Disaster in the South Pacific by cathrl
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Chapter 8

Deep, swimming confusion. Everything black and grey, formless shapes looming in the void. No sense of up or down, no anchor point, nothing recognisable. And then, far-off, the memory of voices.

Five seconds to dive.

Pull out good and close. You sure you can handle this, Jason?

I have pulled g before, Commander.

Diving...now!

Hey, what's that? That's n...n...new.

Mark, he's right! New weapon, rear-facing. It's a trap!

Jason, fire now! Tiny, get us out of here!

Direct hit! They're going down.

Too late. Mark, I can't avoid...

And all around him, the coloured flare of the Spectran ship's photonic weapon was the last thing he remembered.

His hand closed around something that shouldn't have been there. The floor of the Phoenix wasn't soft. He was lying on a mattress of some sort, face down with his head turned to one side. He opened his eyes a tiny slit, and hastily shut them again against bright daylight. His helmet was gone, but he was fairly sure he was still in birdstyle. They'd not figured out the bracelets, then. Mark flexed his right arm experimentally, followed by his left leg. His captors had made a big mistake. They hadn't tied him down.

"Scott? I think he's waking up," a voice called from just behind his head, and then a hand landed on his left shoulder. "Commander? Are you -"

Mark exploded from the bed, one hand pinning both of his opponent's behind him, the other locked across his throat. "Scream and I'll break your neck," he hissed in the other's ear.

He twisted silently, surely struggling for air, and a second attacker hit Mark squarely from behind, an arm going down in a competent attempt to break his stranglehold. Competent, but nowhere near good enough. Mark freed his other hand for long enough to throw this one forwards to land in a mighty crash of furniture and dragged his hostage away from any possibility of help. "You've got ten seconds to live unless you show me the way out of here."

And his grip was expertly broken. Mark twisted round to take on this new attacker, still trying to make his eyes work in the unaccustomed brightness. His vision was just starting to clear enough to see targets - two on the floor, one in front of him.

"Mark, stand down! Stand down! It's Jason, you bloody fool!"

No Spectran would get Jason's name out of him. Even if they got it out of someone else, they'd never, ever duplicate the accent. The Condor's accent - like all of theirs, in birdstyle - was bland middle-American. Jason's was broad Australian.

He stopped fighting. Suddenly shaky, he put a hand behind him, found a bed and collapsed onto it. Lay there, aching far more than the past three minutes' activity could account for, while his eyes refused to accustom themselves to the light. And, without warning, was overwhelmed by a wave of terror so powerful he could do nothing but whimper, curl on his side, and try to ride it.

"Mark?" That was Jason again. "Mark, they hit us with the photonic beam. Just breathe. It'll pass."

That might be. For now, breathing was almost impossibly difficult. Opening his eyes again, out of the question. Mark buried his face into the pillow and tried to find his way back into unconsciousness. This place wasn't somewhere he could handle. He had no idea how Jason was coping.

"Breathe slower. Come on."

He flinched a mile at the hands on his, but the grip was tight and uncompromising, and familiar. Mark locked onto that grip, held on while the waves of icy fear washed over and through him, tried to remember to breathe. And very gradually, it eased off and he was able to open his eyes again to discover a normal amount of daylight and his second sitting alongside him.

"Better?"

Mark struggled to sit upright, and failed. "Report, G-2."

"You're having a rough time with the aftereffects of the photonic beam, Commander. The rest's complicated, but everyone's safe."

"For some definitions of safe," an unfamiliar voice grumbled.

Jason turned his head slightly. "I warned your commander that would happen. You were bloody lucky."

"Alan, I told you to tell me if he stirred," another voice said, this one more familiar.

"And I did!"

"Only at the same time as talking to him."

Mark finally placed the second voice, at the same time as its owner came into his line of sight. "Scott Tracy? What are you doing here?"

Scott laughed. "I live here. I never expected to see you in that uniform, though."

Mark looked down. No, he hadn't imagined it. Here he was, in birdstyle, no helmet, in the company of someone who knew him in civilian life and not only didn't have black level clearance, but had no connection to ISO at all. Could their cover be any more blown?

"S'okay, Mark," Jason said. "As okay as it gets, anyway. Scott is the field commander of International Rescue."

"That makes it okay?" Mark rubbed his temples, desperately trying to clear his head.

"We know who they are, they know who we are. Good enough."

"Good enough?" he repeated. His head swam, and the light was starting to hurt again. He shut his eyes and sagged against the pillows.

"Mark, you need rest. Leave it to me for a few hours, okay?"

He thought he'd opened his mouth to reply, but the darkness swam up to claim him before he could speak.

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