Short Stories and Oneshots

Choices

Author: FreelyBeYourself

Platform: Fanfiction.net

Type: Thunderbirds (Movie-verse)

International Rescue has always been able to help anyone who needed them, but what happens when two urgent calls for help come in at the same time? The Thunderbirds aren't capable of dealing with both rescues at once, and now the Tracy family must choose who to help, and who to leave behind.

~

John Tracy was, as usual, up in space. He was aboard Thunderbird Five, doing the one and only job that held any meaning for him: he was acting as International Rescue's space monitor. He didn't do it for himself; he didn't even do it for his father, the founder and leader of International Rescue. He did it for the world. Day in and day out he would sit among the stars, listening to the millions of communications that bounced around the Earth each day. To anyone else it would have been an indecipherable mess, and indeed, John was certain that not even his family could truly understand the peace he felt when he was doing his job on Thunderbird Five.

To John, however, the mess of signals and communications and broadcast that he was able to listen to on a daily basis was what helped him make sense of the world.

The computer systems on Five were top-of-the-line, and most of the time the computers were able to filter out the regular conversations from the ones requiring John's attention. John rarely got to hear, for example, an airplane pilot talking to a control tower, or a ham radio operator in London talking to a stranger in Hong Kong. Thunderbird Five's computer banks were programmed with a series of key words that might indicate a distress call, though, and therefore there were occasions when these random snippets of communication were patched through to Thunderbird Five's control room. John would listen for long enough to determine that no one was in danger, and then he would push Five's equivalent of an 'ignore call' button. This happened on average about once or twice a day, and it was these incidences that allowed John to stay in touch with the mundane yet necessary aspects of life on the planet below him.

And then, of course, there were the times when the distress calls were just that: distress calls that needed to be answered, because people were in danger and there was a chance that the Thunderbirds could save their lives. That was John's sole purpose: to catch these distress calls, assess the severity of the situation, and dispatch the rest of his family to deal with the problem as needed. To the world, Thunderbird Five was easily forgotten; but to International Rescue, the knowledge that Thunderbird Five, and consequently John, was what made their rescues possible was always at the forefront of the operatives' thoughts.

John sat thinking about this in the control room of Thunderbird Five. It was a slow day; it had been a slow week, actually. John had just come back up to the station to relieve Brains and to start his month long rotation. He had always doubted his place in International Rescue and in the Tracy family, but this recent visit with them had allayed his concerns.

"International Rescue, come in! International Rescue, please, help!" John was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of a man's voice over the speaker. Instantly he was out of his seat and standing in front of the panel that would allow him to trace the call.

"This is International Rescue," he announced as his Bird began triangulating on the position of the call.

"Thank goodness," the man sighed, relieved. "We need your help. We've just had a terrible storm. Lightning struck some dry brush, and now there's a fire. We tried to put it out, but it's growing rapidly and it's just too windy to contain it."

The computer beeped, and John glanced at the monitor. The man was calling from northern California. John quickly tapped into the breaking news feed streaming live from that area of the country, and sure enough, a wildfire had broken out. The fire was massive and showed no signs of slowing down.