#anderverse crossover

The following silence was heavy.

It was a silence with weight to it, a silence coloured with shock, horror and a torrent of grief and pain as old wounds were ripped open to gush anew. 

Scarlet spoke first, standing and leaning on his knuckles as he stared at the pistol on the table, but his voice was barely over a hoarse whisper. “Magenta. What option did Colonel White put in his file for if it happened to him?” 

“...uh… one moment…” Shaken out of his stunned stupor, Magenta got up, went to the computer banks along the far wall of the conference room and delved into the archives. Keys were clicked, the mouse wheel was scrolled, then the answer was found. “Put to rest.” 

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Scarlet declared, straightening up and drawing in a breath to start on the logistics.  

“Wait.” That was Ochre, a frown knotting his brow. “Guys, believe me, I want to get out there and turn the world upside down until we find the Old Man, but every instinct I’ve got is screaming at me that this is a distraction. They’ve been inside Black’s head, Brown’s, Scarlet’s, Indigo’s and now Colonel White’s. I’d bet my one good foot that they made him drop that pistol because they know exactly what our first instinct would be the second we laid eyes on it.” 

“He’s right,” Scott chimed in as he reminded everyone why he was IR’s field commander. “You can’t ignore this, but you can’t get tunnel vision either. Pull back, look at the bigger picture. Remember what Black told Scarlet at the Tesla facility?” 

“Magenta…” Blue started, but the other man had already beaten him to it and pulled up the file. 

“Quote,” Magenta began reading “‘If the Mysteron City is the transmitter, I’m the relay station for their will, they need me here as a focal point. If you get a chance to destroy me, do it. The Mysterons will lose their ability to act here on Earth until they find another puppet.’ End quote.” 

“That’s right, he did say that.” Grey frowned, got up from the table and started pacing as he thought out loud. “Black did say that the Mysterons had been planning something for the funeral. When White was… when it happened to him is neither here nor there right now. They couldn’t do anything without a relay station, and we know that Black isn’t that relay any more. Hence the delay between when the generators were shut down and when they started doing stuff, they needed to get a new relay set up first, so they’ve somehow possessed someone else and made a new relay station.” 

“Or they’ve sent someone.” 

Everyone turned to look at Scott again, who now had his laptop out and on the table, turned around to show them an orbital trajectory map on the screen. 

“John sent me an update just before the meeting and I think it just got relevant.” Scott took a deep breath and went on. “He’s managed to identify roughly when the satellites were tampered with and he’s done a deep dive into everything that Five’s sensors and satellite net picked up since then. There was a blip in the upper atmosphere yesterday. It was small and brief, but it wasn’t any of the space debris that John’s tracking, its trajectory fits for having come from Mars, and it perfectly threaded the gap between the space traffic lanes.” 

“Where would it have landed?” Rhapsody asked. 

“Somewhere in Europe,” was the answer. “John’s trying to narrow it down but he’s not having much luck.” 

“So what you’re saying,” Steel began from his seat beside Blue, “is that we potentially have an actual, in-the-flesh Mysteron running around on Earth?” The Detroit native shook his head. “Damn.”

“It makes sense,” Symphony spoke up, “Mars has been under a general interdiction for roughly a decade now, one that Space Patrol enforces, and no human-made ships could get from Mars to Earth in a matter of days. We know the Mysterons have powers way beyond us, them whipping together something is entirely possible, especially if they’ve spent seven years plotting and scheming just in case they got a chance like this.” 

“Sir?” That was Steel, looking at their commander. “What are your orders?” 

“...Azure, get a report together for briefing the World Government,” Blue started, then tapped his ‘cap to speak to Clay, who was listening in from the Control Room. “Clay, get me a call to the World President and notify all the Spectrum commanders who aren’t here to be on the alert for a potential in-person Mysteron or a new prime agent. I want everyone alert and all eyes open but no witch hunting, if we panic we’ll be sitting ducks. Everyone and everything gets checked, and electron pistols are to be issued to everyone certified for them.” A pause, Blue clearly unhappy about his next order, then he issued it. “And put out the alert on Colonel White. If someone spots him, the orders are to report it first. I want teams ready to respond to those reports but again, no witch hunting and only responding to credible reports. If everyone’s running around after red herrings we’ll be too exhausted and distracted to notice the real one.” 

“If someone does make a 100% positive identification?” Melody carefully asked. 

“If they have an electron pistol or Mysteron gun and it is safe for them to engage, they are to  notify and then eliminate the threat,” Blue declared. “But if they have any hesitation at all, their orders are to call in backup. This is the Colonel we’re talking about. He was in the British Civil War and he’s forgotten more about spycraft than any of us have ever learned.”      

0o0o0 

In his office at Frost Line Command, General Ward slouched back in his chair, a scotch on the rocks in hand, and brooded. 

He’d been working on this project for years now. Spectrum had been fools to leave the job half done! What was the point of leaving things at an impasse when total victory was just within reach? When he’d heard the news, his first thought had been of course to level the Mysteron City with a barrage of nuclear missiles, but with the War ‘over’ the World President had rescinded the emergency powers that would have let him launch without presidential authority as long as there was a clear and present danger. So, as much as it galled him to take the underhanded approach, he’d gone for a stealth attack.

It’d already been arranged for the new waves of satellites to be launched from the Mercury Space Centre since the crews there were already familiar with the tech. It took some doing and some big favours to Space Patrol, but he got three of his staff involved in the operations centre with orders to start sniffing out whatever they could get their noses into, dangling the promise of plum positions and rapid promotions in return for a job well done. Last week one of his men had finally struck gold: the command codes that would tell a satellite it had reached the end of its operational lifespan and it was now time to take a trip to the sun. Ward would have preferred the ability to switch the satellites off and on at whim, but he’d happily take this instead. 

A night of feverish scribbling got together a message where he’d graciously accept the Mysterons’ surrender, then he drafted up the message he’d send to the office of the World President once he’d secured that surrender. Dreaming glorious dreams of getting to take down Spectrum, carve the rival organisation up into bits, and bask in the glory of a job properly done, he’d sent off the signal for a terminal solar orbit, waited three days to give the satellites time to get out of range of Mars, then sent his message to the Mysterons. 

The hollow voice had boomed out of the speakers of his personal radio mere moments later, announcing WE SHALL CONSIDER YOUR MESSAGE. YOU WILL HAVE OUR ANSWER SOON. He’d been elated at first but now… now he was starting to get worried. The Mysterons hadn’t given him an answer yet, and all the messages he’d sent to ask them what their answer was had been ignored. 

The light on his intercom flashing interrupted his musings and he stabbed at the button irritably. “What is it?” he barked. 

“Sir…!” the voice cut out into a squawk and the line died. 

General Ward was half out of his seat, his drink forgotten, when the door burst open to admit three figures in colourful uniforms, weapons in hand and their eyes hard. 

“Captain Green, Spectrum,” the man in the front announced. “General Ward, as per the World Military Code, Section 894, Article 94, you are under arrest for treason.” 

“On whose authority?!” Ward blustered. How dare this kid in a costume think he could arrest him, General Ward of Frost Line Command!?

At the same time Azure was leading her team up the driveway, an SPJ soared high over the Pacific, tracing a path through the sky to Dolphin Base. 

In the passenger area and doing his best to not disturb Magenta, who was asleep in his seat across the aisle, Scott fired off one last email on his laptop before sitting back to rub at his suddenly gritty eyes. This was not how he expected to be spending his Tuesday… scratch that, they’d crossed the date line, it was Wednesday now. “But I’m acting CEO of Tracy Industries and the commander of International Rescue, the unexpected is my normal,” he reflected. 

The thin light through the window caught the simple gold wedding band on his left hand and he glanced over at the closed cockpit door, feeling himself smile at the thought of his wife of all of eight months. ‘Unexpected’ was the perfect way to describe what happened when he’d met Juliette for the first time. 

Penny and Virgil had been behind it of course. They had finally tied the knot three years ago and ever since then he’d become increasingly aware of a vague notion that yes, it was okay for him to be happy too, that he didn’t have to watch over his brothers forever and that he did actually have ‘permission’ to find someone. 

Of course that was all well and good in theory, in practice it was much harder. So many women loved the idea of being married to Scott Tracy, the billionaire heir to the Tracy Empire, but they didn’t love him. On top of that there was the whole question of International Rescue. They’d managed to keep up their secrecy and very much wanted to continue that, thank you very much.

Adding to the mix was the fact that rescues happened on their own schedule and he’d had to get increasingly creative on explaining why he’d had to change plans without giving the game away.

All in all, it made dating very difficult and he’d despaired more than once over the difficulty of finding someone who looked at him and saw him.

He’d expressed these things to Virgil one night when he was exhausted after a particularly rough rescue and drunk enough to drop all his filters, then staggered into bed and promptly forgot about all of it. 

Unbeknownst to him, Virgil had had a quiet word to Penny about it all, and it wasn’t long afterwards he’d found himself invited to a garden party at the mansion. Normally he wouldn’t have been entirely keen on a garden party, but he’d been lured in by the promise of being able to catch up with some of the other guests: Paul, Dianne and their little girl Kathryn. Unbeknownst to him, the Metcalfes had also brought a friend along with them: Juliette, recently retired from Spectrum and looking for a fresh challenge. 

The co-conspirators hadn’t quite locked them into a broom cupboard together, but it was pretty close. 

Conversation over tea had turned into conversation over dinner (she asked him, not the other way around), and two days later she followed up with an invitation to visit the private airstrip she owned near Beauvais, north of Paris. Before Spectrum it was from where she had once run her flying contractor business and now it housed her ‘toys’ - a small collection of stunt and sports flying planes. 

Scott had already been fascinated by her by the time the dinner had wrapped up, getting to chase Juliette around the sky in the equivalent of a street racing motorcycle given wings had only cemented that, and he’d proposed to her within the year. 

The memory of proposing to Juliette at a restaurant in Paris reminded him of the other proposals that the family suspected were in the offing. 

Dad getting sick last year had prompted Alan to finally grow up and get serious about his relationship with Tin Tin. It was partly their own fault, Alan was Mom’s baby and therefore the baby of the family, and with what had happened on the mountain it was natural that they’d fallen into babying him somewhat, but the diagnosis and the knowledge that it wasn’t a question of if the cancer would get Dad but when (hence Scott now being the acting CEO) had made Alan take a good, hard look at himself and he’d dropped a lot of the attitudes that made his older brothers want to toss him into the pool some days. “John still reckons it’ll be a Christmas proposal,” Scott mused as he tried to make himself more comfortable, “I’ve got my money on it being her birthday. Who knows when Gordon’s going to make his move though.” 

There were still a lot of questions around the beautiful woman with green-blue hair that Gordon had introduced to them with the words ‘uh, so, this is Marina and, uh, she’s followed me home’. 

What they did know was that five months ago Gordon had gone to a reunion at Marineville, stayed for three days out of his expected ten and come home with a fading black eye and assorted other small injuries from some sort of scuffle that he point blank refused to elaborate on. He’d then taken his catamaran out for a week of solo sailing up and down the chain of islands that Tracy Island was part of. He returned home without incident and while he was tying up at the dock, Marina had suddenly hoisted herself up the rope ladder to greet him.  

He was clearly deeply in love with her and she was equally smitten with him, so they were willing to wait until Marina felt safe enough to give them the details.  

“It’s going to be interesting to see what her story is, which is going to be literally since she uses sign language,” Scott concluded. Everyone on the Island was either brushing up on it or learning it, and it was pretty obvious that Marina truly appreciated the lengths they were all going to on her behalf. Reaching out, he closed his laptop with the intention of putting it away and checking for light leaks, but the soft click, barely audible over the sound of the aircraft, instantly had a groggy ‘whu?’ in response from across the aisle as Magenta stirred and woke up. 

“Sorry Pat, go back to sleep,” Scott apologised. He didn’t know the retired captain as well as the others, but he was one of Juliette, Paul and Adam’s friends so that made him a friend as well. 

“No, no, ‘s fine, I’m awake now,” Magenta yawned, stretched in his seat and yawned again. “I shouldn’t nap too long anyway, it’ll muck up my patterns. I’m not some crazy twenty-something anymore who can function off three hours of sleep and half a case of energy drinks.” 

Scott laughed. “I remember those days.” 

“Miss ‘em?” Pat asked with a knowing grin. 

“Hell no. There’s some things that only a crazy twenty-something buzzed on three hours of sleep and half a case of energy drinks will do. I’ve been there, done that, still got the tee-shirt somewhere, and I’m never doing that again.” 

Pat laughed. “Preaching to the choir on that one.” He gestured towards the laptop still out on the table. “Pardon my professional curiosity, but what security programs are you running on that?” 

“Something that John and Brains cooked up, fully custom.” Scott thought for a moment, then asked “you’re running a cyber security firm now, aren’t you?” 

“Yep, Radiance Cyber Security and White Hat Programmers.” Pat dug his hand into his sports coat pocket, came up empty and frowned. “I’d give you my card but I must’ve left them at home.” 

“That’s fine.” Scott grinned and gestured at the laptop. “If we get a chance later on, do you want to take a crack at this after I’ve backed up everything?” 

Pat looked like all his Christmases had come at once. “Absolutely! Bottle of whiskey if I crack it?” 

“A bottle of scotch if you don’t.” Scott reached over and they sealed the deal with a handshake. “So if you’ve been cornering the cyber security market, what’s everyone else been up to? I know Grey took over the Dolphin training base, Scarlet’s taken Spectrum London and Rhapsody ‘retired’ so she could run secret agents out of London on the quiet. I found out about Ochre running Koala when he sent us some names for potential new Thunderbirds, and I know about Blue being the Colonel and how Symphony’s the liaison in Futura City.” 

“Oh yeah, Ochre mentioned about sending you guys some cadets. How’s that working out?” Pat asked curiously. 

“Once we talked Dad into it, pretty good. We’ve got three folks checked out on Thunderbird Two and most of the specialised gear, and one’s almost ready to go operational next year,” Scott explained. That they needed backup and replacement pilots had been obvious for a while, but the Tracy patriarch had only recently relented on his desire to keep things within the family. They’d been stumped on where to find possible candidates until Ochre had gotten in touch with some cadets that were very promising but Spectrum wasn’t the right place for them. Scott and Lady Penelope had scrutinised the list, met the ones on their short list and made a selection from there, then requested that Ochre forward them the names of anyone else that he found.         

“Glad to hear it,” Pat nodded, then settled into his report. “Melody’s the head trainer for Angel cadets and the flight school at Koala. Ochre’s got…” Patrick thought for a moment, “Nine and a bit months left at Koala, then he’s taking the big chair from Blue, they’ve had it all worked out for years now. I’m not sure what Magnolia and Adam are going to do when the swap happens, but knowing those two they’ll have it all figured out by then. Harmony got seconded to the WG as part of the ambassadorial team to the United Asian Republic. Her cover is that she’s a pilot, but I’m not supposed to know that that’s a cover story, it’s all very hush hush. Green made captain ages ago and he’s now a senior captain along with Steel and Azure, they got pulled up to fill the gaps left by Ochre and Blue.” 

“Why the nine and a bit months before Blue steps down and Ochre steps up?” Scott asked curiously. 

“That’s when Green ages out and has to step down from the frontlines,” was Magenta’s quiet answer. “Ochre didn’t want to be sending out anyone from our cohort.” 

“I understand that,” Scott nodded. He was going to have to take ‘the big chair’ of his organisation sooner rather than later. Dispatching his brothers when they were on the scene was far easier than running the overall operation from the safety of home while they were in the danger zone. “So, have you heard anything about the new system with the captains?” he asked in a very deliberate topic change. 

“Yeah, they’d just rolled it out when I retired,” Magenta nodded. “It was Ochre’s idea and he and Blue worked on it together. There’s now ten captains assigned to Cloudbase, and because there’s more captains they were able to expand the selection criteria on the Angels so they don’t all have to do double duty as intel officers too. It’s a standing roster of six captains on base and four at London working under Scarlet. Every two weeks, two of them swap out.” 

“That sounds like it’d work pretty well,” Scott nodded thoughtfully, making a couple of mental notes to see if a system like that might work for International Rescue, especially if his idea of expanding operations paid out. “Still five Angels?” 

“No, six now, and a mix of men and women.” A pause, then a knowing look “And no, I don’t know anything about the newest generation of Interceptor.”    

“Darn, I guess I’ll just have to wait then,” Scott mock grumbled. “So, tell me about Radiance…” 

0o0o0

Meanwhile, on Cloudbase, Clay lunged into action as soon as Azure’s signal cut out. 

“Crapcrapcrapcrap!” She danced her fingers up and down her control panel to try to get around the jamming, had no success and hit the button that would connect her to the colonel. “Colonel Blue, have lost contact with Azure’s team, they’re being jammed!” She kept the channel open for his reply as she adjusted frequencies with one hand and started to prime a priority alert message for Spectrum Wellington with the other. They had only a captain and a lieutenant there - hence the team sent from Cloudbase instead of them - but someone was better than no one. 

“Keep trying them and get Wellington on the move! Is there else in the area you can reach out to?” Blue ordered, and by the sounds of things he was sprinting back up to the Control Room. 

Two button presses got the priority alert off, then Clay tried the Stewart Island police constable’s number. “...negative, sir, all transmissions in the area are being blocked!” A ping from the computer brought up an automatic alert, triggered by her sending the priority alert to Wellington. “Sir, there’s also a storm in the Wellington region right now, it’s going to delay them.” 

“Call Wellington anyway, brief them and have them ready to fly the instant they can, then try for any navy vessels in the area, Scarlet and I are almost there!” 

“S.I.G!”

0o0o0

Azure ducked below the line of the windows as a fresh fusillade bored holes in the walls and threw chips of red brick into the air. “One shooter, it has to be!” 

“Ja!” On the other side of the doorway, Sage waited for a break in the gunfire, popped out of cover and fired back through the broken window. He only got off two shots before having to get back into shelter.

“Umber, any luck on comms?” Azure hissed, half rising from her crouch to peep out the corner of a window and almost getting the ‘cap shot off her head for her trouble.

“Nada,” the lean Australian man shook his dark head. “We’re hella lucky we were all inside when the jamming and the shooting started.” 

“Yeah,” Azure cast about for a way out that wouldn’t get the three of them riddled with bullet holes. “Umber, get me that tin of baked beans, I have an idea.” 

“Uh, sure.” A reach and he snagged the tin, then put it into her waiting hand. 

“Gents, I’m going to do something stupid,” Azure announced. “This is about the same size as a grenade. Shooter’s got to be by the driveway, that’s the only place that makes sense from the angles of the shots. I’ll pop up at the doorway and throw this in their general direction as a distraction, you two pop up at the windows and empty a clip at them.” 

“Lethal or non-lethal?” Sage asked, tapping the two extra top-loading clips that came with the newest generation of Spectrum-issue pistol, one of Major Scarlet’s projects that had finally reached the field. Riding in slim pouches beside the holster, one clip was loaded with tranq darts and the other with standard rounds.

“Lethal. They’re playing for keeps and so will we.” 

A pause then they both nodded and moved into position. 

“On my count,” Azure breathed out the words. “One, two, three!” Leaning around the remains of the door, Azure spied a man in dark clothing crouched in the knee-deep hebe shrubs that ringed the clearing. A split second later she was hurling the can at him in a smooth overhand throw, then she was throwing herself back into cover as Sage and Umber opened fire. 

There was a yelp of pain, a crash of a body falling into bushes, and as all three of them watched, the dark figure vanished from view. 

“...well…if we had any doubts about the Mysterons being active here again…” Umber tried, but he trailed off when he saw Azure’s dead-white face.

“...Azure?” Sage carefully ventured the question. “Are you okay? You look like you have seen a ghost.” 

Azure swallowed hard, a white-knuckled grip on her gun. “... I think I just did. Cover me.” 

Without waiting for their response, Azure gathered herself, slipped out the door and eeled her way out into the ruined garden and through to where the man had fallen. 

The two captains watched her with one eye and kept the other on the tree-line as she rummaged amongst the crushed shrubs and picked up something. “Found his weapon,” she called back to them in a clipped voice as she safetied the weapon, wrapped it in a handkerchief and tucked it into her gun belt. “No blood, no body, no other sign of who or what he was… wait…” 

They saw her rear back in surprise, then lunged for a particularly dense cluster of mānuka bushes. “Get over here, it’s Black!” she bellowed to them. 

Umber and Sage were at her side a few heartbeats later, helping Azure haul the unconscious man out from under the sharp-leafed bush. Dressed in a dark blue tee shirt and khaki cargo pants, he was bound and blindfolded and his shirt and trousers were blood stained and ripped in places, haemostatic dressings roughly taped into place over the wounds he’d taken. Umber had the bindings and blindfold sliced off in moments while Sage quickly checked him over.

“Bad. Priority one medevac, shock,” was Sage’s short report. 

“Azure calling Cloudbase, Cloudbase, please, come in,” Azure tried her RadioCap, hoping that the Mysteron being gone meant that the jamming was gone too. 

“Azure! Good to hear your voice, report,” Clay sounded like she was just as relieved as they were. 

“We were attacked by a suspected Mysteron agent, we’ve found Black, he’s alive but critical,” Azure reported.  

“Azure, Sage, Umber, get Black to Invercargill,” Colonel Blue’s voice came over the link. “We’ll have a medical helicopter waiting to transfer Black to Christchurch Hospital. Azure, you’re coming back to base as soon as Black’s on the helicopter. Sage, Umber, go with Black. You’re going to glue yourselves to his side in case the Mysterons try again. The Wellington team will be down to relieve you as soon as they can get in the air, there’s a storm grounding everything. The second that Black is cleared for transport up to Cloudbase you’re on the line to us and bringing him back with you.”

“S.I.G.” Azure answered for all of them and cut the call. “Umber, can you carry him?” 

“Just fine, Az,” Umber nodded as he scooped Black up in his arms. “Let’s go.” 

0o0o0

Thanks to the realities of a round planet, travel time and the need to find emergency babysitters, it took far longer than Blue wanted to get everyone he needed into the conference room, but at last everyone was either sitting or standing around the circular brushed aluminium table. Much larger than the original glass ring table, it meant that all of the original cohort of Angels and former captains, Scott, Burgundy, the new captains Azure and Steel and two of the new Angels-  the twins Themis and Theia - could all comfortably sit or stand around the table. 

Blue called everyone to attention by rapping his knuckles on the table.  

“Captain Azure, your report,” he ordered. 

In brief, clipped sentences, a still rumpled Azure described what they’d found at the cabin, the attack, then finding Conrad. “Sir, I think I know who the attacker was.” She picked up her go-bag as she spoke and reached into it. “I’m not absolutely sure, the light was bad, I only caught a brief glimpse of him and he had a watch cap on, but I found this in the garden and all things considered, well...” 

Metal clicked against metal as she laid a pistol on the table.

A first generation Spectrum-issue pistol. 

Three days later…

The barest pressure, applied between breaths, and the dot of Flat Red on the end of his brush became a tiny maple leaf for a CP-140 Aurora, all dressed up in the livery of the Royal Canadian Air Force, circa 2030. 

“There.” In his room on Cloudbase, Rick put his brush into the water jar and sat back to examine his handiwork, absently picking up a clean brush to fiddle with while he plotted out what to do next. On the one hand it was almost done, on the other hand he’d seen some really interesting ideas where someone had painted up a plane to make it look like it’d gone through a dogfight, been hit by lightning or taken other damage, and made it into a diorama. It was getting tempting to give it a try. “Orchid would probably have some insights into why I want to try it now,” he mused, “maybe I should ask her if it’s my brain figuring out ways to help me cope with my own ‘battle damage’.”  

The doorbell rang and he called out an absent ‘Come in!’ as he pushed his wheelchair back from his desk and turned it around with less grace than he’d have liked. 

The door opened, Brad let himself in, and Rick was heartened by it. Brad had become a very regular visitor these past few weeks. The others were trying their best and he certainly enjoyed their company, but they didn’t quite have the same understanding of coming to grips with a life-changing, career-ending injury like Brad did. 

“C’mon and take a seat,” Rick waved him towards the couch and wheeled himself over. 

“Thanks.” Brad sank onto the soft couch with a sigh. “I get why the Old Man got so irritated with politicians. President Roberts wants a press conference with the crew and lead designers of the Spes. Green’s been helping me figure out wording a response that doesn’t start with ‘you’re an idiot’.” 

“Wow. What part of ‘top secret’ does he not get?” Rick shook his head. “Guy’s really banking on an ‘I ended the war with the Mysterons’ tag-line for his re-election, isn’t he?” He paused, then grinned. “You could say yes and send everyone there wearing enough photo jammers to short out the cameras. Or have Scarlet and Blue just straight up confiscate the footage afterwards under one of the intelligence acts.”  

Brad chuckled. “Don’t tempt me,” he half smiled, then sobered, sitting straighter with his elbows on his knees. “Rick, you good for a serious conversation?” 

“Yeah, fire away.” Rick nodded, belatedly realising that he still had the paintbrush in hand as he started toying with it. It was comforting to have something to fidget with, he had an inkling of what this conversation was going to be about.

“So I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Brad began. “Me, Magenta, Conrad, Scarlet and Blue have been talking off and on about what to do with the chain of command and who’s going to take the big chair. The World President says he’ll confirm whoever we put forward, but if we don’t give him a name, he’s gonna have to pick someone, Spectrum’s too good to disband. Conrad doesn’t want it, he’s going to retire as soon as Fawn says it’s safe for him to not be in a hospital setting. Pat doesn’t want it and truth be told I’ll be better as a 2IC, not the big boss. Technically, according to the protocol it should go to Paul and he’s happy to do it short term but ‘it would be a terrible idea’ if it was permanent. Adam’s next and he’s happy to take it, but what we all want to know first is this: Rick, do you want the big chair?” Brad asked. “You were going to be Chief of Police before you were recruited, you'll be a natural at it, you’ll get to stay on Cloudbase and we’ll all be here to support you.” 

His suspicions confirmed, Rick stared off into the distance, rolling the paint brush between his palms as he strung together his reply. “...no, not right now. Maybe later, but not now, I'm still too close. I really appreciate you guys wanting to keep me here, I really do, but it’ll be a bad idea.”

“What do you mean?” Brad tilted his head, puzzled.

“I've been doing some research.” Rick put the brush down on his lap. “Between the regs and the rehab I have to go groundside anyway. Even with all of Fawn's fancy equipment, if I don't get any infections or complications, it's still going to take at least three more months for the stump to heal up enough for fitting a prosthetic, and then I have to relearn how to walk, drive, fly and everything else again. And don't start on how high tech new limbs can be, they're still not going to be as good as the real thing, especially not for an above the knee amputation. Even if the regs get changed or I get promoted tomorrow and Fawn recruits everyone he needs for me to do all the rehab and everything up here so I can be in the big chair, it's going to be a really bad idea.” 

“Why?” 

“Because this is us. Something's going to go down, something bad, and because it's going to be you guys in danger my first instinct is going to be to do something really stupid by going down to help.” Rick gave him a knowing look. “You know I will. We all got recruited because we've all got seriously atrophied senses of self-preservation and between how we were shoved together and what we’ve been through together we’ve pack-bonded like hell.” He shook his head. “Odds are I'll either get myself killed, someone else killed, or both. I'm not gonna let that happen. Right now the best place for me will be Koala or one of the headquarters. Eight years of that, then I can come back to Cloudbase.” 

“Because by then we'll all have been pulled from the front lines,” Brad realised, eyes wide. “We'll have aged out and retired or taken up heading a base or something.” 

“And it'll be a fresh crop of captains, ones that I'll care about, don't get me wrong, but I won't be as attached to them as I am with you guys.” 

“...I hate it, but you're right.” Brad shook his head. “It's a damn hard thing though.” 

“Yeah, it is. I don't like it either, and it doesn't feel ‘right’ at all, not by a long shot, but it's the correct choice to make.” Rick scrubbed a hand over his face. “Even though I know it's not possible, there’s still a little bit of me saying ‘you can still be out there, you can make it happen, you just gotta fight for your place on the team’, but I wouldn't be on Cloudbase if I didn't have a little voice like that.” He fell silent, fiddling with his paintbrush again, then looked back to Brad. “I already know one change I’m going to make when I take the big chair.” 

“What?” 

“It’s not going to be a top flight team and a ‘B’-team. We didn’t know each other, we couldn’t anticipate each other and we didn’t have time to fix that. When I’m in charge it’s going to be a team of ten, splitting duties on base and on the ground. They’re going to rotate, they’re going to train together and they’re going to function as one unit.” Rick’s mouth twisted in a bitter expression. “It’ll have its own problems, but what we have right now was a mistake. One that me and the Old Man have paid for.” 

“You’re right about that.” Brad looked away, remembering the sound of the shot, the awful screaming and the panic on the comms, then before he could move the sound of the second shot and that dreadful moment of silence that told him that something even worse had just happened. 

A touch on his knee, and Brad turned back to see Rick looking at him, concern and worry writ large on his face. “Hey, it’s not your fault, it’s just how the chips fell. And I’m going to keep telling you that until you believe me, clear?” 

Brad managed a faint smile despite himself and the grief that he was still wading through. “S.I.G.” 

Rick gave him a quick smile back, then frowned a little. “Where are the others anyway? I’d’ve thought they’d want to be in on a conversation like this.” 

“Conrad’s having another migraine, Magenta’s on duty, and Blue and Scarlet are groundside,” Grey answered. “They wanted to wait until we could get everyone around the table, but Conrad pointed out that this is a question that we needed to get answered sooner rather than later.” 

“He’s right,” Rick nodded, then curiously asked “what are those two doing groundside? Did the World Government need them?” 

“No,” Brad shook his head, “Adam’s finally going to have a proper conversation with his dad.”  

“About damn time!” Rick canted a grin at his friend, well pleased by the news. “Someone’s finally smacked the guy up the head with a clue-by-four. Here’s all fingers and toes crossed that that goes well.” 

“Agreed,” Brad nodded, “Very, very heartily agreed.” 

0o0o0

Well wrapped up in long woollen coats, gloves and scarves, standing side by side and leaning against their car, Adam and Paul looked up the slight rise to the Svenson family home in Boston. It was early enough that not many people were about, and the air was dry and crisp with the first true bite of winter. 

Paul looked first at the house - he was fairly certain he saw a curtain twitch at a ground floor window - then at his friend. “You going to be okay?” 

Adam took a deep breath before answering. “...yeah, I’ll be okay.”

“I’m staying right here. I’ve got a book and a thermos, I’ll be good for three hours,” Paul reminded him. “You’ve got your phone, your communicator and your beacon. Signal on any of them and I’ll come get you for a hot extraction.”  

The jest got the huffed laugh that Paul had been hoping for. “S.I.G.” Adam pushed himself off the car, straightened his coat and steeled himself, striding up towards the house. 

Two firm knocks with the brass door knocker, a pause, then the heavy oak door swung open to reveal John Svenson, looking careworn and aged as he stared at his son with a dozen different emotions chasing across his face. 

“...Adam…” 

“Hi Dad,” Adam swallowed thickly, “can we talk?” 

“Of course,” John stood aside to let his son in. “Adam… I’m so sorry…” 

Chapter 13 It was a grey dawn when Tracy 2 landed at the Mercury Space Center in New Mexico - named after the Mercury 13, not the Mercury 7. Scott taxied into the hangar and once he and Tin Tin had completed post-flight and shut down the aircraft, a glance out the windscreen showed three familiar figures waiting for them. 

Lowering the air-stairs and shouldering his duffle, Scott led the way over to Scarlet, Blue and Doctor Giardello, the former two in charcoal grey jumpsuits with their code names embroidered on the chest, the latter in dark trousers and a black sports coat. 

“Good to see you fellas again,” Scott said as there were handshakes all around. 

“Likewise,” Blue smiled. “We got here yesterday. Do you want to settle in first or go to the rocket?” 

“T-the rocket, please,” Brains requested. “W-we have -uh- a lot of work to do.” 

“Understood, I'll take your bags over to the accommodation unit and meet you at the assembly area.” Scarlet offered. 

The offer was gratefully accepted and Scarlet walked off with their bags, loading them into one of the two golf carts that they’d brought over with luggage in mind. Giardello immediately started talking to Brains about a detail regarding the satellites, but Tin Tin’s attention was on Blue as he led them towards the second golf cart. 

“Captain Blue, you're limping, are you all right?” Tin Tin asked, worried.

“We had a mission a couple of days ago and I landed badly, that's all,” Blue was quick to allay her concerns. “It’s just muscle strains, Doc's cleared me for space flight.” 

“Still, you mustn’t push yourself too hard,” Tin Tin insisted. “And don’t you dare try to tell me you’ve had worse and that ‘it’s fine’, I have heard that more than enough times from the boys to know what ‘it’s fine’ actually means!” 

“Looks like some things really are universal, right up to and including us ‘big damn hero’ types having a no nonsense medic type to tell us when to sit down, shut up and take our meds like a good boy or girl,” Blue thought to himself, quite amused. “I promise, I won’t push myself,” he said out loud. 

“Good.” 

The trip across the sprawling facility was uneventful, Blue pointing out the crawler that would take the assembled rocket to the launch pad, mission control, the accommodation block and other parts of the complex. Even at this early hour it was a hive of activity, people and vehicles going hither and yon on their tasks. Finally they reached the vast rocket assembly building where the final checks were taking place before the spacecraft was mounted to the massive trio of boosters that would send it aloft.

“There wasn’t any way we could hide that a launch was taking place,” Blue said as he parked up next to the entrance, “so we’re hiding it behind the planned test launch of the new Argos rocket and spacecraft system. It’s the third test flight and unmanned, so the ‘neighbours’ shouldn’t be interested.” Leading the way to the well guarded pedestrian entrance, he handed out key cards to Brains and Tin Tin. 

“A w-wise precaution,” Brains approved. 

After passing through the multitude of security checks, they were into the assembly hall where the ‘Project Sword’ spacecraft rested in a specially constructed cradle to spare her undercarriage from carrying all the weight. The building was starkly industrial, and the battalion of arc lights overhead would have been blinding if not for the matte finish to the off-white walls and floor to keep the light from bouncing around. 

Scott cast a critical eye over the completed ship. There were a few differences to how it looked ‘in the flesh’, as it were, as opposed to the initial plans put together at the island, but thanks to the updates they’d gotten, he knew what to expect. Apart from the black tiled underbelly, the body was finished in a dark red because the tritonium alloy wouldn’t take any other paint. Instead of being inside the ship’s skin, the carbon black shielding that would hide them from the Mysterons sat snugly over the nose and leading edges of the stubby ‘wings’ - actually extensions of the body of the ship, rather than true wings. The shield covered most of the forward viewports, which was fine; they didn’t need to see where they were going on the first leg of the trip, there were two portholes at port and starboard for if he needed to use stellar navigation, and it’d be jettisoned for re-entry. “All in all, I think she’ll do the job,” Scott concluded as he turned to Blue. “Does she have a name?” 

“Affirmative.” Blue nodded. “It’s under the shielding, but her name is ‘Spes’ - hope.” 

“How very appropriate,” Tin Tin smiled. 

That was when a veritable mob of technicians and engineers descended on them, sweeping up the three scientists and leaving Blue and Scott behind. 

“...well that’s a first,” Scott was the first to speak, amused but not offended. Normally as the field commander of International Rescue and the one in charge of coordinating, communicating and conducting the movements of people, personnel and the paraphernalia of rescue operations, he was the one that folks usually gravitated to. To not be in charge of things on the ground was something of a breath of fresh air.

“I hear you,” Blue agreed with some amusement, also unused to but unbothered by not being the one in charge. 

“Well,” Scarlet appeared from behind them, “I see that our experts are already at work. Shall we take a tour of the ship and familiarise ourselves with her whilst we wait for their final stamp of approval?” 

“Sounds good to me,” Scott said, gesturing towards the ship. “Lead the way.” 

They started in the cargo section of the Spes. The cascading interference generator satellites hadn’t been mounted yet, but the simple ‘launching arms’ were ready and waiting for them. They avoided the engine compartment for now - it was full of engineers - and instead went to the crew quarters. It was on their way there, in a quiet section of passageway without anyone else around, that Scarlet and Blue stopped and quietly ventured something that obviously had been on their minds for a while. 

“Scott, we wanted to tell you something,” Blue began, “we’re going to be locked into this tin can together for at least six weeks and we know you already know our names. If you want to use them in private, go ahead.” 

Touched and honoured by the trust being extended to him (and not a little amused by the comparison of this conversation about names to the first one). “I’d like that, thank you.” He would have said more, but a technician squeezed past them with an armful of dehydrated meal packs and Scarlet made a ‘we’ll continue this later’ gesture as he led them further into the ship. 

“I gotta ask: how big are the bunks?” Scott asked as they approached the small crew quarters. 

“Eighty inches long, thirty wide and twenty five overhead,” Adam supplied. He knew exactly why Scott was asking, having crammed himself into many a too-small bed or bunk over his lifetime. “We made sure they’d be a decent size.” 

“Thank heavens for that!” Scott said as Paul tapped the button to open the door into the crew quarters and stepped inside, the other two close behind and Adam shutting the door after them. 

It was a fairly utilitarian space, but clearly thought had gone into making it as comfortable as it could be. The bunks were set into three of the walls, wrapping around the inside of the room from the left of the entrance. Privacy curtains would block out the light and give some illusion of distance, and the muffled quality of their footsteps and lack of noise from outside was evidence of some fairly heavy-duty noise insulation. Drawers and lockers underneath and above the bunks were for bedding and belongings, and the fourth wall had a door that led to the bathroom. The walls had been painted a neutral cream colour and the lighting was softer and warmer than in the rest of the ship.

“It’s better than I expected,” Scott approved as he poked around the space. A random thought struck him and he turned to Paul and Adam. “How tall are you two anyway?” Scott asked curiously. 

“Six three,” Adam answered. “You?” 

“Six one. What about you, Paul?” 

“Six one.” Paul looked between Scott and Adam, a mischievous glint in his eye. “You do know what this means, right?” Paul jerked his thumb at Adam. “He’s the tall one.” 

Scott lit up, his gleeful delight fuelled by a lifetime of almost always being the tallest of whatever group he was in. “You’re right! So he’s on ‘getting things down from high shelves’ duty!” 

“Precisely. Anything that needs that couple of inches’ extra reach is his job. I’m very glad that’s sorted.” Paul grinned at Scott, then at his partner. 

“...I’m going to regret being stuck in here with you two, aren’t I?” Easily falling into the banter, Adam heaved a much put upon sigh. “This was such a mistake.” 

“Oh yes you are.” Paul nodded, absolutely straight faced. “Terrible mistake. Absolutely shocking. Quite a lapse on your part.” 

“Damn, and it’s too late to run too.” Adam grinned back at them both. “Since we’re all here we probably should sort out who gets what bunk.” 

“Flip a coin for first pick?” Paul asked, already digging in his pocket for one. 

“Best of three.” 

“Agreed.” 

Six flips of the coin later, Scott was moving the pillow to the other end of the bunk on the immediate left, Paul was testing out the mattress on the middle bunk and Adam was reorganising the bedding for the last bunk. Once he’d finished making up his bed to his preference, Scott turned back to the others with a new question. “So while we’re here, which one of the two of you snores and does throwing a boot work?” Scott asked. “I’ve slept in dorms before,” he added by way of explanation. 

“We both do under specific circumstances.” Paul got out of his bunk and jerked his thumb at Adam. “Him if he sleeps on his front, me if I sleep on my back.” 

“Or if you’ve had a head injury,” Adam chimed in. 

“Or if I’ve had a head injury,” Paul dutifully agreed. “And yes, throwing a boot or kicking the bunk works. Yourself?” 

“Sometimes, but there isn’t really a pattern to it. Throw a boot or thump my leg, either works,” Scott replied, mentally logging the directive to wake from distance or hit the bunk, not the snorer. He completely understood it, for at least a year after Bereznik he reacted… badly… if someone touched him while he was asleep. Even now, years later, if he was in a bad patch he would lash out if someone tried to shake him awake. 

“Noted,” Paul said as he took the pillow off his bunk. “I’m going to swap it, too thin,” he said to Adam in response to the other’s curious look, then looked back to Scott. “Well, now that’s all sorted shall we proceed with the tour?”

“F.A.B.” Scott nodded. 

They dodged technicians in white overalls, passed Brains and Tin Tin delving into a system with diagnostic tools in hand, and explored the ship from side to side and back to front, at last settling into the cockpit where they took what would be their seats for the launch - Scott at the helm, Blue as co-pilot and Scarlet on systems. 

“Let’s do a dry run of the pre-launch checks,” Thunderbird One decided, finding the necessary clipboards with their checklists already in the side pockets of the chairs. 

Scarlets and Blue answered with twin ‘S.I.G’s and found their clipboards too. 

This was when the hours of practice they’d separately put in showed here both positively and negatively as they automatically fell into the patterns that they’d developed. It took several tries before the three men managed to amalgamate their ways of working into something of a cohesive whole. 

“I’m not happy about that,” Scott frowned as they finished the last set, turning his seat around so he could look at Scarlet and Blue better. “We didn’t flow as easily as we should have.” 

Blue nodded his agreement. “I hear you. Neither of us liked the parallel training, but we didn’t have much of a choice.” 

“We’ve still got today and tomorrow to use the sims. Lunch first, then we’ll get onto the sims,” Scarlet said. 

“And space suits too,” Scott added. “I’ve brought one of ours -  it’s still back in the jet - because there’s no way I’d be able to get enough time in one of your suits to be confident with it. All the connections are universal, Brains made sure it’d be compatible with the ship’s systems and tethers. I want to run you through mine and to run through yours in case of any emergencies.” 

“That’s a good point.” Blue thought for a moment as he mentally reshuffled their rough schedule. “We’ll do that after lunch, then the sims.” 

“F.A.B.” Scott glanced between the two of them. “Anything else we need to sort out?” 

“Actually, there is one other thing we have to get sorted out first. It’s absolutely crucial,” Paul flicked a quick look at Adam, then turned back to Scott, quite serious. 

Adam - who had instantly twigged that Paul was setting up to break the tension with a tease - hid his smile and played along by nodding sagely. Out of all of them, Brad was the only other person who could hold a completely serious mein when pulling someone’s leg like this.

“What? What is it?” Scott almost dropped his clipboard, looking between Paul and Adam with wide and worried eyes at the news that they’d missed something important. 

“Morning person or night owl?” Paul asked with a completely straight face, his tone making it seem like the fate of the world rested on Scott’s answer. 

Scott laughed, the tension in the cockpit vanishing. “Morning person, dawn’s my favourite time of day. You two?” 

“I’m pleased to report we’re the same.” Paul grinned at him. “Very good news that, I’d have hated to be stuck sharing a tin can with one of those infernal night owls who inevitably wakes up in a right mood.” 

“Agreed! So who’s yours?” Scott asked with a knowing grin. “Virgil and John are the family night owls, but Virgil’s the one who takes the longest to boot up in the morning.” 

“Ochre’s the worst offender. Short of an emergency the man’s barely human until he’s had three coffees and the sun is high.” Paul grinned at them both and put his checklist back where it belonged. “Now that that’s settled, let’s get ready to get this thing off the ground.” 

0o0o0

The sun had long set by the time they wrapped up in the simulator for the day. At Scarlet’s specific request they’d gone through re-entry sims first, his reasoning being that if they could take care of the hardest thing first, the rest would be much easier. Conversation over dinner, taken in a sitting room in the section of the accommodation block set aside for them, had very deliberately been about anything but the mission, then they’d sought their beds. Tomorrow would be another early start for everyone, so rest was very much a priority. 

“I’m still wishing we had at least a month of training together before the mission,” Adam said as he and Paul went to his room so Paul could help him with the stretches and other exercises the physio had prescribed for his leg and back. 

“Agreed.” Paul made a face as he moved a straight-backed wooden chair into position. “We’re lucky that the three of us click so well. We’d be in serious trouble otherwise.” 

“Yeah.” Adam sat on the chair backwards so Paul could start massaging out the knots he’d picked up from the cupped chairs of the simulator before starting the exercises. Very blatantly changing the topic, he canted a cheeky grin at Paul. “So I saw that you stole one of Dianne’s blankets again. Taking it with you on the mission?” 

“I did not steal it,” Paul sniffed, “she and I traded blankets. Big difference. And yes, I am.” He paused long enough to tackle a particularly stubborn spot that needed both thumbs and a grunt out of Adam before it unkinked, then pointed to a bulging brown manila envelope on Adam’s beside table. Rather tellingly it was sealed with a red lipstick print and he could smell the traces of perfume from here. “So what’s that then, hm?” 

“Letters and notes,” Adam smiled softly, clearly remembering the moment of the exchange the night before they flew out. 

It was quite evident that the Old Man knew about him and Karen and Paul and Dianne. The night before their flight, the four of them somehow and without an explanation had had their schedules changed so that they all had the full night off, a gift beyond price with what they were about to face. 

“I’ve given her some letters too,” Adam went on, “one for each day we’re supposed to be away… and a few extras. Just in case.” 

Paul nodded. He and Dianne had exchanged envelopes too, stuffed with letters to read and one that was for just in case. 

It was mid morning in the Svenson household. The trees in the park across the road were putting on their usual autumnal display and it was quite nice right now so John Svenson appropriated a sitting room just off the lounge so he could enjoy the view while he worked on some reports. 

His work flow was disturbed at just after ten when the doorbell rang. Mildly vexed by the interruption, John looked up from his work, but when Sarah called out ‘I'll get it’ he left her to it, pushing it to the back of his mind. However his ears pricked up at the sound of his wife's delighted “Adam! I didn't expect you!” 

“Hello, Mom.” 

“Hm. He sounds subdued.” John turned to the next page of his report. “I'll let Sarah deal with it before I come out to say hello, I can never get him out of a mood.” 

There was the sound of the door shutting and footsteps muffled by carpets, then he heard them take seats in the lounge.

“What brings you here, dear?” Sarah asked. “Oh! I'll get coffee! We have a marvellous new machine and your father brought back some amazing beans from his last trip!” 

“No thank you Mom, it's just a flying visit.” A sigh. “I'm going to miss the anniversary party, I'm sorry.” 

“Oh! But I thought you had leave!” 

As far as John was concerned, Sarah was quite right to sound dismayed, but that was the bare minimum. Realistically she should have been annoyed. Adam had missed almost every single major family event last year and half of this year's, citing different emergencies or that he couldn't get leave for whatever reason. 

“I did have leave, but there's something on and I'm going to be… away.” A rustle of paper bags interrupted things. “I've brought your anniversary presents and the upcoming birthdays and Christmas presents.” 

“What’s this?” John put down his report to better focus on the conversation. Adam was very organised when it came to presents and  always sent or brought his gifts, but to have all the gifts arranged and ready to give this far in advance was unusual. And he was giving them all now… 

“But…Christmas is three months away...” 

John tapped his chin thoughtfully, Sarah was thinking along the same lines he was. “What the hell is going on…?” 

“I know, Mom. I don't know when I'm going to be back.” 

“...Adam? What is it dear? What's happening?” 

Sarah's worry was very clear. John got up and went to the door to investigate further. Peering out, he could see Adam was sitting in a comfortable armchair, his back to the sitting room, and Sarah was perched on a couch, facing him, her tightly clasped hands in her lap. 

“I can't tell you. But it's big, and there's a lot that can go wrong,” Adam was saying. 

“Can't someone else go?” Sarah asked with that worried catch in her voice that John so hated to hear.

“No, Mom.” Without even turning, Adam then asked “Can we talk, Dad?” 

“How did you know I was here?” John hid his surprise, striding out to join his wife on the couch.

“I noticed you,” was his eldest's answer. “Like I've said before, there’s very good reasons why I'm next to impossible to sneak up on.” 

“Yes, the Bereznik issues,” John recalled. “That was years ago.” 

Recognising the bait, Adam didn't rise to it. His persistent hypervigilance had long been used as a point of argument with how unnecessary his family found it and how Adam maintained that it was very necessary. “Yes it was,” was all he chose to say, before getting the conversation back to the matter at hand. “As I was saying, I'm just making a quick visit. I know everyone else is at work or college, I'll call them before I go, but I wanted to say goodbye to you two in person.” 

“Well that's at least something,” John sniffed, ignoring Sarah's muttered ‘John!’ 

Again Adam ignored the barb. “It's a big mission, and I don't know if or when I'll be back, so I also wanted to give you this.” Reaching into an interior pocket of his coat, he pulled out a long white envelope. “Letters for everyone. You'll get a call if it's necessary to open it. If it's not, please burn it without reading them.” He handed it to Sarah, who took it with fingers that trembled. 

The simple act made the enormity of whatever he was up to settle on John and Sarah like a leaden cloud. Yes, there had been serious conversations before, but nothing like this! 

“...Adam…?” Sarah looked at her first born, her eyes wide and wet with gathering tears. 

“Yes Mom, I have to go,” Adam answered her unasked question, leaning forward and resting a gentle hand on her arm to reassure her. 

“No you don't!” John shot to his feet and thundered the words, gesturing broadly in his agitation. “You’re my son! You’ve got much better things to do than gallivanting about and risking your neck on hero nonsense! I’m sure someone else can do it!”

Though he took his hand from Sarah's arm, Adam remained seated and stayed calm. “You're wrong, Dad. There's reasons, good ones, why it has to be me.” 

“But of course you can't tell us, can you?” John sneered. “All this secrecy, cloak and dagger dramatics, and apparently everything is important and dire and critical, and you can't tell your own parents what you get up to!” 

“No, I can't, because it'll put you in danger and I love you too much to risk your lives just so you can have talking points at the country club.” Putting a certain deliberateness into the action, Adam stood up… and John was suddenly reminded of exactly how tall and muscular his son was, an in-the-flesh definition of ‘fighting fit’. “But,” he went on to say, “that doesn't really matter because whatever I do, even if I tell you all about where I've been and what I've been involved in, it'll never be enough for you unless I'm doing exactly what you want: wearing a suit, sitting behind a big desk and spending my days making money for the family business.”

“Because that's where you belong!” John snapped back, trying to regain control of a conversation he belatedly realised he never had control of in the first place. “You’re wasting your skills and talents out there! You belong here, with the family, working with us!” 

“In a way I am,” was Adam's rebuttal, delivered coolly and dispassionately. “The ‘hero nonsense’ I do keeps your precious stock market from quickly becoming completely irrelevant.” He ignored John's impotent spluttering and bent down to give his stunned mother a brief hug. “I love you both. Goodbye.” 

Turning on his heel, Adam let himself out, walked briskly down the steps and got straight into the passenger seat of the nondescript black sedan waiting for him at the curb. 

As they'd planned, as soon as he saw the front door open, Paul switched off the music he'd been listening to and turned the engine on. He waited just long enough for Adam to close the door and buckle himself in before pulling away before anyone could think to run down from the house.

After giving Adam several minutes to start to process everything, Paul ventured “A few rounds in the gym later?” as he guided the car through the maze of mansions with their tall fences, fancy gates and manicured grounds. 

“Yes,” was Adam’s clipped answer as he stared out the window at the blaze of colour, but seeing nothing. “...thank you, Paul.” 

“Any time, and I do mean that, Adam.” 

“Thanks.” 

Paul split his attention between the road and his friend. Adam’s relationship with his father had been fraught for decades and Paul knew how much it meant to him to at least have a cordial parting, but it was very obvious that things had not gone well, not in the slightest.

“I'll give Karen the heads up that he needs some TLC once he's gotten his emotions out on a punch pad. A coffee and some neenish tarts from the commissary afterwards should round things out nicely,” Paul decided as he pointed the car in the direction of the motorway. After all that Adam had done for him, helping Adam pull himself back together was the least he could do. 

As he considered everything, Paul couldn't help but feel rather guilty about how much easier his goodbyes had been. He'd had tea with his parents yesterday, and as soon as they'd realised that Adam was with him, they'd insisted that he come in for a cuppa. “Of course he'll be the first to tell me that I'm being silly for feeling guilty about the differences between our families,” Paul realised, “but he is so very logical like that.” 

0o0o0

Families and their logic were also on Scott's mind as he shook out his duffle bag and put it on the floor, ready for the stacks of clothing and toiletries laid out on his bed. It'd taken a heck of a lot of convincing to get the bulk of Tracy clan to stay home and let just three of them go to New Mexico tomorrow: himself (of course), Brains and Tin Tin. He'd have been happier going alone to keep their profile as low as possible, but their engineers needed to go over the rocket and the satellites (and it'd soothe everyone's nerves, including his own, if it got the tick of approval from experts they knew and trusted). He’d fly them over in Tracy 2, and Tin Tin would fly herself and Brains back. 

When the debate had been on, his main point had boiled down to ‘the more of us out and about, the higher the odds of us being noticed.’ Way too many people had the tabloid tip lines on speed dial, hoping to make a quick buck by selling info on the movements of famous people, and they really, really did not want to be noticed right now. 

His second point had been ‘what if something happens at launch?’. That argument had been mostly targeted at Dad, the main instigator of the ‘go as a group/strength in numbers’ idea. It was one that Scott knew was born from Jeff’s personal collection of fears and worries. The Tracy patriarch knew the dangers of space like few others did, and while he'd made great strides, he still hesitated to trust his sons’ safety to other people and other organisations’ equipment. “Which isn't completely unreasonable, considering what happened to me and Gordon,” Scott reflected as he re-folded a pair of socks before packing them.

So to that end, right now John and Virgil were prepping Three to swap their spacemen around so that when the launch came they'd have Alan ready for Three and John in Five tracking and monitoring things. On the day itself, Virgil and Gordon were going to be in Two with Pod 4 loaded and ‘just so happen’ to be around the area. 

“‘Pray for sunshine, but keep your powder dry’ really is one of many philosophies that International Rescue live by,” was his  thought as he reviewed their many plans and preparations, absently rolling up a tee-shirt as he did so. “Right next to ‘if it's crazy but it works, it's not that crazy’, which kinda sums up this mission.” 

A knock on the door interrupted his musings. 

“Come in!” Scott called, reaching out to grab his favourite hoodie from college. By now it was a bedraggled thing in faded black, thin at the elbows, frayed at the cuffs, the letters mostly a memory and the string long lost, but he wanted it for the comfort more than any warmth it would provide. “Speaking of tabloids, they'd have a field day if they saw me in any of this,” he thought to himself as he folded the hoodie. He was well aware that he'd become something of a clothes horse after the Air Force. It wasn't a bad thing, he enjoyed wearing a well cut outfit, but on the mission they'd be wearing jumpsuits for the most part so he was packing a lot of plain tee shirts, running shorts and other things to wear under the jumpsuits. It made for quite a difference compared to the last time he packed a bag, and he was pretty sure he'd have plenty of clothes and still come under the limit for personal belongings.

“How's the packing going?” Jeff asked as he came in and cast his eye over what Scott hadn't packed yet. 

“Almost there. I'll weigh it next and see if I need to take anything out.” Scott tucked his hoodie in the bag and turned to give his father his full attention. 

“Scott,” Jeff took something from his jacket pocket. “There’s something I'd like you to take with you.” He held out a silver medallion on a braided cord. “Your mother gave this to me before my first flight into space,” Jeff explained. 

Scott recognised it immediately. The St Joseph of Cupertino medallion - the patron saint of astronauts - had lived around his father's neck until he finally left his space days behind. After the mountain happened it had gone into a small box on Jeff's night table - the memories associated with it being too painful in the immediate aftermath - but later on he'd occasionally spied his father holding it while staring up at the moon. 

“Dad… are you sure?” Scott asked, looking between the embossed oval and his father. 

“I'm sure, son.” 

“Thank you.” A lump in his throat, Scott took the medallion and immediately fastened it around his neck. “I'll bring it back, I promise.” 

“I know you will, son.” Jeff clearly had a lump in his throat too as he stepped forwards and enfolded his eldest in a tight hug, Scott wrapping his arms around him just as tightly. “I'm so proud of you, Scott, I'm so very proud,” Jeff murmured thickly. “And your mother would be just as proud, I know it. I love you, Scott.” 

Scott tightened his grip. Though they regularly ‘told’ each other ‘I love you’, it was normally wasn't with those exact words: want a coffee?/ I made apple pie/here's that book you were after/go sit down, I'll take care of it/go to bed and so on. The actual words of ‘I love you’ were sacred things saved for goodbyes and farewells so that they all knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if this was the last time they’d get to talk, they'd said this before parting.