Many thanks to you, Tikatu, Bow Echo, Helensg and Creative Girl. Writing for friends is a joy. =)
38
Mars, in the collapsing reactor access tunnel-
Jeff Tracy didn't know who the h*ll Fuse was, and he wasn't waiting around to find out. Staring directly at that smug, taunting grin, Jeff gritted his teeth and leapt. Very rarely did he have to use his full strength (in fact, he generally kept it in ruthless check). Now, though, all bets were off.
Under the thudding stomp of the saboteur's heavy boot, the ground had begun to shudder and moan. Jeff hit him square in the chest, with all the force he could muster. He heard the young man's purple armour screech, felt it dent as they toppled over, together; crashing on the tunnel floor in a tangle of grunting, hammering, cursing confusion.
He took a few hits, but Fuse's armour was built for looks and protection, not flexibility. Jeff had the jump on him, speed-wise, and fought dirty, too; jamming shards of cracked rock in the saboteur's armour joints, and twisting the helmet around so he couldn't see. Still, Fuse bellowed and raged, trying to pound on the tunnel floor with his metal-clad fist.
Jeff had to be careful. Finishing the fight could mean killing this big young b*stard, which he did not want to do at this time. Then Pete arrived, rictus-grinning away the pain of a too-fast, broken-legged hobble. While Jeff was still wrestling Fuse, the base commander found a valve on his scarred purple armour and worked it half open, rapidly venting the saboteur's air.
Fuse struggled and cursed for a few minutes more, but soon grew too weak and hypoxic to fight. In the meantime, a great slab of stone cracked away from the ceiling, narrowly missing them all in its hissing, rumbling collapse.
After a moment, things grew quiet again, except for a trickle of pebbles and sand and their own harsh gasps, over the helmet comms. Pete reached back over and closed that valve again, saving the last of Fuse's air, and his life.
"Commander! Colonel!" they heard, as Rigby came rushing up with McCord's dropped crutch held in ass-kicking bar-fight mode. "Sir! Do either of you require assistance, Sir!?" Not so much asked, as demanded.
"D*mn, Son," Jeff responded, tempted a little to laugh. "Dial it back, some. We're alive."
"Maybe you are," Pete complained. "F*cking jury's still out, over here. Think my d*mn leg's ripped in half, clear up to the shoulder." Then, "Captain, help get this Goddam lummox off Tracy. Beat-up old men like him need the most help."
Jeff snorted.
"You should see the other guy," he joked.
As for Wayne Rigby, who'd squirmed back over that rubble wall at top speed, with the tunnel roof about to cave in… he breathed deeply a few times, then nodded. There were further shouts of inquiry over their helmet comms, but he barked those to silence, then offered McCord a hand up. Neither quite looked at the other, pretending not to notice the assist, or the silent crutch handoff, afterward.
Jeff got out from under the unconscious thug on his own, though. (Very glad that no one saw him shift the big saboteur with one hand.)
"What do we do with this guy?" he grunted, arriving more or less at a standing position. That shard had cut him up some more during the fight, because it was firmly attached to the suit, and he wasn't. Didn't make a big deal about it, though.
"Drop a big rock on the f*cker, and leave him here," snapped Pete. "Goddam lucky I didn't just kill the sonuvabitch."
"His armour's already locked up with rocks in every joint I could reach," Jeff objected, wincing as his suit sprayed more antiseptic and nu-skin over that raggedy wound. "I'll be happy to continue the good work if you want me to, Pete, but he isn't going anywhere."
Which was just as well to say, since Captain Rigby was actually looking around for a big enough rock. Sheesh. Marines.
Pete looked at his friend, and then looked away; blue eyes just about burning with wrath.
"He killed my base, Tracy. Murdered it, on my watch. Anyone dead, anyone injured, is because of this mother*cker. I don't care if he f*cking dies. Can't pull one d*mn scrap of sympathy out of my ass for him, right now, or ever. Now, let's go, before I finish the job."
Had he or Rigby been the type to offer… had McCord been the sort who'd accept… an embrace would have happened. Instead, Jeff clasped his friend's shoulder briefly, and Rigby said,
"This way, Commander… Colonel!" and then led their way back to the wall.
XXXXXXXXXX
On the surface, in the very faint, bluish light of a rising dawn-
How or why it happened, Captain Hesse couldn't have said. Just pure, blind luck, most likely. But Havoc's comm beeped some sort of alarm, and Lina Hesse dove aside, howling,
"Fire in the hole! Duck and cover!"
…at the same time that Havok snarled,
"Bloody h*ll! Fuse!"
The bomb was a shock grenade, and the girl inexperienced, or she'd have known that shock waves need something meaty to travel through. Surface Mars had just about jack sh*t for an atmosphere, incredibly wispy and faint. Its gravity was weak, too, meaning that the grenade didn't fall very fast. The explosion took place two feet from the ground in micro-thin air. Net result: a pop and faint shudder, plus a few bits of glittering shrapnel.
Hesse hit the ground, rolled and then vaulted back to her feet. Panting wildly, she looked all around; rifle cocked, locked and ready to burn. But the girl had vanished completely, except for her footprints, quite clear in the thin Martian dust and CO2 frost.
Heh! As lieutenant Harper and Sergeant De Claire came pounding up, Hesse straightened to her full, impressive height, and grinned at them.
"C'mon, you two," she growled, pointing out those fresh traces. "Let's go hunting."
XXXXXXXXXX
Thunderbird 7, clearing Earth's atmosphere-
They were alone on the flight deck, now, because everyone else had floated off to work on their huge "fixer-upper", leaving Captain Taylor and his copilot to stare out the viewscreen, wrapped in silence and thought. First, the sky changed from sunset red-pink to black, and the stars came out naked to play. Then, they could see the Earth's gentle curve and a melon slice of thin, grinning Moon.
Gordon Tracy scarcely noticed; burdened with about as much grief and survivor's guilt as one young swimmer could carry. After a moment, too angry to reason, or stop himself, Gordon unlocked and tore off his own helmet, snarling,
"The h*ll with it! I'll make it, or I won't. Not living in a d*mn bubble for a week, just to save my own ass!"
Captain Taylor glanced over from the pilot's seat, then said,
"Ya cain't help 'em none by killin' yerself, Son. They're in good hands, trust me. Whut Doc don't know, ain't worth learnin', an' he'll figger a way outta this mess… but ya gotta hold up y'r end, Godfrey. We all do."
The discarded helmet had bounced off the overhead, and was lancing back down at them. Gordon fielded the thing, looking very much like he wanted to cry.
"I don't deserve to be up here, safe and healthy, Uncle Lee," he whispered, adding, "Know why I'm not sick? Because I was pissed at Scott, over… over Penny, and I skived off work to go swimming. That's why I'm here, and not John, or Virgil, or…"
"Or nobody," Lee cut in. "Which is whut we'd have in th' shotgun seat, right about now, if you wasn't a stubborn, cross-grained cuss, like y'r brothers n' daddy. Y'r here f'r a reason, leave it at that. Now, stop kickin' y'rself in the ass, an' help me fly this "newly renovated" hunka junk. Cain't rightly navigate n' fly at th' same time, Son."
Which might even have been the truth. Whatever, Gordon felt a bit better for hearing it. Enough to say,
"You really think they'll pull through, Sir?"
Lee smiled at him, making his blue eyes crinkle up, and that big, salt-and-pepper mustache broaden.
"'Course I do, Godfrey. I got faith that we ain't in this alone. Someone's lookin' out f'r us. Allus has been."
Managing a weak, answering smile, the swimmer said,
"You sound like Grandma."
"Heh! She's been gettin' t' me, all right. An' not just with her cookin', neither. Y'r auntie's a fine woman, Godfrey. A d*mn fine woman. Any feller 'd be right lucky ta call Beth Tracy his own."
Yeah. Too much information. Hurriedly, Gordon changed the subject.
"So, uh… ETA to Mars, Uncle Lee?"
The astronaut gave him a sudden sly, little-boy grin, saying,
"Now, that's a d*mn funny thing t' be askin' me, Son. Think I got sumthin sneaky tucked up in m' sleeve?"
Gordon's own smile widened a little; his hazel eyes lightening visibly as he said,
"I'd be shocked and disappointed if you didn't, Sir."