Based upon “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”
The events in this story take place six months
after the events in London which led to Paul Metcalfe becoming indestructible.
Paul Metcalfe turned the page of the magazine and
yawned. It wasn’t often that he experienced insomnia – sure he had some trouble
sleeping after the event on the London Car-Vu six months ago, but that quickly
passed. However, tonight, he found he simply could not sleep. He had felt tired
all day, yet when he entered the room of sleep on Cloudbase, even the swirling
and rotating psychedelic patterns on the ceiling could not entice sleep in him.
He had then moved into the officers’ lounge and began reading by the diffuse
light of the moon shining through the large, circular windows in the room. And
still he did not fall asleep. He glanced down at his watch. It was 03:20.
He threw the magazine onto the round glass table besides his
chair, then rose to his feet, shoved his hands in his uniform’s pockets and
gazed out at the blanket of dark clouds beneath the hovering Spectrum
Headquarters. I should go to see Doctor Fawn, Paul thought. After all, Ed had
provided him with a suitable drug which made him fall asleep after the events
half a year ago. He could be asleep, but surely some of his nurses would still
be awake – after all, the rest of the Spectrum night-watch would still be awake.
Patrick would probably be in command at this time with Lieutenant Crimson as his
assistant. Many other people would be asleep though, and those who weren’t would
be on duty, so Paul would not have a chance to talk to anyone.
“Paul,” a voice called from behind him.
He jumped, startled, yet instinctively knowing who was behind
you. “Hi, Adam,” he said, still gazing out of the windows. “I thought you’d be
asleep by now.”
Adam’s hand touched Paul’s shoulder. Paul turned around to face
his friend, and was stunned. Adam Svenson’s cyan Spectrum waistcoat was unzipped, and
splattered with blood. His usually neatly combed blond hair was scruffy and
unkempt. Wrinkles had developed under his eyes, and he looked extremely
bedraggled and exhausted, and the eerie moonlight did nothing to make him appear
more normal.
“My God what’s wrong, Adam?” he gasped.
“It’s been a long time, Paul,” Adam sighed.
“You’ve got to help me.”
Paul stared blankly at his friend. “What do you mean? Help… Help you how? What’s
been a long time?”
Adam grabbed onto Paul’s arm, then turned and started for the exit of the
lounge, dragging Paul along with him. “There’s no time to explain, Paul. Your
fate awaits you.”
Paul grabbed onto Adam’s free hand and pulled him to a stop, just before they
left the lounge. “Wait, Adam… What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded.
Adam turned back to Paul, annoyed, and biting his lip. “Paul, you’ve got to
trust me on this,” he pleaded. “Come with me, please.”
“Come with you where, Adam?” Scarlet insisted.
Adam stared into Paul’s eyes deeply. There was something
in them, Paul though, that was not normally there. He had never seen his
friend as agitated as this. There must be something devastatingly wrong. “Just
come with me,” he begged. Paul eased his grip on Adam’s arm, and allowed him to
lead him out of the arched Plexiglas exit to the lounge and into…
The Spectrum Passenger Jet plummeted through a blanket of clouds
towards the burning city below. Captain Scarlet stumbled forwards, startled by
the sudden change in gravity. He reached out to try to grab onto something to
stop his fall towards the front of the craft – which was hurtling down at a nearly ninety degree angle from the ground.
Captain Blue placed his arm around Scarlet, and guided him to the co-pilots
seat, before taking the pilot’s seat himself.
Scarlet pulled his seatbelt around him, unthinkingly. He was completely
breathless by the sudden change. How had he suddenly been taken from the
serenity of Cloudbase to the harshness of the SPJ? “What the hell?” he gasped.
Blue fixed his hands around the w-shaped steering wheel and forced it upwards.
“C’mon, Paul!” Blue urged. “She’s not responding!”
Scarlet suspended his disbelief and read off the dials in front of him. “Speed,
two hundred kph… We will crash in approximately one minute.”
“We’ve got to get her up!” Blue gasped, trying desperately to drag the steering
levers towards him. Finally, it seemed to Scarlet as though he was making
progress. The burning tower blocks below no longer seemed to be approaching as
fast.
Scarlet began to work the controls in front of him, thumbing buttons and pushing
levers. The jet engines on the rear of the plane’s tail, besides the stubbed
forward-slanting wings, began to fire into life again as the SPJ soared over the
skyscrapers, each one with plumes of smoke billowing out of them, and amber
flashes of flames within them.
It was then, as Scarlet was gazing out, awe-struck, at the city burning below,
that he saw something amongst the rubble below – another SPJ and a Spectrum
Pursuit Vehicle. They were a mangled mesh of scattered and twisted metal –
destroyed.
Scarlet turned to Blue besides him, as his friend steered the jet back up
through the blanket of cloud. “My God, Adam, what the hell is happening here?”
Blue gasped breathlessly, clearly relieved that they had survived the descent.
He was now piloting the SPJ through the blanket of cloud, making sure not to
ascend back into clear skies. “Trust me,” Blue said, keeping his eyes fixed on
the computer monitors in front of him and the clouds outside the cockpit
windows.
The craft suddenly shook violently. The computer panel in front of Scarlet
erupted in sparks. The floodlights which cast a green-glow around the cockpit
flickered out. The jet shuddered again. “They’ve hit the engines!”
“Who have!?” Scarlet demanded.
Blue paused, turned painfully to look at his friend, then suddenly jolted the
jet upwards, before swinging it around to face the opposite direction.
Scarlet looked up out of the windows at the three other aircraft flying in a
standard V formation. The lead aircraft was flying at an incredible speed
towards the SPJ, with the other two hanging back behind. The sun glinted off the
glass bubble shape of the cockpit, and the missile launcher beneath the sharp
nose flashed red as it opened fire. However, there was no doubting what kind of
aircraft it was.
An Angel
Interceptor.
“What the hell is going on here…?” Scarlet stuttered.
The missile dashed through the sky, then slammed into the undercarriage of the
SPJ as it reared up above the oncoming Angel Interceptor. Alarms suddenly
whirred in the cockpit. Scarlet stared confusedly around, not knowing what was
happening to him. Another missile struck the rear of the aircraft. An explosion
tore through the fuselage, and the nose cone dipped again. Blue struggled
desperately with the controls. “It’s no good, Paul,” he gasped. “The engines are
out… Hold on.”
Scarlet gazed dazedly at Blue as his hand fell onto the levers beside his chair.
He suddenly pulled them up, and the canopy above them blew off. The two chairs
suddenly flew out of the cockpit, taking Scarlet and Blue with them.
Scarlet’s mind went blank. All he
saw was a blur of cyan, white and amber as
his seat careered towards the ground. The parachute suddenly unfurled, and
yanked him upwards to continue on a controlled descent towards the ground. He
gathered his thoughts again, and searched the sky for Blue. His friend was about
ten metres away from him, and a good few metres down, already entering the
blanket of cloud. There was a sudden cacophony of sound as the three Angel
Interceptors flew above them and then pulled away towards the sun. What the hell had happened here? Scarlet thought again.
Then came a sudden shriek from beneath him. “Paul!”
Scarlet instantly looked up and saw the imminent danger Blue
warned him of. The
damaged Spectrum Passenger Jet screamed through the skies towards Scarlet. He
stared in sheer terror as it approached him, its tail section flaming – there
was nothing he could do to avoid it. Then he thought – and began unbuckling his
seatbelt. With any luck he might be able to make the leap onto Blue’s seat…
His fingers worked speedily to unfasten the buckle. He moved himself forwards
into a standing position as the belt fell away. Then he looked up, seeing the
nose cone of the SPJ tearing through the parachute. Streams of fabric were
ripped away, and sent flying into the rear jet engines, torn to threads, then
set alight in the flames. In an instant, it would destroy Scarlet.
He spun round, braced himself, then dived, spreading his arms out, towards
Blue’s falling seat. The SPJ’s fuselage scraped Scarlet’s back as he tumbled,
then he reached out, and grabbed onto the metal back of the chair, yanking it
backwards.
The jet spun around as it descended at hundreds of miles per hour, the fuselage
missing the two figures falling through the sky by just a few metres.
But the wings did not miss.
Their stubby shape smacked Scarlet as he clung on to the back of Blue’s ejector
seat, and he lost his grip, winded. Blue reached out desperately as the SPJ
descended through the clouds towards the ground below, and his friend tumbled
behind it, yelling. Blue’s heart stopped and he struggled for breath as he
gasped, “Paul…”
Scarlet spun over, again and again, as he reached out trying to hold onto
something – something that wasn’t there – hope. He left the cloud layer, with
wisps of the stuff trailing from his legs.
He gazed down at the SPJ as it smashed through the crumbling remains of some of
the buildings below. A plume of fire followed it as it smashed into hundreds of
pieces.
Scarlet then became aware that he was falling even faster than before. It
wouldn’t be long now. One of the skyscrapers below, already on fire, and with
just two of its four walls still standing, appeared to be his destination, and
it was rapidly approaching.
Scarlet did not know what to do, he spread his arms out to try and slow his
descent, and he held his breath, but he did not know why.
He could see now parts of the wrecked top floor of the building – it appeared to
be an office, with desks smashed up, and computer terminals ripped to shreds.
How it was still standing, he did not know.
It was even closer. Five seconds left, he guessed.
Closer still…
Closer…
Paul struggled to open his eyes. He was still hurting, and still
wondering what had gone on exactly. He half expected to wake up in the Cloudbase
officer’s lounge after having fallen asleep whilst reading the magazine.
Destiny looked down on him, placing a cold compress on his head. Her face was
difficult to make out in the dark, amber glow of this place – wherever it was –
but she looked different. Her hair was all tied back into a pony-tail, and she
had developed a scar on her forehead, running from the edge of her eye up to her
fringe.
Scarlet realised he was lying down on a harsh surface,
but he wasn’t sure what it was exactly. His eyes darted around the quiet
chamber and he realised he was underground somewhere. The walls had been carved
out of a dark brown rock and were illuminated only from a set of three orange
lights set strategically around the chasm. Most of the place was cast in shadows
though, and it seemed as though he and Destiny were the only people there.
There was no doubt that this was Destiny, though. Even with the unusual hair
styling, the worn-out expression she wore on her face, and the peculiar scar,
her eyes were still that vivid azure, and still full of raw emotion as they always
were.
The sudden shock of the cold compress against his forehead made him wince, and
he tried to push himself up.
“No, no,” Destiny said comfortingly, placing a hand on Scarlet’s chest and
easing him back down onto the bed, which was probably made out of rock as well.
“Do you know where you are?”
“No,” Scarlet admitted.
Captain Blue stepped out of the shadows in the corner. His waistcoat hung
loosely from his shoulders, and there were specks of blood on his face. “I think
I owe you an explanation,” he said apologetically.
“What has happened here?” Scarlet begged.
Destiny glanced uneasily at the two, then backed off towards the shadows.
Blue knelt down on the dusty ground, and placed a hand on the bench Scarlet was
lying on. “Paul,” he started, appearing nervous. His hands were shaking a
little, and he still looked exhausted, but Scarlet could see Blue was more
comfortable in these surroundings. Scarlet got the feeling that his friend had
been here for some time, although surely that wasn’t possible. Then again,
Scarlet wasn’t sure of anything any more. “You are not… where you were,” Blue
said.
Scarlet frowned. Blue’s statement was obvious, so there must be something more
in it. He knew his friend too well for him to state the obvious.
“So where am I?”
“It’s more complicated than just a place,” Blue said, pulling his cyan waistcoat
off and slinging it on the ground. “You’re not in your world any more.” He
gestured around the cavern with his arms. “This… this place is completely
different to anything you have known. And we need your help.”
Scarlet hoisted himself up until he was resting on his elbows. Although it hurt,
he felt in a more commanding position that way. “You’re saying this is some kind
of… parallel universe?”
Blue stood up and folded his arms, before proceeding around the bench. “I
suppose you could call it that,” he mused. “But our universe is not parallel to
yours. Ours is different. A more accurate description would be to call it an
alternate reality.”
“I didn’t realise there was a difference,” Scarlet admitted.
Blue waved his hand out nonchalantly. “It isn’t important.” Then he knelt back down besides Scarlet, this time on the opposite side of the bunk. “What is important is why you are here.”
“How did you bring me here?” Scarlet asked.
“That isn’t important,” Blue insisted. “You have to help us. In our universe,
the Mysterons are winning the war.”
Scarlet swallowed. “We were attacked by an Angel Interceptor.”
“Five months ago, Spectrum was forced to abandon Cloudbase.” He paused for a
moment and shook his head. “Colonel White… they got Colonel White.”
Scarlet closed his eyes, shocked.
“The War of Nerves has now changed – completely changed into a full out assault on us by
the Mysterons,” Blue continued. “Once they gained control of Cloudbase and
Spectrum’s ground bases, they used our equipment to begin systematically
destroying cities and towns.”
Blue stood up and began pacing around Scarlet’s bench again. “A few of us managed to
escape from Cloudbase and we took all the equipment we could, including the SPJ,
a helicopter and we managed to commandeer some SPVs, but that’s it. And we
managed to find refuge here.”
“And where is ‘here’?” Scarlet asked.
“A chasm in the French Alps,” Blue said. “We put automatic heaters and lights
in… It almost feels like home,” he said ruefully.
Scarlet summed up the strength to sit up properly, even though stabbing pains
shot through his body. “Who managed to escape?”
Blue stopped walking, an agonised expression on his face. “Our resistance cell
consists of seven Spectrum officers. Bradley, Seymour, Pat, Rich, Juliette,
Dianne and Magnolia all made it.”
Scarlet’s heart stopped as he suddenly realised why Blue had paused before.
Karen had not made it. Symphony Angel, the love of Adam’s life, had been taken
over by the Mysterons. “I… I’m sorry,” was all that Scarlet’s dry mouth could
muster.
Blue turned to face Scarlet and faked a smile, before moving closer to the
bench. “Thanks,” he whispered. “I don’t know what happened in your reality… but
in ours, we were close… Very close. And I lost her.” A tear trickled down Adam’s
cheek. Paul placed a comforting arm around his shoulder, but he just shrugged it
off, inhaled deeply and tried to pull himself together. “The goddamn Earth armed
forces can’t do a thing about them. They’ve been decimated. The world’s
governments are on the point of collapse. Anarchy has spread through the cities.
People are rioting. And dying.”
Scarlet did not know exactly how to ask his next question – one that had been
burning in his mind for ages. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Six months ago,” Blue started, “you fell hundreds of feet down from the London
Car-Vu after trying to kidnap the president for the Mysterons whilst you were
under their influence.”
Scarlet nodded.
“You survived the encounter and regained control of your body,” Blue continued.
“But you retained the
Mysterons’ power of retrometabolism and became Spectrum’s greatest asset against
the Mysterons.”
Scarlet nodded again.
“Here,” Blue said, again gesturing to the dark cavern with its walls giving off
a reddish-tint to the light, “you didn’t.”
Scarlet was silent. He did not know what to say, but knew he had to say
something. “Pardon?” he spluttered.
“You didn’t survive, and neither did President Younger.” Blue had made his point
bluntly, and Scarlet supposed that there really wasn’t any other way he could
have made it. “You’re dead, Paul. But we need your help.”
Bradley Holden had opted to stand in the corner of the chasm,
just out of the shadows cast by a large outcrop of charred rock. His shoved his
hands angrily in his large, thick grey Spectrum jacket, which was still pitted
with rips and tears.
Adam stood in the centre of the chamber, with the three lights pointed towards
him. It had originally been difficult for Bradley to start calling Adam by his
Christian name, as he had been used to addressing him by his Spectrum codename
of Captain Blue, but they had decided to ditch those when they formed the
resistance cell.
Seymour, Pat, Rich, Juliette, Dianne and Magnolia formed a circle around Adam
and Scarlet as they gave out the briefing. “This is the plan,” Adam started.
Bradley frowned. He didn’t like the way Adam had taken control of the whole
situation from the very start. It had once been hoped that this could be a
democracy, but Blue just immediately took control. And he always thought he was
correct. He never even asked the rest of the cell if he thought bringing Scarlet
into this reality was a good idea.
“Captain Scarlet and I will take the Spectrum Helicopter up to Cloudbase whilst
Juliette and Pat, Rich and Magnolia will take two SPVs and begin an assault on
the latest Mysteron target – Manchester – to make sure the Mysterons are kept
busy.” Blue glanced around the gathering. “Once we have managed to get Captain
Scarlet aboard Cloudbase, it will be his job to ensure the destruction of the
base. Does anybody have any arguments?”
Bradley shrugged. He wanted to ask why Scarlet was so bloody important to this
whole thing, and why somebody else couldn’t have gone on this suicide mission to
destroy Cloudbase in the first place, but he knew the others would condemn him,
so he didn’t bother.
In all honesty, Bradley thought that bringing Scarlet into this universe had been a mistake. A complete mistake. They had spent a lot of time and energy in bringing him here, and there was no guarantee that he would do anything. He hadn’t particularly liked Captain Scarlet before he died, and seeing him kidnap the world president, then fall from the Car-Vu with him, and killing him, was a sight that made him forever despise Paul and made him revaluate how he came to trust his different friends.
“The others of you,” Blue continued, “Seymour, Dianne, Bradley… You will stay
here and make sure nobody gets their hands on the other SPV.”
“Understood,” Seymour nodded, running a hand casually through his now-long hair.
“Right,” Blue said, “let’s get to work!”
Paul Metcalfe was still puzzled by the whole affair as
Adam operated the controls for the helicopter. The rotor blades began to spin,
slowly at first, blowing dust up from the inside of the crater.
“How am I supposed to destroy Cloudbase, Adam?” Scarlet asked as he watched the
crater’s jagged walls seemingly fall away from the copter.
Adam shrugged, clearly not really paying attention. He glanced over his shoulder
through the port windows of the helicopter, making sure no part of the craft was
damaged by this unconventional take-off. “Any way you can, Paul.”
The radio chirped. Paul reached forward and picked up the small red receiver.
“Scarlet here,” he said, “go ahead.”
“Hello Paul, this is Juliette,” she
said in her unmistakable French accent. “We are reaching Manchester along the M6…
Estimated time of arrival now forty-two minutes, over.”
“Understood, Destiny,” he said, before correcting himself, “sorry… Juliette.” He didn’t think he would ever be able to call his co-workers by their real names when he was still on duty. It just felt strange to him, and he was not sure why. Whenever he was off-duty, at a casino, or out to dinner, he felt relaxed and could call them by their given names, but when he was on a mission, he felt obliged to call them by their codenames, even if those had been revoked in this reality.
“That is okay,
Paul,” she giggled. “Rich and Magnolia are about one minute behind
us. Juliette out.”
The hiss of background noise suddenly cut off from the speakers, and Paul placed
the transmitter back on its holder. “What do we do until they begin to attack
the Mysteron complexes?” Paul asked, looking at Adam, who was trying his best to
keep the helicopter hovering just above its crater launch pad.
“We head up there anyway. Forty thousand miles is a hell of a way to go, Paul,”
Adam said, suddenly operating controls frantically, and
sending the helicopter into a sudden ascent. “The Mysterons will have located
the SPVs and know they aren’t under their control. I wouldn’t be surprised if
they’ve launched their Angel Interceptors already.”
Paul shook his head. Adam seemed awfully sure of himself, but he did not seem to
have thought things through correctly. “What will happen if we destroy
Cloudbase?”
“The Mysterons’ plan will all collapse.” Adam smiled at Paul. “Their organisation will collapse, and we will manage to fight back against them successfully. We will force them back to Mars, and then obliterate them.”
Paul looked at his friend, who had now engrossed himself in piloting the copter
again. There was something not right about this whole situation. “What do you
base that assumption on, Adam?”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “My instincts.”
It’s tough at the top, Paul said, reminding himself of something Colonel
White had told him at the informal meeting which led to his becoming a member of
the Spectrum organisation. White believed that Blue had the potential to become one of the top agents in
Spectrum, but not if he became too complacent. Perhaps the pressure of being in
control of an organisation leading an impossible battle for the sake of the
Earth was getting to him so
much that he had come to take actions first and think of the consequences later.
“There she is.”
Paul looked up through the large cockpit windows of the helicopter, and sure
enough, there was the small, silhouetted form of Cloudbase, surrounded by a
number of clouds. Suddenly, two arrow-like forms darted away from Cloudbase,
their actual shapes blurred by the powerful sunshine behind them.
Adam pulled his tinted rectangular glasses over his eyes. “Hold on,” he warned,
then yanked the steering column backwards. The helicopter jerked upwards
suddenly, and approached Cloudbase quickly.
“They’ve still got one Angel Interceptor on the deck,” Paul warned, “and they’ll be loading the other two onto the deck right now. You saw how quickly they launched those…”
Adam flashed Paul a dangerous look. “We have spent months planning for this
moment, Paul,” he growled. “Nothing is going to stop the success of this
mission. Get ready.”
Paul hesitated, then unbuckled his belt and clambered towards the back of the
angled helicopter.
“We are approaching Cloudbase,” Adam announced.
Paul slid open the hatch leading into the cargo compartment, and then pulled his
harness down from the wire it was connected to, and slid his arms and legs into
it.
“Opening hatch!” Adam called from the cockpit.
The hatch to Paul’s left hissed open pneumatically, and the sudden inrush of air
caused by the spinning rotor blades pushed Paul backwards a step. Paul reached
up for the wire his harness was attached to, and pulled down a harpoon-like
device, slung it across his shoulder, then aimed it through the hatch at the
underside of Cloudbase.
“Hurry up, Paul!” Adam shouted from the cockpit.
Paul tried to get the aim exactly right, just besides the underside emergency exit hatch leading into the room of sleep, but it was difficult with the constant shake of the helicopter. His finger pulled the trigger, and the dart shot through the air and attached itself to the metal panelling. Paul pulled the wire that was connected to the end of the dart taught, then inched his way towards the exit. “See you soon, Adam!” he shouted.
“Break a leg!”
Paul glanced downwards at the ground below but he couldn’t make out the hundreds
of sky-scrapers he knew would be down there. “I’ll try not to if you don’t
mind,” he laughed. Then he took one last look around the helicopter, then leapt
out. The wire suddenly pulled tightly against the harness, jolting his body
upwards. Besides him, the Spectrum helicopter turned around, and Adam waved at
him, before slowly moving away underneath Cloudbase.
And then the one thing Paul feared happened. Vibrations started to shudder
through the wire from Cloudbase, making him shake. He
immediately realised that the throbbing was being caused by the sound of a
familiar jet engine above him. There was a roar as an Angel Interceptor left the
deck of Cloudbase. It flew out away from the base, and then swooped low and
around, heading back underneath Cloudbase.
Paul watched in horror as the crackle of a launched missile fizzed from the
Interceptor’s launch tube, then shot through the thin air and slammed into the
main body of the Spectrum helicopter which was attempting a desperate descent
towards the clouds beneath. But it was too late. There was a tremendous
explosion, the tearing or sheared metal, and the tinkle of smashed glass as the
missile struck home. The engine immediately failed, and what was left of the
rotor blades slowed down, before the singed main body of the helicopter began to
hurtle towards the ground.
The Angel Interceptor thundered below Paul, leaving him swaying by the thin
wire. He swallowed hard as he thought of Adam, who could not have known of the
imminent danger.
His present situation did not allow him any time to grieve, though. He grabbed
onto the wire with both hands and began to pull himself up towards the underside
hatch.
It was not as easy as he had bargained for, however. The wire was still swaying
from the Interceptor’s flypast, and there was also a hot blast of air coming
from a vent from the room of sleep’s air reclamation plant.
He managed it though, grabbing onto either side of the hatch, and then pulling
it away with a satisfying click, before slinging it down through the sky. He
placed his hands inside the open hatch, and lifted himself into Cloudbase. Once
his upper body was in, he swung his legs in and placed them on the other side of
the hatch, before climbing up the passageway which led for seven metres up
through the bowels of Cloudbase.
Once at the top, he opened another hatch, this time to his side, and entered the
Room of Sleep, which was fortunately empty. He slipped out of his harness, and
threw it down the emergency exit hatch, then began to get to work.
Juliette pulled the steering system around to the left, and the vehicle tipped up as it spun around the falling debris. Besides him Pat, formerly known at Captain Magenta, smiled. “I never knew you were such a good driver,” he said. His Irish accent had long since been replaced by his American inflections, but Juliette could swear she could still hear some of his native accent underneath.
“Just concentrate on the missiles,” she laughed, keeping her gaze fixed on the
television monitor in front of her, displaying the crumbling warehouse in front
of her.
“There!” Pat shouted, ecstatically. “Two Angel Interceptors are approaching at
high speed!”
“Okay then,” Juliette said, slamming the brakes on. “Where
are Rich and Magnolia’s SPV?”
Magenta checked the computer interface in front of him where the forward
television screen would normally be located. This time, it had been transformed
to display a radar scanner. “They’re two miles away,” he reported. “One of the
Angels is peeling off to attack them. The other one is…”
The SPV shook suddenly, and there was an explosion of sparks behind Juliette’s seat. “I guess the other one’s coming for us,” she finished, before accelerating the SPV forward again.
“What are you doing?” Pat asked, obviously noticing the obstruction ahead.
“Finding shelter,” she explained.
The SPV’s huge armoured bumper smashed through the brick wall of the warehouse
in front of it as another missile from the Interceptor above singed the ground.
“Hey, Pat, how you doing?” Richard’s
voice crackled over the radio system.
Pat was thrown forward by the sudden acceleration Juliette applied to the SPV as
it crashed through another brick wall. A final missile broke through the roof of
the warehouse, causing the fuel stored inside to set alight, and then suddenly
erupt into flames.
“Not much happening here,” he said sarcastically.
“You got problems too then, huh?”
Richard asked, the sounds of explosions crackling through on the radio
transmission as well. “Listen, I’ve been
trying to contact Adam, and there’s no response. I think something may have gone
wrong.”
“Understood,” Pat said, biting his lip. If something went wrong with this
mission, he thought, then that would probably be the end of the resistance cell.
It was all or nothing. “I’ll try and get in contact with them myself. Over and
out.”
Another missile suddenly smashed down into the dirt in front of the SPV,
creating a huge smouldering crater. Juliette overcompensated, and the SPV tipped
up on its set of right wheels. “Hold on!” she warned again. The other wheels
smacked onto the ground again with a huge thud, bolting both Juliette and Pat
down to their chairs.
He glanced worriedly at Juliette besides him, but she didn’t return his look,
and kept her azure eyes fixed on the television screen in front
of her, making minute adjustments to the steering column she held onto. Pat
shrugged and began to operate the communications console again. “Adam, can you
hear me? Please respond!”
Static crackled over the radio, which was just audible over the sound of the
multiple explosions outside.
“Anything?” Juliette asked, still concentrating on piloting the vehicle.
“No,” Pat said anxiously. He bit his lip and tried to change the amplitude of
the receiving frequency. “This is something we could have really used
Seymour
for.”
“So what’s happening?” Juliette asked as she banked the SPV over to the right,
leaving it skidding through the dirt as it entered onto a field off the road it
was on before.
“He’s not even trying to respond,” Pat sighed. “If he was, then I’d pick
something up on one of the frequencies, even if I wasn’t able to understand it.
But there’s no transmission whatsoever. It’s almost as if he didn’t have the
radio with him.”
“And what if he didn’t?” Juliette asked.
Pat didn’t say anything. His throat dried up. It was too devastating to imagine
what could have happened.
This was not what Paul had expected to find. Everywhere,
it was empty. The room of sleep had been deserted, as had the officer’s
lounge, the Angels’ Amber room, the sickbay, and all the corridors he had found.
If the Mysterons had taken over Cloudbase, then the Spectrum officers they
retrometabolised would be manning the base, wouldn’t they? Or would the
Mysterons have just taken control of Cloudbase and killed everybody else,
leaving control of the craft in their own hands… perhaps operating it from Mars?
Either way, the emptiness of Cloudbase still worried Paul. The place was silent,
and the lights were dimmed. In fact, the only thing Paul could hear was his own
breathing, the clank of the deck plates beneath him as he walked tentatively
through the long corridor, and the occasional rattle of an air vent that had not
been attached properly.
With the base empty, surely that would mean it was going to be an
easy task to destroy it. Or would it make it more difficult?
He finally reached his destination – the large bolted door at the end of the
corridor, the label on it marking the lift to the Control Tower.
Paul punched his access codes into the small keypad besides the door, but
nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.
Paul sighed and took a step back, lifting his pistol from its holster. He aimed
it at the keypad, wrapped his finger around the trigger, and fired. The bullet
shattered the glass casing on the keypad, and the circuits inside exploded in a
shower of sparks. The heavy door clumsily slid aside revealing the small lift
which would take him up through the supporting stanchion into the Cloudbase
control room. He entered, and fortunately, the lift was still operating, albeit
slower than usual. A few moments later, he pulled open the lift’s doors and was
confronted by the dark interior of the Cloudbase control room.
Paul gave a wan smile then stepped into the room, clicking the gun into its
holster.
The control room was even more desolate than the other places he had visited aboard Cloudbase. All the main floodlights had been deactivated, and the only source of illumination came from the small flickering lights on Colonel White’s desk, which had always looked to Paul like a donut with a bite taken out of it. Lieutenant Green’s long computer terminal was also active, with the buttons blinking, and on the huge transparent circuit board, different sections lit up at oddly-timed intervals.
The epaulettes on Paul’s jacket suddenly flashed, and he expected
his cap mike to swing down towards his mouth, but then remembered that he did
not have his cap, and so pulled the small pencil-like transmitter Seymour had
given him in the cavern from his belt. “Go ahead, Paul here.”
“Boy is it good to hear your voice,”
Pat’s shrill tones replied. “I couldn’t get a reply from Adam, and…”
“The helicopter was destroyed,” Paul explained grimly. “An Angel Interceptor
shot it from the sky once I had boarded Cloudbase…” Paul’s voice trailed off as
wheels turned within his mind and ideas clicked into place. “They let me get
here,” he said to himself. “They let me board Cloudbase. But… But why? To have
me become one of them?”
“Paul, be careful, it may be a tra…”
Pat’s voice suddenly cut off in mid-sentence. Either their SPV had been
attacked, or…
The cold metal ring of a pistol’s nozzle kissed the back of Paul’s neck. “Raise
your hands.” The voice was unmistakable.
It was Captain Black.
Paul swallowed hard, and then slowly lifted his hands into the air, although he
realised that the gun could do him no permanent
harm. It could, however, slow him down so as to jeopardise the success of the
mission, so he determined it was better to play along with Black’s game.
The gun was pulled away from Paul, and Black then slowly walked around his
captive, keeping the weapon targeted on him all the while. Once Black was
standing directly opposite him, a few feet away, he stopped moving.
“I see that no matter what the universe, the Mysterons still managed to find a fine candidate to be their puppet on Earth,” Paul rasped. Black just stared at him unemotionally. “That gun won’t work on me, you know. It will pierce my skin, I will bleed, but enzymes in my body will dissolve the bullet and my metabolism will repair all the damage to my organs.” Still Black remained silent. “What are you going to do to me?”
“What we planned to do to you all along,” he growled. “You are to be instrumental in avenging the Mysterons. We shall work as one.”
Paul frowned angrily at Black. It was a disgusting thought to think that they
had once been friends working for the same organisation. And if Captain Black
had not requested the assignment to Mars, then it would have fallen upon Captain
Scarlet to go with the Zero-X crew. He had always felt guilty for that. It
should have been him who became the
Mysteron agent. Maybe he would not have been as rash as Black had either, and not
actually fired on the complex in the first place? Somehow, Paul just didn’t feel right about it.
“Captain Blue played right into our hands when he brought you here,”
Black continued. “Now we will have control of you again, and you will
infiltrate the resistance cell and bring it down from the inside.”
“That’s impossible,” Paul retorted. “You’ll need more than one person on the
inside, and…”
“And that is what we have.” This voice came from behind Paul this time, and it
wasn’t Captain Black, yet it was still unmistakable as the voice of his friend
for so many years. Adam Svenson walked around Paul and stood next to Captain
Black.
“Adam,” Paul gasped. He paused for a moment, and then composed himself. “Why
didn’t you destroy the helicopter whilst I was aboard then if you were just
going to retrometabolise us anyway?”
“Have you forgotten?” Black asked dryly. “You are indestructible.”
Adam concluded the speech as he walked back around to the right hand side of
Paul. “A helicopter accident was not good enough. You could have survived. There
is only one thing that can destroy you.”
Paul sighed, knowing the answer. “So that’s what you have brought me here for is
it? You are winning the war anyway. Why do you need me?”
Black’s eyes narrowed.
“It isn’t as simple as that,” Adam said. “Resistance factions are appearing all
over the globe. Only the arrogance of Captain Blue made him believe that he was
fighting a losing battle so that when the victory came he would be celebrated
even more. And when he told his resistance cell that, they believed him as they
knew no better. After the success in Washington where three Mysteron jets were
destroyed, the other members of the cell trusted him implicitly. His plan had
been flamboyant and unlikely to succeed, but it did. And he won their trust.”
Scarlet bit his lip. He should have seen there was something wrong with Adam’s
leadership before he embarked on this mission. The anger built up inside of him.
He was angry at himself, not anybody else, not even Adam.
His fists clenched. It was time for decisive action.
Paul dived down, rolled over on the floor dodging Black’s bullets, then grabbed
onto Adam’s ankles as he tried to step away. He yanked Adam down onto the floor,
his head smashing down through Lieutenant Green’s computer console. It exploded
in sparks, and smashed glass scattered about on the floor.
Paul dived out of the way, and leapt to his feet, before clambering around to
the other side of the long station, away from Captain Black’s bullets. Black
lifted the pistol up again, and fired through the glass outer casing of the
circuit board, smashing it into a thousand pieces which spread about the room
covering Adam’s limp body.
Paul looked around desperately, searching for a place to hide. Black advanced on
the smashed computer console, his pistol pointed straight at Paul. “You can’t
win,” he barked.
Paul stood up, about to admit defeat. If he let Black capture him, there still
might be a chance of escape. There certainly was not one in this gunfight. He
lowered his arm, about to drop the pistol…
When he remembered something.
His original mission.
In a deft movement, he swung his arm towards the right and pointed the pistol at
Colonel White’s rounded desk, aiming at a certain section, and fired. This must
all have happened in an instant, Paul thought, as Captain Black had only enough
time to react and fire one bullet at Paul, by which time, he had dived back down
onto the glass-laden floor.
Colonel White’s console burst into flames as the engines controls were hit by Paul’s bullet. There was a sudden chugging noise from outside, and then a warning alarm whirred through the whole of Cloudbase as it began to tilt up on its axis.
Black was thrown backwards by the angle of the floor and the sudden change in
gravity. He skidded along the floor, trying to reach out for something to hold
onto, whilst Paul lay desperately hanging onto a metal beam from Green’s
station.
“That’s the rear engines out, Captain Black!” Paul hollered. “And without those,
this thing is going to crash in a matter of minutes.”
There was no response from Black, and Paul was not in an adequate position to see what was happening. He pulled himself up using the metal pole, then carefully guided himself down through the control room, which was at, he guessed, about a 45° angle. Supporting himself on the remnants of Green’s shattered computer terminal, which ran almost the complete length of the control room, Paul finally reached the bottom, and found Captain Black lying there, his body smashed through one of the green Plexiglas supports which held the roof up.
Paul bit his lip. Black appeared dead, but he was a Mysteron. In a heartbeat, he
made his decision, and lowered himself down besides Green’s console, and yanked
a power conduit out of it. The twisted wires inside sparked as they were
disconnected from the main circuit. Paul held his breath, then spun round and
pushed the electricity cabling against Black’s uniform.
The cables sparked powerfully, and seemingly tiny flashes of electricity sparked
into his body, although Paul knew it was more like hundreds of vaults powering
through him. Black’s body shook in violent spasms, then suddenly fell limp
again.
Paul heaved a sigh of relief. Despite what the Mysterons had made him, that man
had still been one of his closest friends, and Paul still grieved for him.
There was a shocking reminder of the task at hand as Colonel White’s desk
erupted into a blazing fireball again, smashing the glass supports besides it,
and dragging Paul from his quiet reverie.
“Danger!” the simulated voice of the
computer called out. “Impact in five minutes!”
Paul decided to take action again. He stumbled past Captain Black and then leapt
through the open exit doors to the lift outside as Cloudbase jerked sideways
with the rear engines trying to overcompensate for the sudden descent. Soon they
would burn themselves out as well and the computer’s estimation of three minutes
would appear overly generous. Paul estimated it to be more like two minutes. But
he did not have time to worry about small things like that.
The doors hissed shut, but the lift did not begin automatically. He banged the sides violently, then decided on more decisive action, and dived down onto the floor, opening the emergency escape hatch. He clambered through, then made a difficult climb down the support stanchion into the main body of Cloudbase. Within moments, he reached the entrance which led into a corridor.
He sprinted through the angled corridor, the tilt making it incredibly difficult
to move in, and the constant yet unpredictable sideways jerking of Cloudbase
made it even trickier.
“Danger! Impact in four point five minutes!”
He reached the emergency access ladder to the main body of Cloudbase now, and
began to slide down it, not bothering with the different rungs; there was no
time left. He had to get off this base, and the best bet was probably by Angel
Interceptor.
Moments later, he had reached the Amber Room, which was filled with a red
flashing warning light, and the siren which had remained constant for the past
few minutes. Glass supports were smashed in here as well, and cushions from the
sofas had been spread about the room. Through the large circular windows, Paul
could see the mountains below fast approaching. His heartbeat increased, and he
clambered over to the Angels Injector tubes. But they were smashed. The
transparent surroundings had exploded inwards, and the two chairs were now
indistinguishable as anything other than twisted and mangled wrecks of metal.
“Danger! Impact in four minutes!”
Paul thought fast. There was no other way to the launch deck he could think of
that he could reach in the time. The only other option he now had was to use a
jet pack or to go to the Angels’ hangar. The jet packs were located at strategic
points all around the base, but with it falling at such a speed and angle, it
would be dangerous to try and launch and he would surely plummet to the craggy
ground below before he had time to build up enough power to get
himself
airborne.
His only chance of survival was with the Angel Interceptors which
were still loaded in the hangar in the upper flight deck. He entered the lift
mechanism which would normally elevate one of the Angels up into their
interceptor. He clambered up through it onto the upper flight deck, scrambled
around, and then found what he was searching for – the maintenance hatch
entrance to the hangar.
“Danger! Impact in three point five
minutes!”
The hangar was even darker than the rest of the base, as it had no windows to
speak of, and usually only a few floodlights to illuminate it. There were four
Interceptors currently docked in the hangar, three in various stages of repair,
and the fourth which appeared to be ready to launch.
As soon as Paul’s scarlet boots slammed against the metal plating of the floor,
he scrambled upwards through the hangar towards the one good interceptor.
He vaulted up the ladder, and leapt into the cockpit through the open canopy,
and began the launch sequence. It would take too long to let the machinery
around him lift the Interceptor onto the launch deck of Cloudbase, he decided,
so he had to look for an alternative.
“Danger! Impact in three minutes!”
The canopy swung down on top of him as the
controls flickered to life, bathing him in red, blue and yellow light. He
punched the engine controls, and warning alerts suddenly sounded. He ignored
them, and shoved the control column to the right.
The rear jet engine burst into life, blowing parts from the other Angels behind
it, and slowly, the jet began to inch forward. On his starboard side, Paul could
see there was a small breech in the thick Cloudbase wall, probably caused by
part of the smashed Angel Interceptor he could see behind him as it had skidded
along in the hanger due to the angle of Cloudbase. Scarlet prepped a missile to
fire against the damaged section of the hull…
Too late.
The walls of the hanger ripped open, and explosions tore through all of
Cloudbase as it crashed against the huge Himalayan Mountains.
Paul was bolted forward out of his seat as the Angel Interceptor burst into
flames, and spun sideways as the jet engine was sent wild. And then Paul
remembered nothing more as he was engulfed in flames…
Paul Metcalfe blinked and turned the page of the magazine.
He still could not sleep, although this time, he did not feel as though he
wanted to sleep. He felt refreshed and awake as though he had been asleep for
days.
He winced down at the magazine and frowned. He couldn’t remember what he had
been reading, or indeed what he’d been doing that led him to come to the
officer’s lounge in the first place. His mind seemed blank, and his muscles
ached.
He looked down at his watch. It was 03:23.
He shrugged. Perhaps he had just fallen asleep or been caught up in a daydream
for a moment or so. Either way he could not remember, and he did not care enough
to think about it any more.
He looked back down at the magazine and turned the page. There was a small,
singed piece of paper folded up there. Curiously, Paul picked it out, and folded
it open. It was simple and hand-written, and it looked like the handwriting of
Bradley Holden – Captain Grey. The message was just
two words.
Thank you.