#flight hours

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“…Hey.”

“…hey, John? Johnny?”

That last one gets through, something about the way his name gets said, with just the tiniest note of urgency.

“…hmm?”

“Oh, good. Hey. Know where you are?”

Wherever he is, it’s mercifully, blessedly dark, and there’s no assault of light into his eyes as he blinks them open, stares up through the dimness at a ceiling that’s finally stopped spinning. The bed isn’t comfortable, but his blues are loose at the collar and someone’s pulled his boots off. It’s quiet and there’s a weirdly familiar chemical scent in the air that makes him wrinkle his nose. He closes his eyes again and sighs. He still needs to think about it for a few minutes, before he takes a rather literal shot in the dark, “…hospital?”

“Yeah.” There’s an obvious note of relief in Scott’s tone, and John remembers that his brother’s parked himself in the chair beside the bed, and that they’re waiting for something. Scott’s waiting for something. John doesn’t especially care what it is, and really only wants to go back to sleep. He’s finally been allowed to lie down, and it seems like a shame to waste any of the time he gets to spend lying down on being conscious.

Scott’s annoyingly persistent though, and the booted foot he’s got propped up at the edge of the bed gives a gentle kick, jostles the mattress slightly. “Any chance you remember what happened?” he asks, hopeful this time.

“Was sleeping. You woke me up.”

“I’m supposed to wake you up every hour or so, you’re within the first twelve hours of a moderate head injury. But I meant before that.”

“Mmm. Mm’nope.”

“Hey. Don’t go back to sleep. We’re waiting for your MRI results. Gotta be any minute now.”

John opens one eye at that, glares balefully at his big brother, a shadowy figure in the chair next to the uncomfortable bed, with one of his boots up on the mattress and the low light of the room failing to illuminate his face. “Fuck off,” John tells him pointedly, and then closes his eyes again.

***

“C’mon, John.” Someone kicks him lightly in the shin, and then a hand closes around his elbow, tugs gently. “On your feet, big brother. Know where you are?”

John opens his eyes, pleased to discover that everything’s finally stopped moving, though as he sits up and forward in his seat, there’s a swell of vertigo that makes this seem untrue. There’s a rainbow of coloured lights all around and the way they blur slightly when he tries to focus on them is disorienting. He looks up and squints at Virgil instead. “…TB2?” he guesses, because it’s Virgil, and TB2 and Virgil are a matched set. He’s glad that it’s Virgil, because if it weren’t Virgil it would probably be Scott, and he’s gotten a little sick of Scott.

Virgil grins at him, like he appreciates that this is a joke. It’s mostly a joke. “Well, yeah. But I meant home.”

“Oh, home. Good.” That should’ve been obvious. He’d known that, that they were going home. Virgil had taken a detour on his way back to the island from—John can’t actually remember where, but in fairness, he’s been informed that he’s suffering from a moderate concussion and new information just doesn’t quite seem to be inclined to stick. He’s been told not to worry about most of it, so he isn’t. TB2 just makes for a less intense sort of ride than TB1, and Virgil’s a bit more considerate a pilot.

“D’you think you’re gonna be properly vertical anytime soon? Grandma wants a look at you.”

The past few hours have been full of people who’d wanted the same thing, doctors with penlights and charts and complicated questions, a technician with a loud, horrible MRI machine, and Scott, hovering insistently throughout the entire process, poking and peering and prodding in the spare moments in between professional poking, peering, and prodding. “I’m sick of people looking at me,” John grumbles, but accepts Virgil’s help to his feet, appreciates his little brother’s essential solidity after a very long day spent mostly in the open air.

“Well, I’m sure people are sick of looking at your dumb ginger face. But Grandma’s last in line and then you can go lie down quietly in a dark room, and if anyone else threatens an interest in looking at you, she’ll probably hit 'em with the broom.”

“…Even Scott?”

“Especially Scott.”

That sounds as though it’ll be worth the trade off.

***

He falls again within twenty-four hours, but this time it’s only out of bed, and only because he’s had a nightmare of the same awful sensation, dredged up from the part of his unconscious that had been aware of the last fall. But this time he actually hits the ground, it’s the impact with the floor that wakes him up. John muddles back to awareness to find himself all twisted up in his bedsheets and breathing too fast, with his heart hammering in his chest and his head pounding again, such that the only option for the first few minutes is just to stay curled up on the hardwood, lost and bewildered in the dark, and trying and failing to calm down.

He’s in his bedroom at home on the island, but it’s dark, and the place is unfamiliar and disorienting. He’s spiralling up into a state of uncharacteristic panic when the bedroom door opens and a slice of golden light from the hallway seems to flood the room.

“…Where the hell are you?” is Scott’s first question, but he answers it for himself soon enough, his footsteps are quick across the room to the far side of the bed. “Johnny, for chrissakes,” he sighs, equal parts concern and exasperation. He’s already untangling blankets and bed sheets and limbs as he bends down. “C’mon, lemme help—”

Sorted out and settled back down, permitted to sit on the floor for a few minutes to recover, it’s the nickname that John snags on. It’s the first thing he manages to say once he gets his breath back—his head still spinning, sitting on the floor beside his brother again—with Scott’s hand rubbing up and down the place between his shoulder blades. “Don’t call me Johnny,” he tells his brother, probably for the thousandth time he’s told any of his brothers, though Scott’s arguably the worst offender.

“Yeah, yeah,” Scott mutters. “You’ve always been real hung up about that.”

John shakes his head, regrets it. “Not always.”

“Since I can remember.”

“Since Dad died.”

“…Oh.”

It’s possible this is the first time John’s actually been honest about the reason for the hangup, but it’s a bad thought to have and a bad time to have it, disoriented in the dark and all tangled up in latent fear and pain, and the way this whole ordeal has left him reeling, shaken up and emotional and feeling distinctly unlike himself.

When it happens, It feels like it must be someone else who’s having the sudden, tearful breakdown. It just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that happens to John. But it’s happening anyway, and it’s not happening to Scott.

But it’s good that Scott’s there, all the same.

***

“I’m sorry, Brains. I mean, I’ve tried, but I really don’t think I have anything for you.”

It’s not the first time the engineer’s asked, but John’s answer is the same as it’s been for the past few days, and most everyone else seems content to chalk it up to concussion-typical amnesia. Brains is still holding out hope for a miraculous recovery of what he thinks will be a very informative dataset.

“You’re q-quite sure? Anything at all you could t-tell me about the way it handled would b-be most beneficial,” Brains prompts again, clearly attempting not to be too disappointed by the denial of data, though this time he’s attempted to make the inquiry casually over breakfast, as though coming at it sideways and informally might help jog John’s memory.

John’s familiar with that particular frustration, but he can’t be anything but apologetic about the fact that he can’t help. He spreads his hands helplessly and apologizes again, “I’m sorry, I just really don’t remember.”

The training in question is meant to take place in the midst of a mobile aerial course, designed by Brains, and made up of a suite of drones of assorted shapes and sizes. These can be remotely configured to represent various situations, and are meant to iterate upward through a series of complex levels, designed to test and train a pilot’s skills. Scott knows them inside and out, backwards and forwards, and can run courses designed for TB1 and for him flying solo with his jetpack, practically with his eyes closed. Flying Thunderbird Shadow, at least twice as aerobatic as any of the rest of the ‘birds, Kayo can do it with her eyes closed, because TBS can essentially take the course on autopilot. Beyond that, Scott regularly puts Alan and Gordon relentlessly through their paces, usually with the pair of them flying Pods A and B in tandem, laughing and whooping and relishing the challenge. Occasionally even Virgil will take TB2 through a modified version of the course, piloting the biggest of the Thunderbirds as though it’s a machine only half its considerable size.

Before now, John hasn’t had anything with which to fly the same course. But his Exosuit is meant to be a versatile piece of equipment, meant to be equally useful both in and out of the atmosphere. And while it was in development, John had dutifully gotten plenty of virtual experience, and once it was completed, he’d even logged a passable amount of time in zero-G, just jetting around in orbit, getting accustomed to the suit and its controls. But he’s only flown it once or twice, in atmo, with gravity. And as far as Scott’s concerned, that just won’t do.

So, training. A requisite minimum of a hundred flight hours, with Scott around for instruction and supervision. They’re about eight hours in. It could be going better.

His younger brother is taking a breather, perched on the small deck of one of the drones, with his wingspan folded and his long legs dangling over the edge of the platform. All Scott had done was clear his throat over the open radio channel, marking the end of what he’d considered to be a generous three minute break, and suggested that maybe John might want to get the next exercise started, with daylight beginning to fade from the South Pacific sky. And John had gotten snappish. And, losing patience with his brother, Scott had snapped right back.

Admittedly, Scott’s maybe not the softest touch or the best teacher in the world, and maybe he’s crossed a line, because there’s a frosty silence over the comm. And then—

“I am not,” John answers, and Scott could swear that the temperature inside his helmet actually drops a few degrees, “a shitty pilot.”

By Scott’s standards this isn’t true, but then, Scott’s standards are high enough to flirt with the upper border of the stratosphere. John can fly. John flies reasonably well. He could probably fly better. Still, Scott modulates his tone, though he needs to be very careful not to patronize his younger brother. “Well, okay, maybe that’s a little too harsh a term—but you have to admit, objectively, you are the worst pilot in the family. You’ve got the least experience out of the five of us. The six of us, if you include Kayo.”

“Objectively, you can blow it out your ass, Scott.”

The bad attitude is uncharacteristic, but then, they’ve been at this for hours now, and John gets frustrated when his efforts don’t result in tangible progress, and can’t seem to help taking criticism personally. Scott’s been pushing him pretty hard, finding something to correct with every attempt at every exercise. And he sighs, tries to remember the last time he had to deal with one of his brothers pitching a tantrum, thirty miles above sea level. Probably not since the last time he’d made Gordon and Alan race through the course, and Gordon had won on a technicality. “Buddy, you’re the one who wanted the Exosuit. Our tech has a learning curve, you know that. Just because you haven’t had to learn the ropes of a new piece of gear in a while doesn’t mean you’re suddenly exempt from putting in the damn work.”

“This is still a stupid exercise. I know how to fly my exosuit.”

“No, this is a necessary exercise. When you first got the damn thing, you didn’t even know which button to hit.”

“Shut up. My time is a lot more valuable than this.”

“Your time is only as valuable as the skillset that backs it up, and thus any time you spend training is necessarily time of value. And I think we both know that you could do to spend a bit more time training.”

“I spend plenty of time training!”

“Not in a non-virtual space, you don’t.”

“My sims are—”

“Not a patch on the real thing, and anyway they’re all coded for zero-G. You need proper training, and this is how we train in atmo.”

“You don’t know the first damn thing about my sims. And why the hell do we even have simulations, if they don’t actually count?”

“They’re fine for learning the theory. But they’re academic, they’re not experience.”

“Three hundred hours of sim time—”

“—is not the same as logging actual goddamn flight hours, John!”

“Yeah, well—”

“Boys.”

Their grandmother’s voice slices the channel in half, leaves the raggedy edges of static behind in its wake. Her sternness and moreover, her disappointment are enough to shut the both of them up, pretty much immediately. The abashed quality of the silence indicates that they’re both deeply ashamed to have been caught arguing. Grandma Tracy allows a few judgmental seconds to pass before she clears her throat, and continues, “We’ve got a medical distress call, a private cargo flight out of Auckland headed for Brisbane. The plane is in flight over the middle of the Coral Sea. Pilot is experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath, has no copilot, no other passengers or flight crew aboard. He’s requesting immediate assistance.”

Scott’s never exactly glad when a rescue crops up, but in this case it’s a welcome break from a stupid fight with his brother. And halfway between Auckland and Brisbane is the bit of the South Pacific that represents the equivalent of their backyard, at least as the Thunderbird flies. “FAB, Tracy Island. Thunderbird One responding,” he answers crisply, and even at distance, he can see that John’s already pulled himself back to his feet aboard the drone, reengaged his controls, and is about to hop off the platform. “Stay put, Thunderbird Five, I’ll fly by and pick you up.”

“Negative, Scott, don’t waste the time. We’re only fifteen klicks out, I can get back to the island on my own. Tracy Island, get me a line to EOS and TB5, I want to start running intel on this vessel and its status—”

Scott’s already pulled up alongside the floating platform, thumbed the switch to open his cargo bay. “Cancel, Tracy Island, have Gordon tag in to stay on the line with the pilot, forward us stats as relevant. John’s flying with me, I could use an extra set of hands. Time for some on the job training.”

There’s a brief silence from Tracy Island, as though Grandma Tracy is evaluating the probability that her boys will behave, with both their tempers already running high, and their patience running short with each other. “Thunderbird Five, confirm?”

There’s the very barest pause over the comm channel and then a terse, “FAB.”

Learning by doing is something Scott’s always believed in. There’s a hydraulic whine at his back as the cargo bay slides open, and then a throaty little burst of rocket fuel, as his brother arrives on board. As the cargo hatch closes, Scott calls over his shoulder. “Welcome aboard, Johnny. Pull up a seat.”

All he gets in answer is a faint grunt, as John’s exosuit powers down, the weight of it no longer self-supporting as the propulsion systems turn off. “You do realize I can’t actually get out of this thing?” he asks, as Scott starts to prepare to go to full throttle, checking and rechecking the telemetry as provided by Tracy Island.

“Well, I don’t know why you’d want to, you’re just gonna need to get right back into it. And on that note, you’re gonna wanna brace yourself,” Scott answers cheerfully, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of a couple anchor points at his back, “Our ETA is about six minutes. Get your sitrep from Gordon on the way.”

There's very little difference between John, falling and Scott, flying, because neither of them are doing it consciously. Scott flies like it's second nature. He flies without thinking, because he and his Thunderbird are one and the same, a union of ship and soul. Scott doesn't need to think about how to fly, he just needs to think about why he's flying, and the purity of purpose is enough that his every need translates perfectly into the way his ship performs.

Right now he needs to save his brother's life, because apparently that's a favour that needs returning.

John's always going on about how the best plans are the simplest, but for Scott, the best plans aren't plans at all. Scot's at his best when he doesn't think about what he's doing, when he takes his actions before he can overthink them. He's honed his reactions to be faster than his brain, and this is the fundamental principle he'd been trying to teach his brother. It seems like ages ago that he was trying to tell John he needed to stop over thinking each maneuver before he executed it, but they're still within the same hour.

So he's not making a plan as he throws his Thunderbird downward, in pursuit of his brother, falling. The remnants of the drone swarm are falling too, crowding the skies as Scott gets closer, such that he needs to twist and roll his ship to negotiate his way past them without any collisions. They're bigger than he'd realized now that he perceives them in comparison to his brother; at least half as big again as John's exosuit, and in all dimensions.

He hears the roar of wind through his opened auxiliary hatch in the same moment that he realizes what his intentions actually are---the simplest possible action, just to get his ship beneath his brother and catch him. There are logistical elements to the lack-of-a-plan that present some problems, and Scott's brain takes back over as he sets the autopilot, climbs out of his seat, and grabs his jetpack.

TB1's autopilot is preprogrammed with a dozen or so specific protocols, all intended to make the ship behave the way he needs it to when he's not actively piloting. He has an entire alphabet of flight patterns that achieve all manner of goals; will have TB1 shadow him at a set distance, or remain stationary where he leaves it, or rendezvous with him at a set location. Alpha through Delta all concern his ability to get back aboard the ship once he exits it. It's Delta he needs, and he engages it as he steps out of the cargo hatch.

He's long since gotten over the shock of that initial drop, the way it feels to just fall, straight down from the safety of his ship into the open air. There's always that same clench of his stomach, the skip of his heartbeat, but Scott's done this so many times that he's used to both, and it's really no more nervewracking than crossing the street. Freefalling is a skill, just the same as flying is, and it's another thing John needs to learn. It's not something his brother would ever admit to, but it's something Scott knows about him regardless---that more than almost anything else, John's afraid of falling.

The column of smoke that trails behind him marks Scott's target, and he's in pursuit almost as soon as he hits the skies. It's probably good that John's not conscious for this part, and as he orients himself in the open air to get a better look at him, Scott can tell with certainty that John's absolutely not conscious. Whether it's the impact with the drone that's done it, or the electric discharge that had followed---it doesn't really matter. Scott adjusts his limbs and straightens his back and tips closer to vertical as he dives after his brother, who's already had nearly twenty seconds of freefall in which to hit terminal velocity. He engages his controls and fires his thrusters to close the distance between them. Another eight seconds and Scott covers two thousand feet, gets near enough to get a faceful of smoke. He puts on a last little bit of speed to get through this, then cuts power to the jetpack. As he matches the speed at which John's falling, he's already stretched out to get a hand on whatever part of his brother he can reach first.

Midair, in freefall, Scott snags John's wrist, and for the first time since things started going wrong, he finally feels like he's got the situation under control.

"Oh boy," he mutters under his breath, though if John's biometrics are out, then his radio's out along with them, and Scott may as well be talking to himself. The sarcasm would probably be lost on him anyway, as Scott echoes his brother's earlier sentiment, "You're just in a hell of a lot of trouble, aren't you? Hang on, Johnny."

The next step is to get a proper hold of the exosuit, though the weight of the thing is only going to be a problem. Scott needs to bring TB1 as close as possible if he's going to get them both back aboard. He wants a better look at his brother, but it's going to have to wait until they're safely aboard. He's still got one hand wrapped around John's wrist, and the other locked firmly around a handhold on the chestpiece, as he snaps the command into his open comm line, clear and crisp and deliberate, "Thunderbird One, initiate Protocol Delta, clearance: five meters."

There's a chime of acknowledgment in his ear, and overhead, his ship begins its descent.

Sometimes Scott thinks that the only thing better than flying his Thunderbird is watching his Thunderbird fly itself.

It's the closest he gets to what other people must feel, seeing International Rescue arrive on the scene. TB1 is beautiful, but never more so than when Scott's got a life in his hands, and his Thunderbird represents salvation. He twists in the air to watch as the ship descends, knows that he's being tracked by some of the most advanced telemetry in the world; that his ship knows where he is and will always, always come when he calls it. It's a loyalty born of silicon and iridium, not heart and soul, but whenever his ship flies to meet him, Scott can't help but feel something that seems a great deal like love.

"Almost there," he murmurs, and releases his grip on John's wrist in favour of retaking control of his jetpack. He adjusts his grip on the exosuit, and starts a gentle burn to counter their fall, his gaze locked on TB1 and the open, waiting cargo hatch overhead, as his ship follows him down. The key to open flight is focusing his attention on exactly where he wants to go, which is another trick he hadn't yet managed to teach his brother. He has to shy away from the thought that he might not get the chance.

It takes all the thrust his jetpack can deliver to handle the extra weight, and he won't be able to sustain upward flight for very long at all. But as Thunderbird One obligingly descends to precisely the specified distance, five meters seems like very little to ask in return. Fifteen feet. He used to jump further than that when he did track in highschool. He can feel the strain on the jet at his back as he opens the throttle, but it's just enough to fight gravity, and the next thing he knows, the roar of wind has diminished and he's tumbling with his brother into the interior of his Thunderbird, even as the hatch closes behind him.

But apparently it's time for some on the job training, and with a man's life hanging in the balance, it's not like John had the option to politely (or impolitely) decline.

It's not like he can't do it, either. And maybe this will be the proof that Scott needs that he should back the hell off, and give him some credit for actually knowing what the hell he's doing. Worst pilot in the family is a title that his big brother has invented, as though it's meant to be something shameful, when really it's just an objective fact that John's always going to have less flight experience than the rest of his siblings. Alan's the prodigy and Gordon's the polymath. Virgil's the expert and Scott's the hotshot. Kayo's the acrobat. And John---

That he's the amateur is probably the most charitable description. The theorist. Three hundred hours of sim training. He likes sims, he's good at them, and they've taught him a lot. What they haven't taught him, and what he refuses to admit to Scott, is just how much work it is to really fly. He runs his sims in a carefully crafted virtual reality within his commsphere, with all manner of scenarios projected on the interior of the space around him, and he's taught himself all of the principles of flight, become practiced at the practice of flying.

He just hasn't had a lot of actual practice, and six minutes is a long time to become uncomfortably aware of the fact.

"Thunderbird One calling Flight G-NZ42, this is International Rescue. We're on approach to you now, preparing to match speed for intercept. G-NZ42, do you copy?"

"Pilot's lost consciousness," John reports, changing back to the primary channel just as Scott hits the brakes and is about to hail the flight again. "Gordon's getting us clearance at the nearest major hospital, we're going to have to go for medical evac."

Scott shakes his head and sighs. "Damn. Is the cockpit sealed?"

"Should be."

"Then you're clear to get aboard through the cargo bay. Opening the auxiliary hatch."

The roar of wind fills TB1, though it's muted and muffled by the soundproofing of Scott's helmet, it's still loud enough that he almost doesn't believe it, when he hears the note of doubt in his brother's voice, "Scott, I'm not sure---"

It makes a change from the belligerent attitude of only ten minutes ago, and gives Scott the slight satisfaction of knowing that his brother was just being difficult, just pitching a tantrum. It's hardly the moment for smugness, so instead he reverts to radiant positivity, a pep talk for the worst pilot in the family. "John, you've got this. This is just a simple jump from one vessel to another, we've been working on this all day. Come on. I do this all the time, it's a cakewalk. Get aboard, and I'll talk you through evac procedure."

Time isn't on their side, and there's a pilot in medical distress who needs their assistance. So whatever John's objection might have been, he stifles it, and his tone is crisp and professional as he answers, "---FAB."

"Atta boy, Johnny," Scott approves.

His brother's last words, before he drops through the open hatch, are a disapproving, "Don't call me Johnny."

Scott just rolls his eyes, watches as his brother makes the simple jump from TB1, engages his thrusters, and matches speed with the plane to fly alongside. It's a simple enough maneuver, and there's a hiss of static over the comm as John opens the channel again. "I'm not seeing an exterior override for the forward hatch. Can you pull it open?"

"Yeah, but I'll want you well clear before I do. Get over to the other side of the vessel, do a quick pass over the cockpit and see if you can get a visual on the pilot. I'll pop the door for you."

"FAB."

There's an exterior hatch near the front of the plane, and Scott watches as his brother pulls ahead, then executes a neat pass across the nose, skirting around to land on the wing of the plane. Despite himself, as he lines up his shot with the grappling hook, Scott's rather impressed with the tidiness of the move. "See? Practice makes perfect! You're coming along just fine, John."

"If you think that had more to do with your eight hours of nagging and nitpicking than it did with my three hundred hours of sim time---"

"Did you get a look at the pilot?" Scott interrupts, and taps briskly on the trigger button for his forward grapnel, feels the satisfying jerk of the line as this connects, a perfect bullseye in the center of the door. He tweaks his thrusters just slightly and the magnet at the center pops the door neatly out of its frame.

"No," John answers, and there's that note of slight trepidation in his voice again, the sort of unspoken concern that Scott's all too used to breezing past. "I didn't see anyone."

Scott double checks the call sign he's been given against the numbers stenciled on the fuselage of the jet. Prudently he pulls TB1 up above the vessel, so better to supervise and to lower a rescue harness once John's ready for it. "It's not like we could have the wrong plane. Maybe he fell out of his seat."

"Should've been strapped in. Gordon would've told him so."

"Well, the door's open, anyway, you'll find out soon enough. Get aboard, John. Whatever happened, obviously the guy's in bad shape."

"...Right."

From overhead, Scott watches as his brother performs another neat, nimble bit of aerobatics, moving from one wing of the plane to the other, matching speed with the jet the entire time, and landing lightly and easily, as though this entire process isn't happening at altitude, at cruising speed. And it occurs to him, a little reluctantly, that maybe he's been a little hard on his brother. Maybe the reason John's been so prickly and resistant is because Scott has been nagging and nitpicking, inventing faults where he can't actually find them, and holding his brother to an impossible standard. The way Scott does things isn't necessarily the only way things should be done. John's not a bad pilot, not by any stretch of the imagination. He's just a little inexperienced.

He makes a note to apologize, once they're back to base. For the moment, he watches as John disappears into the open hatch on the side of the plane, and then hears that same note of nervousness in his voice again, as he comments, "...I really wish I'd been able to patch through to TB5 and pull up the shipping manifest on this flight. We don't know what's back here, what're we gonna do about this thing once we evac the pilot? We can't just leave it flying."

"One problem at a time, Johnny. Get to the cockpit."

The only answer is silence, presumably as John follows through on the order. Scott's not sure why, but gradually something about this particular silence starts to send a creep of anxiety up his spine. He's been micromanaging his brother for the past eight hours, and usually that's John's job. He's been listening to John's grumbling backtalk all day, and hoped for an end to it. But this is a different sort of silence, and as the moments continue to stretch past, he doesn't know why he doesn't like it.

Until---

"There's no one here."

In an age of drones and remote manning, when telepresence is as important an aspect of their own work as it is of industry at large---to find a plane flying without a pilot isn't a remarkable thing. But to find a plane flying, its cockpit empty of a pilot who was supposed to be in distress, on the line with one of their own and waiting for rescue---

The note of quiet dread in John's voice is the same as what plays across Scott's nerves like a knife drawn over glass. They both think the exact same thing, though neither of them needs to say the actual word:

Trap.

And below him, as if on cue, the nose of the jet dips suddenly, in a way that has nothing to do with failing engines or the interference of gravity. Scott knows it immediately as the deliberate action of a pilot, putting his plane into a steep dive. And his brother shouts in response, startled, cut off abruptly by a grunt of impact, as he's thrown back against the rear wall of the cockpit. Through the forward window, John's suddenly going to be staring down at the tops of wispy cirrocumulus clouds, and these are a good thirty thousand feet down from their current altitude, seventy-five thousand feet above the Coral Sea.

And spiraling downward.

Scott probably doesn't need to yell at his brother to get the hell out, and he doesn't actually get the chance, because the cargo hatch at the back of the plane blows open, erupts into a roiling mass of black and orange. Almost immediately the sky below him swarms with insectoid mechs, already sparking with blue-white arcs of plasmic electricity, as they begin to orient themselves, organize, and then swerve in unison, to converge on his ship.

"Mechs!" he shouts over the open channel, because his brother needs the warning. "Shit!"

Suddenly John's a lot safer than Scott is, even in a plane driving forcefully downward towards the sea. As there's a reverberating impact and then cracking frrzzzt of electricity across his forward display, Scott's acutely aware that he's got problems of his own to worry about. "Tracy Island, we need back up, now! Thunderbird Shadow, we are in open skies with multiple hostiles. Deploy immediately, Kayo, we're in trouble here! I've gotta---"

"Scott, go!" John's voice over the comm is sharp, stern as steel, and Scott's response is automatic. He has to bank and roll and put his maneuvering thrusters into overdrive, evading the swarm of mechs He can't go too far, can't just blast to full throttle and lose the lot of them, because he can't let John out of his sight. Brotherly instinct is a force like magnetism and he feels the pull in his chest as he leaves his brother behind, but he needs to get clear of the swarm before he can hope to help. There are still seventy-thousand feet between John and real trouble, and they've had far narrower misses than that.

Besides, whatever Scott's opinions on John's relative skill as a pilot, the fact remains: John's got wings of his own, and can take care of himself.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have collared John into this job. He probably should’ve let John fly back to Tracy Island. He’d feel much, much better about this whole situation if John were managing it from afar instead of right in the middle of it, with his exosuit and his misplaced confidence and his highly, highly illegal weaponized EMF generator. Beyond that, if John weren’t here, Scott could just push his engines to full throttle, leave the cluster of drones behind, and hightail it back to the island. If he leaves now, he risks the swarm scanning the skies and retargeting his brother, who won’t be able to handle a dozen drones actively on the attack, no matter what he thinks. It’s taking all of Scott’s attention to keep himself flying, and he doesn’t know how the hell they’re going to get out of this mess.

In between everything else he’s got to worry about, Scott manages to find a few spare moments to be furious about the fact that they’re in this mess in the first place.

There’s probably a lesson they should’ve learned by now about walking (flying/diving) into traps. They should all probably be taking steps to be more careful, to look at situations like this with a baseline of suspicion, prudence. It’s terrifying and unfair to think that there’s someone in the world who would use their profession against them; would turn their desire to save lives into a way to lure them into harm. In retrospect, so many aspects of the whole scenario seem like red flags, and they’re exactly the sort of red flags that John usually looks out for.

But this is hardly the time for hindsight. Scott just has to hope that his brother is as good at thinking on the fly as he is at thinking on his feet. He’s given John a solid half a minute to think, and he’s about to bark over the open channel for his brother to give him some options, when he hears a faint huff of breath, a frustrated sigh. And then John says something Scott doesn’t want to hear.

“…Scott, I really don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t require disabling that swarm. You’re gonna need to bring them to me, or break off and let them find me themselves.”

That’s not happening. Another shot lands against his hull, the dampening shield flickers and his display drops it to twenty-six percent. “Negative. You shouldn’t even be here—”

“You’d be dead if I wasn’t. There weren’t supposed to be two of us. We weren’t supposed to be armed. Clearly you were expected to get aboard that cargo jet and get caught in the cockpit while it dive bombed, and then without you actively flying it, Thunderbird One was supposed to go down. It would’ve gone down. We can get out of this, but you have to work with me. I can do this.”

There’s irony in the fact that Scott had thought a rescue would be a good way to stop having a stupid argument with his brother. They’re still arguing about whether John’s a good enough pilot, only now the stakes have changed. Now the stakes may actually be life and death. And Scott shakes his head, though John can’t see him. “Your shielding—”

“Will be in a better state than yours, in a minute here.”

“Only takes one to kill you.”

“There are twelve trying to kill you.”

“I can—”

“You can’t handle this alone!” John’s voice cuts him off sharply, gains an edge of sternness it hasn’t had before now, the same that Scott’s been trying to use to bring his brother up short. Desperation bleeds over into the warning, as he continues, “This was a trap, meant to kill you and take down TB1. If you go down, they’ll head for me anyway. You have to let me help, or—”

Scott doesn’t hear the rest of it, or maybe the blinding flash of plasmic blue in the skies overhead cuts John off. A particularly well timed strike brings twenty-six percent down to a bare twenty. Alarms start to blare, bathing the interior of Scott’s cockpit in bloody red emergency lighting.

And it just reinforces the fact that John’s right.

Scott exhales, hard, and his hands tighten slightly on the controls. He accelerates, trailing the swarm along behind him, as he starts to prepare to bring his ship back around, towards his brother. The sweat on his palms is wicked away immediately by the fabric of his gloves, but the clammy, anxious feeling remains. “…Okay, John. Coming to you. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Basically, John needs his brother to thread a needle with his Thunderbird at about three hundred miles an hour.

“I need you to make a pass at your lowest possible speed, while I channel an EM field for you to fly through.”

It’s a little known fact about Thunderbird One—not that there are any widely known facts about Thunderbird One—that it’s actually harder on its engines to go slow than it is to go fast. Of course, this references a scale at which “slow” is anything under Mach 1, and “fast” is sustained flight at Mach 20, fast enough to circumnavigate the globe in two hours flat. TB1 is, after all, designed to push that upper limit, not to linger at the lower border of what’s achievable by commercial aircraft. If Scott goes too slow, his engines risk stalling. If Scott wants to leave TB1 hovering stationary in midair, he has to turn his engines off entirely, and rely on a suite of thrusters designed to keep the ship in the air.

There’s an inverse relationship between the size of the field that John’s EMF device can generate, versus its duration. It leaves them with two options. “I can give you a hundred meter field for three seconds, or a thirty meter field for ten. You’ll burn the last of your shielding on the way through, but if they stay in formation on your tail, it’ll take the swarm out with it.”

There’s math to be done here, but not the sort of math that’s done with numbers. It’s the sort of math that’s done by feel, pure instinct. Scott doesn’t need to do the math to know how close he can safely fly his ship, and he makes that call almost immediately, “Gotta be a hundred. I’m not flying within fifteen meters of you, the turbulence will be more than you can handle”

John’s less worried about that than he is about the timing. Three seconds isn’t much time. “It’s not much of a window.”

“Not your problem. You just open it when I tell you to. I’m coming back around, get ready.”

“FAB.”

So that’s that, decided. They’re doing it, and now John needs to get himself in position. He’s just thankful that Scott trusts him enough to help.

Whether he realizes it or not, it’s lucky he’s had eight hours of practice. John hasn’t had time since they first deployed from island airspace to switch out of thinking like he’s flying, the muscle memory of the suit’s controls remains fresh. He’s thinking too hard and concentrating too closely on what needs to happen next to second-guess himself, as far as the positioning of his ailerons or whatever else. In the briefest possible moment of distraction, John remembers the cargo plane and glances earthward towards where he remembers seeing it last. It’s still falling, trailing a corkscrew spiral of smoke downward towards the tops of the clouds below. It’s only been a few minutes since this whole ordeal started. Less than a quarter of an hour ago, Scott was nagging him to get back in the air and back to training. Kayo’s probably about seven minutes distant, but up here that may as well be an eternity. If John’s learned anything today (and if he’s honest, he’s learned plenty), it’s that time passes strangely in the sky.

And that the world is surreal, hovering at seventy thousand feet.

They’re high enough that the curve of the Earth is apparent, and far below are the fleecy, undulating clouds of a mackerel sky, marred only by the helix of smoke from the back of the cargo jet. At this height, the divisions of the atmosphere are visible, the aura of sunlight throught the stratosphere like a halo around the Earth, stretching up into the darkness of the mesosphere, then the thermosphere beyond. It’s strange and otherworldly, even by John’s standards, and for living his life well outside the Earth’s atmosphere, there’s something about the presence of gravity that changes absolutely everything.

It seems obvious, in hindsight. He probably owes Scott an apology.

Later, though.

Static hisses in his ear, and then Scott’s voice, firm and decisive, “Coming around for final approach now. Fire on my mark.”

“FAB.”

It’s a simple plan, which are the best kind, in John’s experience. He dials in the appropriate calibration for the EMF generator, and the pad of his thumb ghosts the trigger, waiting.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Mark.”

John immediately squeezes the trigger for the EMF generator, and the field radiates out from the source. He feels the peculiar, untranslatable sensation of his exosuit’s extant shields, as they cancel it out. It’s going to work, there’s no reason it wouldn’t. There’s nothing in the skies against which he can gauge relative speed or distance, and time seems to slow as he watches TB1 on approach. Even at his lowest speed, Scott’s moving fast enough that John feels him pass overhead rather than sees him, the disturbance of his passage enough to buffet him downward through the air, but not before he compensates with his thrusters, and stays level.

The swarm of drones has stayed tight to Scott’s tail, exactly according to plan, and even as the three seconds pass and the EMF field peters out, John can see they’re already falling, tumbling uselessly out of the sky around him; eight, nine, ten, eleven—the sudden spark of triumph ignites another giddy rush of adrenaline, and it’s impossible to suppress a slightly hysterical laugh over the comm channel, at the closeness of the call, even as he turns in midair, watching his brother coming back around.

It’s come off almost without a hitch.

But the hitch in question is one single drone, slightly different to the others, not a part of the AI hivemind. Configured for direct, remote control, and piloted by someone clever enough to have seen the shape of a trap, and to have known how to turn it back to his own advantage.

When the last mech comes careening out of the sky, John doesn’t know what’s hit him. But it tears an entire wing off his suit, and discharges the last of its energy into a bright, plasma blue bolt.

And like Scott said, it only takes one.

Overhead, looking upward through the cockpit door, he can see the blown open hatch at the back of the plane and the infinity of bright blue freedom beyond it. The interior of the plane is dark, cavernous, a hollow space of bare metal, confining and claustrophobic. When he'd gotten aboard, the cargo bay had been filled with miscellaneous black crates, and now it's apparent what they had contained. Even in those first few moments, he'd gotten the sense that something was wrong, and wished he could've had more intel. Should've trusted his instincts.

Neither here nor there, at this point. At least he's got a straight vertical shot up and clear of the plane. As he pulls himself up through the doorway, John manages to find purchase on the bulkhead, levers himself to his feet, unfolding long limbs with the assistance of the exosuit. The suit is haptically controlled, and so flexing his back changes the positioning of his wings, and he extends his hands to wrap his fingers around the dual joysticks that control his thrusters. There's also a secondary switch for his comms, and he toggles this on, announcing, "Thunderbird One, I'm about ready to bail out of this thing. Am I clear?"

"Negative, John, there's about two dozen mechs out here, and they'll tear you apart. Kayo's en route. She'll be here in fifteen minutes. Stay where you are until I can---"

Where John is is in the belly of a cargo plane, spiraling towards the Coral Sea, and while he hasn't ever coded a simulation to match this exact scenario, he's still pretty sure that this is not really a situation in which one stays put. He's got maybe two minutes, tops, until splashdown, and that's presuming that the plane isn't rigged with any other nasty surprises. "...Until you can do what, exactly?"

"Until I can clean up out here!" There's a slight strain of effort in Scott's voice, the one that goes along with him throwing his Thunderbird through its paces, that sort of tactile physicality that John just doesn't share with TB5. He's not quite there yet with the exosuit, either, despite the intimacy of its very existence, and despite the fact that it's going to be the thing that saves him from crashing into the ocean aboard a falling jet plane.

There's an implication in Scott's answer, and it takes John by surprise, because it's not something he ever would've expected from his brother. In fact, it's something he'd have considered a stark impossibility, if it weren't for the situation they're currently facing.

It's a question they've all been asked, something they've all been offered, a choice they'd each had to make for themselves. Scott had made his own preferences loudly and clearly apparent, but even so, he hadn't done anything further to exert his will upon any of his brothers' choices. He'd left The Decision up to each of them.

So John has a question to ask, because the answer to it will change what exactly he does next. He's still hesitant, a little bit uncertain as he asks, "...did you take the upgrade to Protocol Theta?"

There's immediate hostility in the beat of his elder brother's silence, offense taken. And then, though by now John doesn't need the answer, a heated and empathic, "No. No way in hell, John."

And that settles it. John flexes his shoulders again, and engages his controls. "Well," he answers, bending his knees just slightly as he feels the jets at his back whine into life. There's already a countdown to launch running at the back of his mind, and in a second or so he'll be out there in the same deep blue as his brother, facing the same external threat. "I did."

And he launches himself out the back of the plane and into the fray.

As far as Scott knows, Gordon did, Alan didn't. Kayo already had, ever since their first run in with the Mechanic. He hadn't been sure about Virgil or John, but he would've bet no for both of them.

Theta is a weapons upgrade.

TB1 is not---and never will be---a weapon, but after what had happened with TB4 and the Mariana Trench, after the TV-21 and TB3---there'd been a family meeting, though it hadn't been called by a member of the family.

Well. Not a member by blood, anyway.

Brains had insisted that they all be there, and their grandmother too, probably for the benefit of her sage advice and wisdom, but also probably because he'd gone to her with the idea in the first place, to get her approval. It had been late and everyone had been tired, emotionally and physically. There'd been the uncomfortably prescient sense that what they'd gone through was only the start of worse to come. And Brains had brought up the Theta Protocol.

The most fiendishly clever aspect of the Mechanic's mechs is the fact that the weapons best capable of disabling them are some of the most illegal in the world. A simple electromagnetic pulse would make short, effortless work of any of his drones, but their usage is staunchly forbidden by the World Council.

It's still what Brains had offered. He'd put it in simple, purely practical terms, and said that the best defenses in the world could only go so far, and that this would be the only time and the only situation in which he would offer them the option to arm themselves. He'd put it on the table, and left it to the five of them to make their choices, said that they could each get back to him privately, and no one else ever need know what option they'd taken. Kayo had, rather darkly, hinted that it might be best if they kept their choices to themselves unless it became absolutely necessary. Plausible deniability.

Virgil had had his engines torn out from beneath him in midflight, been forced into the choice between ditching his bird in the ocean or crash landing it on the island. Gordon had nearly been crushed to death inside his ship, then seen TB4 ripped in half in front of him. Scott had nearly been murdered alongside his baby brother, burned away to atoms by one of their own ships, turned against them.

He remembers being hazy and exhausted in that specific aftermath, but he'd still stood up in the middle of the lounge, and made some righteously principled declaration about his own personal opinion on the subject. He'd announced the legacy their father had left them didn't allow him to take this option, that they were better than to need to stoop to the Mechanic's level. That he hoped his brothers would give the implications of the prospect some serious consideration, because they would be opening a door they couldn't exactly close again---but also that he wouldn't stop them, whatever they felt was necessary.

Because he couldn't in good conscience forbid his brothers the option to defend themselves.

And even with a swarm of drones bouncing off the hull of his 'bird, even with electrical interference starting to threaten his control of his ship, Scott still feels his jaw set like stone as he watches a blur of blue and goldenrod yellow come rocketing upward up out of the back of the plane, and knows that his brother's made a choice he doesn't agree with.

It's particularly galling as John gets some altitude, and at distance makes an assessment of Scott's current situation. His voice crackles over the comm, almost disbelieving, "Oh boy. You're just in a hell of a lot of trouble, aren't you? Sit tight, Scotty."

"Don't call me Scotty," Scott snaps, for lack of anything better to say.

Because John's currently in possession of an illegal piece of weaponry---has been this entire time---and he's rocketing in Scott's direction, grim and determined and apparently spoiling for a fight. Only about twenty minutes ago, Scott had been condescending to him about his skills as a pilot. Now Scott's in trouble, knows it, didn't need it stated. Realistically, he should be glad that he's got his brother for backup, glad that John has options available. Practically, there are about two dozen murderously dangerous mechs teeming around his 'bird, damaging his shields in quick, glancing blows even as he tries to evade them, and he's going to be in pretty serious danger if someone doesn't do something.

But this is still the last possible situation in which he wants to engage the worst pilot in the family.

Well, of course he'd taken the upgrade.

Gordon had too, that was a given. Virgil was resolutely, intensely private about his choice, and wouldn't say one way or the other. Alan had quietly wanted John's opinion on what he should do, and it had been John's opinion that it wasn't something Alan was ever going to need, and he'd been glad to watch his little brother gratefully decline another too-grown-up responsibility.

And Scott had felt compelled to set an example in their father's absence. As the eldest, that's probably his prerogative. John's the second-eldest, and needs to follow no such standard. In fact, there's probably an argument to be made for the merits of devil's advocacy, for offering an alternative to Scott's take on things. For John, it had been the simple consideration of better safe than sorry, and the practical reality that he was also the least likely to ever need to use a weapons upgrade, such as it was. In his opinion, the differences between what they already had and what Brains was offering were academic, anyway. It's not like TB4 doesn't have a nose full of demo charges. It's not like TB2 isn't equipped with some of the most powerful industrial grade lasers on the planet. It's not like Scott wouldn't level a grapnel at the face of anyone who threatened one of his brothers and pull the trigger, if by doing so he could save a member of his family from harm. Not like their father wouldn't have either.

And further to that point, at least in this specific scenario, it's not like they'd be hurting anyone by defending themselves. The Mechanic weaponizes drones, has a suite of mechs that seem specifically designed to disable aircraft; their aircraft. He remote pilots everything, has nothing at risk and nothing to lose when he goes on the offensive. It's an unfair advantage, and not one John believed they could tolerate.

So, carefully constructed and cleverly hidden, his exosuit contains a mini EMP device. Short range, limited output, single use and disposable. Usable directionally or in a radial burst, with only enough power for a limit of two minutes. Very, very illegal. A last resort, in case of emergency.

The sky full of insectoid drones menacing his brother's Thunderbird seems like it constitutes an emergency.

And surprisingly, bringing today's efforts around full circle, it turns out that flying is a great deal easier when it's obviously an emergency than when it is demonstrably not. Weaving in and out and around Brains' preprogrammed drones in their own airspace while Scott tells him that he needs to make his turns a little tidier is one thing. Negotiating his way out of a falling cargo plane and into a sky full of hostile mechs is entirely another. Apparently there are some actual merits to on the job training.

So John doesn't second-guess himself for a moment as he rockets a thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet upward, gets well clear of the plane falling away below him in case it decides to explode, and up above the swarm of drones that fill the air around Thunderbird One. He wouldn't have predicted it, especially after being harangued all day about the finer aspects of his piloting ability, but there's a weird sense of anticipation building up, as he peers down and clinically assesses the mess Scott's gotten into.

It's worse than he'd expected.

John can't help but be a little bit dumbfounded by the fact that there'd been two dozen mechs lying in wait for them, and they just hadn't had any way to tell. He'd known there were drones, had assumed Scott was exaggerating, and hadn't expected more than a handful, but this is a swarm. If he and Scott held slightly less disparate philosophical positions about the weaponization of Thunderbirds, then the current situation would probably be a death sentence for one or both of them.

"Oh boy. You're just in a hell of a lot of trouble, aren't you? Sit tight, Scotty."

His brother's voice is taut, irritated and tense in his ear as he answers, "Don't call me Scotty."

And John can't quite help a grin at that, as his hands tense around the controls again.

Considering the concerns he has about the current status of his brother's spine subsequent to being tackled in midair by a hostile drone nearly twice his size---tripping over him would probably sbe bad and unhelpful. John hasn't so much as twitched since they got back aboard, crumpled on his side where Scott let him drop.

The reasons he's got to be concerned about his brother's spine are starting to catch up with him, a brewing storm of fear and anger and anxiety, with the faintest silver lining of relief that it hadn't been worse, like lightning at the edges of thunder clouds. He still doesn't know that John isn't just dead. He hasn't checked. Scott's just been acting like he isn't, like that's impossible; something that just couldn't have happened on what was supposed to be a simple, straightforward run, a basic rescue, practically a stone's throw from the island. It's not optimism as much as it is the simple, staunch refusal to believe the worst, that today could've gone so wrong, so suddenly.

The first thing he does is douse the smoking, sparking place at the back of the exosuit, stifling it with fire retardant foam that hisses out of the can he'd grabbed. This immediately snuffs out the smoke, neutralizes any leaking fuel. He sets the cannister aside and kneels down, leans over to get a proper look at his brother, carefully shifting the bulk of the exosuit so that John's no longer lying twisted on his side.

And he's rewarded with a (blank, slightly unfocused) stare from a pair of bright green eyes, even as he reaches for John's wrist in search of a pulse. He ends up grabbing his brother's hand and squeezing instead, gets a feeble twitch of his fingers in response.

Scott hadn't quite realized how potent the relief would be, but it floods into him like oxygen. Real relief is like a proper strike of lightning, instead of just the faint silver edges of hope. He feels the tension in his jaw finally relax as he breaks into a grin, smiling down at his brother, though the first thing he can think to say is, "You absolute fucking moron."

John can't hear him, with his radio off and his helmet still on, but he seems to recognize that Scott's said something and he blinks, confused. Scott just sighs and shakes his head, starts to move through basic triage. The exosuit is bulky and ungainly and awkward and very much in Scott's way, but it does prevent John from moving too much, as Scott continues a quick assessment. He puts a hand on his brother's shoulder and squeezes gently, hoping John takes this as an indication to hold still, but his eyes have fallen closed again, and there's no response. Scott doesn't like that, and he frowns to himself as he toggles his HUD for a basic medical overview.

A preliminary scan reveals no broken bones, no evidence of severe internal trauma, beyond some minor bruising. Scott chalks up the exosuit as another miracle of Brains' engineering, because after the impact his brother had suffered, Scott had expected to see all manner of damage; broken bones and bruised organs. But the suit had clearly taken the bulk of the force from the impact, absorbed and distributed, just the same way as John's blues have absorbed and diffused the drone's final electric discharge. Scott sighs again and raps his knuckles lightly on the clear perspex face of John's helmet. "C'mon," he mutters, and there's another little burst of relief as John blinks up at him again. Scott raps a little harder, this time on the exosuit. "Hold still," he says, loud and clear so his brother gets the message. "Gonna get you outta this thing."

John just closes his eyes again, but he also lifts a hand, flashes a quick thumbs-up. Scott takes this to mean About damn time, and obligingly gets to work.

The exosuit weighs about a hundred pounds and while this is impressively light considering its capabilities, it's still about a hundred pounds of dead weight. Scott slots open a panel on the chest piece and hunts down a bright red lever. He twists it to unlock the mechanism, then pulls it sharply, and the suit disengages at four major points of articulation, popping open at the shoulders and hips, the chest piece coming loose so that Scott can pull it off and put it aside. It's a little bit like shucking an oyster. Not for the first time, he's grateful for the fact that Brains thinks of everything.

He catches John's shoulder as his brother shifts, and then he's careful, patient, as he helps him ease up into a sitting position, and then lever himself off the shell of his exosuit to sit flat on the floor of TB1's cargo bay, ducking his head to pull off his helmet. This thuds hollowly on the floor as John drops it, but his shoulders stay bowed and he doesn't look up, one hand pressed against his forehead and the other leaning his weight against his knee. This all seems to bode well for the state of his neck and spine, though Scott's a little unsettled by the speed and the shallowness of his breathing. "John?" he prompts. "You with me?"

"Mm. Mmhm." Scott had been hoping for words, and after a few more deep breaths, John manages to pull himself together. The first thing he says is still dazed and disconnected, and an entirely stupid question besides, "...did...did I fall?"

"Yeah, Johnny."

"Oh." He falls silent for a few moments, and then sounds much younger than usual as he asks, "...did you catch me?"

Scott can't help a bit of a chuckle at that, and the hand he's rested on his brother's back reflexively offers a few comforting pats. "All part of the service," he jokes, though it very nearly wasn't funny, and the degree to which John's still disoriented with respect to what's happened is concerning.

"I fell, though?"

"A little."

"...a little?"

"Well. Freefall for maybe twenty seconds. About half a mile, by my reckoning. I can probably get the telemetry to tell you exactly---" John shudders bodily at the mere mention, so Scott quickly appends, "---but I think you probably don't need to know that."

John shakes his head. "Nn. No, I th-think---"

Scott doesn't get to find out whatever his brother thinks, as his back spasms beneath Scott's hand, and he gasps shakily, then throws up on the floor.

"...Okay." Scott's caught him reflexively as he pitched forward, braced an arm across his collarbone. His other hand rubs down the ridge of John's spine as he coughs a few times, retches once, and then shudders again. He doesn't try to sit back up, just hunches forward with his head bowed towards his knees, and his breathing grows shallow again. At least now Scott's got a better idea about why. "All right. Right. So. Is that just late onset motion sickness, or did you hit your head?"

John groans and doesn't catch the sarcasm. Scott catches the way his voice has gotten a little slurred, as he answers, "Depends. 's'Thunderbird One spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise right now?"

"Thunderbird One is cruising on autopilot, flying perfectly straight and level."

"...then I think probably I hit my head."

"Yeah, no shit."

Before he can upbraid his brother for his recklessness, to say nothing of the quality of his flying, there's a chime from the comm in his sash, and Kayo speaks up, "I'm here, just got a visual on Thunderbird One, and...and everything else. What the hell happened? You two made a mess."

Scott grimaces. "We had help."

"I'm tracking debris from multiple collisions, at least a dozen drones still in free fall, the cargo plane you were meant to be evaccing is in the ocean---and is that---did John lose a wing?"

"John also lost consciousness for a solid minute and a half."

"...Is he okay?"

John lifts his head slightly at this, blinks his eyes back open, turns his face towards Scott's open comm. "M'fine," he offers. "Hi. Kayo. Glad you made it. Let's go home."

This last sentence blurs into essentially one word, and Scott rolls his eyes, exasperated for some reason he can't quite put his finger on. "Disregard, Shadow. He is not fine and we're gonna head for the hospital and get him looked at. At least they're already expecting us."

"FAB." There's a note of guilt in Kayo's tone, palpable remorse. "I'm sorry I didn't get here faster. This was...god, Scott. I'm gonna need a full debrief once we've landed. This could've been bad."

Scott's aware. "We're both still in one piece," he assures her instead, deliberately refusing to think about just how bad things could've been. "John'll be okay once we get him checked out."

"Do you want an escort?"

Scott's still sitting beside his brother with an arm around his chest, halfway into the closest thing to a hug that John's tolerated in ages, at least where Scott's considered. This is probably less of a hug and more just the desire not to fall over. Scott's pretty sure the last confirmed instance of anyone getting a hug from John was Alan, on Alan's sixteenth birthday. There's photographic evidence, even. But between the nausea and the dizziness resulting from what's likely a mild concussion, John doesn't seem in a hurry to move, and Scott's not in a hurry to move him. He can fly from here, but there are easier options, and Kayo's presented one of the easiest.

"Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good, thanks. I'm gonna stay put and make sure John's okay. I'll set the autopilot to tail you. Just keep an eye on the skies, I think we'd both feel better if we were ready for any more surprises."

"You got it, Scott. I'll let you know when we're on approach."

"Thanks, Kayo. Thunderbird One, engage Protocol Shadow."

Scott's right arm is still pinned where John's leaned his weight against it, still slumped forward where he sits. Scott absently pats his back again, and then flicks his wrist just-so, just to double check his flight control. He watches as the control matrix switches over to tracking their sister's flight path, and feels the ship dip slightly beneath them, as TB1 adjusts to follow Shadow's flight pattern and then levels off again. John groans about this, too, protesting the sudden movement.

"Oh, you're okay, you big damn baby," Scott chides gently, but he rubs the heel of his hand up and down John's spine, then feels guilty when his brother shudders again, and hesitantly asks, "...You are okay, right?"

There's no immediate answer, and probably it's asking a little much to expect one, but eventually John gives him another thumbs up, and then continues not to say anything.

That's probably fair. Scott checks their ETA again---about another fifteen minutes out, travelling at near top speed, for the hospital in Brisbane where they'd planned to take their phantom pilot. They've already got flight clearance, it's just a shame they're going to have to use it. Scott sighs to himself, starts to mentally rearrange the rest of the month around the fact that John's going to need at least two weeks of downtime, someone to sub in for him up on TB5, a new exosuit. And this is to say nothing of the sobering reality that the Mechanic had laid a trap within spitting distance of Tracy Island, sudden and vicious, and with an apparently deadly intent.

He should probably say something about that, but one minute of silence becomes two, and two turn into three, and it's actually not so bad just to sit next to his brother, in the cargo bay of his Thunderbird, letting the adrenaline bleed off. It's a reminder of how rare John's presence actually is, and how lucky he'd been to have him today. There hadn't been time for hindsight during the course of the action, but the more Scott thinks about it, the more he comes to the same conclusion John had drawn, easily and immediately. He's been worrying about his brother ever since the situation first started going sideways, but it's pure luck that he wasn't killed himself. Solo, it's almost certain he would've been.

He should definitely say something about that.

It takes him another solid minute, but he finally clears his throat, and offers, "---You know, you're not a shitty pilot."

He probably could've come up with something better than that, but it still gets John to lift his head. He shifts slightly where he's sitting, so that Scott removes the arm he'd had around his shoulder, and then shakes his head. "No, I'm not," he agrees.

He sounds tired, rightfully so, and Scott winces, tries again, "I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

John shrugs. "As a general rule, I disregard about ninety percent of the shit you feel the need to say."

Scott scoffs, and knows it isn't true. He knocks an elbow lightly into his brother's ribs. "Took that one pretty personally, though."

"Well, then there's that one time in ten."

"I'll take those odds."

"Yeah, well, you would."

That's more like it. Scott grins, and in deference to his brother's concussion, refrains from ruffling his hair. He punches John lightly in the shoulder instead, and then says the thing he should've said in the first place, "Thanks, John. Really."

"Oh, you're welcome." There's a pause, slightly self-conscious. And then it's with a credible absence of guile and a probable absence of memory that John cautiously inquires, "...uh, for what, though?"

end