Electrification

"Wow! That last lightning strike was a doozy!" Alan entered the cockpit of Thunderbird 2. "Any damage, Virgil?" He approached his brother, sitting in the pilot's chair.

There was no answer.

"Virgil? Virgil!" Alan spun the chair around to find his brother slumped over, his hands burned, raw and red. Alan immediately felt for a pulse. It was there, very slow, but there. He noticed that his brother's chest was still.

"Scott! Virgil isn't breathing!" Alan pulled his brother bodily from the chair and laid him out on the cockpit floor. He cleared Virgil's airway and started artificial respiration.

"Not breathing? What happened?" Scott's worried voice came over Alan's telecomm watch.

"Lightning...puff....I think....puff." Alan matched the number of chest compression to the number of breaths he blew into his brother's lungs. He did it again. And again.

Finally, Virgil's chest rose with a big, shaky gulp of air. Within minutes, his breathing took on a regular rhythm.

Alan pulled in a deep breath himself.

"Scott, he's breathing again. I'm going to put him on oxygen and move him to sickbay."

"No, Alan! Stabilize Thunderbird 2 first!" Scott asked. "She's losing altitude!"

Alan swore and went to the control panel. Several telltales had been shorted out. It took some doing, but he managed to put the aircraft on autopilot and stabilize her position.

"Okay, Scott. I've got her on autopilot. Now for the oxygen and sickbay." He pulled out an oxygen tank and mask from a storage locker at the back of the cockpit. Fitting the mask over Virgil's face, he watched as his brother's pale face and bluish lips began to regain a healthier color. He was about to go get a stretcher for Virgil, when, in a flash, he remembered that Tin-Tin was aboard.

"Tin-Tin, I need an AG stretcher in here! Virgil's hurt!"

The Asian girl brought the stretcher at a run.

"Oh, no! What happened?" she asked as she helped move Virgil's unconscious form to the antigravity stretcher.

"I think that last lightning bolt shocked him. Fortunately, it seems that the voltage was dissipated somewhat by the wiring system." They had moved into sickbay by now, and got Virgil onto one of the beds there.

"His hands are burned. You'll need to treat them. I've got to get back up to the cockpit."

Alan made a quick assessment of the controls. Communication system out, propulsion seemed okay, helm was responding, but over half of the telltale gauges were burned out. It's going to be a bear flying this girl home, he thought. He glanced over to the new remote access system and saw that the display lights were off.

"Oh, no!" Alan raised Scott on his telecomm. "Where is Gordon?"

"You should know. Virgil had Thunderbird 4 on remote access." Scott told him.

"Yeah, but communications are down! The link would have been broken when the comm went down."

"Let me try his watch. Scott to Gordon. Scott to Gordon. Do you read me?"

No response.

"Thunderbird 1 to Thunderbird 5. John, can you give me Gordon's position?"

"Thunderbird 5 here. No, Scott. His watch must not be working." John's voice took on a worried note.

Scott felt a cold stab of fear through his gut. He thought for a moment, then began to move Thunderbird 1 toward where he last had contact with Gordon.

"I still have his last known position. I'm going after him."

The waves were getting higher, and Gordon was getting tired. He and the man were both supporting the woman, treading water. Gordon kept trying his telecomm watch in hopes of contacting his brothers, but without success. He knew that he was running short on air. The people he had rescued had more than he did, because he used some up searching for them. But being without the mask in these waves meant taking on water with each breath.

Suddenly, he heard a familiar sound of jet engines. Thunderbird 1 was moving slowly toward them. It stopped to hover over the place where the house had been. We've been moved some distance from it by the waves, Gordon thought. Scott will know that. He'll set up a search pattern.

A bright beam shone from the belly of the silver craft. It began to sweep the water's surface, searching slowly. Gordon pulled his free hand from the water and waved. The beam passed over him, then stopped and reversed, coming to rest over Gordon and the two rescuees.

"Alan, John, I have him." Scott reported to Thunderbird 2. "Vector 128/84D. He looks tired out. Better get over here quickly."

"FAB, Scott." Alan took Thunderbird 2 off autopilot and began to move her towards the coordinates that Scott had given him.

Gordon will be okay, he thought. He has to be.

"What happened up here?" Gordon questioned his younger brother. He was standing in the cockpit, wrapped in a warm blanket. Tin-Tin was tending to the two people he had rescued.

"I think it was a lightning strike. It took out communications and broke the remote access link to Thunderbird 4." Alan explained.

Gordon groaned.

"You mean Thunderbird 4 is at the bottom of the sea?"

"I don't know. We've got to get communications up again so we can re- establish the link." Alan turned to look at his exhausted brother. "Why don't you take over for Tin-Tin so she can get in here and fix the comm system?"

"Good idea." Gordon stumbled from the cockpit. In a few moments, Tin-Tin came in.

"Time for repairs?" she asked as she got out a tool belt.

"Yeah. So we can go submarine hunting." Alan favored her with a weary smile.

There were two more rooftops to evacuate before the team was finished. Gordon worked the winch on the rescue capsule and tended to the wounded. Only one more person had to occupy a bed in sickbay, for which he was grateful. He kept an eye on Virgil, who was still unconscious. His color was good and he was breathing normally, so Gordon didn't fuss over him too much. Tin-Tin had treated and dressed the burns, swathing them in layers of gauze. Hope this doesn't affect his piano playing, Gordon thought. He unconsciously kneaded the scars on his own hands.

Dawn was breaking and Bernice had moved inland, bringing her torrential rains to other parts of Loiusiana and Alabama. Scott was finished with the thermal imager. He could find no other survivors of the flooding. He looked down at the damage. This will be a mess to clean up, he thought. At least we saved some. He toggled his radio.

"Thunderbird 1 to Thunderbird 2. Status please."

Alan's voice responded. "Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 1. Communications system is back up. Tin-Tin is re-establishing the remote access link to Thunderbird 4. It should be surfacing soon and Gordon can take it back to the pod." They had put the pod in a remote place on the mainland shore. It would have been at the mercy of the wind and waves had they dropped it in the sea, as was their normal procedure. "Virgil is coming around. I'll winch Gordon down as soon as I see Thunderbird 4. Then I'm going to take this group over to the mainland hospital, and come back for the pod."

"FAB, Alan. Good work! You really saved the day today."

"Don't forget Tin-Tin. She's been a big help."

"Absolutely! Great work, Tin-Tin! Glad to have you along with us. Alan, I'm going to wait by the pod for you lot. See you in a bit."

Scott turned his silver craft around and headed for where the pod rested. Maybe he could get a little bit of shut-eye before flying home. But first, he would radio base and let them know how the rescue went.