IRONHORSE

Part One

'Were we expecting turbulence?' Alan looked up from Thunderbird Two's navigation console as the aircraft juddered disconcertingly around him.

Virgil glanced at the MET display as the unexpected vibration quieted, then returned his gaze to the clear blue sky outside the cockpit.

'Localised instability,' he responded distractedly, squinting at the green jewel of Tracy Island as she rose through the haze of the South Pacific horizon. 'Disabling autopilot.' Virgil inclined his head towards his youngest brother, perched at the console beside him. 'Get Gordon back on deck and buckle up.'

'FAB,' Alan replied as he opened a ship-wide channel. 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is your co-pilot speaking. The captain requests all passengers return to their seats and fasten seat-belts for landing.' Alan grinned at nothing in particular as he removed his headset, stretched his neck and relocated to the passenger seat attached to the rear cabin bulkhead.

'Base from Thunderbird Two.' Virgil angled International Rescue's giant transport for descent, banking to bring her into alignment with the runway. 'We are on approach.'

'Thunderbird Two from Base,' Tin-Tin's voice burst crisp and clean from the communications panel. 'You are clear for landing and your washing has been done. Cash payments only, please.'

'FAB.' Now it was Virgil's turn to grin, and he definitely had something worth grinning about. Fresh sheets on his bed, for a start. A soft pillow. And at least ten hours of uninterrupted slumber. The grin widened.

'What's keeping Gordon?' Alan's unexpected question wiped the anticipatory smile from Virgil's face. He glanced back at the empty space on the passenger seat, then raised an eyebrow at his brother.

'He didn't respond?' Virgil turned back to the intercom, irritation underscoring the edges of his words. 'Gordon. Location.'

Silence crackled from the cockpit speaker.

'Respond please.' Virgil stared at the island as it loomed larger on the horizon. Protocol demanded all crew secure on deck prior to landing. If Gordon didn't show up…dammit. 'See if you can get him on your wristcom, Al.'

'Gordon? Are you reading?' Alan's voice cut sharply across the whine of the engines. 'No response, Virgil. I can't even get a fix on him.'

'What?' Virgil didn't know whether to be worried or pissed. 'Go find him. You've got sixty seconds and then I'm aborting.'

Alan unbuckled himself obediently. 'Don't worry,' he tossed his hat onto the seat as he headed for the access passage. 'He's down there somewhere.'

'Fifty-five seconds, Al.'

Alan rolled his eyes. Virgil's moods could turn on a dime, and it was never worth poking the beast when he was in a state of flux. Alan slapped his hand against the corridor lighting panel, blinking as the lights flickered into life. A glance at the elevator showed it wasn't active, which meant Gordon was either still in the pod or making his way up via the access hatch. Alan leaned over shaft, hoping to see the dark outline of his brother already filling the narrow hatchway. Instead, the ladder was empty, all the way to the bottom.

'Gordon!' Alan bellowed down the shaft.

Shit.

If he had to go down there, then this was going to take way more than fifty-five seconds.

'Gordon!' He cocked his head, listened intently for Gordon's returning voice. Nothing.

Alan felt the faint prickling of unease beneath his skin. He placed a hand on the guardrail and peered intently down the empty shaft, Virgil's timeline ticking away unforgivingly in the back of his head. Thirty seconds.

'Gordon!' He lifted a foot, placed it uncertainly on the upper rung. Twenty-five.

Perspiration bloomed in the palms of Alan's hands, his breathing suddenly loud in his ears. Twenty seconds. He tested his weight on the ladder, the metal warm beneath his fingers.

'Virgil?' Alan called back towards the cockpit. 'Something's not right.' Seventeen.

A tremor ran through the aircraft, shuddered its way through the superstructure and into the railing beneath Alan's hands.

'Virgil?' Alan clamped his hands tight to the guard rail, felt the aircraft lurch as she angled wildly off course.

Fifteen.

'Virgil!' The railing slipped from Alan's fingers as he became momentarily weightless, the deck falling out from beneath his feet as Thunderbird Two dropped abruptly out of the sky.

Time slowed.

Fourteen.

Stretched like a ribbon…

…thirteen…

…and snapped.

'Thunderbird Two from Base. What the devil's going on?'

Jeff Tracy stared aghast at the radar, hardly believing what he was seeing. Thunderbird Two had dropped almost 1200 metres in altitude before levelling out, and was now overshooting the island.

'Thunderbird Two from Base,' Jeff broadcast again, every glass surface in the villa rattling as the aircraft thundered just metres overhead. He looked at Tin-Tin worriedly. 'Shut that alarm off, would you?'

'Yes, Mr Tracy.' Tin-Tin disabled the proximity alarm, then turned to the window as Thunderbird Two banked over the nearby headland and headed back out to sea.

Jeff switched channels. 'Thunderbird Five. John, are you seeing this?'

'Yes Father, I'm seeing it.' John's voice snapped immediately into the room. 'I'm also reading only one life sign aboard. Biomet reads Alan.'

Jeff paled. 'Tin-Tin. Locate Scott and get him down to the operations room. Fast. You and Brains wait for me on the runway.'

He turned to watch the diminishing green speck in the sky as Thunderbird Two banked one-eighty over the ocean and aimed herself once more for the island.

'Thunderbird Two from Base. Respond please!'

Alan fought for control of Thunderbird Two's steering yoke as he struggled to raise her nose skyward, tried desperately to gain altitude as the pressure wave from the aircraft's passage tore the tops of the island's palm trees to shreds below him. The frantic hails of his father spilled unanswered through the cockpit speaker.

'Virgil!' Alan screamed through gritted teeth, tearing his eyes away from the flight display to search the deck for his brother. Where the fuck had he gone? He grunted as he felt Thunderbird Two respond and pulled harder on the yoke, banking steeply to take the aircraft beyond the rocky shores of Tracy Island and out to sea.

The comms crackled again. 'Thunderbird Two from…'

'Dad!'

'Alan, what's happened?'

'I… Dad.' Alan's palms pressed hard against the steering yoke. 'Dad. Virgil's gone.'

There was a brief moment of silence, a millisecond of empty air as Jeff Tracy ran through a hundred possibilities in his head and rejected every single one of them. 'Thunderbird Two, say again.'

'Virgil's gone.' Alan teetered on the edge of hysteria. 'He's gone!'

Static bloomed cold in the cockpit. An unbroken stretch of hiss and pop that needled into Alan's skin and settled deep into his bones. Sweat slicked cool beneath his fingers as he brought Thunderbird Two around and aligned her once more with the runway.

'Dad?' Alan took a hand slowly from the yoke to buckle himself in. 'Are you reading me?'

The response was slow in coming, the single word hanging heavy in the air. 'Affirmative.' There was another burst of static. 'Bring her in, son. Just… bring her in.'

Scott adjusted his headset and scooted his chair towards the operations console as he logged on to Thunderbird Two's primary flight display. He had come straight from locking down Thunderbird One, tired, thirsty, and stinking of day-old sweat.

'You heard?' Jeff strode intently into the room.

Scott nodded at his father and covered his headset mic with one hand. 'What the hell did Alan mean? Virgil can't have just disappeared.'

'You heard the same thing I did.' Jeff leaned towards the console to assess Thunderbird Two's flight data. 'Bring up the cabin readings.'

Scott's fingers flew over the keyboard. 'Everything reads normal.'

Jeff scrubbed at his face. 'None of this makes any sense.' He straightened and turned to the viewport and the endless expanse of sea and sky beyond. Thunderbird Two was barely visible in the glare, a tiny green speck aimed straight for the runway. 'Bring him down, Scott.'

'Yessir.'

'And patch John in.'

'Already patched.' Scott readjusted his headset. 'John?'

'Eyes open.' John's voice issued through the console speaker. 'Still registering only one lifesign.'

Scott's eyes rose to meet his father's, a thousand unspoken questions passing between them.

'Thunderbird Two from Operations,' Scott opened the cockpit channel. 'Alan. You're clear for approach. You ready to bring her in?'

'Affirmative.'

Scott was relieved to hear that a semblance of calm had returned to Alan's voice. 'Switching to autonav.'

'I don't need autonav, Scott. I can see the runway.'

'I know kid, but I'm not taking any chances. Anything happens and I'm ready to remote in. You just give the word.'

'FAB.' Alan didn't sound confident. 'Commencing descent.'

Jeff watched the display as Thunderbird Two commenced her approach, placed a hand on Scott's shoulder. 'You got this?'

Scott nodded.

'Then I'm going down to the runway.'

Jeff waited as Thunderbird Two rolled to a halt at the end of the tarmac, superheated air washing down from the engine mountings and evaporating the perspiration on his face. His feet shifted on the burning bitumen as sweat collected slick and warm in the small of his back.

'Tin-Tin.' Jeff turned away from the backwash as the engines droned their way towards silence. 'Check the externals for breaches. Identify anything anomalous and report.'

Tin-Tin tilted her face towards the sky, shielded her eyes with one hand as she looked up at the cockpit. 'Yes, Mr Tracy.'

'Brains, follow me.' Jeff keyed open the forward entry port, sweat cooling on his skin as a draft of cold air washed out from the dark space beyond. He pressed a hand against the lighting panel inside the door, waited half a second for the lights to flicker to full illumination. 'Check the pod,' he instructed the young man behind him. 'Gordon has to be there somewhere.'

Brains nodded and stepped into the cool passageway, footsteps echoing sharply from the metal beneath his feet. He parted his lips and inhaled the still air, tasted ozone on his tongue. Thunderbird Two seemed unnaturally quiet. And strangely dangerous.

'Textbook, Al.' Scott appraised Thunderbird Two's remote flight display as Alan powered the aircraft down. 'Although engine one's running hot.'

'Don't care, Scott. I'm just glad to be on the ground.'

'I hear you.' Scott moved his headset mic closer to his mouth. 'Al?'

Silence burned through the connection.

Scott fingered the microphone and lifted his eyes to the window. 'What happened out there?'

There were sounds of movement. Rustling. A sharp inhalation of breath. And finally, 'I don't know.' Alan's voice sounded hollow, sent a knot of fear spiralling into the pit of Scott's stomach. 'I don't know.'

Jeff paused before the cockpit door and activated the access panel, teeth clamping hard together as the door slid smoothly aside. The knot in his gut tightened as he saw his youngest son standing apprehensively beside the pilot's chair, a small figure stranded in a cockpit that suddenly seemed way too large. And way too empty.

'Dad, I…' The words caught in Alan's throat, pinioned there by fear and the inexplicable.

'Easy, son.' Jeff strode across the deck and placed a hand on Alan's shoulder, looked carefully into the wide blue eyes. 'What happened?'

'Virgil just… he just… disappeared.' Alan's shoulder tensed beneath his father's fingers.

'Alright.' Jeff nodded. 'We'll find him. And Gordon?'

'I don't know.' Alan shrugged away from his father's grasp and turned to the empty pilot's seat. 'Just before…' He paused mid-sentence, swallowed hard. 'Gordon wasn't answering his comms,' he said carefully as he stared at the red leather that padded the chair. 'Virgil sent me down to look for him.'

'And then what?' Jeff prompted.

'We hit a patch of turbulence.' Alan turned to his father. 'And then Virgil was gone.'

Jeff probed searchingly into his son's eyes. 'Report to Tin-Tin,' he said at last. 'Get down to the infirmary for a full work-up.'

'Dad.' Alan remained planted where he stood, the apprehension in his eyes giving way to anger. 'There's nothing wrong with me.'

'Alan.' Jeff's eyes continued to track worriedly across his son's face. 'A full work-up, he repeated. 'And as soon as you're done I want a written account of events. Every detail.'

Alan's eyes lowered, his jaw tight. 'Understood.' He paused by the passenger seat on the way out and bent to retrieve his hat. Alan straightened slowly, crushed the hat silently between his fingers. Jeff studied his son's movements, tried to find in the tightly clenched fists the answers to the questions that hovered unspoken in the air.

'Mr Tracy?'

Jeff flinched as Thunderbird Two's internal comms burst unexpectedly into life.

'Gordon is not in the, ah, pod.' Brains' voice issue tinnily from the speaker. 'Internal sensors indicate no-one else is aboard. A-at least,' he faltered, 'there are no heat signatures registering outside the, ah, cockpit.'

Jeff wiped at the sweat that beaded across his upper lip. 'None of this is making any sense, Brains.'

'I-it's possible the sensors could be malfunctioning,' Brains ventured hesitantly.

Unlikely. Jeff's tongue caught on the word, unwilling to give voice to cold hard reality.

'M-Mr Tracy?'

'Download the flight specs and in-flight recordings for the entire mission. I want the CCTV for the flight deck, pod, every entry port and Thunderbird Four's interior.'

'Yes, Mr Tracy.'

Jeff ran a hand through his hair as he surveyed the cockpit, eyebrows furrowing in consternation. He swept his eyes once more around the empty deck, placed a hand on the pilot's chair and pressed his fingers deep into the leather.