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tb5-heavenward · 1 year

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The Orion Protocol

Act 1

Prologue

People are going to die on Mars.

But then, they're supposed to.

It's almost arguable that that's the entire point of sending people to colonize the Red Planet---to make a new place for humans to live their lives to their ultimate conclusion and to create a foundation for generations to follow. The first pioneers, the people who will beget life on another planet; all of them are supposed to die on Mars.

By their bones buried or their ashes scattered, human lives, ended and spent, will be a measurement of the success of the colony's efforts. Earth is a planet rich in ghosts, where the dead outnumber the living tenfold. But the dead are not a native commodity on Mars, and the Red Planet has no ghosts of its own---until the day it does.

As of November 19th, 2061, there are just shy of ten billion people alive on Earth. There are 400 people alive on Mars.

There are meant to be 401.

"Astronauts don't murder people."

By the tone of Lady Penelope's answering sigh, Scott gets the idea that she's not really interested in treading over this particular patch of philosophical ground. He sees Penelope so often in hologram that it's easy to forget just how arrestingly pretty she is in person. She's no less so than usual today, today being a chilly English afternoon in late November. But it's possible that there might be the slightest hint of strain, tension, just around her eyes. And they narrow, just slightly. The way she lifts her teacup to her lips somehow makes it plain that it's an act of mercy that she does so.

His brother probably doesn't hear the whistle of a bullet, dodged, as Penelope takes a sip of lightly sweetened Earl Grey, instead of tearing John in half, conversationally, for the capital crime of interrupting her.

But then, John rarely sees anyone in person, so perhaps it's understandable that he wouldn't pick up on it. Penelope's got a particular subtlety about her when she's especially annoyed, and when John really gets riled up about something, he doesn't always realize when he's being annoying.

And he must be really riled up at this, because he's being especially annoying---almost belligerent---as he takes note of Penelope's frustrated sigh and Scott's deliberate lack of comment and insists again, "Well, they don't."

Scott reaches for the double espresso parked just beyond the edge of his plate, lately emptied of a dense and buttery scone, complete with clotted cream and jam. At his elbow, his brother still hasn't touched a flaky piece of pain au chocolat, nor his cup of Orange Pekoe, probably gone cold by this point. This might be down to the fact that what was meant to be a friendly rendezvous with Lady Penelope has instead turned into a secret meeting about a secret murder on Mars, and now into a moral debate about the likelihood of a specific subset of humanity to commit said murder.

Being the only astronaut at the table, John seems to feel as though he's obligated to mount a staunch defense of the character of his colleagues. Scott's inclined to think he's taking it a little personally.

But then, maybe that's understandable, too. Not seeing John in person nearly as often as he should, it's easy to forget that off the clock and on the ground, John's more than capable of a certain vehemence. Maybe the death of a fellow astronaut is just an item on the very short list of things John will take personally. Something that seems like just a shame to the rest of the world might be something more like a tragedy, for John.

The news is a few days old by now, and it's not like Scott hasn't heard about it. Everybody has; the first colonist to die on Mars, and only four months after the initial wave of settlers had arrived with the transport ship Helios. Details as reported Earthside are limited by the relatively narrow availability of communication with the Martian Colony. There've been memorials and tributes to the colonist in question, though the cause of his death hasn't publicly been described as anything other than the result of a technical mishap. Media speculation is predictably ugly and rampant, but it's still just speculation, and generally held to be in extremely poor taste. Lady Penelope's usually well above influence by such forces.

After all, strictly speaking, from over a hundred million miles away, there's no way to know that it was murder.

Or what it's got to do with International Rescue if it was.

The bottom of Penelope's teacup hits her saucer. Blue eyes lock with green across a windowside table in a quaint, charming little tea room in the nearest village to Creighton-Ward Manor. The fact that the place is virtually empty, Scott suspects, has more do with the secretive, knowing smile that Penelope had offered their hostess, and the heavy looking envelope she'd laid on the counter before they'd taken their seats. This is saying nothing of the fact that Parker stands outside, staunchly guarding the door. Aside from the initial service of tea and homemade sandwiches, scones and pastries and jam on cheerily mismatched china, the staff have been curiously remote, none of the usual hovering attention of waitstaff to their patrons. Scott gets the idea that this is an arrangement Penelope's made use of before.

And her voice is as sweet and smooth and chilled as the cream on the tea tray as she begins, "John, darling. For the sake of your apparently intractable sensibilities, I shall henceforth make the distinction that it was technically a colonist who's committed the act aforementioned, and not, if we're being strictly technical, an astronaut per se. Regardless, the facts of the matter remain, there has been a murder on Mars."

Before Scott can even raise an eyebrow at this, John's retrieved a slim silver tablet from his pocket and laid it atop the table, his fingers flickering across the surface to pull up relevant details. And he answers back, still waspish and defiant as he elucidates what he must think is a blindingly obvious truth, "People die in space. Space is dangerous. Accidents happen."

Scott watches his brother skip past a handful of news articles about the incident in question and then discard these in favour of something else. What he projects up into the air above the detritus of their afternoon tea is nothing like the sensational coverage that most of the media had been preoccupied by. What John's brought to bear on the argument at hand is the actual incident report, complete with the holographic WWSA encoded seal in the top corner. "And this was an accident," he asserts.

Penelope appears utterly unsurprised by the appearance of what are probably highly classified official documents from the World Wide Space Agency. Scott is slightly less than unsurprised, and can't help a groan in his brother's direction. "Are you supposed to have those?" he asks.

"I got curious. I called in a favour," John replies glibly, with the sort of easy avoidance of the question that doesn't actually get past his older brother, so much as it's temporarily permitted to slide. John taps a finger on his tablet again and pulls up a complex electrical schematic. "There was a technical failure of an airlock on one of their habitation pods, one engineer was killed by sudden depressurization. Personnel investigated and put it down to an isolated equipment malfunction. The appropriate steps were taken to verify that it was an individual fault and not a systemic problem." He glares at Penelope, plainly irritated with their London agent as he goes on, "It wasn't a murder, it was an accident. And it's an insult to every last person who undertook this mission---not to mention the man killed in its course---that you'd suggest otherwise. Maybe you've let yourself be taken in by the sensationalism in the media coverage, Penelope, but this is the actual report. And I thought better of you than to believe you'd settle for anything less."

Scott's been on the receiving end of enough of John's categorical shutdowns to feel like this must necessarily put an end to the matter. But Penelope hasn't even blinked and doesn't seem surprised in the least by the official version of events.

"That," she corrects, with an icy gleam in her eyes as she pulls out her own tablet and hands it across the table, "is the official statement as relayed to the WWSA via the World Wide Space Station. It is explicitly intended as a cover up. This is the report that was encrypted and embedded within the same, along with a missive from the Mission Commander---submitted to WWSA high command under the Orion Protocol."

Whatever this means to John is lost on Scott, but he doesn't miss the way his brother's eyes widen slightly. John takes the tablet and starts to skim through its contents. Scott watches as his younger brother sits back in his chair, lapsing into what seems like a fairly troubled silence as he reads the provided report. For lack of another likely opportunity, Scott takes advantage of the distraction to steal his brother's pastry. Penelope takes another sip of tea. And a long minute of silence creeps by, as John does what he does best.

While John assesses the situation, out of the corner of his eye, with his mouth full of puff pastry and French chocolate, Scott covertly assesses his brother.

Scott doesn't spend a lot of time in John's company. They talk to each other every day and some days it seems like every hour, but as far as time spent together---John's actual presence is a relatively scarce commodity in Scott's life. Still, he's known John for a quarter of a century and even in spite of their usual distance, in person, Scott's got an innate sense of when his brother's been rattled. And something about this is getting to him, though at first blush it's not entirely clear what or why.

For lack of information, Scott swallows, and clears his throat in a silence that's slowly growing awkward. There's an obvious question that needs asking and he feels a little dumb for being the only one who needs to ask it, "...what's the Orion Protocol?"

"Break glass in case of mutiny," John mutters absently in answer, not looking up from poring over the provided report.

Penelope sighs again and from the way she glares at John (and goes ignored), it's possible she considers this a rather shallow interpretation of the actual facts. "Essentially. The Commander has reason to believe there may be an extant threat to her command of the mission, and in this case a threat to her life. The Orion Protocol is a means to covertly request urgent intervention from those in authority."

"What's this got to do with you, though?" Scott asks, and refrains from asking what this has to do with him, by extension. He can probably guess what this has to do with him, because it's bright red, fifteen stories tall, and he's one of the few people in the world who know how to fly it. More importantly, it can reach the Red Planet within the span of twenty-four hours. "This is something that happened over a hundred million miles away, Lady P. Kinda seems like it must be out of your jurisdiction."

"I haven't got a jurisdiction." Lady Penelope's tone remains vaguely peevish as she corrects him on that point. "In this case, the WWSA reached out to the GDF, and the GDF reached out to me, to discreetly request your services. Not---and this is an important distinction---International Rescue's services. Not Thunderbirds One and Five. Your services, as Scott and John Tracy. This is an incredibly sensitive matter and it needs looking into. Therefore, this is a liaison. I'm liaising."

That's a new one. It might be the double espresso, but in spite of himself, Scott feels a flutter of something like anxiety. He glances at John, hoping to gauge his brother's read on the situation, but John's still transfixed by the information he's been provided. Scott clears his throat a little awkwardly. "Uh. Well, Virg and Gordon are a bit more on model for Frank and Joe Hardy, as far as mystery solving brotherly duos, but---I mean, it's not really what we do, Penelope. If somebody official needs a lift, we can try and hook them up, but I know for a fact that the WWSA has at least a couple spacecraft capable of making the trip at comparable speeds. We'd save them a day or two, maybe---or a week if it's the bureaucracy of an unplanned launch that's the holdup. I guess I'm not sure why you're talking to us at all. Why can't they sort it out themselves?"

John's capacity to pay attention to more than one thing at once is one of the reasons he's Thunderbird Five in the first place. He's apparently been listening well enough that he glances up at Scott's question, but he looks to Penelope as he answers, "Because they don't want to admit that it's happened. They can't. 'Murder on Mars' sounds great on the front of a tabloid, a hundred and forty-four million miles away, but on Mars, it's basically a nightmare scenario. A death this early in the colony's history---an accident is bad for morale as it is, but that's still just life in space. Accidents happen. But if that tiny pool of colonists has to contend with the notion that one of their community is a murderer?" John shakes his head and repeats himself for emphasis, "Nightmare."

Penelope's nod is brief, but there's no denying the triumph in her smile as John comes around to her view of the situation. If she were less than a lady, it might even be somewhat smug. "See? John understands. I knew you'd get there eventually, darling."

John's always been a big picture kind of guy. That's just another reason he's Thunderbird Five. In spite of the fact that it's a rather impersonal reading of the scenario, it's always been something Scott appreciates and admires about his brother; that John can see the whole of a situation, and doesn't let his heart rule his head.

Still. Sitting next to his brother, Scott's getting the distinct sensation that this scenario might present an exception to the rule. Nightmare is a strong sort of word, from John. Scott's curious why he'd use it.

If Penelope notices, she doesn't seem unduly diverted, and there's a certain intensity to her as she continues, "Someone's deliberately made this look like an accident, and it's too great a risk for Commander Travers to acknowledge it was anything but, even if her suspicions are otherwise. The implication inherent in the Orion Protocol is that there's someone within her command structure that she believes she cannot trust. If she were to force the issue, or if the WWSA turns up out of the blue to investigate, they risk panic amongst the colonists, and could potentially force this individual into taking drastic action. She needs help. And that, after all, is the essence of what you do. By several degrees of separation, on behalf of the citizens of Mars, I'm asking if you and John would be willing to look into the matter."

Well. There it is.

And if Scott's honest with himself, he can't pretend he doesn't feel a little flicker of excitement at the intrigue of the idea. There's no question that what's happened is a tragedy, but tragedy is more or less their family's bread and butter. His family's uniquely suited to tragedy. Penelope's not wrong---helping people is the essence of what they do---but more than that, this is a matter of a question to be answered, a problem to be solved. Both of these are things that John excels at. Big picture, there are plenty of reasons why he and his brother are perfect for this job, and they're starting to stack up at the back of Scott's mind; just the same as they must have stacked up for Penelope. And if the big picture is obvious to Scott, then it's gotta be obvious to John.

But before Scott can say so, John surprises him. He puts Penelope's tablet back down on the tabletop and gets abruptly to his feet, his chair scraping on the hardwood floor of the almost empty tea room. "No," he says, in a voice that's just a little too loud for the space that they're in, "That isn't what we do."

Then he pulls his coat off of the back of his chair and makes straight for the exit, without a further word.

It's not often that John wishes he knew less about a situation.

It's not often he completely shuts down someone asking for his help, either.

And especially not when that someone is Lady Penelope, but what's done is done and the fact remains; John's walking away from this one.

Literally, in this case.

Just to make sure his position is absolutely crystal clear.

He pushes through the front door of the tea room and out onto the high street of the small village. Parker doesn't stop him, apparently more concerned with keeping people out than keeping them in. Beneath grey skies, the day is cool and damp, dreary with the threat of rain. Nodding to Parker as he pulls on his coat, John picks a direction, and heads down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, before Scott can follow.

The breeze is chillier than what could strictly be considered bracing, but John still pretends he's only stepped outside because he needs a breath of fresh air.

He does, anyway. Need some air. And Scott won't follow him. Not right away, at least. They know each other better than that. John's aware that he's got time to walk this off. And he needs to walk this off.

The high street is narrow between tightly packed buildings, white walls beneath dusty red shingles, with one edifice or another occasionally framed in stark black timber. John's not really paying attention, and he walks more quickly than he probably needs to. It's not like he's running away, or anything. It's just that he needs time and space in order to collect his thoughts. The road slopes gradually upward and curves away in a subtle arc. At the speed he walks, it's not long before the inner track of it takes him out of sight of the tea room.

He slows down slightly, then. Shortens his long-legged stride to half the length of the paving stones on the sidewalk, deliberately pacing himself. And then shivers in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

John wishes he didn't know about the murder on Mars.

It's an ugly enough thought that it makes him feel a little bit sick inside, almost dizzy, like a sudden attack of vertigo. Although, in fairness, it's hard to say how much of that is down to the gravity of the situation, as opposed to just plain old, actual gravity, up to its usual malicious tricks. He's only been down for a couple days. The nausea might just be some latent jet lag, the result of jumping halfway across the world from the island, when Scott insisted they should to pay a visit to Penelope. Well, now he knows what that had been about. Really, he shouldn't be jet-lagged. TB5 runs on the same timezone as England, GMT, Coordinated Universal Time. Theoretically, this is his own timezone, but that doesn't seem to matter. Practically, he's been awake for something like a full twenty-four hours, and hasn't eaten much more than a chicken salad sandwich in the past eight of those. Realistically, there are plenty of reasons for the way he feels ill.

Instinctively, though, John thinks it's probably got more to do with the murder.

John's always been capable of a certain personal detachment from the sort of work he does. It's part of the reason he excels at it. He's able to consider any number of objectively horrifying scenarios calmly and in the abstract, as questions to be answered and problems to be solved, objectives to be met. If they're the sorts of things that keep him up at night later on, that's just because he's only human. What matters is that in the moment, he's reliably capable of keeping a handle on everything.

This, though. This is something that drills down through all his hardwired composure and abstraction; breaks through to the bedrock of what he does---and a not insubstantial aspect of who he is---and leaves a great, gaping crack. And it exposes a deep, dark void of terror, something he's always known was there, but which he almost never taps into. He hadn't realized something like this could touch on such a fundamental fear.

This is something he needs to walk off. So he keeps walking.

There aren't many people out on the high street, between the weather and the time of day, he doesn't pass anyone on the sidewalk. His pace is growing brisk again; his anxiety tells in the way he walks a little too quickly, and he has to slow down. Not that there's anyone around to notice. Further up and on the other side of the narrow street there are a few cars parked, but for the most part, he's alone. John glances back as he stops to turn up the collar of his coat against the wind, blustering between the buildings as they start to space out a little bit---but he can't see anyone following him past the curve of the road at his back. Every passing minute increases the likelihood that FAB1 will come prowling down the street, and then he'll have to explain himself, but for the moment he's still alone with his thoughts, and he's not about to turn back. He keeps going and keeps thinking.

It's just that it's abhorrent, is what it is.

That's what makes his stomach twist and his chest tighten, what makes him have to swallow against the pressure in his throat---the sheer horror at the very thought of it. Murder. On Mars.

A tornado or an earthquake---or a Martian dust storm---that's just nature. The most important thing to know about natural disasters is that they're just natural. They just happen, there's nothing like discretion or discrimination in a tsunami or a mudslide. Industrial accidents, equipment failures, hell, even just plain old, run of the mill stupid bloody idiocy---those sorts of things are worse, in most ways, but they're usually still accidents. They're nothing like this.

This is cold-blooded, deliberate murder, with malice aforethought. John had read Dr. Sandra Travers' plea for help and felt cold starting to creep up his spine. He'd read her secret report of the truth of the incident, and then he'd read it again, and by the third time he'd expected to be able to detach himself from the feeling of numb horror, but he just couldn't quite shake it. The words still cut down to the bone, struck down to bedrock. Evidence of expert tampering. Something made to look like an accident. The sort of thing that would have passed for an accident, except some quintessential sixth sense had told her to look closer. Her suspicions were roused mostly on the grounds that the place where the airlock had failed had been a place where she was meant to be, and that it was instead an innocent and unlucky engineer who'd fallen victim to a trap, made all the more horrifying by its essential cleverness.

Caught up in his thoughts, which circle and spiral around words he'd read too many times, John stumbles a little on a crack in the sidewalk. He puts it down to a fifty-fifty split between vertigo and existential horror, and then looks up and back again, trying to work out how far he's come.

The buildings around him have turned from the prim white-paint exteriors of the main drag to the rusty reds of exposed bricks and mortar, a more residential part of town, already near to the outskirts. John slows down as he comes to a cross street, and realizes he's gone further than he meant to. He stops and, catching himself a little bit out of breath, sits down atop a low brick wall edging up on someone's front garden.

This is ridiculous.

He doesn't know how the hell they're supposed to "look into" a murder without anybody realizing it's a murder, anyway. He doesn't even know what Penelope wants, exactly, or why she's asking, or why this should be his problem, or his brother's. It's not what they do. It's just not. And they're not going to do it, anyway, so that's that. Someone else can deal with it, and he can go back to believing the cover up, and given time, perhaps he can convince himself that it's what's actually happened.

He's still trying to talk himself past the niggling little voice of his conscience, when Scott turns up. It's about ten minutes later and it's started to rain.

Scott's got an umbrella, a big black domed thing that looks like it'll stand up to whatever dolourous old England has to throw at it. Probably on loan from Parker. Probably John should've thought of that. Because raindrops patter stubbornly on black nylon, but Scott stays perfectly dry. By contrast, a drop of icy water falls squarely down the back of John's neck.

Scott's also got a scruffy old bomber jacket, formerly their father's. Rain would run off its smooth leather surface even without the umbrella. Its lining is plush and thick and fleecy, and thus Scott's turned up collar does substantially more against the cold and the wind than even John's good winter trench coat, in its navy blue cashmere.

And Scott just stands on the sidewalk, doesn't make a move to offer his umbrella, or join John where he sits on the low garden wall, because with a ratio of 4:1 vs John's 3:1, Scott's got him soundly beat as far as asshole-big-brother cred. That's just math. And whatever the scenario, John's always well-aware of the math. Eventually Scott clears his throat and breaks his silence.

"I told Penny you're probably just jet-lagged," Scott announces cheerfully, his voice just as warm and dry as he looks beneath his umbrella.

The way he feels isn't jet-lag. "Did she believe you?"

Scott grins, because they both know the answer. "Not even a little. So I said it was probably some astronaut thing, and that we'd both get some fresh air, walk it off, talk it over, take the rental car and meet her back at the manor."

It's starting to get clammy on the inside of John's collar and he shivers again. This time it's because of the cold. "And you left the rental car ten minutes' back up the road because...?"

"John, if you wanted to sit and talk in the rental car, your melodramatic ass could've waited by the rental car."

"I wasn't about to ask for the keys."

"And ruin the high drama of your sudden and extremely rude little exit? No, of course not. You'd have had them in the first place if you hadn't let your driver's license expire."

Embarrassed now, John shrugs and pushes a hand through his hair, sweeps it off his forehead as the rain starts to weigh it down. "Yeah, maybe."

He doesn't know what else to say and so he doesn't say anything else.

Initially Scott just peers at him, and though he's broken the ice with the usual brotherly banter, he's plainly at least a little concerned. Probably with good reason. After a while he scuffs the toes of his boots on the sidewalk and then clears his throat a little awkwardly. "Hey. Uh, real talk for a minute, though. John---you okay?"

John deflects the question as a matter of reflex. "I'm wet and cold."

Scott rolls the handle of his umbrella lightly back and forth in the palm of his hand, the shaft of it resting against his shoulder, and his other hand tucked snugly in the pocket of his jacket. "Yeah, well. That's because when something rattles your cage, your standard M.O. is 'leave immediately and go as far away as possible.' You've been doing this since you were four. I'm just lucky gravity kept you from hauling your scrawny ass up a tree. C'mon, John, talk to me. I didn't know this would bother you so much."

John fidgets slightly and pushes his hands into his own pockets, mirroring Scott. His shoulders hunch a little bit against the rain and the cold, and he's aware that he must look miserable as he answers, "I guess I didn't either."

"What's wrong?"

What's wrong is the fact that John wants to wind his life backward by an hour, to before he'd been confronted with the notion that someone at the bleeding edge of humanity's best and furthest efforts into space exploration so far could be possessed of the will and the capacity and the desire to commit murder. That one of the best and brightest examples of humanity beyond Earth would willingly jeopardize the integrity of an entire colony, could be willing to take the life of a fellow colonist. John wants to pretend that it isn't true, and that if he doesn't acknowledge it, it just won't be.

But he can't exactly admit that to Scott.

"I don't think we should do this."

Scott scoffs and just about rolls his eyes clean out of his head. "Really? Funny, that hasn't been even remotely evident in the way you're carrying on. Not at all. Nope. Would not have guessed."

The sarcasm is what gets John's own natural defenses to kick in. In spite of himself he starts to dig his heels in a bit, starts to push back against Scott's probing. "Well, I don't. We're not...this just isn't what we do. We shouldn't be involved, we can't handle this. We've got no business---"

"See, I disagree with you there," Scott interjects, but he makes the charitable move of coming a little closer with his umbrella and holding it at such an angle so as to deflect the worst of the wind and rain. It also forces John to look up at him, as Scott goes on, "Someone needs our help. Penelope's right; that's what we do. Knowing someone needs us and knowing we're able do something about it, whatever the circumstances, I think we've got an obligation to get involved. And Penelope makes a pretty compelling case for why we might just be the only people who can handle this."

"We're not---"

Scott cuts him off again, "We're not WWSA. We're not GDF. If we're not Thunderbirds One and Five, then we're Scott and John Tracy: the two eldest sons of the first man to walk on Mars, surrogate nephews to Captain Lee Taylor, lately retired to the Red Planet, and known eccentric multi-billionaires. We've got the means and the motive, if you'll pardon my phrasing. The opportunity is just a question of 'we're richer than a small country; we do what we want'. We're the sort of people who would go see Mars. I'd argue that as far as people who could, we're kind of the best possible option."

John makes a minor hypocrite of himself as he says, "The WWSA are the best possible option."

Scott gives him a look. This is another hand-me-down from their father. John's very rarely on the receiving end, and gets the reminder of just how spooky it is---just how much Scott looks like Dad, in moments like these. "You were the one who laid out the reasons why they aren't, actually, so I know you know that's a lie. And you left before she could say so, but Lady P says if we don't do this, then the GDF wants her to reach out to Francoise Lemaire."

This is the sort of statement that brute forces John into a spontaneous revision of his assessment of "The Worst Things That Could Possibly Happen on Mars."

And "Murder of one Martian colonist by another Martian colonist" is just narrowly edged out by "Murder of one Martian colonist by another Martian colonist necessarily investigated by That Insipid Fucking Moron Who Tried to Land a Yacht On Haley's Comet".

Which is horrifying to the point that John doesn't want to believe that could ever happen, either.

So it might be that he sounds a little more incredulous than he means to as he says, "You're not serious."

"Dead serious." Scott pauses to make sure John's been appropriately annoyed by the tastelessness of the pun, and then primly corrects himself, "I mean, if it makes you feel better, technically Penny'd be talking to Madeleine Lemaire---but husband and wife, you know, they're kind of a package deal. And you just know that the unfortunate other half of that partnership is gonna rock up to the Martian surface, park another big dumbass yacht on top of our dad's monument, and disembark wearing a deerstalker cap and brandishing a magnifying glass the size of his stupid face. He'll vlog the entire thing. Almost as good as being there yourself."

John glares at his brother, because by this point it's clear that Scott's being deliberately flippant in order to get a rise out of him. "This isn't funny."

Scott rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet and nods his agreement. The rain's let up, just a little, but the arrhythmia of raindrops on his umbrella still runs in counterpoint to their conversation. "No, it's really not. This is a very unfunny, shit-awful thing that's happened, and a hell of a complicated situation it's put these people into. But you're the smartest, unfunniest bastard I know, and so I can't imagine anyone better to help deal with it."

Dealing with it is the last thing John wants to do. But Scott's not going to let up, either. So he should probably at least try and explain the reasons. He's just not sure where to start.

Scott cedes the last bit of ground and takes a seat on the low stone wall, finally sharing his umbrella properly. It's too little too late, but the gesture still has its meaning. "I feel like you and me have faced up to worse things than this before, John. Hell, I know we have. I guess I just don't get why you're freaking out."

John still doesn't have an answer. He shifts uncomfortably where he sits and privately laments the fact that the hard edge of the brickwork coping is particularly painful when you're not someone who spends much time sitting down. The astronaut's equivalent of taking a load off is just drifting in neutral posture, floating in zero-G. He wants to make a remark to defuse some of the tension, some offhanded comment about how this is a literal pain in the ass, but it's an astronaut's joke, and it'll be lost on Scott.

It suddenly occurs to John that this might be the greatest part of the problem.

"...You told Penelope you figured this was 'probably some astronaut thing'?"

"Is it?"

John nods and scuffs the toes of his oxfords on the cement of the sidewalk at his feet. "Yeah. Probably more than you'd understand, since you're not---I mean, it's just how you aren't---like, you're space-rated, sure, but that's...I mean, that's just not---" he trails off, not sure if what he wants to say would be insulting, and despite Scott's occasional obnoxiousness, not actually wanting to insult his brother.

But Scott has him covered. "I moonlight," he supplies, with another situationally inappropriate grin. "I'm not a real astronaut."

"Right. And...there's just a lot to unpack, here. About all this, and the way it happened, and the fact that it happened at all. And the history of humanity on Mars, and the context...it's complicated. It's really complicated. It's bigger than it seems, it's more than just tabloid headlines that say 'Murder on Mars' and it's more than just the WWSA's reputation---it's...it's even more than the fact that one person's dead and that another person's in fear for their life. It's more than just a murder."

He's rambling, and Scott knows it, because there's the pressure of his elbow against John's ribs. It's not a reprimand so much as it is an acknowledgment that Scott's listening. He goes on to cough pointedly and affirm, "Yeah, I kinda got all that. Gimme some credit, John. I know this is a big problem, but we're not exactly strangers to big problems. You especially. So I guess I'm asking---what is this for you?"

John takes a deep breath, and does what he does best. He drills his way down to the bedrock, gets to the heart of the matter, and renders the situation into its fundamentals. "This scares me," he admits. "This really scares me."

John's not a coward. Far from it. Probably so far from it that he comes out the other side, and quietly exists as one of the bravest, toughest people Scott knows. For as much as their family pokes fun at John for existing high above and far away from the actual action---for as much as he himself can be self-deprecating on the same subject---the truth is, John's an astronaut. A real astronaut. John may not plumb the depths of abandoned uranium mines or get in scraps with supervillains at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but he does live his life at over seventeen thousand miles an hour, nearly three hundred miles a minute, five miles a second, in a bubble of air and heat and light and precarious safety. Sometimes with no more between him and the void than a spacesuit so tight that they tease him about that, too. And so the mundane reality of John's day to day existence is raw and perilous and courageous in a way that precludes him entirely from being a coward.

But the admission of fear isn't what makes a coward. And in situations where Scott's reacted with gut-impulse and instinct, he's always counted on his brother to have the big picture view. It's John's job to see the things that are worth being afraid of, before anyone else does. Fear is part of what John does. Maybe John's not wrong to think they shouldn't be involved. Maybe Scott should trust his brother's instincts.

But in spite of the gravity of John's confession, he doesn't seem to want to discuss it any further, and they make the walk back to the car in relative silence. When they get back to the tearoom, FAB1's already long gone, headed back to the manor. This might just be Penelope's equivalent of leaving in a chilly huff, making her irritation with John plain in a way that, once again, John probably just won't pick up on.

It's probably for the best they're not dependent on Penelope for a ride out to the manor. Scott can only imagine it would be an awkward tableau, the three of them in the back of FAB1. And he misses driving, to the point that landing TB1 at Heathrow and renting last year's Aston Martin---in a gleaming cobalt blue, with a leather interior and the sort of horsepower that feels comparable to a jet engine, even if he knows better---had seemed like an entirely justifiable luxury. It lies in wait, one of Scott's only natural predators, by the curb outside the tearoom. Raindrops glisten on its jewel-toned paint job and, despite everything else, the sight of it is enough to pick Scott's spirits up, just a little. So with that in mind, he attempts to lighten the mood.

"This is all mine and you don't get to drive it," he informs his brother, as is required in the time-honoured tradition of elder siblings lording their possessions over their younger. He clicks the key fob in his pocket and the car lets out a cheerful digital chirrup in greeting. He doesn't unlock it immediately, can't help but amble his way around the length of it, casting an appreciative eye over the curve of the hood as John watches him disapprovingly from the curb. "You get to ride in the passenger seat like a loser."

John just sighs and waits with pointed impatience for the passenger door to unlock. "Scott, I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm tired. At this point, I'll ride in the trunk if it gets me out of the rain."

Scott doesn't know what John's complaining about, as he's very generously permitted his brother to retain custody of the umbrella. "It's the 'boot', because we're in England. And I don't actually think you'd fit."

"Open the damn door."

Obliging, Scott lays an affectionate hand atop the roof of the car. As John folds up his umbrella and shakes it out before folding himself into the passenger seat, Scott gives the rooftop a fond little pat, and then climbs into the driver's seat himself. The interior is all graphite coloured leather and sleek, refined interfaces, assorted holograms and heads up displays in the same bright blue as the exterior. As he starts the car, one of these informs him that his connected personal phone has a message waiting.

John's already picked up Scott's phone from where he'd left it in the car's central console and he's thumbing his way past the lockscreen with a practiced ease. Scott's relatively certain there's not a single device in their family's collective possession that John wouldn't be able to hack his way into, given the time and the inclination.

Scott starts the car, pulls away from the curb, and cautions idly, "Mess with that if you really feel you need to, but I guarantee if you're not careful about where you poke around, you're gonna find something you won't like."

John ignores him and takes the high road, which apparently entails a minor reprimand, "You know, being who we are and doing what we do, you probably shouldn't leave your phone just lying in the car. And you should probably have Brains beef up your encryption to something it takes me more than a minute to get past."

"We were out for tea with Penelope. I didn't want to be interrupted." Scott shrugs as he threads the car back up the narrow high street, back in the direction they'd come, towards the outskirts of the tiny village. He's thinking of the open English motorways waiting ahead, the twenty or so miles that stretch between the village and Creighton-Ward Manor, as he answers, "Besides, if it's anything actually important, you know it's not me they'll call, John. You're basically never incommunicado. The day we can't get in touch with you is the day I'll worry. Relax."

"Why've you got a message waiting for you, then?"

"Dunno. But if it was important, you would've gotten it, is my point. QED."

John pulls up the message and reads through the time and origin and the details of the attached file. "...Virgil forwarded you something downloaded to the island's central comm hub, about twenty minutes ago. Low res video, less than a minute long."

The suspicion and creeping disdain in John's tone is something of an insult, but Scott doesn't actually know what the file could be. "Well, if it'd been from Gordon, then I'd tell you to shield your virgin eyes---but since it's Virg, I think you're probably safe. Open it up, I'm curious."

John's eyes flicker up from the phone in his hand, just as Scott clears the end of the high street and starts wending his way towards the nearest motorway, southward towards the manor. The engine gives a low, enthusiastic hum as they pick up speed. "It's raining, watch the road," his younger brother admonishes, unnecessarily, and then with a few deft gestures, broadcasts the video to the dashboard's main display.

Lee Taylor appears in gauzy and low-res hologram. His voice over the speakers is gruff and gravelly, but bluff and friendly as ever, if slightly distorted by the quality of the audio. It's a warm counterpoint to the patter of raindrops on the windows and the scrape of the windshield wipers. "Boys! Hullo from Mars! Scooter, Johnnycake, Virg, Gordo, Allie, hope you're all doin' well. You hear that? Got 'em in one. Tell Brian thanks for the list. Comms're all narrowband out here on the ol' Red Planet, so this'll be short, but it's been a while, so I thought I'd drop a line, letcha know how it's going. And I'll tell you what, this is probably just about the best damn call I ever made, sticking around out here. We've had two more waves of colonists come out, and a crew of surveyors on a two-year contract, and this place is really starting to look like somewhere worth seeing. It's beautiful, boys, and I just wanted to thank you all for bringin' me out. If you're all ever feelin' the need for a change of scenery---and I mean a hell of a change of scenery---we'd all just be properly damn tickled if you ever wanted to visit. Up in Three, wouldn't take much more'n a day. C'mon out, stay a while. Won't hear it said that us Martians ain't hospitable. Anyway. Don't get much more than a minute or two, so I'll wrap this up here. Your ol' Uncle Lee's doing just fine. Been thinking about your dad a lot these days, so I'm thinking about the five of you, too. Wouldn't say I miss Earth, but I sure do miss some of the Earthlings, and you boys most of all. Love to you all. Take care. Cap'n Taylor, signin' off."

The video itself is too blurry and grainy to really be worth paying attention to, even if Scott were the sort of person who'd take his eyes off the road. John, by contrast, watched the entire thing with a sudden intensity, and out of the corner of his eye Scott can see the way he's grown still. Unasked, he plays the call back over again.

As it ends for the second time, silence falls between them.

If they were to investigate a murder---and at this point it's not certain that they will, though Lady Penelope hasn't had a chance to take a second crack at John yet---then this would be the sort of thing that might just be tantamount to a clue. The first they've heard from Captain Taylor in the nearly four months since they left him behind, left him to his retirement, and to Mars. Only days since the first human being had died on Martian soil; not even an hour since Scott and John became privy to the truth of his murder, and out of the clear blue sky, their habitually reclusive surrogate uncle just happens to drop a message about how much he misses them and wishes they would visit.

Prior to discovering that Lee Taylor had taken up residence in a decrepit and abandoned base on the dark side of the Moon, the last time they'd heard from Lee Taylor had been their father's funeral. There's no question that the man is family and even if it's a truth usually unstated, no question that he loves all five of them like the sons he'd never had (nor particularly wanted). But he's still not what one would call casually chatty or tremendously affectionate.

So in the growing discomfort of their current silence, with his eyes still on the road, Scott has no choice but to point out the obvious.

"Oh," he says, in a very deliberate monotone. "What an absolutely mundane and totally probable coincidence. What a completely unsuspicious video message Captain Taylor's just sent us, in his usually gushy and sentimental fashion, asking us to drop a cool twelve million dollars' worth of TB3's flight hours on a round trip out to Mars. He's probably just bored---of the newest and furthest frontier in all of human history. He's probably just lonely---our wacky old uncle, who cheerfully lived alone on the Moon for six months, in a decommissioned moonbase with only a lunar rover for company. This probably has absolutely no bearing on our brief conversation about the sort of quote/unquote 'nightmare scenario' that scares the shit out of astronauts, in particular."

Beside him, John curses under his breath and Scott sees his fingertips drift to the bridge of his nose, pressure points at the inside corners of his eyes, indicative of what's probably a tension headache. Scott's probably not helping.

But given the matter in question, Scott doesn't particularly care. There's a quiet, treacherous part of him that's deeply annoyed with his brother for his reticence, for his refusal to even consider Penelope's request---for his fear. It's probably not to Scott's credit, but something just eats at him about the notion of John, giving in to fear.

John shifts in the passenger seat, tugs at his seatbelt as though he's suddenly feeling trapped by it. He fidgets and seems not to know what he should do with his hands. They toy with the controls for the passenger side window (childlocked, because Scott's an ass) then drift back to his seatbelt, and finally fall into his lap. He's oddly hesitant when he finally asks, "How could he know, though?"

"Know what?"

The hesitance doesn't last. It never does, when John's sure of something. "That it was murder. Commander Travers can't have told anyone else about the report she submitted. The Orion Protocol---when enacted, it's supposed to be completely secret. She wouldn't have told anyone else, and next to nobody knows about its existence. It's exclusively need-to-know, and if you're not the actual commander of a WWSA mission, then you don't need to know. It's like...I mean, you'd never heard of it. I only knew about it because I---"

"Because you're a real astronaut," Scott supplies, but there's a faint drawl of sarcasm there, this time.

There might be the faintest suggestion of hurt in the single beat of John's silence, before he continues, "---Because Dad told me about it, actually."

There's probably plenty that Dad shared with John and not Scott, on the subject of astronauts and their relative realness. That's fine. It brings Scott to his next point. "Yeah, well, I wonder what he'd think of this whole situation."

The pause is long enough to infer at least some margin of guilt. Scott watches the road and John watches raindrops streaking along the passenger side window, before he says, "I don't know. But if he asked me for my take on it, I'd say Lee's message is just exactly what it sounds like."

Scott doesn't like the sound of that. "My gut says this is Lee Taylor, asking for our help, John."

John shakes his head and then shrugs. "You haven't got the only read on him---if you ask me, he's a natural recluse who's retired to a community of four hundred complete strangers. Mars is---well, at the outset, Mars is going to be monotonous. Mars is about eking out survival right now, it's not a big grand adventure. It's the sort of exhaustive technical labour that he's meant to be retired from. This isn't...this isn't some coded distress call. Maybe this is just Uncle Lee, realizing that he's a hundred and forty million miles from home and that it isn't what he thought it would be. Maybe he'd rather pretend he misses us then admit that his era's over." John shrugs. "And if that's the case---well, he can wait a little longer, or he can admit he's made a mistake. He's made his bed, he can lie in it."

It's growing dark. The road lit up by his headlights is properly wet, as rain continues to soak the English countryside. The car is quick and snappy and responsive---and John's warnings for Scott to watch the road really are unnecessary, because the idea that Scott's driving this thing himself is an illusion. Scott can tell, because when he turns to stare at his brother in blank astonishment of what he's just heard, the steering wheel in his hands starts to drift just slightly to the left, and then gets sternly corrected beneath his grip, before the car can so much as start to skid.

John's just deliberately maligned one of his own biggest heroes, written Lee off as some washed-up old has-been, when nothing could be further from the truth. The man Scott had left on Mars had come bounding out of retirement, still fresh and spry and with renewed vigour, when asked if he could consult for International Rescue. He'd stood atop a ridge overlooking the Martian colony, watching a new generation lay their own first footprints in the dusty red soil. Scott had watched Lee Taylor come back to life again, at the prospect of starting fresh, beginning a whole new life on Mars.

Real astronaut or not, John hadn't been there. John doesn't know. What John's just said---the excuse he's just concocted in order to pretend their uncle's call for their help is anything but the obvious---is fear talking.

And Scott hates that thought just about as much as John must hate the thought of what they've been asked to do.

To borrow another trait of their absent father's, Scott's not mad. But he sure as hell is disappointed. And he wonders what their dad would have to say about this. A solid minute of silence passes between him and his brother, before Scott clears his throat.

"I've never had to tell you this before," he says finally, and is grateful that he has the road to stare at, instead of his younger brother, as he says what he needs to say, "---but you're not a coward, John. You're one of the bravest people I know. And I hope I know you better than to believe what I'm hearing, when I listen to you trying to make excuses not to help somebody."

The silence that falls after that statement is the sort that can't be broken.

They arrive at Creighton-Ward manor in frigid silence and receive a similarly chilly reception. Apparently Lady Penelope is possessed of some unspecified but sufficiently pressing personal matter to attend to, and so it's Parker who greets John and his brother when they pull up to the front door. More probably her ladyship is stewing about the fact that all her delicate liaising hasn't resulted in a liaison, but John doesn't care. If Scott cares it's not apparent. If Parker has an opinion on the matter at all, he keeps it entirely to himself.

And if he makes any note of the fact that the pair of them aren't speaking to one another, Parker also makes no comment, and only tells them to leave their overnight bags in the front hall, and that he'll settle them somewhere comfortable to await her ladyship's pleasure.

He escorts them inward to one of the manor's myriad sitting or drawing or parlour rooms, though upon review, this one might actually be a study. The room is paneled all in dark wood and stuffed with heavily bound books, a pair of massive leather chesterfields, scattered club chairs, and assorted century-old pieces of art and statuary that contribute to the manor's stolidly dignified aesthetic. Scott excuses himself to find the nearest of probably a dozen bathrooms. John's left alone to pretend he's interested in reading the gold-embossed titles of books that probably haven't left their shelves since people preferred to read the printed word as printed on actual paper.

Eventually, playing the courteous host in Penelope's stead, Parker returns to ask if John would perhaps care for a drink. When the answer is a wearily affirmative "Yes, please" Parker seems to take it as an indication that this should be a double, and brings a highball glass filled with ice, vodka, and just enough tonic water to suggest that the latter was added only an afterthought. And a wedge of lime.

This is probably unwise.

Astronauts don't murder people and astronauts don't drink.

...or, anyway, they don't drink in space. Or, anyway, John doesn't. He has an up-and-down tolerance and an on-and-off relationship with alcohol, to go along with his up-and-down lifestyle and on-and-off relationship with Earth. And right now, recently returned to the ground after a three month rotation as he is, this tolerance is down. And he's aware of the fact.

But provided with a vodka tonic, proportioned generously in favour of the vodka over the tonic, and left alone to wait for either Scott or Penelope to turn up, John decides that this has been the sort of day that demands a drink at its end. Alone with his thoughts once again, John permits himself a tired sigh and retreats to an arm chair in the corner of room, near a thick-paned, leaded window. There's a ficus and a tiffany lamp and a bronze bust of a bearded and behatted man, sat atop a pedestal. The window is curtained in heavy, dark green fabric, and outside the rain continues, drenching the grounds outside. It seems to be a dark little corner of the manor specifically appointed for brooding, and John would hate for it to go to waste.

Especially when the thoughts he's been left alone with are mostly to do with what Scott's had to say to him.

Not a coward.

Well, no. He's not and he knows that, doesn't need Scott to tell him so. Doesn't need anyone to tell him so, because it's just an empirical fact. John's proven himself the equal of his brothers, on more than one occasion, at least as far as thrilling heroics are considered. Their grandmother's said it of her boys that they've all got bravery bred right into their blood, but that none of it could possibly have come from her side of the family, for as frightening as it can be to watch them work, sometimes.

But if he's honest with himself, John's aware that he hasn't really made himself face up to what he's actually afraid of, as far as this situation's considered. He'd just had the initial shock of fear and horror and hadn't attempted to understand it at all. Scott had tried and failed to press for a clearer explanation, but John hadn't wanted to discuss it any further, and especially not in the cold and the rain. Now he's warm and dry and safe, and with a stiff drink slowly emptying into him, gently ebbing away some of the essential tension---John tentatively starts to try and get his head around the problem.

Because there's a difference between what's frightening and what's dangerous. And despite everything, it's not the danger of confronting a killer that frightens him. His family has no shortage of experience with dangerous people---they have a nemesis, after all---and there's a certain hardening of the heart that happens, when faced with the reality that there are people who want to do him and his loved ones harm. John's got a wary respect for the people who've tried to hurt his family, but he wouldn't call it fear.

In this case, he's less afraid of the murderer than he is of the murder.

Because it's what he'd tried to explain to Scott; that there's more to it than that. That the first death in this planet's history could be at the hands of a colonist---it's the sort of thing that could mar the Martian legacy irrevocably. It could be the thread that causes the whole colony to unravel.

The Helios Mission took a decade to plan. The people the WWSA sent to Mars are the best and brightest examples of what humanity has to offer. They were carefully chosen from a pool of thousands of applicants, expertly vetted and thoroughly trained. They're all meant to be dedicated, wholly and completely, to their new lives as the first citizens of Mars. The colony is more to them than it is to the people watching it from Earth---for the people who live there, it's their home, their entire future.

And one of them has been willing to throw it all away, by killing one of their comrades. Something's malfunctioned on a fundamental level, if someone so carefully chosen could go so wrong. In a pool of about four hundred people, one life seems as though it counts for more than it does on Earth. A murder on Mars is just worse, for so many reasons.

Almost no one on Mars even knows that it's happened. And they won't, unless it happens again.

And there's only one sure way to stop it from happening again.

John's glass on the table at his elbow is empty by the time Scott comes back to the room.

The spot John's chosen is in a little alcove by a bay window, and there's an empty wingback chair across from his. Scott crosses the room and drops into this, heaving a sigh as he does so. He has no drink of his own, and he eyes John's emptied glass with moderate suspicion, but doesn't comment. He doesn't actually seem moved to say anything at all, because he just hasn't, ever since he'd had the last word on the drive to the manor.

It's an unfortunately effective tactic, even against John, who's had more years than the rest of his brothers to build up his resistance to the natural inclination to fall in line with whatever Scott says, just because Scott's the one who said it.

You're not a coward, John.

Scott's inherited a set of incredibly high standards from their father, and he demands no more of the people around him than he does of himself. It's his best and worst quality, the idealism that means he can't understand when not everyone holds the exact same values and priorities that he does; that not everyone holds themselves to the height of the same standard.

So, sometimes literally, Scott just pushes people. He always has, and it's almost the most annoying thing about him.

The actual most annoying thing about him is that, generally speaking, Scott also knows exactly when people need to be pushed.

And equally, he knows exactly when to back off the pressure, so that the lack of it will make its apparent necessity into something to be ashamed of.

Or at least that's how John feels in the face of his brother's continued silence.

John's very rarely the subject of this sort of treatment, and between two generous shots of top shelf Russian vodka and his big brother's dense, disappointed stare, it's maddeningly effective. Bright-eyed and more than a little less inhibited than usual, John can't help but break the silence, and admit to the truth that's been dogging him ever since the tearoom.

With a deep breath, wishing his glass wasn't empty, he starts, "Scott, it's just...it's just how I wish I didn't know it happened. I didn't want to believe it, when Penny said...said there'd been a murder. It's Mars. That's not supposed to happen on Mars. This is supposed to be a whole new frontier, as close to a blank slate as humanity will get. This is supposed to be our species, gaining our first foothold in the solar system. This is---was---so big and beautiful and complicated and important---and so, so many years in the making...and having to know that someone would throw all that away---"

"No one's thrown anything away yet," Scott interrupts. "You're talking like this is already the end, like the whole thing's been tainted and won't ever be okay again. It's bad. I get that. But you're talking like it's enough to completely scrub the entire colony, and John, I just think people are just tougher than that. These people especially."

This needles at that deeper, darker place, the void of fear down below the bedrock, and John shakes his head. "Somehow one of these people is a murderer. Worse, the sort of murderer who plans a murder. Did you read that report? Evidence of expert tampering. This isn't something that happened in the heat of a moment, or in self-defence or...or for any reason I could possibly justify. I can't comprehend how this was even possible, how someone could've slipped past all the vetting and screening and precautions the WWSA takes, to make sure that the sort of people they send to Mars are the sort of people who can handle it. The sort of people who won't do this. What does it mean if one of them's just snapped?"

Maybe it means that Mars is just too much. Maybe it means that there's a limit to what even the best and brightest people can endure, if one of them could deliberately kill another, and could jeopardize the mission as a whole, by leading the commander to believe there's a threat to her life. Maybe it means that there's a limit to what humanity can take, and that this sort of distance and isolation from Earth is dangerous in a way that no one's perceived, the sort of thing that strikes down to bedrock and breaks people open, reveals something dark and terrible.

"It means someone has to find them and stop them, before it happens again," Scott answers evenly, missing the existential interpretation of the question, in favour of what's straightforward, practical, and probably true. He sits leaning back in his chair, secure and calm and confident, and apparently unafraid. Whether this is courage or bravery or just an incompleteness of the understanding necessary to be afraid, Scott's still looking at John like he expects at least one of the above.

And then he says the only thing that could possibly decide the matter---

"---and I've already told Penelope that I'm going to go."

John doesn't flinch at that, but it's a near thing. Instead he stares at his empty high-ball---a heavy, crystalline vessel of cut glass---and the light shining through it, breaking the low gleam of the lamp at his elbow into a complex refraction on the table top. Eventually, because it's his job, he starts to go through the roster, "You're not taking Alan."

This is just a statement of fact, because even if Scott doesn't feel the same deep sense of dread that John does, there's still no way he's bringing their youngest brother into the presence of someone who might threaten his life. "Well, to be more accurate, Alan's not taking me; I'm taking his spaceship and taking myself. But yeah, no. I'll work up some excuse to keep him home. Can't tell him what this is about. He'd probably take it worse than you have."

"Gordon would be a loose cannon."

Scott chuckles. "Gordon wouldn't be able to decide if he wanted to be the good cop or bad cop, not that there's supposed to be a good cop or a bad cop, so much as a pair of hotshot rich kids swanning around Mars like it's a tourist attraction, by way of a cover. Ironically, he'd be good at that. But no, not Gordon. Gordon won't take this seriously."

Right. Because Scott's been taking this so seriously. Scott reliably needs someone to balance him out, headstrong and impetuous as he is. This usually falls to Virgil, but---

"Virgil still can't reliably break Low Earth Orbit without breaking out in hives and hyperventilating."

"Mars would be murder for Virgil."

John glowers at his brother, and if Scott got their father's voice, then John has echoes of their mother's, that don't-make-me-come-up-there, you're-pushing-it-buster, put-your-brother-DOWN type of voice that warns away from the danger zone. "You really have to fucking stop that."

Scott shrugs. It's that same flippancy again, the sort that the eldest employs when he wants to get under John's skin in particular. Gordon does it too, but Scott's definitively the expert. "Whistling in the dark, John."

"Glaringly offensive disregard for the gravity of the situation, Scott."

"No pun intended, I'm sure." Before John can snap at him for this, Scott's fingertips drum on the arm of his chair. "Anyway, it's my situation, I'll handle it how I want."

John sighs and makes his penultimate suggestion, the best one he's got. "Bring Kayo."

But they both know the answer to that one. "You want to leave the rest of the family without Kayo? Here, on Earth, where we've got a murderer of our very own, a madman in the employ of the family nemesis? Trying to pick us off aggressively and with specificity? I don't think so."

Well, obviously not. And the reminder of just what it's like to know that there's someone dangerous out in the world, and out for blood---it's really the nail in the coffin, if John permits himself to slip up and slip into the tendency for morbidly appropriate turns of phrase. Because, despite everything, it's not the murderer John's afraid of. And he knows that deep down, if the murderer in question is allowed to hurt anyone else, things will get exponentially worse.

And even if he's afraid and more than willing to admit that he's afraid, John's not a coward.

"Well, you're not going alone."

Scott lifts his chin and there's a stubborn glint in his pale blue eyes, and just the barest indication of a challenging smile. "You're not going to stop me."

John shakes his head and looks up to meet Scott's gaze. "No," he says, still reluctant, but with a bone deep awareness that, ultimately, this was always the resolution the two of them would come to. "Because you're not going alone."

It's about twenty-four hours since they'd met Penelope in a tiny English tearoom. Twenty-two hours since they'd told her they would take the job. Fourteen hours since they flew back to the island after an overnight stay at the manor. Eight hours since they told the rest of the family that they'd be taking Lee up on his invitation, and flying out to Mars for a visit. One hour since Brains finished loading TB3's cargo bay and outfitting her for the trip, and about another twenty minutes until they're clear for launch. Then it'll be about thirty seconds on the launchpad, and then eight minutes into orbit.

And approximately eighteen hours from that point, and they'll be putting TB3 down on Martian soil for the second time.

It's early morning on Tracy Island, and the lack of urgency about their impending launch means that Scott's afforded the leisure of gearing up at his own pace. Therefore, at t-minus twenty, he's still lying in bed in his pajamas, staring up at the ceiling, and thinking about Mars.

He's glad that they're going. The circumstances aside, he thinks this is going to be good for his brother. Because really, when else is John going to get to see Mars? John hasn't even been to the Moon. Depsite the fact that he's the second astronaut in the family, right in line behind their father, John rarely ever actually leaves orbit. His seventeen thousand mile an hour existence is twenty-two thousand miles from the surface of the Earth, but hardly ever further.

Scott's been to the Moon. Scott's been to Mars. Scott's been to both the places where their father left his bootprints and yet, as far as being an astronaut goes, it's reliably considered to be John who's followed in Jeff Tracy's footsteps. Scott's not an astronaut in the same way that John's not a pilot. Scott's spent plenty of time in space and John can fly a plane, but the pair of them separately still represent two distinct halves of their father's legacy. Space is John's territory, it's what he and their father had shared.

And Scott's not bothered by that. Not really.

...it's just that Scott's always tried to emulate his father. He's always tried to be as bold and confident and decisive in his leadership as his father was. So John's the astronaut. Fine. It's Scott who's always being told that he's a chip off the old block, cut from the same cloth, the spitting image of Jeff Tracy in the prime of his life. Scott's seen pictures, he knows he looks uncannily like his father had, at his age. He tries to act like it, too. When Scott had realized he was younger than his father was, when he took his own first steps on the Martian surface, it had been with a melancholy blend of pride and sadness.

But John's told him that what happened on Mars is something Scott's fundamentally unable to understand---and it's possible that might be getting to him, a little. Just a little. Not in any way he's about to let on, but still. Staring up at the polished wooden beams that cross his ceiling, he wonders if he's missing something that his father would have understood naturally; if Jeff Tracy would have suffered from the same immediate, visceral fear that John had, at the idea of a murder on Mars. He wonders if Lee Taylor's feeling the same dread right down in his core, a hundred and forty million miles away, whether he knows it was a murder or not. Scott wonders if it really is an astronaut thing, because he can't seem to summon up even a fraction of that same feeing.

John hadn't even expected him to be able to understand.

The memory of that realization is suddenly a little more galling than it had been, at the time that he'd first had it. It's suddenly irritating to the point that he kicks the blankets off and climbs out of bed, rolling his shoulders and stretching, as though he can muscle past the sudden feeling of vexation with John. For lack of anything else to do, Scott starts to pull his uniform on.

Sitting beside his brother in the rain, he'd watched John fumble, awkwardly trying to find some inoffensive way to express the fact that there are things he understands that Scott just doesn't, and that this situation is one of them. He'd put it down to the fact that Scott isn't a real astronaut, and Scott had let him, though he'd still managed to perceive John's usual opinion, going unstated. John's never gone so far as to call Scott stupid, exactly. It's possibly a little bit telling that he hasn't, actually. Ever. That he's always been very, very deliberate about never actually putting the words in that specific order.

Instead it's always, "Don't do anything stupid, Scott" or "Abort your landing or crash your Thunderbird, Scott, it's entirely up to you" or the ever popular "Just making absolutely sure you're aware of the mountain you're about to fly into, Scott."

Of course you're not stupid, Scott.

But then---

You just do a lot of really fucking stupid things, though, is what it is, Scott.

Again, it's never actually been said. And even if it were, Scott's thinks he'd mostly be able to take it. John's always been the smarter out of the pair of them, and Scott counts on that.

The friction in their working relationship---when there is friction in their working relationship, which is actually less often than might be expected---is generally on the grounds that Scott can be a little headstrong, a little impetuous, and can occasionally jump face first into a situation without all the relevant information. Sometimes. John's always had to compensate for that, always had to have backups of his backup plans, for when Scott gets himself into trouble. Scott still gets results, though, and at the end of the day they mostly agree that that's the important thing. Mostly.

Scott knows this, and more importantly, knows that John knows it just as well or probably better.

And the truth is, Scott had been bluffing when he'd said he would go to Mars alone. He just knows his brother well enough to know that there was no way John would have let him. Maybe John hasn't got the nerve to handle something like this on his own, but Scott's acutely aware that he lacks the brains, himself. Or the delicacy. Or the innate sense of what there is to be afraid of. The only way they can do this is if they do it together.

Hopefully, once they're actually there, it won't matter that John didn't actually want to.

It's too late now, anyway. T-minus ten, and he's just about ready to go.

His space gear is slightly different than his regular kit, though still mostly familiar, and he's had it prepped and ready since he went to bed last night. It's not quite as quick as suiting up for TB1, but once he's vertical, Scott's still dressed and ready in under five minutes. He activates his comm and glances through a quick review of Brains' posted alerts about TB3's systems' checks. Their launch is scheduled for 6:15 AM, and the rarity of a scheduled launch means that Scott's had the pleasure of scheduling it specifically to wake the rest of the household up with the thundering roar of TB3's ion engines.

It's just dawn on the island, and the low angle of the sun on the horizon casts long shadows through the windows as he walks softly down the hallway, past his brothers' rooms. No sense waking them unless it's with a rocket engine, and even then, it's going to be a little bit unkind. Gordon and Virgil are only a few hours from the end of a long and exhausting ordeal, dealing with a cruise ship run aground on a reef in the Caribbean. It's mostly for Alan's benefit, anyway, for once the youngest will be on the receiving end of TB3's enormously loud engines, thundering their way into orbit.

But for now, the villa is quiet and empty and peaceful in a way it almost never is, as Scott reaches the stairs at the end of the hallway.

He's feeling rather pleased with himself as he makes his way down to the lounge, only to discover that John's beaten him there. Presumably by a fairly substantial margin, by the way he's already sitting, in full uniform, ready and waiting in one of TB3's bucket seats. He's got his tablet in hand and above the central display he's pulled up a live review of the same systems' checks that Scott had only glanced through. If Scott didn't know better, he'd be tempted to assume that his brother's actually excited to go to Mars.

"Morning," he calls to his brother, jogging down the steps into the lounge with his helmet braced against his hip and his hands flexing in his gloves. "Been up long?"

"Didn't sleep," John answers, though he doesn't look tired and holds up a hand when Scott raises an eyebrow at him. "I'll sleep on the way, not like there'll be much else to do. Figured you'd be taking the first shift once we were en route, I'll pick up the second. Did you want to break it down into six shifts of three hours each, or just an even nine and nine?"

Scott shrugs automatically. "I wasn't thinking so much about shifts. It's autopilot most of the way out, and Brains and EOS will both have an eye on our telemetry. I wouldn't stress about it."

John gives him the sort of look that indicates that the only reason Scott doesn't stress about these things is because other people do it for him. His fingers flicker over the surface of his tablet as he makes the call of his own accord and inputs his preferred shift arrangement into TB3's onboard computer. "Nine and nine, then."

"You say so."

John's got one of the least sensible sleep schedules of anyone Scott's ever met. He approximates a cobbled-together scheme of polyphasic sleep that has him maximizing his availability to his family. He'll sleep in bursts of two to three hours while he's on duty aboard TB5, occasionally catching up with bursts of six hours at a stretch if things are slow. Scott's known John to stay awake for as long as thirty-six hours straight, if things are busy---but has also seen him sleep for a solid eighteen, when he's newly returned to the ground and officially off-rotation. In spite of the apparent disorder, according to John it's all carefully calculated and regimented and Scott can't actually find any fault with it, because John's always attentive and focused and alert when he needs to be.

Like now. John's intent on the last of TB3's preflights, and doesn't seem to notice the way his older brother studies him, trying to detect any of the anxiety that had been so plainly on display in England, only twenty-four hours ago. Whether John likes it or not, there's no turning back now.

And if Scott feels even a modicum of shame for having backed his brother into a corner on this one---for basically forcing John's hand, manipulating him into doing something he categorically does not want to do---this is alleviated by the fact that outwardly, John's as calm and taciturn as always. There's no hint of the plain, obvious apprehension he'd displayed in England. None of the grand moral angst or the insidious existential dread. Whether this is just John, resigned to what they're going to do, or John, deliberately putting up a front---Scott's not sure. But either way, he seems back to his usual self, to the point that Scott can almost let himself forget just how distressed John had been by the whole prospect.

Almost.

Scott makes a few last minute adjustments to the collar of his flightsuit, the cuffs of his gloves. Then he takes the pilot's seat next to his brother. T-minus three. Things have been a little tense so far, so Scott reaches out, prods John in the shoulder, and attempts to lighten the mood, "Hey, it'll be more sleep than you usually get, right? Guess we really are taking a vacation."

The early morning light casts half John's face in shadow. He doesn't look up from the last of TB3's preflights and his voice is soft as he asks, "Really? A vacation? Is that really what we're going to pretend this is?"

It takes a considerable degree of restraint to keep from sighing aloud at this, and so Scott sighs inwardly, and reevaluates his impression of his brother's general attitude. "I think it'd help if you at least tried."

"There's been a murder," John answers stiffly.

Scott rolls his eyes and settles back in his chair. Below, distantly, he can hear the faint hum of the hydraulics of the launch track starting to wind up into readiness. "Yeah. On Mars. Just...forget the murder for a minute, okay? Back burner. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. On Mars. Mars, John! Come on! Did you ever think you were going to make it out to Mars? This is...I mean, c'mon. This is part of our legacy---the planet literally has our name on it."

It's obvious that he doesn't mean it to happen, but there's a quick little huff of involuntary laughter, as Scott says something that John actually finds funny. It's a good sign, and the first good sign Scott's had since England, so he presses on, "You and Dad and Alan are the astronauts in the family, John. Dad led the way. And Alan's had his turn. Now it's yours. It's Mars. I know you, and I know---if things were just a little bit different; if we'd never talked to Penelope; if we were really just a pair of screwball rich kids, off to take a vacation on a whole other planet---I know that you'd be excited, right now."

That might spark something. It's just possible that he's accidentally caught on something that will snag John's interest, because John looks up at that, and idly keys a few inputs into his tablet again, before laying it aside. The readout of TB3's launch specs is replaced by a spherical holographic rendering of the Martian surface, complete with a current map of the colony, the nearest and most likely landing sights, and a small, star shaped marker, indicating the place where their father had taken his first steps on the surface.

The globe of another world hangs in the growing light of their last morning on Earth and for a long while, John doesn't say anything. When he does speak up, for the first time since this whole thing started, Scott hears the determination, the spark of warmth and brilliance he's been waiting for and counting on---

"T-minus one," John starts, and there's the suggestion of a smile as he glances over at Scott, and thumbs the switch to begin their descent into the hangar. And then, "Do you want to say it, or should I?"

Once they're out of orbit and on their way, John manages to get the first properly restful sleep he's had since returning to Earth, and this is only because they've actively left Earth. He sleeps best in zero-gravity, and when he's got the omnipresent white noise associated with any vessel, sustaining itself through open space.

TB3 has a pair of bunks, a lavatory, and a small galley tucked in the space below the cockpit and above the cargo bay. It's spartan, even by John's relatively ascetic standards, and built for someone slightly smaller than he is. Waking, he finds the ceiling of his bunk a bare foot and a half above his head and it's only the strap across his chest that prevents him from sitting up and cracking his nose.

It takes some negotiation to pull himself comfortably free of the little cubby, but zero-g is John's natural habitat and once he's out, even in limited space, he moves freely and easily, stretching and yawning and glad he's gotten some rest. He's still grateful that Scott's not around to witness any of the somewhat undignified acrobatics associated with retrieving his boots from where he'd stashed them in an overhead locker, and pulling them back on.

He pushes open the aftward hatch, a little earlier than Scott might be expecting, and rejoins his brother in the cockpit, to take over command of Thunderbird 3 for the latter half of the flight. It's all going to be auto-pilot, and Scott's going to have to manage the actual landing, but after nine hours of sitting still in one place watching a ship fly itself, Scott probably wants a break.

"G'morning, Starshine," Scott calls over his shoulder, before John's even got the hatch closed again. "Sleep okay?"

"Fine, yeah. How's the flight been?" John pushes off the back wall and catches hold of the back of the pilot's seat to stop himself. He looks up through the forward portal, though he knows better than to expect to see anything but a vast expanse of black out in front. They're a long way between planets, and Mars won't be visible for another few hours yet.

Scott yawns in answer, though after only nine hours in flight after a full night's sleep, John imagines this is boredom and not tiredness. "Nothing to report. Alan's lucky I know he can actually fly, or I'd be really, really unimpressed with him right about now. His 'bird does most of the work."

"Well, so does mine," John comments, making an idle defense of his little brother and feeling a prickle of homesickness for his station. "And so does yours, for that matter. He's only seventeen, it's still pretty impressive that he flies a Thunderbird in the first place."

Scott scoffs at this and folds his arms across his chest. "I'm only twenty-eight, no one's ever impressed with me."

Because it's an opportunity he's rarely ever afforded, John's not gentle as he cuffs his big brother in the back of the head. He pushes nimbly out of range as Scott automatically reaches back to swat at him. "Right, nobody. Never. No one's ever the least bit impressed by Scott Tracy, fourth richest person in the world, and the richest under thirty; leader of International Rescue, pilot of Thunderbird 1, and heir apparent to Tracy Industries."

"Well, then they're not as impressed as they should be."

An alert chimes on the central console before John can remark on that, an indication that they've hit the halfway mark and it's time to switch over. Scott probably hasn't actually been waiting for it to be official, but he still takes the opportunity to pump a fist in the air, as though this was a triumph. "Hey! Halfway there. All right, Jaybird, the hot seat's yours if you want it." He groans slightly as he pushes up the shoulder restraints, stretches as he relaxes into the lack of gravity. "About damn time. I should've taken you up on six shifts of three hours."

Probably, but it's too late now. "Nine hours of babysitting the auto-pilot, I'm surprised you're still sane," John replies dryly. "How've you been killing the time?"

"Aboard Alan's ship? Take a wild guess," Scott answers, as he pushes out of the pilot's seat to allow John to take his place. Rather than taking the co-pilot's seat, Scott kicks back and lets himself float freely in the open space of the cockpit, as John gets himself settled. Scott's just slightly taller than he is, so it doesn't take much adjustment, but he does pull the seat just a little closer to the command console. He's pulling up the main display to go over their latest telemetry as Scott asks, "Are you aware of just how many video games he's got loaded onto the main console of this thing?"

"I coded and installed about half of them." This is something of a secret hobby, shared between him and Alan. It started out innocuously enough, with Alan whining that none of his games would run on their systems and that he got bored during long haul flights. Since then, in his spare time, John's hacked apart and then hacked back together assorted elements of their various rendering programs, sprinkled in a melange of complex simulation algorithms, basic game theory, and bundled the whole thing together with the judicious application of some fairly complex AI.

That gets Scott's attention. He snags the back of the other seat and pulls himself into place, brings up a screen of his own. "Oh, well then. Lock and load, player two. Zombie Apocalypse or Alien Storm?"

This has the tone of an issued challenge if ever John's heard one, and he's legally and morally obligated to rise to it. "Up to you, would you rather die of shame or embarrassment?"

Scott just cracks his knuckles and settles in, shoots a quick grin across the cockpit. "I've had a solid seven hours of practice, buddy, you maybe wanna stow the big talk."

John beats his brother to the player one slot and loads up Alien Storm, with Alan and his ridiculous conspiracy theories in mind. It's a piece of work he's actually fairly proud of in the abstract, a complicated bullet-hell style shooter that starts simply enough, but iterates up through complex patterns and formulas via a learning AI that tailors its algorithms to counter the style of the player as they progress. It's fast and colourful and the music is all bubbly bright chiptunes, oddly out of place in TB3's spartan cockpit.

He's rusty to start out with and Scott's more recently practiced, but John knows the game's mechanics and fundamentals with the intricacy of someone who's seen them from the inside out. He gains an edge against his brother that has them about evenly matched, attempting to outlast and outgun each other against swarms of brightly coloured holographic polygons, proliferating in 3D space faster than seems possible. Two small avatars weave and dodge between a geometrical flurry of simulated alien spaceships, and fire dueling projectiles across the field at one another.

And it's fun. It's the sort of casual, spontaneous, actual fun that John almost never has, and especially never with Scott. There's a great deal of snark and an almost constantly running stream of muttered cursing, the sort of utterly unprofessional language that threatens to peel the paint off TB3's interior. Scott's feet end up propped up on the forward console and John ends up pulling the pilot's seat further forward than would be strictly considered ergonomic. And, though it goes unsaid, they're both aware of the fact that this is something they haven't done since they were much, much younger---or at least, since they were less like adults and more like children.

They trade wins over the course of an hour that passes faster than John had anticipated, and stall around the tenth level, until it occurs to Scott to ask if there's a co-op mode. Over the next hour, between the two of them, they clear a further eight levels. Eventually the time comes to admit defeat. Still, by the time they're through, they've both earned the right to enter their initials in the fifty place leaderboard; JGT and SCT looking distinctly out of place, even buried near the bottom of a long list of AST.

Scott looks up at this with mild chagrin, crossed with something that might almost be awe, reading the twelve digit high scores racked up next to their little brother's name. "Level thirty-four. It goes that high?"

John shrugs. "It's procedurally generated. Technically it goes on forever." He gestures at the top score, some ridiculous number in the high billions. "I don't actually know how he does that. I coded the damn thing, and I don't even know what it would look like at that level."

Scott chuckles at that and takes his feet down off the console, stretches his limbs again. "Well, you don't see him fly very often. I guess technically I've seen him do that. I guess I've seen him thread this ship through an asteroid field like he's throwing a needle clear through a haystack."

The choice of phrasing earns a faint chuckle. "Your farmboy is showing."

If John meant it as an insult (and strictly speaking, he'd be a hypocrite if he had), Scott doesn't take it as one, grinning again as he removes himself from the copilot's place. "Take the boy outta the wheatfield, can't take the wheatfield outta the boy."

"'Boy'," John echoes, complete with air quotes. Out of a distant sense of obligation, he closes the game down and rechecks their telemetry, but it's all exactly as it should be, acceleration and trajectory both as expected. Idly, he pulls up the Martian globe to have another look at the surface, and a long minute passes before he realizes Scott hasn't fired back with a retort for the crack about his age. John glances up to find that his brother's got his hand on the back of the pilot's seat, and that he's being looked over with a frown that might actually be somewhat troubled.

"Are you okay with me making you do this?" Scott asks, before John's even entirely sure that something's actually wrong.

"...well, it's my turn. We said nine and nine, and---"

"No," Scott interrupts, and points at the holographic rendering of the Red Planet. "This, I mean. Mars. Look, I know it's too little too late---obviously we're not about to turn back around, but just---did I push too hard? Making you do this?"

John pauses, just long enough to be sure his brother's conscience will suffer a little bit in the silence, before he relents, "...well, first of all, you've never successfully made me do anything. Don't flatter yourself. If I didn't---if I really didn't want to do this, Scott, you couldn't have forced me. And I know you wouldn't have, either. And besides that, you weren't...I mean, you aren't wrong. Someone needs to do something. It looks like that someone's gonna be us. Whether I like it or not, this is what we do."

Scott seems to relax slightly at that, though he continues to drift nearby as he presses the point, "Really, though? I mean, you seemed pretty spooked by this whole thing. If this scares you---"

"It's not that." John shifts in the pilot's seat, made uncomfortable by the continued scrutiny. Truthfully, he's more than a little embarrassed by the way he'd reacted. It's not to say that it's not the way he actually feels, but he's not proud of the way he'd behaved as a consequence. "It's...I mean, it's a pretty abstract kind of fear. I'm afraid of the idea more than I'm afraid of the reality, maybe. I told you, it's complicated. What freaks me out is how it could have happened more than the fact that it has happened. I guess."

This is exactly the sort of subtlety that's likely to be lost on his big brother, so hopefully Scott will do what he always does with life's subtleties, and decide that it should be John's problem.

Predictably, Scott chews on that for a few moments before he clears his throat and says, "Yeeeahh. Okay. Just so long as you're not gonna have a complete existential breakdown or anything. You can gimme a heads up if you feel one coming on, and we'll make sure we get you tethered to something solid before you give up on humanity entirely and go wandering off across Arabia Terra in the throes of nihilistic despair."

Sometimes Scott's capable of a little more subtlety than John gives him credit for.

"I'll do my best."

Scott brightens slightly. "Or, actually---feel free to try it, but I'll tell Uncle Lee, and he'll drag you back and wallop you."

John groans at that. "Trussed up in the back of a Martian rover."

"Hog tied."

"Great."

Almost gleeful now, Scott continues, "Calling you 'Jack' and lecturing you about 'back in his day' and 'when me and your ol' dad were the only living beings on the surface of a virgin planet, a hundred and forty million miles from all human existence, we kept a lid on our grandiose moral quandaries about the state of humanity beyond Earth.'"

"Oh, shut up."

"'Damnit, Jim, you're an astronaut, not a philosopher!'"

John rolls his eyes and sighs, feigning exasperation. The truth is, despite the mention of a sore subject, he finds himself feeling better about the situation as a whole. The thought of their uncle, especially, has him feeling something like a warm burst of affection, and looking forward to seeing the grizzly old astronaut again. It's been a long time.

A companionable silence falls between them for a while, as John continues through various system checks and Scott does a few idle laps of the cockpit, just fooling around in zero-g. He's still drifting lazily nearby as John wonders aloud, "Have you ever figured out if he's just fucking with us? With the names thing?"

Scott scoffs. "I've given the old bastard a list of our names every single time we've seen him, it just doesn't stick."

John's not convinced. "I mean...we're named after the Mercury Seven, though. I don't know how he could fail to parse that, the man's a career astronaut."

"He called me Virgil the last time I saw him. Consistently."

The notion of anyone mixing up Scott and Virgil is a pretty compelling point in favour of John's argument, in John's opinion. "At least he didn't call you Gus? I just have a hard time believing that it's not just him messing with us. He's probably forgotten more about spacefaring than the pair of us put together."

"Maybe there's just not any room in his brain these days, maybe he had to keep up with all the spacefaring stuff and the names of his best friends' kids just weren't worth hanging onto."

"Maybe." John continues to doubt it, and has one last salient piece of evidence in his favour. "He had them all down when he sent that message."

The mention of Lee's message seems to sober the tone of the conversation slightly, and Scott sounds more serious as he answers, "Yeah, well, that's part of why I think it was Captain Taylor, asking for our help. Call it our first clue." Scott's boot hits the back of the John's seat as he floats over and then kicks off. It's impossible to miss the note of reproach in Scott's tone when he comments, "But then, you sure had a pretty damn bleak take on that."

This is something that John's not proud of. He's got the same message saved onto his personal comm and with a few deft gestures, he loads it onto the main console and pulls up the image of Lee Taylor, fuzzily holographic. The resolution isn't quite good enough to make out his expression, and John doesn't remember the tone of his voice giving anything away. But he remembers what Taylor had said, and what he'd said in answer. Meant to be retired. Unwilling to admit that his era's over. Neither of these are things he really believes, because of course Captain Lee Taylor belongs on Mars. So John's regretful, contrite, as he tells his brother, "I didn't mean it. I was just---"

Scott, either out of mercy or just because he doesn't want to hear it, doesn't let him finish. "Yeah, I know. I just think it's too much of a coincidence to ignore."

"I think you're right." John clears the image of their uncle from the central display, and pulls the image of Mars up again. There's a countdown timer in the bottom of the readout, estimating their time of arrival---six and a half hours out. If there's still a flutter of anxiety in the pit of his stomach, if there's still a dark shadow of dread clinging at the back of his mind---well. Scott's the one who'd said it, with the caveat that he'd never needed to say it before; John's not a coward.

This is just one of the rare occasions where he's going to have to prove it.

The catch-22 of landing Thunderbird 3, freestanding, without guidance, on the uneven surface of a whole other planet is that Scott's not actually allowed to brag about it. To brag about just how technically difficult a landing like that actually was would be to tip his brother off to the fact that it hadn't been breezily, effortlessly easy.

He settles for taking his hands off the controls and holding them up, as though demonstrating that he's got nothing up his sleeves, and that what was just done was tantamount to magic. "Gossamer," he declares, because the quality of the landing is worth at least one word of commentary. He adds several more for good measure, "I bet you barely even felt that, even with your tender and delicate spacefaring backside."

"Mmhm."

Apparently it was a good enough landing that John hasn't actually paid it any attention, closing out a suite of communication relays from the Martian base, and moving on to begin their post-flight checks. Scott had done the flying, but it's John who'd hailed the base as they'd made their approach, and coordinated all of the logistics necessary for their actual landing. When he's working, John's voice takes on a neutral, official quality that Scott listens to without even thinking. He can't say for sure if the voice on the comm from the Martian base had been male or female, old or young, because all he'd heard was his brother, relaying instructions---all the information he'd needed to make sure their landing was as good as it was.

Now that they've landed, actually, solidly, and officially on Martian soil, John glances up through the forward portal and blinks up at the skies of Mars, glowing an unearthly, alien violet as the distant sun sinks towards the horizon.

Scott's seen this before. So instead of the Martian sunset, Scott watches his brother, seeing a whole new sky for the very first time.

Sometimes, and these past few days especially, Scott wonders if John Tracy might not get a little bit lost in Thunderbird Five. Thunderbird Five is unfailingly cool and detached and professional, hard to surprise and harder still to unsettle. Thunderbird Five has the entire Earth at his fingertips, takes it in and understands it at the barest glance, can reach down out of the heavens themselves and change the course of the world beneath him. Sometimes even Scott manages to forget that there's a person behind the persona, and that person is his nerdy, introverted little brother, who's allergic to penicillin and freckles within five minutes when exposed to sunlight; who built his first telescope when he was fourteen and has a bookshelf full of dog-eared, vintage sci-fi, gathering dust in the bedroom he almost never occupies.

Fear and awe and wonderment aren't qualities Scott would ever attribute to Thunderbird Five, but John Tracy has bright, wide green eyes and a soul that belongs to the stars, and he's plainly reverential at his first glimpse of an alien sky.

Scott lets him have a good, solid minute, before clearing his throat and asking, "Worth the trip?"

Reverie not quite broken, John's gaze doesn't leave the sky overhead and his voice is distant in an entirely unfamiliar way, as he quotes something Scott's equally unfamiliar with, "We pray for one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth; let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies, and the cool, green hills of Earth."

Thunderbird Five emphatically does not quote poetry. And if John Tracy does, he doesn't do it often, so this must be an especially momentous occasion. It's got a familiar lilt to it, but Scott doesn't have John's memory for things like this, so his guess is a stab in the dark, "Bradbury?"

"Heinlein."

"I was close."

John shrugs, and then, charitably, "I mean, kind of."

"Same century."

"Sure, that definitely counts."

"Oh, shut up."

Offhanded condescension is a trait shared fairly equally between John Tracy and Thunderbird Five. "It's not my fault that your literary aspirations as far as sci-fi is considered never matured beyond Tom Swift."

Scott's entirely capable of spinning this up into a full blown squabble, but instead he reaches forward and toggles the control for the copilot's seat. Its motors whir abruptly to life and drop his brother backward along the cockpit track by about four feet, so that he startles and curses and clings onto the sides of the chair. Scott grins at the death glare he receives. "Never matured much as a whole, either."

"Asshole."

"Yup."

Before this can devolve further, there's a crackle over TB3's main comm that shuts them both up, and the gruff and grizzled voice of a responsible adult inquires, "You boys plannin' to disembark at any point in the foreseeable future? Only you got your welcoming committee standing around burnin' O2, waiting for your skinny blue butts to get on the ground."

Scott's on the comm immediately, just as a matter of pure reflex, "Yessir, sorry sir. Just, uh. Just doing some post-flights, Captain Taylor, we'll be right down."

"Son, I helped draft the major protocols for your post-flights, and I'll tell you they ought've been done five minutes ago. C'mon, boys, getcher gear and hustle on down here. Mars's cold by night."

"Yessir."

John's already negotiated his way down to the back (bottom) of the cockpit, and has his helmet on and is prudently checking his oxygen packs, by the time Scott joins him. The Martian surface is a full twelve stories down from the hatch of TB3's cockpit. Scott follows suit, going through the procedure to check and recheck his helmet and his gear, careful and methodical.

The hiss of the comm in his ear makes him look up before John actually speaks, and so he catches the slightly concerned quirk of his brother's expression as he says, "Did he say 'welcoming committee'?"

"What, just now? Uh, yeah."

"What do you think he meant?"

Scott blinks at this. "Figure of speech? We're about three klicks out from the actual colony, he probably brought a rover. Maybe it's got a backup driver."

There's one of those very deliberate pauses from his brother that indicates that he's caught the edge of an idea, and that he's piecing the whole thing together as he says, slowly, "...there've been two more waves of colonists aboard two other transport ships since Helios first landed, along with the crew of a private prospecting company, here on a two year contract as part of a deal with the WWSA. And now there's us. What're the odds he was being literal?"

Scott's not sure what the problem is, why his brother suddenly sounds uncertain, hesitant. He rubs the back of his neck through the collar of his spacesuit. "I'm not sure I get where you're going with this."

John might be getting exasperated, the way he groans into his radio and puts a hand on the cockpit's hatch control. "A welcoming committee. Like the kind of thing there might be if we just happened to be the first official visitors to Mars in the colony's entire history."

The light bulb blinks on and Scott gets it. And he laughs, though John doesn't; John just glares at him. "Hey! First! That's great! Come off it, J, what's with the face? Dad would've gotten a hell of a kick out of it."

"What're we supposed to do, what're we supposed to say?"

"Uh, 'Hello, thanks for having us, nice planet you've got here'? John, what's your problem?"

It might just be that this is another one of those astronaut things, because Scott doesn't understand his brother's sudden frustration, as he objects, "It shouldn't be us. We're just---we're not entitled to this. What, we've got money and we've got a rocketship, and somehow that qualifies us to be part of this planet's history? This is going to get written down somewhere, this is going to be official."

Scott's flatly affronted at that, the notion that this isn't something that they have as much a right to as anyone possibly could---and more, in Scott's books, considering that they're following in their father's footsteps and that this colony owes its establishment to their family's actions. "Newsflash, dumbass; we're already part of this planet's history. I am, anyway. Alan, too, and Captain Lee Taylor. And Dad before that, if you want a list of things that are official. What do you mean it shouldn't be us? Why the hell should it be anyone else?"

John seems a little taken aback by that, but he still shakes his head, seems seized by an attack of trepidation, that has him hang a little bit further back from the cockpit's exterior hatch. "I just---"

"---And," Scott interrupts him sharply, "you're forgetting the actual reason we were asked to come here."

It's not often that Scott gets one up on John, but by the way his brother falls abruptly silent, apparently the fact that there's been another first in Martian history is something that had entirely slipped his mind. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, reminding John of the fact that they're here because someone's been murdered, but it's too late now. There's an alert over his comm as the cabin pressure equalizes, and Scott opens the exterior hatch.

As per usual, once Scott's boots hit the ground after taking the lift down from TB3's cockpit, it turns out John was right. Waiting for them by a pair of rugged looking Martian rovers is a collection of four people, arrayed in a curiously formal little cluster, and Scott only knows two of them on sight.

They've landed TB3 on a flat (ish) plain, the opposing side of the colony to where Scott and Lee had "landed" the Helios, the last time Scott had been here. Around them, even with the bulk of TB3 soaring its fifteen stories of height up into the Martian sky, even if he's been here before---even with the people who represent the beginning of this planet's legacy, this is still a whole new world. For a few moments there's nothing to do but just stand and take it all in again, the bare expanse of ruddy terrain stretching off towards a strange horizon, beneath the slow twilight of the violet sky.

Captain Lee Taylor stands a pace behind and to the left of Commander Sandra Travers, in a standard Martian spacesuit to match hers, and not his trusty old Lunar gear. He looks well, Scott thinks, and when he catches his uncle's eye, he'd almost swear that there's the flash of a wink and a twitch of a grin beneath the older man's mustache, though his expression is serious and neutral again in mere moments.

Dr. Travers herself is just as dignified and composed and calm under pressure as Scott remembers her to be, if this moment can be considered to have any kind of pressure associated with it, as John seems to believe. John lingers an uncertain step behind Scott, like they're children again and his little brother desperately doesn't want to meet anyone new. Though they're already on the same comm channel, as they wait for the other party to sync with the same frequency, Scott doesn't even hear his brother breathing in the silence. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.

The other two members of the party will have to wait for their introductions, but to Lee Taylor's right is a petite, blonde young woman with a button nose and a rather pretty face. She stands at military attention in a way that makes Scott straighten up himself. To Taylor's left is a tall man, dark and handsome, with a toothy smile that seems to be a permanent fixture. His uniform differs from the other three, sleeker and more stylish, and of a level of tech that the trained eye would recognize as nearer to the echelon of IR's own. There's none of the unisex utilitarianism of the Martian uniform; rather, this looks to be tailored, custom-made for its owner. Scott's kneejerk reaction is to label him as some rich asshole, until he remembers that his own gear is similarly custom, and that his own flight out technically had a price tag in the millions.

There's a crystalline chime as their comms sync, and the first voice he hears---at least officially---is Dr. Travers', warm and welcoming, "Scott and John Tracy. It's my honour and privilege on behalf of our colony to be the first to welcome you to Mars."

It's short, sweet, and simple---and absolutely paralytic. Scott realizes too late just what might've been bothering his little brother---there's meaning here. This is important, one of those essential, meaningful moments that he might just remember for the rest of his life. There are no cameras, no press, and only a handful people to witness this particular exchange---and it's a triviality, really. Technically it should be welcome back to Mars, at least in Scott's case. But there's something in the formality of it, in the sincerity of the Commander's voice, that has him realizing that what he says next actually matters.

Scott's lucky his father was who he was, and in more ways than one.

Because he's inherited his father's determination and charisma and essential grasp of when his actions matter. Being the echo that he is of Jeff Tracy, near the age he was when he first stood in this same place---Scott knows exactly what to say, because his father's already said it; the first words ever spoken from the surface of Mars. John's not the only one in the family who can quote things from memory.

"Thank you," he says, with the very same respect and sincerity, "to everyone who's made it possible for us to be here. It was never a question of if we'd come, but when."

The brilliant smile he gets from Dr. Travers in answer has none of the formality or magnitude of the moment before, only the genuine delight in the recognition of whose words he's just said. She's held out a hand to shake his, but as he takes it, she pulls him into a brief, tight embrace. And the ice breaks properly, and the formality starts to melt away.

"It's good to see you again, Scott," she says, and squeezes his fingers before she lets go, and then turns to John and extends a hand for him to shake. "And John, I'm so glad to finally meet you. Lee's told me so much about your family."

Technically they've met before, though never face to face. And, so long as they're being technical, at least in an official capacity, Dr. Travers has met Thunderbird Five.

"Commander Travers," John answers, and for whatever anxieties that Scott's been privy to, his brother is unfailingly gracious, collected and polite as he shakes her hand. "I'm glad to meet you, too."

There's a brief pause, the sort that's only significant if you happen to meet the Commander's eyes in its course, and Scott watches a moment pass between the two of them. "Thank you," she says, "for coming all this way."

"It's our privilege, ma'am."

She takes a step back and gestures to the people standing behind her, "This is Captain Rosalyn Hill, our chief of security, and Mr. Lloyd Berringer, owner and operations manager of Berringer Boring Technologies."

The name rings a bell, but represents a side of the world that Scott traffics in as little as possible. Captain Hill just nods, but Mr. Berringer steps forward, and seizes Scott's hand with an exuberant, "Thank you, Sandra. It's such an honour to meet you boys. I had the pleasure of doing business with your father on more than one occasion. I like to hope he'd be impressed by what we're doing here. He'd probably make all the same jokes I've heard about a billion times already."

The immediate familiarity with which Berringer operates is instantly, completely off-putting. Scott feels his back teeth grit together as the man pumps his arm in the sort of powerplay of a corporate handshake that makes him want to spit. Or at least alter the technique of his handshake. "Pleasure," he answers in a manner that manages to stop just short of appallingly terse, and then John intervenes with the save, before Scott can yank the man's elbow out of its socket.

"Mr. Berringer," his brother says, with Thunderbird Five's perfect, functionally eternal patience operating at full bore, and just a hint of John Tracy's very rare but very real actual interest, "I've kept up with reports of your company's contributions to the WWSA's exogeology program. I look forward to hearing more about it personally."

"And I look forward to telling you!" The handshake John gets is less aggressive, just a brief clasp of his hand and a nod of acknowledgment, before Berringer steps back.

Scott's more than a little bit interested in introducing himself to Captain Hill, but Lee Taylor's gruff voice pipes up before he can make a move to make her acquaintance, "All right, that'll about can it for the pleasantries. We're burnin' the last of our daylight. Boys, it's good to have you here. Rovers'll only take four people apiece, so if it's all right, I'll say my hullos on the ride back to camp. Scott, Johnny, you're with me. We'll get the pair of you settled for the night, and then you can get the grand tour and all the pomp and circumstance tomorrow."

"Yessir, Captain," Scott agrees immediately, and sees John nod out of the corner of his eye. He adds, "We've had a long flight."

"Two more miles, and then the pair of you can get a break, but we still gotta get 'em put behind us. Dr. Travers, Captain Hill, Lloyd. We'll load up and see you all back at base."

Dr. Travers seems to consider the matter settled on Lee's order. "Excellent idea, Captain Taylor. We'll leave you to it."

Scott's not sure just where Lee Taylor falls in the hierarchy of people around them. His rank, if he can still be considered to hold one, is no better than Captain Hill's, but the Captain is the first to obey his order, turning on her heel to return to the forward rover. Dr. Sandra Travers commands the mission as a whole, but had raised no protest to Lee's suggestion. She does nothing more than reach out to clasp Scott's hand again, and then turns to follow Captain Hill.

Berringer hangs nearby for a moment, and Scott can see him about to start something, some attempt to ingratiate himself into the second rover, with Scott and his brother and his uncle---but at the last moment he seems to think better of it. At the last moment he just reaches out like Dr. Travers had done, and claps a friendly hand firmly on John's shoulder. John, to his credit, doesn't flinch. "Glad you boys are here," he says, and Scott revels a bit in the lameness of it as he nods a curt goodbye.

And then, though the other rover's departure is hardly abrupt, it's just the three of them. Scott does a quick recheck of TB3's systems and puts her in low power mode, as John and Lee unload the minimal baggage they'd brought from back on Earth, stow it in the back of their rugged little rover.

In his ear, his comm hisses to life again, and John says, with just the faintest note of triumph, "Shotgun."

Well.

That wasn't so bad, actually. It's even better now that it's just him, Scott, and Lee Taylor, alone in a rover, waiting for it to boot up. The phrase "welcoming committee" had put him in mind of something far more ceremonial and significant than what it actually was---four people and two Martian rovers, where in his head John had conjured up fifty people and red carpets---and he's glad that the resources expended on their welcome hadn't been significant. More than anything, John hadn't wanted anyone to make a fuss.

Or, if they had made a fuss, then more than anything he'd wanted his brother not to say something stupid in response to it.

But that isn't really fair and John knows it.

So, necessarily, once the rover's been sealed, pressurized, and flooded with breathable air, John pulls his helmet off and turns to Scott in the back seat. There's no easy way to do this, when it need to be done, but the best practice is generally sincerity. So John attempts to be genuine and to the point as he says, "Hey. I'm sorry for...uh, for getting cold feet. Before we disembarked. I guess I didn't know what to expect, and it threw me off, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Thanks for knowing what to say."

If Scott were more the way John imagines him to be and less the way he actually is---this sort of admission would've been met with a scoff and something dismissive of John's own (admittedly irrational) anxiety. Instead his brother just nods his acceptance of the apology, and offers back, "Hey, you were right. It was something that mattered and I hadn't thought about it the way you had. I'm just lucky that Dad was a well-spoken kind of guy."

"Jeff worked on that line for months," Lee informs them, joining the conversation as he pulls his own helmet off, gets himself settled in the driver's seat. "Weren't like we didn't have the time on the trip out. Sat in a spaceship pointed at Mars, just me and your dad, and whenever we had some downtime, we were battin' around ideas for what should get said when our boots hit the ground. Was down to a coin toss, who got to go first, and there's no one I would've rather lost it to. I won't pretend it didn't tug the ol' heartstrings---one of Jeff's boys sayin' one of the best things I ever had the honour to hear."

Scott flicks an easy little mock salute, two fingers off his temple, as he answers with his usual effortless charm, "Was my honour to repeat it, Captain Taylor."

Lee puts the rover into gear and they start to rumble along the rough and rugged terrain. The rover's interior is all white and stainless steel, accented in bright red and dark blue, the sort of colours that John and Scott stand out against, while Lee fits right in. He glances at John in the passenger seat and his smile is warm, welcoming, as he says, "I sure am glad you boys are here."

And suddenly, hearing Lee tell a tiny piece of a story he's told a thousand times before---John is, too.

It's possible that it wasn't quite completely true, up until just now. It's been growing truer moment by moment, from the moment they'd begun their deceleration to start their approach to the Red Planet, to the moment he'd been able to look up and see a whole new sky. It had helped to see their uncle wiggle his mustache and wink, it had helped to hear Scott say their father's words, it had helped to realize that Mars is more than he ever could've imagined, and that whatever's happened here doesn't diminish the awe and the reverence and the privilege he feels to be here.

But---

Lee clears his throat. "Now, you gotta forgive me cutting to the chase, but this is gonna be a short drive and we should get down to business. I'm operating on the assumption that you boys're here about the murder."

Right.

That's still happened. The nausea, that sick feeling of dread, comes creeping back, but John takes a deep breath to steady his nerves, and pretends it's just motion sickness. This is why they've come all this way, and he has a job to do. Whether he likes it or not, it's a job he'll be good at.

"Yes, Captain," Scott confirms, moving to the center of the bench seat in the back of the rover, so he can lean forward between the two bucket seats in front. "We couldn't actually be a hundred percent sure you'd know about that, though."

Lee's expression is grim, and he keeps his gaze fixed on the path ahead of the rover's bright xenon headlights as he answers, "'Course I do. Sandra came to me right after it happened. Wanted me to double-check the chief engineer's findings about why that airlock failed---but what I had to say didn't track with what she'd been told. If you know what you're looking at, then it's plain that some evil damn bastard had meddled with the damn thing. Whether it got past her guy or whether he deliberately didn't see it---I ain't sure, but it needed keeping quiet either way. I told her to submit a report to the WWSA encoded under Orion, this ain't the kind of thing you screw around with."

"You know about that? The Orion Protocol?" John asks, mildly surprised.

Lee takes his eyes off the lack of a road in front of them to favour him with a look, as though John's just inquired after the opinion of Lee's second head. "Boy, who d'you think you're talking to? You're damn right I know about Orion, and it's a good thing I do, because she didn't want to report it."

John can't help but perk up a little at that, because that's interesting. "Why not?"

"We should probably wait until we can talk about this with Commander Travers," Scott interjects, plainly a little uncomfortable at the idea of talking about the commander behind her back.

John isn't. "Unless we need to talk about Commander Travers."

Predictably, Scott balks at that. This is down to a streak of politeness and decency hammered into him from a precociously young age. It's not that John lacks the same, so much as he recognizes when it's neither relevant nor expedient to the situation at hand. Scott makes his protest on the Commander's behalf, "I'm sure she had her reasons. We should all try to stay on the same page. There's only four people on the entire planet who know what's happened here."

"Five," John corrects firmly. "And that's our best case scenario. There's at least one person responsible for this, and they know it. Our only advantage is that they don't know that we know it. Right now, as far as we're aware, you and I are the only two people on this planet who couldn't possibly have done this."

"Um." Scott's eyes cut to Lee Taylor, still sitting placidly in the driver's seat. "Three people, is what I think you mean."

"No, it ain't," Lee answers on John's behalf, and John's pretty sure he doesn't mistake the warmth of esteem in his voice. "And he ain't wrong. Listen to your brother, Scotty. That's the astronaut in him talkin', because there's things you think and things you guess and things you guesstimate and things you hope---but it's the things you know that are all you can count on. All you can know right now is that you can trust each other. Don't trust anyone else, and don't count anyone else out, 'til you know you can."

Lee makes it sound a bit more dire than what John had meant, strictly speaking, but the point stands, and leaves Scott looking slightly chagrined. For his brother's sake, John clarifies, "I don't mean that I think Uncle Lee's a murderer. I mean we need to be thorough and methodical and certain, above everything else. If these people are going to be told that there's been a murder, then immediately thereafter, they need to be told that the murderer in question has been identified and taken into whatever passes for secure custody around here. We can't rush to conclusions. We need to know. Right now, we have four hundred names with four hundred question marks beside them. It's going to be a process of elimination. And it's not going to be easy."

It's probably going to be very, very hard. Their pool of suspects contains four hundred people, not one of whom has a criminal record nor the sort of social or psychological history that would preclude them from an expedition to colonize Mars. Four hundred people, all of whom know this colony and each other better than Scott or John do, and better than they possibly could within the limited span of time they have here. Four hundred people, and none of them can be permitted to suspect that there's been a murder in their midst. Four hundred people, and they have to figure out where they're supposed to start.

And by his expression, Scott might just be starting to understand just what the stakes are, and just how challenging this is going to be.

But it's to Scott's credit that he knows his strengths and the strengths of others. It's part of the reason why this was inevitable---ending up here, rumbling along in a Martian rover at a generous thirty miles an hour, towards a colony that needs their help, even if they themselves don't know it. Because what Scott does know, at least as well as John does, is that this is exactly the sort of problem John's good at.

There's a double-edged sword here, and it carves John neatly in half; divides the part of him that wants more than anything to be here, and the part of him that wishes he could be anywhere else, considering the circumstances. By the same strengths that he recongizes a nearly impossible problem, equally he knows he's among the best possible candidates to try and solve it.

God damn it.

"Well," Scott says, and punches John's shoulder lightly, "That's why I brought you, John. I'm the Watson, not the Holmes, and that's fine by me. You work out the right questions, I'll make sure we get the answers. We'll figure it out."

It's also not often that Scott self-identifies as the sidekick, but John will still take it. Maybe one day he'll even let his brother know just how much it's appreciated. For now he just nods his acknowledgment and gives Scott the very slightest smile, proportionate to the seriousness of the situation. "Then the first question we have to ask is about Dr. Travers and why she wouldn't have wanted to report a murder. Uncle Lee?"

The rover jolts slightly as Captain Taylor takes them over a rougher patch of terrain than the ride's brought them across so far. He's silent for a little longer than might be expected before he answers and he sounds troubled when he does so. "Well. It's a hard thing to have to wrangle with. Putting it down in a report---that made it real. Truth be told, I think she's scared. She's known everyone on this planet for at least as long as they've been here, and now one of 'em has it out for her? She's got a kid to think about, but she's also got a whole damn colony. I can't say I blame her for not being sure what to do. Can't pretend I ain't a bit scared myself."

"Sounds like she's lucky she had you to turn to," Scott comments mildly, though he also kicks the back of John's seat as he does so. John chooses to interpret this as Scott's acknowledgment of the legitimacy of his fears about the idea of a murder happening on Mars. "Are we going to get a chance to talk to her one on one? I get the idea tomorrow might be kinda busy, if we're supposed to be playing tourist."

"Should," Lee confirms. "She'll be waitin' for the two of you, to getcha settled. We've got an empty habitation module ready'n waiting."

"Sounds cozy."

If John hasn't missed the wry note of sarcasm in Scott's tone, then Lee certainly won't have either. He snorts. "Ain't nowhere on this planet you couldn't call cozy. It's a cozy sorta place. Consequence of having to pressurize every habitable cubic inch. Still. Home sweet home. Strap in back there, Scooter, we got a bit of a rough ride down the ridge. Shame you ain't getting your first sight of the place by daylight. Things've been really comin' along."

As he says this, he pulls up to the edge of the ridge in question. But instead of his usual bombast; charging ahead over the low rise and down into the colony below, Lee hits the brakes. Out the front window of the rover, bright xenon lights gleam off the white exteriors of the colony proper, though these are already ruddy with the dust of the Martian surface around them. At first John thinks they've stopped so that they can get a proper look at the colony, and he's about to make a comment about regretting their time of arrival, but the sight of Lee's expression cuts him off. Scott's fallen similarly silent, and they wait for their uncle to speak.

When he does, he sounds grave and serious, and some of folksy affectation drops from his speech. "Might be this is the last chance I'm gonna get to speak freely in front of you boys. I hope not, but I meant what I said. Mars is cozy, and by that I mean Mars is crowded. And Mars is busy. There's still enough to do in the day to day that's just about survival, and it can't exactly be put on pause. So before we get down there in the thick of it---and quick, because we're keepin' Dr. Travers waiting---is there anything you want me to tell you? Anything you wanna ask?"

John knows his question immediately, but when he glances at Scott and meets his big brother's eyes, he nods his deference instead of asking. He's not sure what Scott could've come up with on such short notice, and doesn't expect it to be especially insightful---but sometimes Scott surprises him.

"You really scared, Uncle Lee?"

This is an excellent question, and not one it had occured to John.

Lee surprises him too, and laughs at that. "Shoot, kid. Right to the heart of it, eh Scotty? Always liked that 'bout you. Just like your ol' Dad. Yeah. Yeah, I am. More than I let on, that's for damn sure. Now, I ain't said so because I want you boys shook up, but I do want you wary. I want you to know this is someone worth bein' afraid of. You kill a man on Mars---and then what? You get away it and you live with that secret forever. Or you don't, and then you're trapped. Then you got nothing to lose. These are some of the best, toughest people I ever met. But life here is fragile. And the wrong person---they wouldn't have to try very hard if they wanted to hurt a lot of people."

That's probably what Scott's needed to hear. If Scott knows it about John that he can't help but take on big, complicated problems---then John knows it about Scott that he can't help but come to the aid of people who need him. That the person who needs him here and now is someone who's known them both since before they could tie their own shoes---so much the better. Scott's jaw sets and his chin lifts slightly, and in the low light of the Martian rover, he looks more like their father than ever. And sounds like him, as he says, "We're gonna find them, Captain Taylor."

"I sure hope so, kid."

Scott's better at this than John is. Better at the big, meaningful moments, better at connecting with people, and especially people like Lee. It's good that Scott's here. John's got patience and polish and brains and panache, but he lacks Scott's sincerity, the way he makes things like this sound like they're going to be easy. John's own question is much simpler, and he has to clear his throat a little awkwardly to get Lee's attention before he can ask it. "Uncle Lee?"

"Something you wanna ask me, Johnnycake?"

There's no easy way to ask this, but in fairness, John's about ninety-nine percent certain of what his answer will be. 99.75%, in fact.

"Did you kill James Marston?"

This time Lee's laugh is a crowing guffaw, and the hand that clasps John's shoulder does so warmly and with the sort of genuine affection that only Lee Taylor's really capable of. "No, Johnny. I sure did not. Thanks for being direct about it."

John shrugs and makes an entirely unnecessary mental note. Lee Taylor: Not a Murderer. "One down," he says, as Lee puts the rover into gear again. "Three hundred and ninety-nine to go."

Scott likes Dr. Travers. To separate her entirely from her life's accomplishments---the fact that she's the mission commander of the first human colony on Mars, a decorated astronaut and a mother on top of all that---he just thinks she's a nice lady. She's in her mid-forties, with dark hair and dark eyes, and has the same sort of polished English accent that Lady Penelope does, but none of Penelope's occasionally chilly aristocracy. She's a warm, friendly sort of woman, and there's a rather motherly quality about her, as she shows Scott and John around the little pod that will be their temporary home on Mars.

Not that there's a great deal to show, because the place lives up to Lee's definition of the word cozy. It's a particularly utilitarian little module, two levels tall, with bunks lofted above the main floor. Nearly half the main floor is the bathroom, a walled off and sealed wetroom designed to recover every drop of excess moisture. The rest of the common area is living space, the outer wall ringed around with basic utilities---a small kitchen module, a screen that looks like a standard comm unit, and curved seating along the exterior wall. The space feels dominated by the no-nonsense bulk of the airlock, a constant and uncomfortable reminder of the inhospitable reality right outside the door. Scott wonders if he'll be here for long enough to get used to it.

"I hope you'll both be comfortable here," Dr Travers says, taking a seat on the couch next to John, who somehow contrives not to look awkward in the small space, despite his height. Dr. Travers is a small woman, but Scott and his brother are both upwards of six feet tall, with Scott edging John out by a bare inch of height. A judicious estimate puts the ceiling at about eight feet, but it still feels low overhead. "This is one of the pods that was waiting for us when we first landed. Most colonists are living in more permanent habitation these days, but space is still at a premium, and this was the best place we had to put you. I hope you won't be too crowded."

Scott trying to remember the last time he and his brother shared this much living space between them. They haven't shared a room since they were children, and Scott's position as the eldest meant he'd aged into the right to his own room sooner than John had, even if strictly speaking, John would've appreciated it more. It's probably going to be fine, but he cracks a joke anyway, "Oh, we'll be all right, ma'am. There might be a duct tape line straight down the middle of the place by tomorrow, but he's been my brother for twenty-five years and we've both made it this far. We'll cope."

Dr. Travers smiles in answer, but the light inside the pod isn't exactly kind to her. Under the bright halogen lights, her eyes are tired and there are dark circles beneath them---there's an unmistakable air of anxiety about her. "Thank you again, so much, for coming all this way. I wish the circumstances were anything but what they are. You both deserve better than to be here under this kind of pretense."

John speaks up before Scott can get a word in, "The worst sorts of circumstances are what we deal with best, ma'am. This is a little outside the bounds of our normal, but it's still far from the worst thing we've ever faced. We're here to help."

Scott just nods his agreement. It's a fairly common fallacy that John's not good with people. It's one that John encourages, so it's not as though that helps. John's a natural introvert and prefers solitude as a matter of course, but neither of these things preclude him from being good with people. It's part of the reason that Scott's deliberately set himself apart from the conversation---it's time to let his brother take over.

And John does, with ease and grace and the cool professionalism that people occasionally mistake for coldness. He's calm and patient as he begins, "I've been over your report several times since I was made privy to it. I've got the basics of how you think this happened, but I'd like to go over it again, just to be sure we're clear. Is it all right if I ask you some questions, Dr. Travers?"

"Of course, John. Just---" She glances up at Scott, hesitates for a moment, almost as though she's hedging, "Did you want to sit, Scott? I'm sorry, I realize this is hardly the ideal place for an interview like this. I'd have brought you to my place, but I wanted to be completely sure of our privacy, and Paul---my son, Paul---I don't want him..."

"I'm fine, ma'am. Was an eighteen hour flight out, I'm glad to stretch my legs a bit," Scott declines, and makes a private mental note about the way her voice tremors slightly when she mentions Paul. It's hardly surprising that she doesn't want her son to know. Scott would rather he didn't know either. "I'm sure you want to get home to your son. We'll try not to keep you too long." He nods in his brother's direction, to get the conversation back on track, "Go ahead, John."

John can occasionally miss certain cues, but Scott's been explicitly clear about this one. Keep it concise and let the lady get home to her kid. "Right. Can you tell me more about the man who was killed? Lieutenant James Marston?"

Dr. Travers nods, and Scott watches her take a deep breath to steady her voice before she answers. "Yes. He came with the second wave of colonists to the planet---unattached, not with a family. Most of the WWSA personnel who've joined our colony are singletons. A few couples. I wish I could say I'd known him better than I had, but I'm still getting acquainted with the second and third wave arrivals. Most of our interactions were in a strictly official capacity---signing off on maintenance reports and the like. As far as I know, no one had anything like a problem with him."

"What sort of work did he do, what were his responsibilities?"

"He was a computer technician, one of the engineers responsible for the colony's digital infrastructure. Our computer systems are the life's blood of this place---everything's monitored and controlled and kept running from a central hub, with redundancies built into every system as necessary. Our airlocks, our food production, our vehicles and maintenance drones---it's all dependent on our engineers, and they take the work very seriously."

"Can't imagine there's much on Mars that doesn't get taken seriously," Scott comments, and then lobs a question of his own into the mix. "What was he doing, the night he died?"

It's something easy, something that he technically already knows the answer to, having read the same report John has, if not as many times as John has. But this time Dr. Travers pause is too long to go unnoticed, and of the sort that seems to have a kernel of guilt buried in it, or reticence at least. She's almost apologetic as she answers, "He was...ah. As I said earlier, space is at a premium here. As we started getting settled on the planet properly, we began to transition out of these short-term modules and into more permanently constructed residences meant for long term habitation. Modules one through eight---we're in number five, now, I don't know if you'd noticed---were all cycled out of use, shut down and sealed. They'd been out of operation for over a hundred sols. With the arrival of Mr. Berringer's people, I'd given the order to have these modules evaluated and several of them reopened, in case we ever needed to accommodate any of the expedition's surveyors at short notice. Lieutenant Marston was in the process of examining and vetting module number three, when its airlock failed. The module decompressed and he was killed when it did so."

Scott's read Dr. Travers report. Twice, even. Due diligence. John's been over it several more times than that, and he has notes of his own to go with it---so probably John's already aware of the fact that they're currently in a carbon copy of the module where the first man to die on Mars met his end.

Scott hadn't quite caught onto that yet, and the realization is a bit of a punch in the gut.

John's used to airlocks, though. There are three aboard TB5, and they're just a fact of life, for John. John's a real astronaut and real astronauts probably aren't afraid of sudden, unexplained airlock failures. He's pretty sure he's even heard John joke about that, once or twice. If John's not nervous of the airlock, then Scott has no reason to be. Still, he's aware of the fact that his eyes cut to the module door and that his posture shifts involuntarily. He's also aware of the fact that John catches the movement.

---And Dr. Travers does too, and Scott gets the uncomfortable reminder that he's the only non-astronaut in the room, as she hurries to reassure him, "But I wouldn't have put you here if I weren't certain of your safety. We tested and retested every one of these modules and their airlocks immediately after it happened. What happened was made to look like a malfunction---and to my engineers, it did---but its conditions weren't replicable within any other system, when they ran the standard tests. They were very thorough. Short of deliberate tampering, there's no way another could fail. As long as the proper protocols are observed, there's no reason for concern."

"Oh, no. Of course not," Scott says, but he has to swallow before he does so. "Yeah, no, it's fine. Sorry. Please continue."

There's a brief moment in which he catches John's gaze, but he doesn't hold it, and instead---in defiance of the flutter of anxiety, though it makes no real difference---Scott starts pull his gloves off. John's attention returns to Dr. Travers, and he continues as though there's been no interruption. "How exactly did it happen?"

Dr. Travers pauses again and seems to need to steady herself slightly before she answers, "No one actually witnessed it. It was past sundown, it was his last work order for the day. As near as we could tell, he'd entered the airlock without his helmet on. Strictly speaking this is a break in protocol---but everyone's been here for at least a hundred sols now, and occasionally people will let things slide. There's a window on the exterior door, it's not hard to imagine that he might have wanted to take a look outside for some reason, didn't want to bother suiting up completely. In a perfectly operational system, this wouldn't have been a problem---he'd left the interior door open, as a precaution, because the exterior hatch should not be usable in that case. It should have remained locked. It didn't. Both the module doors were found open behind him, he'd been thrown to the base of the ramp up into the module when it lost pressure, like a bullet out of a gun."

John nods his understanding, but none of this is new information for him. It's not technically new information for Scott, either, but hearing it rendered by another person, with her voice shaking and her hands twisted in her lap---it makes it real, in a way it wasn't before. He's let John take over because this is John's job, this is what he's best at. John's job is getting important information from people who are scared or hurt or compromised in a way that makes the truth that much harder to ascertain.

But the way John remains outwardly impassive and detached is a little bit unbelievable, for Scott. The impulse he has, and the impulse he gives into, is to cross the room, to take a knee on the floor beside Dr. Travers, and to put a comforting hand on her arm. She offers him a rather watery smile in response, and John clears his throat.

"That tracks with the official incident report, as completed by Captain Hill, and as you authorized for submission. But under the Orion Protocol, you encoded and included evidence to indicate that the airlock had been tampered with---that Captain Taylor's secondary evaluation indicated that someone had interfered with the system. Can you clarify what his findings were?"

John's just doing this. John hasn't had to think about it, hasn't displayed any outward evidence of preparation for this kind of conversation, and yet he adopts the language without the slightest difficulty. It seems brusque, almost unkind, until Scott realizes that maybe Dr. Travers takes a kind of refuge in the same formality---that the pair of them are speaking a shared dialect, because she answers in kind.

"Under Orion, I included a statement issued by Captain Taylor, indicating his belief that someone had disabled the failsafe that would've prevented that exterior door from opening without the airlock having sealed. Having examined the system, he came to the conclusion that it had been done deliberately---that panels within the airlock's control system had been accessed and that from that access point, self-deleting code could have been introduced, and then purged after that single failure had occurred. He...he demonstrated the same process for me, independently, in a separate module. He replicated that same failure. Then he double-checked to ensure that none of the other pods had been similarly tampered with."

"Shit, that's awful," Scott mutters, without quite meaning to, and breaks the formality of the mood.

John ignores him, but Dr. Travers looks up and pats the hand he's rested on her arm, before he can apologize for the language and the interruption. "Yes," she agrees. She sighs, and there's a weariness to her that makes Scott's heart ache. "I almost wish I hadn't asked him, which is a horrible thing to think and a horrible thing to want---but it's so hard to have to know that someone's done this. It feels wrong to say it, but an accident would've been so much easier to cope with. I have a responsibility to the truth and to the safety of my people here, but---the truth is so very much like a nightmare."

There's that word again, and Scott winces. Nightmare. It seems so long ago that Scott first heard John use it, but in reality it's only been about forty-eight hours. Now that they're here and in the company of someone who needs them---someone who's more frightened by this than John ever could be---there's no trace of fear or anxiety in his brother, none of what he can see in Dr. Travers now, lurking just below her carefully composed surface. Scott feels a flicker of guilt for automatically extending Dr. Travers his sympathy, when he hadn't felt John deserved the same, but it's not like it matters. His brother doesn't seem in need of it now.

"Why did you ask him? If your engineers were satisfied with the explanation that it was an individual fault in a single system and that Marston's death was accidental, why did you feel the need of a second opinion?"

It's hard, watching Dr. Travers, to discern between her weariness and her anxiety and her diminishing composure, but Scott still gets the sense that something about this question makes her uncomfortable. His sympathy for the woman flares up again, and he has to stop just short of glaring at his brother, for taking such an accusatory tone. But she shrugs Scott's hand off her arm, almost absently, and shifts where she sits, lifts her chin and meets John's gaze evenly. "Because Lieutenant Marston was waiting for me, when it happened. I was the one who found him. He'd been in the process of examining each of these pods for the course of about a week, and when he finished for the day, I would sign off on each of his evaluations. I don't know how exactly that airlock on that module was meant to fail, but it's entirely possible---probable, even---that it was meant to fail with me in it."

10.

Scott is who he is, and so after their interview with Dr. Travers wraps up, he attempts to walk the Commander the bare eight feet of distance between her seat on the couch and the door. John gets to his feet to see her off, and he shakes her hand as they say their good nights. Dr. Travers promises to give them both a full tour of the colony in the morning, but she's plainly exhausted. Having to take her guests through the all the grim and grisly details of the situation probably hasn't helped.

But it needed to be done, and in spite of how it might have made Dr. Travers feel, for his part, John feels better for having done it. Getting to render the problem into something real and present and apprehensible, instead of some shapeless concept hanging in the ether. A problem he can understand is a problem he can solve, and if he hasn't quite shaken off the worst of the dread, exactly, John at least feels resolved to the task at hand.

It doesn't seem like Scott can say the same, and John's absolutely not even a little bit smug about that, watching his brother staring at the airlock door for longer than necessary after Dr. Travers makes her exit. It's certainly not a moment of completely needless cruelty that has him announce, "Pop your helmet back on, Scotty, I'm gonna screw around with the airlock a bit."

The flicker of horror that crosses his brother's features is in no way retribution for the fact that John's been dragged to Mars in the first place, because he's definitely not that petty. Scott's having none of it, in any case. "Fuck no She's got us staying in a literal deathtrap. Jesus, John, were you listening to the woman?"

"Probably better than you were, if you think this place is a deathtrap," John answers, shrugging and pretending at the same flippancy that Scott affects when he's trying to be annoying. "Technically it's more like a murder weapon."

For the first time since this whole thing started, Scott the one giving him a look, another of their father's hand-me-down glares. John continues, casual and unconcerned, "---But you're right, it can wait until tomorrow. I do want a look at it, but for now we should probably settle in for the night."

If Scott's relieved by this, he covers for it well and seems to consider the matter settled for the night. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the door into the bathroom. "Dibs on the first shower."

If it's anything like the shower aboard TB5, this will be nothing to envy, and John's in no rush. "All yours."

Once Scott's ducked into the bathroom, John takes the opportunity to strip out of his blues, down into the undersuit he wears beneath. This is a satiny black unitard not unlike what a dancer would wear, open at the feet and with its sleeves cropped just above his biceps. It's a smart fabric designed to provide a responsive interface for his uniform's biocircuitry against his bare skin, and to help regulate his body temperature. It's more complicated (and more expensive) than what it appears to be, because all it appears to be wouldn't amount to much more than a handful of lycra. John fishes around in his bag and pulls on a pair of sweatpants, out of modesty more than strict necessity, and sits back down against the curving outer wall of the module with his tablet in hand.

It's a matter of relative ease to connect this to the module's main display, a large screen on the wall across the room, and then to have a cursory look over the colony's local network. There's a great deal to look at and once or twice he strays near a distracting digital rabbit hole or a thickety technological garden path---but he manages to keep his focus, and instead patches his way into the colony's nearest comm array. From this access point he sets up a remote link with TB3, and makes himself a neat little private relay, secured and encrypted, a link with TB3's shipboard comms, more powerful on their own than anything the colony has to offer.

Then, dutifully, he puts in a call to Global-One.

Of the satellites in orbit above Earth, the WWSA's newest and most powerful station is one of the only craft capable of making contact with the Martian colony, and thus the only official access point for communication data from the Red Planet. And he'd promised that this would be his first call.

"Captain O'Bannon," he says in greeting, when the comm connects. Straight video, via a camera built into the top of the display across the room. Nothing as fancy or complex as a hologram, to save on their limited bandwidth. The video quality is better than he expects, thanks to the boost from TB3's comms, but better than he expects is still fairly fuzzy and pixelated. Even so, Ridley O'Bannon's familiar silhouette against the backdrop of Global One's command deck is a welcome sight, and he's glad to see her.

"John Tracy," is her automatic answer, and he can hear the smile in her voice, though she's trying very hard to keep a straight face. "How's Mars, you unbearably lucky bastard?"

"Mars is fine."

Ridley's not the sort of person to let him get away with that. Even from a hundred and forty million miles away, her outrage at the understatement is palpable. "Mars is fine," she echoes, disbelieving. "Tracy, have you had a head injury? Did you pull a few too many G's on your descent? Mars is fine? I am attempting to have this experience vicariously, so you're gonna have to take a mulligan on that one. Try again."

Before he can answer, John hears the sound of running water as Scott starts up his shower---the sound of pressure in the pipes is louder than he expects, and distracts him for a moment. Maybe longer than a moment, because Ridley snaps her fingers into the camera on her end and whistles for his attention. "John. How. Is. Mars?"

Ridley doesn't know why he's really here. This is about ninety percent of the reason he's called her, because for Ridley's benefit, he's going to have to try to keep up the pretense that he's just as thrilled and excited to be here as he should be. He's hoping it'll help, as he starts, "Mars...Mars is---"

When the sun sets, the sky is shaded in a blue that wants to be violet. The planet's surface is vast and barren and alien and yet somehow lent some impossible sense of normalcy by the presence of the people who'd been waiting for them when they landed, who'd already staked their claim. There's gravity, but less of it; there's an atmosphere, but less of it. There's sunlight, but he'd only caught the last fading glimpse of their faraway star, and then night had fallen, and been darker and colder and just different from night on Earth. Or in space. And now he's further from home than he's ever been, even for being the member of his family that lives his life twenty-two thousand miles above the surface of the Earth. These are the sorts of numbers he's supposed to be good at getting his head around, and yet the notion of a hundred and forty million miles just sort of fizzles on the surface of his brain, and fails to penetrate.

John doesn't say any of that.

Mars is home to at least one murderer. Mars is the worst possible place to try and corner a killer, and yet that's what he and his brother propose to do. Mars is quietly under siege, secretly held hostage by the sort of unimaginable monster John can only imagine having nightmares about. Mars is a place where it's frightfully easy to die, but where it should have been nearly impossible to be killed.

John doesn't say any of that either.

He's trailed off and she's staring at him. Snapping out of it, John shakes his head.

He's been too preoccupied by what's happened on Mars to have formed a proper opinion about Mars and so, a little guiltily, he has to shrug at the camera and fail to know how to say what Ridley wants to hear. "Mars is...dark. The sun was going down when we landed. Sunsets are purple here. I've met three people, and I've seen the inside of a rover and the outside of the colony, and you can see about sixty percent of the pod where we're staying. It's...it's a lot, I guess. Mars is a lot. I guess maybe it all hasn't quite had the chance to sink in yet."

It's not a very satisfying answer, but she still seems satisfied. Her smile is a surprising source of comfort, and alleviates some of the guilt he feels for not appreciating this experience the way he should. "Well, that makes sense. I remember the first time I got to go to the Moon. For the first little while it just didn't seem real."

"Well, there's something I haven't ever done. The Moon. Maybe we're even."

She just chuckles at that. "Mmm, no, pretty sure you have me beat by an entire order of magnitude there. Pretty sure the Moon is old news, compared to Mars. People were still putting fossil fuels in their cars when we went to the moon. I have moon rocks on the mantelpiece back home. Nice try, Tracy. I appreciate the charity. You can bring me some rocks if you continue to feel charitable."

"For your kids?"

She looks agahst at the very suggestion. "No, you dolt, for me. What are those little goblins going to want with pieces of the Martian surface? They have rocks at home. As far as my boys are concerned, rocks are ammunition. Piece of advice---if you ever meet them? Don't give them anything you wouldn't want bounced off your skull."

Ridley has two children, a pair of boys whose names and ages John can't ever manage to remember, if and when he remembers to ask after them. He's reasonably certain that they're both younger than ten. He's never met them, though Ridley's made the sarcastic comment that her boys are now more impressed that their mother knows Thunderbird Five than they are that their mother is the astronaut in command of the WWSA's newest and most advanced space station. Given the tales that generally get told about Ridley's children, John's of the opinion that they'd probably be better served by introductions to Scott or Gordon, as far as meeting Thunderbirds is considered. And Gordon and Scott would probably be best served to keep their helmets on.

"Well, I can bring you some rocks, then. Probably. I'll have to check. People live here now, I'm probably going to have to ask before I take any rocks."

On the screen across the room, drifting idly in her station's zero-G, Ridley's inverted herself with respect to the camera and the exaggerated shrug of her shoulders is a little tricky to parse. "I've never been, but I'm pretty sure that if there's one thing Mars isn't short on, it's rocks."

John shifts on the couch to sit cross-legged, more comfortable than he expected to be, despite the lack of space. "It's the principle of the thing. There's probably some legal statute about who's permitted to take rocks from where, and for whom. You're supposed to be WWSA, Captain O'Bannon, shame on you."

Ridley just laughs at that. "I won't tell. If anyone asks, I'll say they're souvenirs from Roswell. C'mon, Tracy. Your dad left the first footprint on the surface, maybe you could commit the first crime!"

She doesn't know why he's really here, and there's no way she could know it's the worst possible thing she could've said. And it's been a long day and he's just had a long conversation with a woman in fear for her life, concerning the first crime on Mars.

And he doesn't mean it to happen, but silence falls in the wake of the sort of joke he usually would've bantered right back. It's a very rare kind of silence, the sort that only happens when John's been caught off his guard by something, and suddenly he's hyper conscious of his expression and his body language and the fact that he's frozen up in mid conversation. A long few seconds pass, and a flicker of concern crosses Ridley's features. "John?"

The sound of the bathroom door unsealing with a hiss of released pressure and a breath of steamy air spares him from having to answer, as Scott wanders out of the bathroom and into the field of view, still damp, with a towel cinched around his narrow hips.

There's still the faintest trace of soap suds gleaming on his skin and clinging at the base of his hairline, and he doesn't pay the video screen the least attention as he announces, "I think that thing makes up for a lack of volume with an excess of pressure, pretty sure I've been scoured. Hot as hell, though, so that's something---"

John presses his fingertips against his eyes and sighs loudly enough to be heard from Low Earth Orbit, interrupting his brother, "Scott."

"Hm?"

With his free hand, not looking up, John points to the video screen and hears the faintest squeak on the bare floor as his brother turns on his heel towards the camera, without the slightest trace of shame or embarrassment.

"Captain O'Bannon! Good to see you!"

"Likewise."

John and his brother are almost equal in height and similar in build. They're both patterned after their mother, with her long, willowy limbs---but there are a handful of differences in the way they carry themselves. John's slender where Scott is rangy, lithe where Scott is lanky, fair where Scott is dark. Side by side, in spite of how they're similar, the pair of them are still a study in contrasts. John's always been vaguely aware of the idea that he and his brothers are all reasonably attractive adults, with good genes from both sides of the family, but he never really thinks about the idea in context.

And, another difference, Scott's name occasionally gets thrown around with the words billionaire playboy trailing after it like the tail of a kite, in a way John's never is. Occasionally the tabloids provide a reminder as to why. Scott has broad shoulders and chestnut hair, blue eyes and what's been described as a winning smile. He's also half-naked, for all intents and purposes, and being broadcast live onto the command deck of the most powerful WWSA station in orbit, apparently for the exclusive personal benefit of one of John's friends and colleagues.

"How's LEO treating you, Captain? World still spinning without us?"

"Oh, everything looks just fine from where I'm sitting."

Even without seeing her face, John can hear the salacious grin in Ridley's voice and he picks his tablet back up and takes the video off the main screen, switches to the smaller camera. "...aaaaand I think we'd probably better cut it off there. Big day tomorrow. Lots of Mars to see. Nice talking to you, Ridley."

Upside down again, Captain O'Bannon feigns a pout. "Aw! Put the other camera back on and tell your brother to turn around once or twice. He can take his time."

Scott's bad enough, but Ridley's infinitely worse. The pair of them barely know one another, and yet together they're just about unbearable. John can feel the heat in his face, and glances up to watch Scott gathering a change of clothes from his bag, whistling innocently as he does so. "Nice talking to you, Ridley."

"Spoilsport. Say good night to Scott for me."

"Yeah, say good night to Mr. O'Bannon for me."

"Good night, Scott!" Ridley calls over the speaker and waves cheerfully for John's benefit. "Enjoy Mars!"

"Night, Captain! Thank you!" Scott answers, and John disconnects the call.

And then it's just him in his brother, and John's more embarrassed than he is exasperated as he sets his tablet aside and rubs at his eyes again. Scott's pulled a pair of pajamas out of the bag of gear he'd left on one of the pod's narrow counters, and he tosses a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt casually over his shoulder. As he crosses back to the bathroom to change, he comments idly, "I like Captain O'Bannon. She's remarkably so down to Earth, for someone who lives in space. But it always seems so weird to me that she's happily married with two kids, because I guess sometimes I forget that not all astronauts are like you."

The door clicks shut behind him before John allows himself a faintly irritated sigh. The slightly skeptical stress laid on the phrase "like you" is the closest Scott ever gets to actually applying a label to one of the biggest differences between the pair of them. In John's books, aromantic and asexual would be ideal, as far as an appreciation of his preferred labels---but Scott just can't ever seem to get there. It doesn't come up often, but when it does, Scott manages both to be the person who draws attention to it and the person who insists on talking around it, as though he's charitably playing along for his little brother's benefit. These days, at least where Scott's concerned, John's mostly content to settle for the retirement of the term abnormal.

And it's not really a sore point John wants to dwell on, especially not here and now, with so much else to worry about. So he makes no comment of his own as Scott comes back out of the bathroom, changed into his pajamas now, yawning and toweling off his hair. "We've got a lot to do tomorrow," John says instead. "And you were awake the whole flight out. You gonna get some sleep?"

Scott looks a little surprised at the exemption implied by the question. "You aren't?"

John shakes his head, settles himself more comfortably on the couch as Scott drifts to the ladder beneath the hatch up into their sleeping quarters, puts a hand on one of the rungs. "I'm good for a while yet, I'll catch a nap sometime tomorrow. I want to see what I can get into, digitally, get a head start. Colonist records, that kinda thing. Commander Travers gave me a handful of administrative privileges on the local network. I'll see what I can find out." John shrugs. "I don't know. Flying a bit blind."

Scott doesn't seem to think so, by the way he's staring, halfway between awe and bemusement. And he says as much, "Doesn't sound like it. Did you really always want to be an astronaut, or did living up to Dad's legacy secretly trample over the ambitions of a plucky redheaded boy detective?"

John scoffs at that and rolls his eyes. Scott's not the only offender, nor even the worst, but his brothers occasionally have the bad habit of attributing to some special talent what's more easily explicable as hard work and thoroughness. "It's just working the problem, Scott. It's just my job."

"More than I'd know how to do."

That much is true, and they both know it. It's why John's here in the first place. He still waves the compliment away and quotes something Scott had said earlier, deflecting, "Yeah, well, you're the Watson."

Scott cracks a grin at that, and puts his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. "Yeah, and I guess Holmes didn't sleep like a normal human being either. At least he had cocaine as an excuse. All right, John. Whatever you think is best. Good luck. But crash out if you do get tired, okay? We're supposed to be pretending this is a vacation."

John's already dropped his attention back to the tablet in his hands, keying in the administrator's login and the password Dr. Travers had given him, before she'd left. He pretends he hasn't heard the word vacation and doesn't look up as he says, "Good night, Scott."

"Night, John."

Act 2

11. Interlude

There are 402 people alive on Mars, as of midnight, Sol 460. Two of them aren't residents.

Accounting for the presence of two guests, and allowing for the fact that there's been a murder, the number of people who belong on Mars is a matter of minor debate.

Because, strictly speaking, it was meant to to be an even 400. It's an even 400 once again, but only because one of the people meant to be on Mars has been killed.

The population of Mars was a carefully calculated, carefully planned sort of number. Thousands of applicants were considered. Requirements were stringent, and the process was long. To say nothing of the actual six months spent in flight to the Red Planet, the preceding years called for complicated, intensive training, a years' long program designed to prepare the colonists for their lives on Mars. Everyone here has been carefully chosen, vetted, and above all, prepared to live this life. They've spent half a year together over the course of the journey to Mars, and have known each other for years longer than that. They're a community.

Of course, one of the first actions taken by Commander Travers was to deliberately upset that carefully calibrated, delicate balance, by adding an extra member to the colony's roster, a man whose name and actions made him a legend on the Red Planet, but who's actual presence wasn't ever expected.

Not unwanted. Not even unwarranted. But not expected.

After his actions in helping International Rescue to land a transit ship that would otherwise have been lost to deep space, or smashed into death and debris amidst an asteroid field, there'd been no question that Captain Lee Taylor had a right to remain on Mars and indeed, that he'd received a hero's welcome.

And there's a sense of rightness to it; that Lee Taylor, second man on Mars, would choose to spend the second half of his life on the Red Planet. It's not a reward he would ever have asked for, but to have it offered, there was no way he could possibly have turned it down. He has just as much right to be here as anyone else does, if in a different way. His is a belonging of circularity, of long-established destiny. Lee Taylor's name is carved into a monument where he and his partner took their first steps onto the planet's surface, and on that strength, he's as entitled to be here as anyone else.

But there are people who would argue that he shouldn't be.

And strictly speaking, they wouldn't be wrong.

Martian dawns are the same bluish violet as Martian sunsets, and Scott wakes up in time to watch the first sliver of the sun, silvery and distant, as it crosses the horizon. There are two small portals in the upper part of the module, but the light through them is dim, and the colour of it makes the space seem colder than it is, such that Scott shivers when he pushes the blankets back. The other bunk is still empty, not that Scott had expected otherwise.

John's got a project. Reliably, when presented with a wealth of new information, John has the impulse to sit down and categorize it all according to its potential relevance, and to condense it down into a format easily apprehensible by his brothers. The rapid acquisition and management of data is something John's raised to an art form, a type of intelligence so sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. At least as far as Scott's concerned.

So, after dressing in a fresh uniform, when Scott comes down from the lofted sleeping quarters, he finds John precisely where he'd left him the night before. He's still sat on the couch, cross-legged and with the tabletop pulled down in front of him, an auxiliary display beside his tablet projecting data arrayed in hologram above it. Across the room the pod's display screen still glows bright, and John's abstracted by some complexly cross-indexed manifest, muttering to himself under his breath. He doesn't take his eyes from the display in front of him, and doesn't say good morning, so much as he just waves vague acknowledgment in Scott's approximate direction, and then returns immediately to whatever had his attention.

Wise to the consequences of breaking John's concentration at a moment like this, Scott skirts the edge of the room and occupies himself at the small kitchen module. It's not dissimilar to a compact version of what exists back home on the island, and eventually Scott manages to perform the borderline occult ritual necessary to produce a surprisingly tantalizing cup of black coffee.

The fresh aroma of this, rather than Scott's actual presence, is what gets John's attention, though his gaze doesn't break from the display as he asks, "Is that for me?"

Scott pauses, deliberately, with his coffee cup halfway to his lips and an arched eyebrow. But as those same few mildly incredulous seconds pass, he does a quick mental calculation, with regard to the relative difficulty of making a second cup of coffee, John's obvious preoccupation, and the dark circles beneath his eyes.

There are a lot of reasons why John will eschew sleep, and the majority of them have to do with the work that he does in support of the work his brothers do. Sometimes, owing to the typically disparate nature of John's role within IR, it's possible Scott doesn't always account him the same sort of credit he extends to Virgil, shifting earthquake debris, or Gordon, mopping up an oil slick, or Alan, rocketing off to Jupiter. They all joke about John, that his job is so easy he doesn't even weigh anything while he does it. Most of John's workload is of the mentally rather than the physically taxing sort, but it's still work, and it's how John's spent his first night Mars. The fact is, Scott's had eight hours of sleep where his brother hasn't, and probably the first cup of coffee of the morning should have gone to him by default.

So Scott lowers his coffee cup with a barely audible huff of private amusement, and delivers it to the tabletop at his brother's elbow, where it's immediately and gratefully seized. "Guess that's officially your version of 'good morning', then," he comments wryly, even as John takes a cautious first sip.

John swallows and has the decency to look slightly abashed, even as he rubs his eyes. He goes sheepishly through the requisite pleasantries, "Sorry. Thanks. Morning, Scott. Sleep okay?"

"Pretty well, I guess. Took a while to warm up. It's colder in here than I expected." Scott turns back to the kitchen module, and proceeds to make a second cup of coffee.

"The sun is a hundred and forty million miles away." John's' apparently been untroubled by the same affliction, though the steam rising from his stainless steel mug makes it plain that the air in their shared accommodation is cooler than it might be. His attention drawn to the chill in the room, he absently rubs his hands up and down his arms. "I guess I didn't notice 'til you mentioned."

Scott scoffs quietly to himself, but with a certain sort of affection. "No, of course you didn't." A few more quiet moments pass, and the module chimes with the completion of his own cup of coffee. He turns to lean against the counter and regards his brother expectantly. "So," he starts, suppressing a grin, "you solved it yet?"

It's only a joke, but it still precipitates a groan and grimace, as John takes another sip of his coffee. He sets the cup aside, unfolds himself and gets up off the couch that curves along the exterior wall. The stiffness in his limbs is plainly apparent and Scott finds himself certain that John's missing zero-G. Even Martian gravity is more than his usual, and his brother paces a few short strides, stretches his legs and rolls his shoulders.

"That'd be a no, then," Scott concludes. He pushes away from the counter and crosses the room to take a seat on the only available seating, settles himself down. "Well, it's only day one, don't worry about it. You gonna hit the shower before we head out? Commander Travers said to expect our ride at 0800h, and we've still got about an hour or so. Try and wake yourself up a bit."

"I'm not tired," is John's immediate, automatic answer, but its one Scott's heard before. Polyphasic sleep or no, they've got a big day ahead, and objectively John isn't at his sharpest. He must catch the implication of doubt in Scott's pointed silence, though, because he relents shortly thereafter "---But a shower's not a bad idea."

"Do you want me to reconstitute you some breakfast, or have you been snacking all night?" Scott's appetite is already dulling at the prospect of space food, but he'd be a hypocrite not to attempt to put his best foot forward today, and to be fed and caffeinated and ready to go.

John's already drifted to the bathroom door, and he declines with a shake of his head. "No, I already ate. And you're not reconstituting anything, the food we've got is all fresh from their greenhouses. The algae pucks are a bit of a challenge, but they do the job, as far as protein goes. The mushrooms are good. Try the potatoes."

The bathroom door clicks shut, but Scott doesn't stir himself from the couch, having been thoroughly and completely put off the idea of breakfast by the use of the term "algae pucks". He downs some more coffee instead and idly browses through the data John's pulled up via his tablet, connected to the colony's local network. In the past eight hours, John's gone deep into whatever information he could get his hands on, but Scott can't make head or tail of any of it.

But there's an obvious conclusion to be drawn, and it's that by this point, John's probably got a bedrock of knowledge about the colony that might not entirely work to their advantage. There's a necessary duality to their presence on Mars, and in Scott's opinion, it's not going to be helpful if John seems to know more about the colony than he really should, as an outsider. It might be possible to pass it off as enthusiasm, or obsessive interest, but Scott doesn't think this is the easiest option.

Scott mulls this over as his brother takes a shower. He doesn't comment when John gets done and crosses the room, makes his way up to the lofted sleeping quarters. There's a sort of omnipresent white noise to the habitation pod that Scott doesn't know if he's going to grow accustomed to. Everything that makes the place habitable also makes the place quietly noisy. John's up top, but he's making less of a racket than their life support does, as he gets himself into his uniform.

Partially to take his mind off the omnipresence of the noise, Scott finishes his coffee and gets off the couch, crosses the room to lean against the wall by the ladder. He glances upward at the open hatch and calls, "You realize we're both going to have to play this one pretty dumb, right?"

There's a rather obvious silence (or as close as it gets) from overhead, and then the sound of booted footsteps, and then John leans over the hatch and peers down from the upper floor, apparently offended by the suggestion that he might need to play dumb. "Um. No?"

Ironically, it's Scott's opinion that John's playing pretty dumb at the moment, because from his perspective it's an obvious conclusion. "Um, yeah. You're the one who said it, that the murder thing needs to stay strictly on the down-low. That means we need to act like we don't actually realize how incredibly tasteless and inopportune our timing is. This guy is less than a week dead, the first death on the entire planet. And we rock up in our big red rocketship, expecting a grand tour and preferential treatment and whatever the hell else, just because we're the two eldest sons of Colonel Jeff Tracy? We'd have to be idiots." Scott shrugs and pushes off the wall as his brother's boots find the top rungs of the ladder. "I know idiocy isn't exactly your strong suit."

"Lying isn't exactly my strong suit," John corrects primly, and his boots hit the floor of the module. Standing flat, in full uniform, John gains at least an inch and a half of height, and ends up only just a hair shorter than Scott is. It's the boots that do it, and Scott finds himself straightening up, almost unconsciously, especially as John gives him an evaluating once over. "Smart-cop, dumb-cop?" he suggests, and in the moment it takes to parse this suggestion Scott's not entirely sure he's joking.

"Uh. We're not cops. You're the one who's been emphatic on that point; we are one-hundred percent totally and completely not cops."

"Well, no, but you know what I mean."

"You mean I'm the dumb cop, is what you mean."

John shrugs and neatly sidesteps this interpretation, as he explains, "More that I'm the smart cop, is what I meant. Of course I don't mean that you're dumb-dumb, but...like, there are better reasons for you to know less than I do, or at least to act like it. Objectively you do know less than I do. But I'm in a position to talk to these people as someone who actually understands the mechanics of what they're doing out here. If I have a dozen questions about how exactly their airlocks work, that's just going to be another astronaut taking a professional interest. If you do, it's going to be a civilian paying uncomfortably close attention to something no one's going to want to talk about. You're the one who wants to play dumb. So lean into it. It probably won't be hard."

One of these days, when the timing is a little less awkward, Scott plans to make a snide comment about just how much extra effort John expends, talking around the fact that he thinks Scott's an idiot. Now's not the time.

So instead he says, "I guess we'll just play it by ear."

#the orion protocol #as requested #in full as much as was ever written #thunderbirds are go #it's like 30k words and ends at the end of the rising action #reblog it and say nice things about me #i triple dog dare you #oh there's some art buried in there #if you scroll #sad john and shirtless scotty

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