her thin shoulder.
"It's going to be fine, Mrs. Tracy," said the professor. "They'll be alright, I'm sure of it. No doubt, this is all part of some scheme they've cooked up with Hiram." At least, she fervently hoped so. Nearby, Rigby and Sheffield just waited and cursed, while Caleb pulled Kaise into a sudden, tight hug. This was it; the moment where everything changed… or did not.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Below cracked, blasted Edinburgh, in the stronghold of the Kanes-
The council was still in session, its lords and ladies met to consider their options. Jeff, sitting up very straight in his linked-mecha seat, had just told them,
"Four of my sons have gone to Mars to survey the derelict, meaning to find some way to destroy or divert it. One of your people… the Mechanic… went along with them. What we know, so far, is that… um…"
The colonel hesitated, because Madame Kane had stiffened, suddenly. The cyborg's amber-brown, natural eye stopped blinking entirely, while the other one target-locked the far wall. A long moment passed. Then, in a very flat voice, she said,
"Something has happened."
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
London, former U.K., in the Chancellery-
Chancellor Shaw leaned forward in his big leather seat, watching all that transpired on the wall-sized viewscreen. A small, intent smile touched his face, because… either way, whatever happened… he was about to win. As the far-sighted public servant who'd dispatched IR, or the sorrowing leader who snatched humanity's remnant from chaos, Sebastian Shaw would soon be unshakably powerful. All he needed was a few properly humbled Specials, to complete his triumph.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Inside of the alien vessel-
All the world had become scratching, buzzing, roaring noise, and battering weight. Just like what they'd faced on that dead future Earth, only worse. The faint blue bubble and flaring red light were smashed inward by a planet's worth of grinding mass. No time for a countdown. They didn't have three minutes. Maybe, not even one. Then, everything froze, and fell utterly silent.
John's heart pounded, and his breath came grunting-fast as he crouched there, surrounded by statues. His brothers and Beech… plus the scowling Mechanic… were all frozen in time, along with the raging dust-storm around them, and a cage of shimmering, badly-bent force lines.
He was alive, and so were they, for the one-half heartbeat before a crashing tide of nanites overwhelmed and destroyed them all. Jaeger was present, too, red as a slit-pupiled eye.
"Hey, Buddy," John gasped. Then, switching to German, "Wir nicht haben Zeit fur diese. Wir mussen schnell." (We don't have time for this. We have to hurry.')
His friend flickered by way of a nod, answering,
"Ja. Countdown komplet."
John was the only one who saw it all, and later couldn't wholly describe what took place. Tried, though.
The generator chimed once, its soft light briefly illuminating that stasis-locked cloud of rapacious dust. And then, instead of shifting extra mass outward, the altered generator pulled it all in, summoning relativistic Higgs Bosons created by the expansion of spacetime, itself. The alien death-ship quadrupled in mass, then doubled again, twenty times over, while never increasing in size. Jaeger shielded John and the rest as best he could, maintaining that bubble of stasis over them. Some bit of Eos got through, as well, joining her power to that of her fellow A.I.
All he could liken it to was sitting in the back of a car, as it was crushed by a junkyard compacter. All around them, the nanites and ship first crumpled, then began to compress, steamrolled by their own wildly inflated mass.
Somehow, the A.I.s managed to clear and maintain an aisle through that chaos of shattering metal and bending space. Not very wide, and not too long-lasting… but enough to allow five saboteurs to be hurled away from the violently imploding derelict. Just a glimpse of weird other-space John got, and then… well, he didn't quite recall being born, but it must have felt somewhat the same as that wild, crushing passage through darkness.
Driven by an entire universe's worth of hijacked mass, the alien vessel behind them reached its Schwarzschild Radius (about half the size of a pin head) and then ripped itself straight on out of their threatened dimension. Light flowered, like the birth of a brand-new star. Gravity waves shot out in every direction, traveling at the speed of light. They stretched and flexed Mars, restarting its core, and halfway collapsing the base.
Those same gravity waves ripped through Thunderbird 3, causing the shielded rocket to twist and compress, along with the people inside of her. Alan threw up, and Gordon developed an ass-kicking headache, but Charlie had fun; shrieking and laughing like he was on some kind of wild carnival ride. And, hey… vomit in space? Not a good thing. super un-cool.
They'd been headed in, already. Saw the derelict fold up like paper, then begin to compact; crushed ever smaller and redder. The ship and its nanites were vanishing, after all. But, they'd grown so very massive that their gravity hauled at Thunderbird 3 like a sudden black hole. Things might've got ugly (Alan told Piper, once… y'know… they actually met) only then, a tremendous flash of light enveloped them all. The sun rose twice on Mars, that day. A monster plunged out of sight, and five half-conscious, heroic young men floated free.