Mail
deliveries were always a source of anticipation on Cloudbase. Although the
majority of staff maintained contact with close relatives via the scrambled
phone-links and e-messaging, it was still a thrill to receive a physical
reminder that people cared back down on Earth. The scientists hadn’t
yet figured a way to transport matter down a wireless link – although that
was no doubt just a matter of time – so people eagerly awaited their
‘goodie-boxes’ sent from home, filled with favourite candies and chocolate,
framed photos of the nephews and nieces, even – sometimes, items of
underwear - the latter not just for the women either.
All items were
scrupulously inspected, despite having been checked groundside prior to
loading into the Spectrum cargo-aircraft. Colonel White and his security
team took no chance that an explosive device or biological weapon made its
way onto the aircraft carrier, disguised as a box of cookies.
Lieutenant Sable, a
Toronto-born Canadian, was the leader of just such a team, under the overall
jurisdiction of Captain Ochre, responsible for safety and security within
Cloudbase. At the moment he stood in the incoming stores area, a small
hangar on B deck, where the packages and supplies were being unloaded from
the Spectrum cargo-shuttle.
Sable stifled a yawn.
Auditing was his least favourite job, but he, as well as the other officers,
knew that it was just as vitally important as any other task. Safety aboard
Cloudbase depended on everyone following procedures and protocols to do
their jobs, and people, being – well, people - had a natural tendency to
treat the everyday routine with a familiarity that, left to its own devices,
would border on contempt. Regular audits of the processes ensured that
things didn’t become slipshod. He’d just come from maintenance, and he’d had
to tear a strip off the supervisor there for some missing signatures in some
of the service logs.
Sable
entered some comments on his data-pad as he watched technician Mikhail Kirov
scan the packages that trundled along the conveyor through the analyser,
ready for sorting for the mail room. So far things were going well
here, at least, and it didn’t look as if the Bursar would be getting a bad
report.
“Sir,
we’ve got a package here with your name on it.”
Sable looked across to the operator at the end of the conveyor. She held up a three-foot by two foot rectangular carton, heavily wrapped, which had just come off the scanner.
“It looks like picture, Lieutenant. Oil painting, maybe,” Kirov said, as he studied at the x-ray image of the contents of the box on his screen.
Sable walked across
to look at the package. The postal code was franked from Toronto.
“Did the scanner give
it the all clear?” he asked Kirov.
“Da, S.I.G.”
Sable
nodded to the female operator. “Just stick it over by the wall, I’ll
take it when I’ve finished up in here.”
*****
Sable’s
audit took a lot longer than he anticipated and by the time he’d finished
and sent his report to Captain Ochre, he realised that he wouldn’t have time
for that shower if he wanted to catch the usual Friday night card game in
the junior officer’s mess. Gambling was officially prohibited, but the
colonel turned a blind eye to the exchange of personal effects that made a
game worth winning, and mail delivery day was always a good bet for
extra-special goodies to put in the pot.
Sable
decided his colleagues could live with a little extra body odour, but he
didn’t want to be saddled with the package, so he quickly dropped it off in
his quarters before heading for the mess-room.
*****
On arrival
he found Lieutenants Navy and Verdigris already shuffling a couple of packs
at the round table in the centre of the room. Navy was half-Cuban, and
off-duty, his signature trademark was an unlit cheroot that he chewed
between his teeth. New-Zealand born Verdigris was expertly dealing the
pack of cards as Sable slid into an empty chair opposite her.
“Sorry I’m
late, guys,” Sable said, taking a quick peek at the topmost card.
Verdigris
flicked back an unruly strand of dark hair. “No worries,” she answered.
“We’re still waiting for Grainne.”
Almost in
answer the door of the mess-room swished open and Lieutenant Copper rushed
in, a little breathless.
“Bout time, honey,” Navy drawled, with a grin on his swarthy features, “We thought maybe you’d chickened out this session.”
“Not on your life, boyo, and any more of your cheek and I’ll put bromide in your coffee.”
“Is that
for the pot?” Verdigris motioned at the beautifully wrapped package Copper
had in her hand.
“Sure is,
the finest chocolates in all Ireland.”
“I love
chocolate,” Sable said, “Especially the stuff you Brits make,”
Copper
waved them under his nose before depositing them in the collection in the
centre of the table. “Well, take a good look, Alex, ‘cos that’s all you’re
going to be seeing of them!”
“That’s
fightin’ talk, girl,” Navy said.
“Believe
it, boyo,” Copper grinned and picked up her cards.
*****
“Okay, Sable, you
gonna stare at those cards all night or make a move?” Navy said with a
growl. They’d been playing for about an hour and the cards
weren’t going his way at all.
The Canadian gave
Navy a slow smile, peered over his cards and winked at the two players to
his left and right.
“Oh, come on, Alex,”
Verdigris said with an expression of exasperation on her face. “At this rate
I’ll be back on duty before I can win back my goodies.”
The door to the
mess-room swished open, and heads rose at the gold-uniformed newcomer who
sauntered in.
“Captain Ochre, sir!”
Navy half-rose out of his chair, his cards still in one hand.
Ochre waved him down.
“At ease, this is a social call.”
“Slumming it tonight,
sir?” Verdigris asked.
Ochre grinned as he
pulled up a chair to the table, and Copper and Verdigris shuffled sideways
to accommodate him. “I’ve seen livelier morgues than the Officers’
Lounge at the moment,” he said. “I thought I’d see if there’s anything more
exciting going on here.”
“There would be, if
Sable would get his finger out,” Navy said. The Canadian replied
by removing a pile of chips from his own stack and setting them in the
centre of the table with a sly grin. “Okay, if that’s the way you want
it. I’ll raise you twenty-five.”
“That’s too rich for
me,” Copper said, throwing in her cards, “I fold.”
“There go your
chocolates, Grainne,” Verdigris said.
Navy put a pile of
chips to join Sable’s, and bit down on his cheroot. “Seeing you, and raising
you five more, let’s see if you’re bluffing, mister.”
Sable laid
down his cards, a ten-high straight flush, and Navy made a disgusted sound
in his throat.
Verdigris
snorted, “Three kings, I thought I had that one.” She threw her cards on the
table to join Copper’s.
Sable
looked at Navy. “Well, Ramon, show me what you’ve got.”
Navy
slowly spread out his cards, and Ochre whistled. He also held a ten-high
straight flush.
“Bejesus,
what’s the odds on that?” Copper said.
“Who’s the
dealer? Ochre said.
“I am,
this round,” Verdigris said. “and we agreed, spades over hearts. Sable wins
– again.”
“Well,
I’ll be darned…” Navy said, and bit down on his cheroot. “One of these days,
mister, your luck’s gonna run out.”
“Well,” Sable replied, with a grin, “Let’s have another round and see, shall we?” He looked across at Ochre. “Did you want in this time, Captain?”
“You know the rules,” Navy interrupted, his white teeth flashing in a grin at the Midwestern captain. “What you got that’s worth winning?”
Ochre took
off his hat and unzipped the pocket of his tunic. He took out a transparent
box and laid it on the table.
“That’s
good enough for me,” Verdigris said, putting it with the mounting pile.
“Game is five-card draw, jacks or better to open, nothing wild.”
“Anyone
for more coffee?” Copper asked, rising to her feet as Verdigris shuffled the
deck.
Ochre
nodded his assent, and she returned with a mug of what looked suspiciously
like brown sludge. He raised an eyebrow.
“That’s
Ramon’s special brew. If that doesn’t keep you awake, you aren’t human,” she
said in reply.
“And here
was me thinking that Blue had Cloudbase’s Worst Coffee nailed.”
He took a
sip of the coffee, grimaced, then placed the mug back on the table to look
at his cards.
“Okay,”
Verdigris said, “Captain, what’s your opener?”
Ochre
picked up a pile of chips and was half-way placing them on the table when
the intercom buzzed into life. Lieutenant Green’s lilting voice drifted into
the room.
“Captain
Ochre, please report to Colonel White for a briefing.”
Ochre gave
a momentary sigh. “Typical. I had a darn good hand too.”
“Never
mind, sir, better luck next time.” Sable said with a grin as Ochre rose to
leave.
*****
Sable
grinned to himself as he wandered back to his quarters. He’d cleaned up at
the card table, and now had an armful of goodies. He dumped them on the edge
of his bunk and began peeling off his tunic and sweater when his eye
alighted on the package in the corner of the room.
The
painting. He’d completely forgotten about it.
He pulled
it across his bunk and started to open it. Underneath the first few layers
of wrapping was yet another package, this time the frank indicated it had
been posted in Scotland, and he was immediately reminded that an old uncle
had passed away three weeks ago on the other side of the pond. The last time
he’d seen his dad’s older brother was when he was twelve, on a visit to
‘retrace the family’s roots’ and he still remembered with horror the
draughty old Scottish mansion, and it’s dour owner, an old recluse who’d
made Scrooge look like Andrew Carnegie. Sable had seen or heard little
of him in years, and frankly, the news of his death hadn’t made much of a
dent in his consciousness.
Within
those two wrappings, there was an envelope, which slipped to the floor.
Sable bent to pick it up, slicing a fingernail through the flap for the
letter inside. He immediately recognised his sister’s handwriting, and his
eyes scanned the contents, feelings of guilt stealing over him as he
realised he hadn’t contacted her in ages.
Dear Alex,
Uncle Magnus left this painting to you in his will, as the sole surviving
male heir of the family line. Bit of a joke, eh? I hope you don’t mind, but
I took the liberty of sending it to you at the usual Post Box address, since
I have no idea when I will see you next. I hope things are going well in
your job and I you manage to get some vacation time to visit Toronto.
I get lonely in this big apartment sometimes.
Love,
Moira
He laid
the letter on his bunk and continued to peel away the remainder of the
wrappings until at last the object was revealed – a heavy gilt-framed
painting, just like Kirov had figured.
He stared
at it, confused.
In his
mind he’d imagined that it might be some god-awful portrait of his grouchy
uncle, the one where he was dressed up in full Highland regalia like some
ancient Rob Roy. Or maybe even the picture he’d actually liked, the one
hanging up in the freezing bedroom he’d been forced to endure; that of a
noble stag, standing on a heather- covered mountain, staring out at him as
if it was as real as life.
This
wasn’t what he expected at all.
Sable
wandered into his quarters and nearly stumbled over a robo-vac whirring
quietly across his carpet. One of the female orderlies was in the process of
cleaning them, but at this moment, she had her back to him, and was staring
closely at his uncle’s painting. He’d stuck it on a storage unit at the
bottom of the one wall of his quarters, and as he’d suspected, it seemed to
dominate the small room, He wandered closer to the woman, right into her
peripheral vision, but she remained rooted to the spot, seemingly
transfixed.
Sable
coughed, and the woman turned her head in surprise, staring at him with wide
eyes.
“Hey,
sorry, Heidi, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
A flush
bloomed on her fleshy cheeks, and she moved away from the painting, a look
of intense embarrassment on her face. “I am sorry, sir, I did not mean to be
snooping.”
“No
problem, there isn’t much to look at, really.”
Her mouth
formed a slight grimace as she turned off the robo-vac. “It is not a
very…nice painting, if I may say so.”
“You go
ahead and say it, Heidi, and you’re absolutely right. I guess it’s what they
call Abstract Art, and no doubt there’s some deep-seated meaning about life,
the universe, and everything, hidden away by the artist – just waiting for
us to discover it.”
The German
woman gave him a troubled stare, and she glanced once again towards the
painting before her eyes scuttled back to the half-finished room.
He swore
he saw her tremble, just for an instant, before she seemed to recover her
composure. And then she flushed red once again as she realised she had been
tardy in her chores. “I am sorry, the shower unit has not been cleaned…”
Sable
waved her apology away. He was starting to become unnerved by the cleaner’s
strange manner. Hell, the painting was odd, but it was just a pile of old
paint. “Forget it. I’ll only get it dirty again.”
“Are you
sure?” Heidi seemed torn between doing her duty and what seemed to him to be
a sudden desperate desire to flee his quarters.
“Sure I’m
sure.”
She
vanished quicker than a plate of jello on a technician’s lunch tray, and
Sable wondered what she had seen that made her behave like some jittery
jackrabbit.
It was
just a painting of nothing.
Absolutely
nothing at all.
The entire
three foot by five foot canvas was painted entirely in a flat sheet of
thick, black oil paint. That was it. Not even a single coloured line to
break up the monotony.
He didn’t
even know which way up it was supposed to be, and then, in a moment of
insight, he picked it up and turned it over. One close inspection he
discovered two holes on either position on the longer sides, indicating that
the painting was meant to hang portrait style.
Some portrait,
he thought, and he felt a momentary annoyance with Moira for sending it to
Cloudbase. What the hell am I going to with the damn thing? He
had enough room in his quarters, certainly, but he wasn’t exactly into
Abstract Art.
Yawning,
he slid between the covers of his bunk, and killed the lights. He paused
before turning over, the rectangle of the canvas seemed to glow faintly in
the darkness, but he knew it was just an after-impression on his retina.
He turned to face the wall and within moments he was gone into sleep’s
hinterland.
Captain
Ochre sauntered into the Officers’ Lounge to find the sole occupant was
Captain Grey, who gave him a grunt of acknowledgement, then returned to bury
himself in his diving magazine, with a look on his face that suggested he
wasn’t about to come up for air anytime soon. Ochre gave a sigh. He’d just
completed his latest model, and didn’t feel like starting another, and so
had been hoping for a spot of conversation to break the boredom. There
hadn’t been a Mysteron threat for a couple of weeks now, and everyone on
board was getting jittery. Maybe he ought to send Sable round on
another spot check just to keep the technicians on their toes. Although he’d
never admit it to Sable or his team, Ochre wasn’t overly keen on
audits either, they smacked too much of deskwork, and that wasn’t something
he relished at all, so much so that he’d given up what many people thought
had been a dream career move because he didn’t want to be stuck behind a
hunk of wood, shifting paper.
He left
Grey to his reading, and headed down from the control tower towards E-deck.
He guessed he shouldn’t actually be even thinking about wishing for a
Mysteron threat, but he couldn’t help it. Like Grey, and Blue, and Scarlet,
this is what he was trained for; being in the thick of the action, the
adrenaline pumping.
Not
sitting around here twiddling his fingers.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Melody drawled, as Ochre entered the Amber Room. She was perched on her usual spot on the upper tier of circular couches. “What card game did you get thrown out of this time?”
Ochre gave
a pained look as he wandered across to where Rhapsody and Destiny sat
together. “I didn’t even get a chance to get thrown out last time. The
colonel hauled me and Sable into the control room before I could win
anything.”
“Quel
dommage,” replied Destiny, giving him a friendly punch on the arm. “But
why are you here when you have a perfectly nice lounge of your own?”
“Are you
kidding me? I’d rather look at your pretty faces than sit in silence
watching Gray with his nose buried in a magazine.”
“Well, I
can certainly understand that,” Rhapsody said airily, giving Ochre a
mischievous grin which he returned with a wink.
“I heard
you had engine trouble when you landed on the flight deck this morning,
Destiny.“
“Mais
oui. But I am perfectly fine, you do not have to worry about me, mon
capitaine.”
“Oh, but I
do, I worry about all of you ladies, when you go flying off into the ether.”
Destiny
and Rhapsody giggled, and Melody gave an undignified snort.
“You just
don’t appreciate how much I care, Mags, but one day...you’ll be just so glad
I’m around.”
“Huh, I’m
just waiting for the day when I save your big, honky ass, and I’m
going to laugh myself silly.”
“Less of
the big, or I’ll have to come over and spank you.”
“Huh, you
can just try, mister.”
Rhapsody
chuckled. “Oh, you two, what are you like? Anyone would think you had
a love-hate relationship.”
Ochre
shrugged. “Yeah, she loves to hate me. I don’t know why, I’m only ever
trying to be nice.”
“Those
puppy-dog eyes might fool some besotted technician down on B deck, but they
don’t fool me one itsy little bit,” Melody said.
“Oh, you
have to admit, Mel, he is very cute,” Rhapsody said.
It was
Ochre’s turn to snort. “Teddies are cute, Di. I was hoping you
thought I was more, well, kinda –”
His joking reply trailed off as the loudspeaker crackled in that ominous way. Every one of them froze as the familiar sepulchral tones of their enemy boomed out into the Amber Room.
‘THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS. WE KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR US EARTHMEN. WE SHALL CONTINUE OUR WAR OF REVENGE FOR YOUR ATTACK ON OUR MARTIAN COMPLEX. WHEN EVIL COMES FROM THE SHADOWS, WE SHALL REAP.’
“Oh no,
here we go again,” Rhapsody said, but there was a gleam in her eye that
belied the concern in her voice.
“Well,
that serves me right,” Ochre said, rising to his feet with a grimace.
“What do
you mean?” Destiny gave him a quizzical look as she also rose to leave the
room.
“I was
just thinking how boring it had been the last couple of weeks.”
Her mouth
widened in a smile. “I know exactly what you mean, mon capitaine.”
*****
Ochre and
Destiny arrived at the Control Room to find the Colonel in his usual spot at
the circular desk. Grey, Scarlet and Blue were already sitting
opposite their commanding officer. Captain Magenta was the last to
arrive, rubbing one eye as he settled into the empty chair beside Ochre.
“Sorry, Colonel, I was having a session in the Room of Sleep when the alarm
went off.”
“That’s
all right, Captain,” White replied with a nod. “The Mysterons like to keep
us on the hop.”
“Very
well,” he continued when he had their full attention. “It seems we are faced
with another oblique threat this time around. I am open to suggestions
as to what this one might mean.”
“It could
mean just about anything.” Grey was the first to answer. “There’s no
specific target mentioned, no person threatened, how on earth are we
supposed to know where to put our resources?”
“I
appreciate the difficulty involved,” White replied, his face grim, “but it
is our job to find out. Captain Blue, do you have any thoughts on the
matter?”
As if of
one accord, everyone’s eyes fixed upon the tall blond man sitting on
Scarlet’s left. Blue had often come up with some erudite answer to a
Mysteron riddle in the past. However, his eyebrows drew together in a deep
frown and he sighed. “This one is a beauty, I have to admit. As Grey said,
there’s very little to go on. “
“What
about a bit of brainstorming?” Ochre suggested. “Just throw some ideas
around, maybe it’ll trigger something.”
“Wickedness, malevolence, sin,” Blue drawled, “Whatever words you use, it
doesn’t exactly help.”
“Monsieur
Satan,” Destiny said emphatically.
“So speaks
a good Catholic,” Magenta said, with a chuckle. “But I don’t think even the
Mysterons can get him to do their bidding.”
“So from
their point of view,” Ochre said, “What might they consider as being
evil?”
“Us,
probably,” Grey replied laconically.
Ochre
sighed. “Yeah, good point; so that leaves the entire population of the
planet as potential threats, not great odds, is it?”
“Well, the
ending sounds obvious in any case,” Scarlet spoke up for the first time.
“Reap. Could that mean the Grim Reaper?”
“Death
usually follows in the path of their threats,” White agreed, with a nod.
“Still
doesn’t say where or when though,” Ochre said.
“Well, it
does, it’ll happen when evil comes from the shadows,” Blue replied.
“Which
brings us back to square one,” Scarlet said in an exasperated voice. “This
isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Could we
assume it’s not a threat to Cloudbase, sir?” Blue said.
“We can’t assume anything,” White replied grimly. “Up to now they have issued threats that are quite literal, but they have often changed their spots when the occasion suited them.”
“But they usually give us some sort of fighting chance, don’t they?”
“Perhaps
we have won too often and they wish to redress the balance,” Destiny said.
“That is
always a possibility,” White agreed. “It looks as if we shall have to work a
little harder to discover their plans this time around. Captain Magenta, you
will work in tandem with Lieutenant Green. I want every scrap of information
relating to the words evil, shadow and reap monitored and analysed. I
want to crack this fiendish code before disaster strikes!”
“S.I.G.,
Colonel.” Magenta said, with a nod.
Rhapsody
Angel relaxed deep into the contours of the couch in the Amber Room, and
opened the novel she was in the process of reading. There was nothing like
losing oneself in a good book whilst waiting out the boredom of a four-hour
shift in anticipation of a Mysteron threat. She was just becoming absorbed
in a particularly steamy paragraph when the book was yanked out of her
hands.
“The
Flames of Passion, by Marianne Woodclyffe.” Melody read, in a flowery
voice. She flicked the book over to scan the blurb on the back cover,
and continued in her normal tone. “A torrid tale of love and intrigue
during the reign of James the First.” She made a face. “Honestly, Di, I
don’t know how you can keep reading this crap.”
Rhapsody
snatched the book back, annoyed at losing her page.
“You can
think what you like. She’s a fabulous writer, she makes you feel as if
you’ve left this world and entered another.”
“Sure. The
world of the brain-dead.”
Rhapsody
sniffed. “I’d rather read this than Aircraft Technician Today. I
prefer to switch off entirely when I’m here on-duty.”
“Switch
off is right, honey. And maybe one of these days you won’t be able to switch
on again!”
Rhapsody’s retort was cut off when Symphony barged into the Amber Room,
dressed in her flight suit, and with an expression on her face that swung
from intense frustration to extremely flustered. The two other young women
watched in interested bemusement as she started removing cushions on the
couches and rummaging around.
“Karen,
what on earth are you doing?” Rhapsody asked.
There was
no reply as Symphony poked around some more, so they waited.
“I’m
looking for a necklace!” Symphony snapped finally.
“What
makes you think it’s down the back of the couch?” Melody asked, as Symphony
gave up on the couch search and moved across to start hunting amongst the
wall shelves.
“I don’t,
it’s just one more hiding place in a long line of hiding places that I’ve
been searching for the last hour.”
“What does
it look like?” Rhapsody asked.
“The very
one I couldn’t afford to lose. The one that A – “ she stopped herself just
in time, realising what she’d been about to blurt out, and sent a
surreptitious you-know-what-I mean glance at Rhapsody. “You know, the
one I got for my birthday – this year.”
“Oh,
that one,” Rhapsody acknowledged with a nod.
Melody
kept her face straight. Her sharp eyes had intercepted the glance, and she
knew fine what Symphony had been about to say. Symphony wasn’t fooling
anyone but herself if she thought that Rhapsody was the only one sharing her
little secret. “When did you last see it, honey?” she asked.
“In the
jewellery box on my clothes storage unit, or at least, that’s where I was
sure I’d put it. I’ve turned my room upside down looking for it, I thought
maybe I’d mislaid it here.” She threw another book back on the sofa with a
grunt of frustration. “Damn, damn, damn, where is it?”
“You gotta
hot date?” Melody said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, unable to
resist tightening the springs a little. She just found it fascinating
the way a normally cool-calm-collected and poised young woman like the
Iowan, could turn to complete drooling jibbering mess when a cute guy was in
the picture. Okay, Blue wasn’t her type, but she had to admit he certainly
was as cute as Ochre, although she’d never ever give him the
satisfaction of knowing it.
“Hardly,” Symphony muttered, “with the base at yellow.” She turned from her destruction of the shelving unit and looked at the mess she had wrought. “Oh jeez,” she said.
“Oh, stop it, Mel,” Rhapsody put her own book down and got up to help Symphony address the disarray. “I’m sure it’ll turn up,” she said hopefully. “Remember that time I thought I’d lost that old World Cup holo-vid of P – Captain Scarlet’s, and it turned out he had it stashed away in his closet all the time?”
Melody
rolled her eyes some more. Dianne was about as convincing as Karen.
It was the
night shift in the Officers’ Restaurant, and in the small area cordoned with
a glass divider from the main galley, senior cook Jim McWhirter yawned and
stretched in his chair. For some reason Mysteron threats seemed to
make everyone ravenous, and he’d lost count of how many meals he and his
staff had served in the last six hours.
It was now
3:00 am, and the canteen was closed so that the usual nightly cleaning and
maintenance could take place. While the robo-cleaners and their human
counterparts busied themselves amongst the stainless steel units, McWhirter
finally completed the batch of menus for the following week. He signed off
on the supplies list, which he would send to the Bursar in the morning.
He
wandered back out into the galley area which was now pristine and gleaming
and devoid of any personnel. He probably had the place to himself for about
fifteen minutes, so he busied himself with his little indulgence before his
staff returned. Before he’d joined the military, he’d spent two years
away from rainy Aberdeen in the French town of Aix-en-Provence, and had
fallen in love with the art of the patissier.
Quietly
humming ‘Scots Wha Hae’, McWhirter took the pastry that he’d prepared
and baked at the start of his shift, and filled them with an assortment of
fresh fruits. Then, he began to pipe rosettes of thick, fresh cream in an
intricate design over each one, smiling at his handiwork as he did so.
The
Scotsman doubted there was a single red-blooded male on board the base who
didn’t have a passing fancy, for at least one of the five lovely lassies who
risked their lives every day flying the supersonic Interceptors, and,
although he might be unable to command their admiration with acts of
derring-do, he liked to think that his little sweet artworks might make a
small difference to their day, every now and then.
He
sugar-dusted the entire lot, pleased with his efforts, and decided he’d
deliver them personally to the Amber Room when he got off shift. He left the
patisserie on a tray on the countertop, rinsed his hands in the deep
sink at the back of the galley, and did a double check on the supplies in
the stores.
It
couldn’t have taken him more than five minutes, but when he came back out
into the galley he stopped with a start, staring at the tray he’d left on
the countertop.
Every one
of the pastries had disappeared.
McWhirter
strode up to the countertop and looked around, but there wasn’t a soul in
the area. He stared at the few flakes left behind on the tray and scratched
his head in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. Who would steal a bunch of
cakes? It wasn’t as if anyone had to starve. All meals on a duty shift were
free, and there were plenty of sweet treats available from any of the
canteens or the Spectra-Mart. It gave him a sour feeling to think that a
senior member of the Cloudbase crew could stoop to something so childish.
When
Lieutenant Sable woke up exactly three hours after he’d gone to sleep his
head was dream-heavy. And yet, try as he might, he couldn’t recall a single
image from any of them. He felt sure he’d slept like a dead man, yet he
still felt dog tired. Maybe he was going down with a virus or something?
He dragged
himself from his bunk and into the shower, setting it on hot in an attempt
to blow some of the cobwebs away. After his regulation two minutes,
when the jets automatically cut out, he felt a lot better, and he hummed
tunelessly as he towelled his hair on exiting the cubicle.
Shivers
rippled through Sable. The temperature in the room had dropped, as if the
heating had conked out. He checked the room controller, noted that the
temperature was set correctly at 72F.
It felt
more like 40F.
Weird.
He grabbed
a bathrobe and slung it on, only then did he become aware of a second
sensation.
Like he
was being watched.
He whirled
around, eyes darting here and there, but of course, the room was empty, save
for the black painting on the unit.
He stared.
Felt his
breath hitch.
There was
something different about it.
His feet
padded across the carpet, walking towards it, his breath condensing in the
cool air of the room.
He saw
several faint, brown smudges on the canvas, about a third of the way down,
and he was pretty convinced that hadn’t been there when he’d unwrapped it
from the packaging.
A rash of
goose bumps prickled along his arm, and his mouth set in a line. He crossed
the room once again, to the console, determined to contact Moira and find
out where the painting had come from, and why the hell she’d sent it to him.
He typed
in an electronic message to his sister, and waited to see if it sent
correctly. Then, he looked up again, towards the canvas, and realised that
the room temperature had risen again, back to almost normal. In addition,
the peculiar sense of being watched had also vanished.
The brown
stains remained on the painting, however.
“Have you
found your necklace yet?” Rhapsody said in a low voice to Symphony at
the coffee machine in the Amber Room. Harmony sat a little distance
away, her eyes closed as she listened to some music through her headset.
The Iowan
shook her head, a glum look on her face.
“Look,
maybe you’ve dropped it in a corridor somewhere, it’s easily done you know,
so I really think you should report it lost to the security department.
For all you know, someone’s handed it in already. It isn’t worth all this
stress.”
“I guess
so.” Symphony didn’t look convinced. “Anyway, that’s the least of their
worries, when we have a Mysteron threat looming over our heads.”
Rhapsody
cocked her head. “Hmm. And you’re not going to be giving it all your
attention when you’re worrying about this. Have you told him it’s
gone missing?”
Symphony
gave Rhapsody a look. “That I’ve lost it, you mean. He’s going to think me
such an idiot.”
“No he
isn’t, don’t be silly, Karen.”
She
shrugged. “Okay, well, I’ll speak to someone in security.”
Rhapsody
smiled. “Why not go to the top? Give Lieutenant Sable a call - I’m sure
he’ll get onto the case right away for you.”
*****
As soon as
Symphony came off her duty shift she tracked Sable down on D-deck.
“Hello
Ma’am, what can I do for you?” he asked, dropping his data-pad on the desk
and giving her his full attention.
“I hope
you don’t mind, but I’ve lost a necklace, somewhere on Cloudbase, I just
wondered, if you have a moment, you could check for me, see if anything’s
been handed in.”
“Sure, no
problem. Let me get off shift and I’ll check the missing items log.
What does it look like?”
“It’s a –
St Christopher medallion, the chain is about twenty inches long, and the
medal is about this much in diameter, both in pure silver.” She illustrated
with her fingers. “But don’t make it a priority or anything, I know you’re
busy.”
He nodded.
“We’re always busy, Ma’am, but this sounds personal. Leave it with me.”
It was
twelve hours into the Mysteron threat, and so far, there was no indication
that the mysterious aliens from the red planet had made any sign of a move.
In the Control Room, Lieutenant Green and Captain Magenta sat alongside one
another at the wall-length screen, where they had spent a considerable time
sifting through all manner of data to try and find any link with the riddle
and an actual target.
“Colonel
White.” Magenta at last turned his head towards the control console where
White sat. “I think we might have something.”
The older
man’s head came up, immediately alert. “Go ahead, Captain.”
“We’ve
just intercepted a message from a WIN operative on one of the scrambled
channels. He’s been in deep cover in Bereznik, following a lead that the
government there have developed their own version of the Stingray
submarine.”
“I
understand that such capability would be a dangerous weapon in the hands of
those people, but what does it have to do with the Mysteron warning?”
“Well,
sir, we picked up a couple of words in the encrypted message that could
relate to the threat.”
White
frowned sharply and immediately demanded Lieutenant Green patch him through
to the head of the WIN. A terse conversation followed, and White discovered
that the operative had succeeded in transmitting an underwater photograph of
the craft, before WIN had lost contact with him. He was now presumed missing
in action.
“I want to
see the photograph,“ White demanded.
A few
seconds passed, and he stared at his screen until the picture appeared. It
was very grainy, but there was no mistaking the sleek, deadly outlines of a
vessel designed for speed and agility. Similar indeed to the WASP Stingray,
except for its longer length, and the fact it incorporated twice as many
missile launch tubes.
Deliberately designed for aggression, White thought grimly. His eyes focused
on the black lettering etched in the metal, near the nosecone. It was in the
language of the rogue state, and was presumably the name of the vessel.
“Do we
have a translation for this, Lieutenant?” he asked Green.
“Yes, sir,
we think it means - Shadow Reaper.”
White felt
his chest tighten. A match this close couldn’t be simple coincidence.
“Good job,
Lieutenant Green, now get me Captains Scarlet, Blue and Grey here, on the
double.”
“S.I.G.
Colonel.”
*****
The remainder of the senior staff and the off-duty Angels were called
immediately to the Control Room, where White informed them of their
findings.
“Captains Scarlet, Blue and Grey, I want you to proceed at once to the Baltic Sea. Captain Grey’s knowledge of the WASP submarines will be invaluable, and I expect that rogue ship to be in our hands as soon as possible.”
“Sir!” The
three men acknowledged smartly.
“Take Lieutenant
Navy with you, he speaks several eastern European languages fluently, I
understand.”
“What
about the rest of us, sir?” Ochre asked.
“Until the
nature of the threat is quite clear, Captain, we cannot afford to send too
large a task force into hostile territory. Our team will have some local
back-up, therefore you and Captain Magenta will remain on Cloudbase for the
foreseeable future.”
“Sir,”
Ochre replied, with a crestfallen glance at his partner. Magenta gave
him an almost imperceptible shrug.
When the meeting
broke up, Scarlet, Blue and Grey went off to prepare for the mission, whilst
Ochre and Magenta headed back to their respective duty shifts.
“Trust them to get
the glamour job again, and we’re stuck here babysitting Cloudbase,” Ochre
grumbled.
“Yeah, did
you spot old Grey trying to keep the grin off his face? He looked like a kid
in a sandbox.”
The base
was buzzing with the news that the Mysteron riddle had been cracked.
Scarlet, Blue, Grey and Lieutenant Navy were immediately dispatched to
Bereznik in an SPJ piloted by Melody Angel. They were dropped off on the
coast of the Baltic Sea, close to the border with the rogue state, and would
cross over at nightfall. Their mission was to capture the submarine with
minimal loss if life on both side, if at all possible.
Cloudbase
remained on yellow alert, and the personnel carried on with normal
operations, waiting for news that the four men had foiled another Mysteron
threat.
That
afternoon Lieutenant Sable took a break mid-shift to grab a bite to eat in
the canteen. He glanced around when he entered, and saw Copper sitting
towards the back of the room, on her own, and absorbed in a data-pad as she
ate. He selected a meal option from the chilled cabinets and slid into
the empty chair opposite her.
She
glanced up. “Hi, Alex.”
“Hi to
you.” He deposited his dishes on the table. “Heard any news from our boys in
Bereznik?”
“Not a
whisper. I tried to get something out of Greenie, but it seems they’re
maintaining strict radio silence, in case the signals are picked up. So it
looks like a wait and see for now.”
”I wonder
what Ramon’s doing right now.”
“Probably
smoking his cheroots like there was no tomorrow.”
Sable
grinned. “Not if Grey has anything to say about it, he won’t. So, what’s
your day been like?”
She told
him, talking animatedly in that way of hers. He found himself suddenly
fascinated by her lips as she talked, unable to pull his eyes away from her
face, with a sudden, inexplicable desire flickering at the edges of his
consciousness.
This is nuts, she’s a friend, a colleague; I have no business thinking how
well she fills that tunic…
His skin
prickled underneath his own clothes, and a slow heat infused his bones. He
caught a scent, faint, and at first unrecognisable, until he realised his
senses were becoming attuned to the scent of – her.
At that
moment, Captains Magenta and Ochre entered the canteen, and they both nodded
a friendly greeting towards their table. Sable caught the subtle glance that
flickered on Copper’s face as she looked at Magenta. Saw – with an
inexplicable awareness - the almost imperceptible blush on Copper’s cheeks,
despite her casual wave back. He heard – or perhaps sensed – the change in
her heartbeat, and the way her scent changed - the tell-tale aroma of female
desire.
Copper
turned and the two senior officers continued across the room to sit at
another table. Copper went on chatting as if nothing unusual had happened,
but Sable knew otherwise, and the knowledge filled him with a simmering
anger. He took a mouthful of food, but it tasted flat, as if all the flavour
had been sucked out of it.
They left
the canteen and walked together to their respective duty stations. At a bend
in the corridor, Sable checked, and when he saw no one in the vicinity,
barred her way.
“Alex,
what’s wrong?” she said, surprise tinting her voice.
The
sensation overtook him again - strong, powerful, irrational.
Sable
wanted to throw her against the wall and thrust his tongue into her mouth,
peel that uniform off and see what lay beneath.
“I was
wondering,” he said in a thick voice, “ If maybe, you’d like to have dinner
with me sometime.”
“We’ve
just eaten lunch together, Alex.”
“I know,
but that was there, with – everyone. I’d rather we – went somewhere a bit
more intimate.”
He took a
long, dark curl and held it up close to his face, and she gave a short laugh
in half-surprise, half-embarrassment.
“Are you
coming on to me, Alex?” She pulled her hair away from his fingers.
“I
wouldn’t put it like that, exactly.”
“Well,
that’s good, because you’re a fine friend and all and – “
He felt
the anger flare, like someone struck a match inside of him.
“Sure, I
get it. I’m only a lowly Lieutenant; you’re more into the senior ranks,
aren’t you?”
“What
nonsense you’re talking,” she replied firmly, but Sable felt the way her
heart beat a little faster as she pulled herself up to look him squarely in
the face. She tried to smile. “I’ll be late if I don’t get going.”
He moved
aside to let her pass, unhindered, but he watched her retreating back, the
feeling of anger still simmering inside him.
An anger
that required release.
Captain
Ochre squinted and pulled the trigger of his Spectrum pistol, several times,
and watched with satisfaction at the three holes which appeared almost dead
centre of the life size target at the end of the practice range. Handling a
gun was like any other skill, and if you didn’t keep practicing, then you
got rusty, and that might get you, or anyone you partnered – killed.
And in any case, it was a good way to release the pent-up tension that
usually accompanied a Mysteron threat when you were stuck on Cloudbase.
“Nice
shooting, buddy,” a voice said loudly, behind him.
Ochre
pulled off his ear defenders and turned to where Magenta stood lazily
propping up the entrance to the practice firing range.
“There’s
nothing like blowing off a little steam, huh?”
“You got
it,” Ochre said, “Although I’d prefer if they were real Mysterons.”
“Well, fun’s over, Colonel White wants us to go over some reports.”
Ochre
looked back longingly at the bullet-riddled target. “Great. Just great.”
Copper
finished her duty shift and wandered along the corridor to her quarters,
conscious she was keeping one eye out for Sable, and still unsettled by his
odd behaviour at the meal. His niggling jibe about fancying one of the
senior colour captains had been right on the money, unfortunately. She
hadn’t ever mentioned it to Verdi or Flaxen, since she hoped that maybe her
infatuation would just disappear with time, but she did, in fact, carry a
torch for the damn-fine looking Patrick Donaghue. Maybe she wasn’t as clever
as she’d thought at hiding her feelings, after all.
She keyed
in the access code, trying not to feel slightly depressed at the thought
that Captain Magenta also suspected her crush on him, and that he and
Captain Ochre had probably been having a good laugh about it that very same
lunchtime.
She kicked
off her boots and padded in bare feet to the small fridge in the corner
unit. Never mind Captain Magenta, what she fancied right now was a bottle of
something cold and fizzy. It would preferably have also been alcoholic, but
the general rules were no private stashes of alcohol on board, although she
had heard rumours to the contrary about Captain Scarlet and the odd whisky
bottle.
She opened
the door of the fridge, realised that it wasn’t on. She peered down the back
of the unit, and found the switch had been turned off. Darn cleaners,
she thought testily.
She
flicked the switch, heard the motor whine into life as the thermostat kicked
in. She opened the door wide and stretched her hand out for the bottle of
lemonade.
Then she
saw them.
She
retracted her hand, fast, and took an involuntary step backwards, her
stomach heaving. The contents of her fridge seemed to writhe in from of her
eyes, and it took her horrified brain a few seconds to register what her
eyes were seeing.
Maggots.
They were
everywhere, scores of them. Several of the wriggling white forms
rolled over the edge of her slab of chocolate cake and plopped on the
carpet, right at her feet.
A
disgusted shiver ran all the way up her arms. She’d hated the things with a
vengeance, ever since she’d been bitten by one during a stint in an egg
factory in Ireland as a penniless student and ended up with a nasty flu-like
virus.
She
slammed the door shut and whacked the escapees with a boot-heel, mashing
them into the carpet.
Get a grip, Grainne,
she told herself.
She
patched through to the duty orderly and demanded they come and take the
offending item away at the earliest opportunity. She wasn’t going to sleep a
wink if those things were still in her room.
That same
night, Specialist-Technician Rob Lander was on-duty in the maintenance
sector. Among his responsibilities was over-seeing the scores of small
robots that worked ceaselessly around the huge base, performing the
dangerous and dirty cleaning chores. Although it was pretty rare for a
robot to completely stop functioning, it still happened occasionally.
And it had to be on the flight deck, he thought, as he heard the alarm beep
from his control panel, the schematics showing a red blip halted smack-bang
in the middle of the lower runway. Normally deck-cleaning robots had
in-built software to remove themselves from the vicinity pronto in the event
of a Code Red, but he ran a quick on-line diagnostic and concluded that this
baby wasn’t moving anywhere on its own steam. Lander sighed. He hated having
to go top-side, but that unit needed to be shifted fast off the runway.
He heard a crackle of static, and then the soft tones of Lieutenant Green’s
voice sounded in his ear-communicator.
“Mr
Lander, I have a malfunctioning deck-robot showing up on my panel.”
“Yeah, I
have it, I was just on my way up there.”
Like I couldn’t figure it out for myself. Maybe if they just left us to get
on with the job, they’re have more time to figure out what these damn
Mysterons were up to…
“Be
careful up there,” Green added.
“S.I.G.”
He suited
up in his deck-gear and mag-boots, and rode the vertical elevator to the
flight deck. He adjusted his breathing mask and checked the oxygen delivery
system, then waited in the interim airlock for the pressure to stabilise,
and then the second tube deposited him to the surface of Cloudbase and into
a night full of stars.
Ignoring
the view, he scanned the deck for the recalcitrant unit. There it was, just
as it had shown on the schematic screen, skulking about seventy feet away.
Shrugging,
Lander trudged towards the unit with as much speed as his grav-boots would
allow. It was slow going, but he had to admit that it sure beat sailing off
the edge of the deck into space. At the end of the upper runway, he could
make out the pale-white silhouettes of the three Angel Interceptors, but it
was too far to even see who the occupant was in Angel One.
He reached
the deck-bot, and as he’d suspected, the panel was dead, all the lights off.
The damn thing was too heavy to move so he had no choice but to open the
main access port and try to restart it with a Z-tool.
“How are you doing, Mr Lander?”’ Green’s voice
sounded in his helmet.
“Working
on it.” And I’d get on a lot faster if you’d stop bugging me.
He was at
the job for only ten minutes when he managed to get the deck-bot functional
once again. He felt a sense of satisfaction as it beeped and whirred into
life, then moved off on its heavy magnetized treads towards the safe storage
area for deck-robots.
“I have unit 369 showing a green light. Good work, Mr Lander.”
“S.I.G.
Coming back in.”
“Very
well, Green out.”
Lander
tramped back towards the deck air-lock, and he tapped in the code to open
the air-lock. He looked up, a last look at the stars twinkling in the sky –
and failed to see the shadow looming up behind him in the darkness.
The force
of the blow stunned him, and as he fell forwards, he felt a heavy weight pin
him to the cold flight deck. He tried to fight back against this unknown
assailant, confusion losing him precious seconds. Too late, he felt an arm
encircle his neck, while strong, vicious fingers yanked off his breathing
mask.
Lander’s
cry of panic was muffled as the hands clamped on his mouth, and his unspoken
cries echoed solely in his mind, knowing the awful consequences. Without
oxygen at 40,000 feet, he would be unconscious in fifteen seconds.
And after
that….
The
technician struggled – for his very life - but the body on top of him had
him in a stranglehold, pinned on the deck. And with each passing second he
lost the ability to function normally.
After a
while, he stopped caring.
A warm,
tingling sensation appeared in his limbs, and his mind floated, blissful,
free of all the cares of the world. He was turned over, and as he lay
supine, he saw a dark outline lean over him, then move away.
Lander
stared up at the heavens, at the indescribable panorama of glittering stars.
He heard a rasping wheeze, from somewhere, close by, and as he continued to
gaze, the stars gently blurred, one by one, until a warm shroud of darkness
enveloped him.
Lieutenant Sable awoke from disturbed dreams, his head muzzy, and his tongue thick and acrid in his mouth. He felt as if his body was made of wet sand, and when he tried to open his eyes, they stung, as if glued shut. He shifted, disoriented in the darkness of his room, and thought he could hear a sound – no sounds – surrounding him - the wafting of moth-wings against his ear.
He sat
bolt upright – his heart hammering against his chest.
He swept
shaking fingers across the sensors and the room illuminated. Sable glanced
around the room, confused.
He was
alone.
And cold.
He
shivered, pulling the coverlet across his shoulders. Damn heating must have
malfunctioned again, he thought as he saw his breath curl in the air in
front of him.
His eyes
were drawn to the painting, that ever-present canvas monolith on his unit,
and his heartbeat spiked up.
Forgetting
the cold, he sprang out of bed, went closer to it, wondering if his eyes, or
his mind were playing some sick trick on him.
There were
more smudges.
And the
colour had changed.
No longer
were they a dull brown, but had grown brighter, redder.
Like fresh
blood.
Sable’s
mouth dried up and his heartbeat played a staccato against his chest, as his
mind tried to scrabble for rational explanations. There had to be another
layer under the black paint, and it was seeping through somehow.
That had
to be it; there couldn’t be any other reason.
He
continued to stare at the newly-formed marks, wondering if he was going mad.
But who would believe him even if he told them? On impulse, he picked
up the painting, and was again disturbed to find it was heavier than he’d
thought. He looked around the room for somewhere to hide the damn
thing, but there just wasn’t that much space. In desperation, he got out a
towel and draped it over the frame, so at least he didn’t have to look at it
anymore.
The room’s
warmth had recovered, and he made up his mind to speak to someone in
maintenance about it. He flicked on his console, and checked again for a
message from Moira. There weren’t any. But that wasn’t unusual; Moira was a
bit of a technophobe, and still liked to speak to people, rather than pass
notes across the ether. With that thought in mind, he decided to try the
direct approach, since it would still be light on the American continent.
The
security-system took him through all the scrambling checks, before it
allowed him to dial through to her number in Toronto. He heard the long
tone, waited, heard three more, but no one picked up at the other end.
She could
be anywhere, of course, shopping for groceries after work, having a drink
with work colleagues. He sat and stared at the towel covered painting,
and couldn’t dismiss the niggling worry that something was wrong. Moira was
all he had, since their parents had died three years ago. Dad from a stroke,
and Mom from the worry of looking after him, and bloody Uncle Magnus,
sitting in his fancy Scottish pile, with all that money, hadn’t lifted a
finger to help.
Sable felt
a hot, sour anger envelope him.
Rob Lander
wasn’t missed until the next shift change, three hours later. The relief
technician checked the log – saw that he’d gone topside – and yet his suit
or mask hadn’t been returned to its holder. Concerned now, he roused
the maintenance supervisor, from sleep, and the two of them suited up and
went up onto the deck. A quick search and they discovered Lander’s lifeless
body under the overhang of the upper Interceptor runway, his breathing mask
still intact.
The
technician was about to move Lander’s corpse when his boss stayed his hand,
shaking his head.
“We had
better call Colonel White. He might want the security boys to look at this.”
*****
For a
second time Lieutenant Sable was roused from sleep by his desk communicator.
“Please
report to the Maintenance sector,” Lieutenant Sienna intoned.
“What’s
up?”
“Colonel
White will fill you in on the details.”
Sable
hurriedly dragged on his sweater and tunic and five minutes later he was at
the scene of the incident. He interrogated the Maintenance Supervisor and
the relief technician, making brief notes in his data-pad, and then arranged
to have the body taken to sick-bay, where Dr Fawn prepared for a
post-mortem. From the blue discoloration on the body’s fingertips and lips,
it was in all likelihood that Lander had died of acute hypoxia.
What was
of more concern to Colonel White, however, was what happened to cause the
technician’s death.
*****
“His oxygen gauge was faulty?” Colonel White
looked gravely at the small assembled company, consisting of the Maintenance
Supervisor, the Maintenance Chief, Lieutenants Green and Sable,
Captains Ochre and Magenta, and Symphony Angel, who had been in Angel One at
the time of Lander’s death,
“Yes,
sir,” Sable replied. “The readings would have suggested he had enough oxygen
in the bottle, but there was actually very little, he might have been
suffering the effects of hypoxia as soon as he walked out on the deck.
“When was
the unit last calibrated?”
“It should
have been yesterday, but the signature is missing.”
White
looked at the maintenance supervisor. “Who should have checked it?”
“It was
Lander’s responsibility, sir. I don’t know how he could have missed
something so important. He was always spot on.”
“But this
isn’t the first time this week that your section has had a problem, I
understand there were some missing signatures in the last audit.”
White’s
tone held an accusatory note, and the man’s face went a shade deeper.
“No, sir,
it’s not – I’m sorry, I just don’t know how it could have happened,
especially since I have my crews a pep-talk just after Lieutenant Sable got
– through with us on Friday.”
“I want
all breathing units taken off-line and re-calibrated immediately, and think
beyond this fix; perhaps there are other items that require a double check.
There is no room for complacency on this ship.”
“Yes,
sir,” the man answered meekly.
White’s
gaze alighted on Lieutenant Green, who sat on Sable’s left. “Did Mr Lander
sound confused when you spoke with him on the radio mike”
“It’s hard
to say sir, we didn’t have much of a conversation, but I would have to say
no, he didn’t.”
“I see.
And did you see anything untoward during the time that Lander was on the
flight deck, Symphony Angel?”
“No, sir,”
she replied, looking downcast.
“It was
pretty dark out on the lower deck,” Magenta said, “You can’t blame
yourself.”
She shook
her head. “Don’t make excuses for me, I should have seen something.”
A man had
died out there, when she might have been able to do something to prevent it,
but she couldn’t bring herself to admit to Colonel White or anyone else that
the plain simple truth was that she had been day-dreaming, distracted, up
there in the cockpit. She had been thinking about Adam, as usual, but even
more so, since he was out there, away from her, wondering what dangers he
was facing in Bereznik.
Heidi
Muller crept along the corridors to the senior crew quarters, her eyes
constantly flicking around. It wasn’t her duty shift, so she really had no
business being here, but something drew her, like iron filings to a magnet.
She had
tried to avoid thinking about the thing in that room, but even in
avoidance, it dominated her thoughts. She was normally such a stolid
person, nothing ever bothered her – a good Lutheran woman with a no-nonsense
attitude to life. But that wretched painting had turned her pragmatic,
organised world upside down. She could not shake off the niggling belief
that there had been something about it, something about it, something
not quite right.
She had
borrowed the access card, and hoped that the crew leader wouldn’t spot it
before she returned. It would only take a few seconds…just so she could
reassure herself that everything was fine.
The room
was dark as she entered. She ordered minimum illumination in a quiet voice,
for just enough light to see the painting on the unit. She moved closer,
closer. Saw that it was covered with a towel. She removed it and then
gasped in surprise as she saw the newly formed smudges of paint on the
canvas, some were faded brown, almost disappearing into the dark background,
but others were brighter – red like blood.
A snake of
fear uncoiled in Heidi’s stomach. She had always denied the Romany blood
that ran in her veins, but it throbbed within her now, a deep atavistic
pulse, warning her.
She
thought about that poor technician. An accident, she’d heard.
Just a stupid painting.
She fought
for self-control, to will her body to respond and move away from this place,
but now the feeling of malevolence seemed to fill the room, and she could
feel it slithering along her nervous system, making her breaths short and
rasping.
The spell
was broken when she heard the door swish open again, and heart beating, she
turned to find Lieutenant Sable staring at her.
“Hello
Heidi, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Her words
came stumbling out, her normally calm demeanour faltering, with no excuse to
explain her presence in his quarters at this hour.
“I forgot
– something, I’m sorry sir.” She walked past him calmly, but her knees
trembled and her stomach fluttered.
“Hey, are
you okay, Heidi? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She
stopped, turned around, and without thinking, grabbed both of Sable’s hands,
gripping them so tightly her nails dug into him.
“Ow, what
the hell are you doing?”
“You must
get rid of that thing!” She gestured with her head to the painting.
“Are you
nuts? Let go!” he pulled his hands out of her grip, rubbing where the points
of her fingers left small red welts. He frowned then, catching the whiff of
alcohol from the German woman.
“Are you
drunk, Heidi? You know the regs, if that isn’t Synthol you’ll be in
big trouble.”
Her face
reddened and she realised her fears were putting everything she had worked
for at risk. Perhaps it was not her business after all. If he would not
listen, then he could take the risks, but she had to think of herself, of
her father. She immediately became contrite.
“Please
don’t say anything about this, sir, my job, I rely on it, to pay the
hospital bills for my sick father. He has cancer, it is very expensive.”
The look
on Sable’s face was dark. “You’d better go Heidi, now, while I’m still
feeling sympathetic.”
She walked
out as quickly as her legs, unsteady with both her fear and alcoholic
stupor, would allow her.
The
laundry room on Cloudbase was a hive of activity, with hundreds of uniforms,
off-duty wear, bedding and towels to wash and press. The sound of the
industrial steam-pressers and tumble driers was a constant background noise,
punctuated by the sound of banter from the orderlies.
The usual
bets had been wagered on how fast Scarlet would end up in sick bay this
time, with extra odds given on whether Captain Blue would join him. The
secret of Scarlet’s retrometabolism was a carefully guarded secret, even
within Cloudbase, and many of the lower ranked crew members could only
speculate on how one man could survive so many tribulations and still
bounce back time and time again.
“Dunno how
he does it, the guy’s only got so many bones to break.”
“Must be
them robot doctors, they’ve got an amazing bloody surgery up there, although
I’ve only seen the front end, for colds and suchlike.”
Someone
sniggered. “Front end of Nurse Jackson, you mean, now she’s worth getting a
cold for.”
“In your
dreams, Reg,” said orderly Janice Mulholland as she wandered through with a
trolley piled high with dirty uniforms from the maintenance department – the
members of which were almost as much a favourite with the cleaning staff as
Captain Scarlet was, for the degree of difficulty in removing stains from
their clothing.
“Speaking
of people being ill,” Janice said, looking around, “I didn’t see Heidi at
breakfast this morning, has she gone down with something?”
Heads
shook. “I’ve never known Heidi to have a day’s illness since she started
working up here,” Reg commented. “Maybe the ‘coiffed-one’ got her to do
another rota,”
Janice
shrugged. “Dunno, and if she hears you calling her that, you’ll be scrubbing
the decks by toothbrush.” She handed over the soiled fabrics. “Here, have
fun with this lot. Any chance of getting the spare uniforms for the Angels?”
“Yeah,
they’re in the back-bay since last night, just waiting for you,
sweet-heart,” Reg said, hefting the clothes out of the trolley ready to
stick in one of the huge dry-cleaning units.
She blew a
raspberry at him and sauntered right down to the back of the big room, to
the enclosed area where all the cleaned and pressed uniforms hung on
circular racks, waiting to be picked up and distributed. Janice hunted
through the racks, searching for the distinctive cream and gold flight suits
belonging to the women pilots. She nearly tripped over a step ladder lying
on the floor, half under the rack of clothes, and cursed briefly, wondering
who the hell had been stupid enough to leave it there. As she moved it away,
something brushed the top of her head.
Startled, she looked up, to see a pair of feet see-sawing gently back and forth, as if with a life of their own. Her gaze travelled upwards to see the body dangling from the ceiling strut and shock paralysed her vocal chords at the sight of those bulging eyes, and protruding tongue - the long, white sheet twisted around the neck of the dead woman.
Finally,
she found her voice, and let out a long scream.
Captain
Ochre strode briskly into the laundry area, followed by Lieutenant Sable and
a security detail.
Reg Jones
had recovered his wits after seeing the body of Heidi Muller swinging from
the roof, and immediately contacted his superior, who informed Colonel
White, who in turn sent Ochre down to oversee the situation. On arrival, the
American captain found a circle of male and female orderlies surrounding
Janice Mulholland. The young woman was weeping softly into a hanky.
“Where’s
the body?” Ochre demanded of the nearest orderly.
“In the
rack-area,” Jones said, his face still pinched with shock.
Ochre made
his way across, with Sable in tow, and his lips thinned in a grim line when
he set eyes on the lifeless body gently swaying from the roof strut, staring
unseeing unto space. He couldn’t help noting the dark brown stains at the
crotch, a typical symptom of hanging, when the bowels and bladder
involuntarily evacuated. He swallowed, hard. He’d seen a similar scene more
than a few times in his lifetime, but seeing it again didn’t make it any
damn easier.
Sable
hustled in behind him and Ochre heard the indrawn breath of surprise as he
surveyed the scene.
“Jeez, did
she hang herself?” He wandered deeper into the room, looking around.
“There’s a ladder on the floor. Maybe she used that to jump off.”
“Maybe,”
Ochre said, with a noncommittal shrug. That had been the first thought
that passed through his head when he saw the suspended body hanging there,
but he’d been a cop too long to make assumptions about anything. “We’d
better print and scan the area, just in case.”
“S.I.G.
sir.”
After the
grisly scene was photographed, Ochre asked the security guys to take down
the body, and Sable took another set of pictures. When Ochre was
satisfied he had enough, he told the security detail to take the body to Dr
Fawn. He moved out of earshot of the others, and contacted Sick-Bay.
“Fawn here.”
“The body’s on its way to you, but can I
ask a favour?” Ochre said in a low voice.
“Sure,
what is it?”
“Can you
do an X-ray of the neck?”
Fawn’s
hesitation lasted only a second. “I can, of course, any reason?”
“Yeah, but
let’s keep it between you and me for now. Ochre out.”
He watched
the lifeless form of Heidi Muller being stretchered away, and pursed his
lips. Two dead bodies in twenty-four hours – and neither of them belonged to
Scarlet. That was beginning to look careless, at least from the point of
view of Spectrum Intelligence, anyway. Ochre smiled mirthlessly to himself.
He could well imagine Colonel White’s thoughts on having that man and
assorted cohorts tramping around his base while he still had an unresolved
Mysteron threat to deal with.
Dismissing
that unpalatable idea from his mind, Ochre concentrated on interviewing the
orderlies, with Sable taking notes in his data-pad. All of them insisted
they hadn’t heard or seen anything untoward, but they agreed that it was
always possible that Heidi could have somehow sneaked into the rack room
unseen in order to end her life.
“Did she
seem depressed at all recently?” he asked Janice Mulholland. Her eyes were
red and puffy from crying.
“N- no, I
don’t think so, I mean it was hard to tell. She just got on with things, you
know? Worked really hard – she loved it here, I know, even if she didn’t
well…gush about it. I just can’t believe that she would commit suicide.”
Sable
grunted. “Who knows what goes on in people’s heads – really?”
Ochre
raised an eyebrow, but Sable unfortunately had a point. Supply staff were
not subject to the same scrutiny as the colour-coded or mission critical
personnel. For the former, physical and psychometric testing took place only
on an annual basis. It was theoretically possible that something had gone so
totally wrong in Heidi’s life that she felt the only option was ending it by
dangling from the ceiling, but Ochre smelt something wasn’t right. He might
not have Scarlet’s famously erratic Mysteron sixth sense, but he had
developed his own highly evolved intuitive sense during his years as a cop,
and it had served him well on many occasions when he was involved in
crime-busting.
Finally,
he’d dragged about as much information as he could from the assembled
laundry staff, and as they drifted off back to their work, he pulled Janice
aside and suggested she check in with the medical department before going
back on shift. That scene was enough to give the young woman
nightmares. She bestowed him a grateful smile.
Ochre next
headed for Heidi’s berth in the main crew quarters. Maybe he’d find some
clue amongst her personal possessions as to why she would want to end her
life so spectacularly. He first checked in with her superior, and the three
of them proceeded to investigate the dead woman’s quarters. She had
one of a six-berth unit in the crew area and the lead duty orderly took her
set of keys to open up the drawer units above the bunk. With gloved hands,
Sable and Ochre emptied them onto the bunk. There were trinkets, and
lipstick, a couple of head-bands, a small data-book, the usual personal
stuff.
Ochre pulled out the second drawer, and emptied a selection of underwear onto the bunk. A glint of silver amongst the fabrics caught his eye, and Sable whistled low, his fingers were first to reach out to grasp it.
“What’s
the deal?” Ochre asked the younger man, wondering about the sudden gleam of
recognition in his eyes.
Sable
triumphantly held the St Christopher medallion aloft.
“This
belongs to Symphony Angel!”
*****
Symphony
was delighted when Ochre personally handed her back her precious necklace,
after he had Sable fingerprint it, naturally, but when she asked where he
had found it, he had to mumble an excuse. Until they had definitively closed
the case on Heidi Muller, they had to keep speculation to a minimum,
although that was easier said than done. In such close proximity, news
travelled swiftly enough through Cloudbase, and bad news travelled at light
speed. That was his reasoning anyway, and privately he was glad, as he
really didn’t relish telling her it had been in the possession of a dead
woman.
“You want
to grab a bite to eat?” she suggested to him, “My treat, after getting this
back to me.”
Ochre
hesitated, and glanced at his watch. Fawn wouldn’t have finished his
autopsy, and he could feel his stomach grumbling at the mere mention of
food. He sensibly figured that if he was going to eat at all, doing it
before, not after viewing a cadaver, was probably the smarter of the two
options.
Symphony
looked pleadingly at him. “Go on, I hate eating alone, the other girls are
busy.”
He
couldn’t resist a grin. “Yeah, and Blue-boy is off being a sailor, so I
guess I’m just a third best lunch date, huh?”
She smiled
sweetly back, unfazed. “Stale donuts don’t count as real food, you know?”
“Says the
woman who can eat six Krispy Kremes in one sitting.”
*****
Jim
McWhirter happened to be on duty when they entered the Officers’ Restaurant.
He greeted them in his usual bright manner, but Symphony noted a tightness
around his eyes that wasn’t usually there.
“Hello,
lassie, it’s a treat to see you.”
Ochre gave
a snort. “Guess I’m no sight for sore eyes, huh?”
“Ignore
the big lunk,” Symphony said. “He’s suffering from donut withdrawal.”
“Aye,
that’ll make a body girn all right.”
Ochre
rolled his eyes and pointed at a particularly virulent looking curry while
Symphony scanned the chilled cabinets.
“I’m
probably going to regret this,” he said to McWhirter, as the chef ladled
some of the curry onto a plate for him.
“It’s
Captain Scarlet’s favourite.”
“Well, in
that case, make it two portions.”
Ochre
moved off for some cutlery and Symphony moved across to stand at the
counter. “I’ll have the fish pie.”
McWhirter
briskly served a piece, added some vegetables. Symphony leaned forward as
she took the plate from him.
“I’m just
thinking about my sweet tooth, as usual, me and the girls have been missing
your little ‘treats’. Any idea when you’re going to bring us up some pastry
delights?”
McWhirter’s eyes widened. “You know, I did make a batch for you, only
a few days ago.”
“Don’t
tell me you ate them!“ her tone was jesting, but the look on McWhirter’s
face and the shake of his head told her the joke had fallen flat.
“I’d left
them on the countertop, and I’d gone into the office. I couldna have been
more than five minutes, but when I came back oot, they had vanished.”
“Gone, as
in stolen?”
“Well, I
suppose so, if you put it like that, but I wouldna want to accuse anyone.”
“Who would
want to steal cookies…on Cloudbase?”
“I
wondered the same thing.”
“Why
didn’t you tell security?”
McWhirter
shifted his weight onto the other foot, a sombre look on his face. “I don’t
know, really. I suppose I should have, and then, this thing with Heidi, I
sort of forgot.”
“Sure, I
heard about it. Poor woman.”
“They say
she committed suicide.” He shook his head. “She was a friend of mine, and I
just can’t believe it.”
Symphony
glanced quickly at Ochre, who was already seated, and wore a
‘why-are-you-taking-so-long?’ expression.
“I’m sorry
Jim, but I guess we shouldn’t really be discussing this.”
McWhirter
reddened a fraction. “No, of course not. I’m sorry.”
“It’s
okay, forget we mentioned it.”
Ochre
looked up as Symphony finally joined him at the table.
“What
were you getting so cosy with McWhirter about? I might have to let Blue-boy
know he has a rival.”
Symphony
stabbed her fork at Ochre’s hand, but he was too fast for her.
She made a face, before her expression turned serious.
“He says
everyone’s talking about the suicide, but he’s not buying it.” Ochre’s
forkful of curry stopped mid-way to his lips.
“What do
you think?” She looked questioningly at him.
“Fawn
hasn’t even done a post-mortem yet, so I haven’t any opinion right now.”
“That
would be a change. Maybe you just don’t want to tell me?”
Ochre’s
brows lowered and he motioned for her to keep her voice down. “Karen, enough
people start talking and we’ll have panic on the lower decks, whatever
the reason.”
“You have
your cop face on, I can see it. What’s wrong with telling me what you know?”
“I told
you, it’s just a hunch.”
She
sniffed. “I was in the USS, remember?”
“I
remember.”
“Well, I
can help, with the investigation.”
Ochre
sighed. “Just don’t go barging around and causing trouble.”
“Cheek. I
am the epitome of discretion.”
“You’ve
been spending too much time in Blue’s company; you sound like you’ve
swallowed a dictionary.”
Her
expected retort didn’t materialise, and Ochre sensed another question
coming.
“By the
way, you still haven’t told me where you found my necklace…“
His heart
sank. “Does it matter? I found it for you, didn’t I?”
“I just
want to know.”
“Karen,
leave it.”
Her eyes
narrowed. “What’s the big secret? If you won’t tell me then I’ll just have
to go and speak to Sable. After all, he was the one I asked in the first
place.”
Ochre
shook his head. “You’re not gonna like the answer.”
“Try me.”
“Okay…we
found it amongst Heidi Muller’s personal effects.”
Symphony’s
eyes widened. “So it was stolen?” she whispered fiercely. “I can hardly
believe it!”
“This
isn’t the time or the place, Karen. And remember, all of this is
confidential, at least for now.”
“I almost
wish you hadn’t told me now. Ugh, just the thought of it.”
“Well, I
did warn you, but as usual, you didn’t listen.”
Symphony’s
brow furrowed deeper.
“What’s on
your mind?” Ochre asked her.
“Just
thinking of coincidences.”
“Anything
you want to share?”
She gave
him a curving smile. “Oh, it’s just a hunch.”
Ochre
rolled his eyes. “I have to leave, don’t do anything dumb, huh?”
“As if I
would.”
Symphony
waited for Ochre to leave and then she wandered across to the galley area.
“Have you
got a moment, Jim?” she called out.
McWhirter
came out of his office. “Sure, lassie, what’s up?”
“Let’s go
into your office for some privacy...” she said quietly.
*****
Ochre
headed straight for the infirmary. Fawn was in the process of removing his
gloves, and Ochre caught a fleeting glimpse of the woman’s body as a
med-tech wheeled it out of the analysis-room to the morgue, leaving the two
of them alone.
“Hi Doc,
what did you find from the X-Ray?”
Fawn
brought up the scans on the screen in front of him. “Well, it is interesting
you should ask. I did find a fracture – “
“Let me
guess, in the hyoid bone?”
Fawn
looked surprised. “How did you know?”
“I was a
cop, remember, and guess I still am, really. I spent a lot of time in
homicide, and you can’t help pick up a lot of forensic stuff as part of the
job. I’ve seen lots of cases where the murderer strangled the victims
then made it look like suicide. Often the key to telling the difference is a
breakage in that specific bone – the hyoid. You don’t tend to see fractures
when the victims hang themselves, as you simply don’t need that much force,
and asphyxiation is usually what causes death in those cases.”
Fawn was
silent for a few seconds.
“Were
there any other signs of a possible struggle?” Ochre asked.
“Well, I
did find evidence of petechiae in the skin and conjunctiva, but without
doing a full blown autopsy I can’t really say any more than that, I’d have
to get permission from the relatives first.”
“Maybe we
need to get it.”
“Are you
seriously trying to imply that this wasn’t suicide?”
“Well, I
know that’s what it looks like. But we already have one member of staff
dead, so I’d just like to check all the avenues first before making
assumptions.”
“Well,
there’s something more. The blood analysis showed that Heidi Muller had been
drinking shortly before she died – and not Synthol, but whisky.”
“Whisky?”
Ochre frowned. “I never thought Germans drank whisky, I thought they were
more into beer. And where would she get any? You can’t just go buy it at the
Spectramart, and the only other place is the Officers’ Restaurant, but
that’s off limits to most of the crew.”
Fawn
raised an eyebrow. “She might have stolen some from there, and there’s
always the possibility she got hold of Scarlet’s secret stash.”
“Not so
secret it seems,” Ochre replied, and pursed his lips together, thinking.
Together with the discovery of the stolen necklace in her cabin, this was
another piece of evidence to suggest that Heidi might have been having some
sort of personal problem. Enough of a problem to risk her job by stealing
booze. But then what about the neck fracture, and the contusions consistent
with a forced strangulation? Not to mention her colleagues’ insistence that
she showed no signs of anything amiss with her life. Ochre had been a cop a
long time, he couldn’t help treating her death as suspicious, especially
after what happened to Lander so recently.
He wasn’t
going to be happy until he’d solved the mystery.
Lieutenant
Sable simmered with anger. He should have been the one to return the missing
medallion to Symphony Angel, not Captain Ochre. Oh, but that’s the way it
goes, doesn’t it? he thought darkly. They let
you do all the work and then they take all the glory.
He sank
down on his bunk, laid one arm across his eyes. Tiredness seemed his
constant companion, and already he felt a gnawing need to shut his eyes, but
he found himself fighting the notion. He had the weirdest feeling that
something bad would happen if he surrendered to sleep. There were too many
strange things going on, maggots in Grainne’s fridge, Heidi Muller’s
suicide….
Sleep, sleep, your time is coming…
Sable’s
eyes snapped open, and he sat up, feeling his heart thump against his chest.
Had he thought those words, or had he heard them?
His eyes
dragged towards the painting, despite his every screaming inclination not to
do so. There were yet more of the smudges, they seemed to be forming some
sort of pattern, but he couldn’t make out what they were.
Why don’t I get rid of it?
He heard
the faintest of guttural replies: You know why.
He
squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m not hearing it, not hearing it.
He
couldn’t seem to be able to function in his own mind, although he gave every
outward impression to his colleagues that he was perfectly fine.
But I’m not fine, am I?
He felt as
if he was two people, both fighting for supremacy.
The light
and the dark.
You cannot fight me.
“Dammit,
no!” Sable uttered the words through clenched teeth, and sprang off his
bunk. Coffee, he needed coffee, strong as tar, to keep him awake.
Keep him from the nightmares
He headed
down the corridor, towards the mess room. It was empty, like the
coffee pot.
He set a
brew going.
Seems like forever since I sat here playing cards with Navy and the others.
The dark
liquid drip-dripped into the glass pot, and he found his gaze drawn to it,
and it might have been his imagination, but it seemed that each drop fell
slower than the previous one.
Drip,
drip.
Like black
oil.
The anger
was rising, again, he couldn’t stop it.
There was something he must do.
Something I need.
Ochre and
Fawn joined Magenta and Lieutenant that evening in the Control Room for a
private conference with Colonel White following the post-mortem of Heidi
Muller.
“So, what
is your verdict, Doctor?” White asked.
Fawn
glanced at Ochre, before answering. “I’m not a forensics expert, so I can
only make a judgement on what I know. There was some indication that the
injuries that Ms Muller suffered may –and I stress the word may –
have been due to external forces.”
White
raised an eyebrow. “External?”
“It’s
possible she didn’t commit suicide. Whoever killed her set it up to look
that way.” Ochre said bluntly.
Magenta
whistled quietly, and White’s lips thinned.
“I see. Do
you have any evidence to prove this theory, Captain?”
“Not at
the moment, Colonel, it’s just a hunch.”
“I see,
meanwhile, I have to consider what to tell her family.”
The others
exchanged glances. Colonel White took it upon himself to break the
unpleasant news of the death of any member of his staff to the relatives
personally, a job they were all more than happy to surrender.
“What if
Lander’s death wasn’t an accident either?” Ochre broke the sudden sombre
silence.
“But why
would anyone want to murder either of them?” Magenta replied.
Ochre
shrugged. “I don’t know – yet - but I think we should consider all the
angles.”
“Spoken
like a true cop.” Magenta’s words were flippant, but his voice held a bleak
note.
“We do not
hire serial killers in Spectrum, Captain,” Colonel White said coldly. “The
people that work here have been vetted by the most stringent security
measures; I am not willing to believe that anyone on this base would commit
the sorts of atrocities you are suggesting.”
“I know
that, sir,” Ochre said. “But maybe we haven’t considered the other
possibility.”
“And that
is?”
“That
these deaths are somehow linked to the Mysteron threat.”
“We have
already resolved this infuriating riddle, captain.”
“I know,
it seems that way, doesn’t it? But we could be wrong.”
“Two
simultaneous threats? It’s never happened before,” Magenta argued.
“There’s
always a first time.”
“Perhaps,
but we cannot make assumptions right now. The threat from Bereznik is clear,
they have a nuclear powered submarine with the potential to destroy Unity
City, and I have to continue to act on the interpretation of that threat,
until you can provide me with more substantial evidence to the contrary that
these were something more than tragic, but unrelated accidents.”
“S.I.G.
Colonel,” Ochre said.
Lieutenant
Green’s voice broke into the conversation. “It’s Captain Scarlet, sir,”
Green announced.
Everyone
went tense as the transparent privacy shield rose. The away team had
maintained a strict radio silence up to now.
“Good news
I hope, Captain,” White said.
Scarlet’s
voice came over the intercom, accompanied by some static.
“We’ve wrested control from the Bereznik crew and the submarine is under our
control.”
“That’s
the best news we’ve heard in the last forty-eight hours,” Ochre muttered.
“Has our
side sustained any injuries?” White demanded.
“Just
Captain Blue,” Scarlet replied. “He has two
cracked ribs and a head wound, sustained during the fight for control of the
sub. He’s unconscious, and I’m afraid it’s difficult to asses how critical
his condition is.”
“I see.”
White’s expression flashed with momentary disappointment, “However, as a
field agent, Captain Blue knows the situation. He would not expect any
special treatment before a mission was concluded.”
Ochre
found himself sympathising with Scarlet, at the Colonel’s unspoken thought
that he’d wished the Englishman had been the usual injured
party. He glanced at Magenta; both knew that a certain someone
wouldn’t exactly agree with the colonel’s sentiments about the Bostonian
captain.
“It is
imperative that you rendezvous with the WASP patrol, before returning to
base,” White continued. “Head for grid reference 22050.NW, where you will
hand over the Shadow Reaper.”
There was
a minute’s silence, then Scarlet replied. “At present speed, Captain Grey
says it’ll take us about an hour to reach that location.”
“Very
well. As soon as the submarine is in WASP hands, you can return to
Cloudbase. I will be sending Melody Angel in the Magnacopter, together with
medics for Captain Blue.”
“S.I.G,
Colonel,” Scarlet replied, his voice carefully neutral. “We
will maintain radio contact from now on.”
“Good
luck, Captain.”
Symphony
Angel was dreaming that she was walking along a corridor in Cloudbase,
although it didn’t look at all familiar. Another corner, and yet another
corridor, and the lights were out in this one. She knew she probably
shouldn’t go in there, but she was hungry, and she’d promised McWhirter that
she would come and collect the pastries he’d made for her.
The cafeteria isn’t down here, a little voice
whispered. But she continued on along the dark corridor anyway. There was a
glow at the end, and she could hear a sound, like the chiming of a bell.
She
approached the light. Closer. Closer.
A figure
appeared, suspended within the glowing nimbus of light.
“I have something for you,” an indistinct
voice said.
Symphony
felt as if she was being pulled forward, and she resisted the tug.
There was something not quite right with this. The figure loomed nearer and
stretched out a hand. It held a plate of pastries.
She heard
the chime again.
The figure
became clearer; it was a woman, and Symphony noticed there was a chef’s hat
perched on the head, which seemed to be bent at a peculiar angle. There was
a giant St Christopher medal around the woman’s neck, the chain cutting into
the swollen folds of skin.
The chain
began to swing, to and fro, while the woman sang, “Can’t
have them, you’ll get fat and Adam won’t like it.”
The chime
was louder, more insistent, and dragged her out of the dream.
Symphony
raised herself groggily and it dawned on her that someone outside the door
of her quarters. She slid out of bed, and pulled on a robe, dragged herself
from the bed, unable to shake the disturbing images from her mind.
The door
swished open and she saw Rhapsody standing there, evidently agitated.
“Goodness,
you look rough, Karen.”
Symphony
ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair. “Weird dream. What’s up?”
“I just
heard that Paul and the others are on their way back.”
Symphony
noticed the look on the other girl’s face “There’s a ‘but’…isn’t there?”
“It’s
Adam, I’m afraid; he’s been injured. Rick just told me.”
The news
acted like a cold shower, the dream discarded.
“Why
didn’t anyone come and wake me?”
“Calm
down, I’m telling you now, I’ve only just heard myself.”
“How is
he?”
“Not too
bad, I think, just enough to render him hors de combat. Rick
mentioned he might have concussion.”
Symphony’s
shoulders relaxed. “Well, in that case, he’ll be fine; he has a thick skull
at the best of times.”
“Especially when it comes to expressing his innermost thoughts, eh?”
Rhapsody said with a sly smile, evidently pleased that Symphony was taking
this with a sense of humour.
Two hours
later Melody arrived at Cloudbase with her cargo of passengers. Blue was
whisked off to sick-bay and both Scarlet and Grey headed immediately for a
de-briefing with the Colonel, despite the late hour.
The
Magnacopter was handed over to Flight Maintenance crew-leader Yvette
Rousseux. Together with her two technicians, and their maintenance
check-robots, she led one of three crews who serviced the helicopters on a
four-on-four-off shift rota.
Yvette
tightened a wheel bolt, and pushed an escaped strand of hair from her face,
leaving an oily streak behind on her cheek. She loved her job, but
what she really wanted to do was work on the Interceptors. Now they were
aircraft to get your hands dirty for. She’d been studying the online
schematics like crazy, and was pretty sure she could convince the
Maintenance Chief that she was ready to graduate.
An hour
later she and her crew were relieved and, after waving goodbye to Harry and
Pavel, she headed alone to the small women’s locker room at the end of the
hangar.
Yvette
felt horny. Coming up to that time in the month, she
thought ruefully.
It had
been weeks since she’d last had sex, if she didn’t count that quick fumble
in the back of the helicopter with one of the other crew leaders. That had
been desperation, really, since she usually never made assignations with
anyone in her own department. The rules on fraternization were
sometimes bent a little on board Cloudbase, for when you had this many
robust young men and women living in such notoriously close quarters, where
work and leisure became blurred, people had a habit of doing what came
naturally, at some point, and after a successful Mysteron mission things
tended to relax a little more than usual.
She was
mid-way sloughing off her greasy coverall in the empty locker room when she
saw him in the mirror of her cabinet. She knew she ought to have recognised
him, dressed as he was in maintenance technician coveralls, but she had
difficulty in putting a name to the face. Still, there were six hundred
folks on board this airbase, and she couldn’t be expected to know everyone
of them personally. She did, however, notice his boyish good looks,
and in her current mood she would have said ‘yes’ straightaway to the
blanket tango if he came right out and asked her, no matter which department
he happened to be assigned to.
She pulled
up her zipper and faced him, trying to dampen down the wild swirl of desire
in the pit of her stomach. She might have a reputation as a sexual predator,
but she usually liked to give the guy half a chance at the start, let him
think he was the one making all the moves.
“I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in,” he said. “I think I might have taken a
wrong turning, somewhere.”
“That’s
okay. Were you looking for someone, in particular, I mean?” She couldn’t
help her flirtatious smile. Yvette wasn’t especially beautiful, but she had
a raw animal sensuality about her, a knowing awareness that she occasionally
used to her advantage. Already she could see a spark of interest flare in
his brown eyes.
“I’m not
sure,” he said, with the hint of a smirk on his lips. “Have I?”
She felt
the familiar pulse throb between her legs, her body’s experience telling her
brain the dance was about to commence, and it surprised even her by how
rapidly it was happening.
I really must ask him his name, and maybe we ought to have a drink or
something to eat before…
He was now
close enough as to be almost touching her, and Yvette licked suddenly dry
lips. His brown eyes bored into hers, with an almost hypnotic quality that
made her feel that such things were irrelevant, unnecessary. He wanted what
she did – and pretending to dress it up with fancy food and music and
candles was a waste of time and effort.
He pulled
at the zip of her coverall, drawing it down, exposing the deep-V of her
chest, and then bent to graze his lips along the side of her neck. Yvette
felt as if her skin was on fire. She wanted him to taste her, to touch her,
to take her to that place where she longed to be. Her shaking fingers
fumbled with his clothes, but he stopped her, grasping her hands in his.
“Not
here,” he murmured.
Dizzy with the tsunami of lust that overwhelmed her, she allowed him to steer her out of the locker room into the corridor. He spied a large utility closet, and finding it unlocked, he drew her inside. In the darkness Yvette heard herself panting softly, her body aching with need, as he closed the door to keep them from prying eyes. Then, he was pressing up against her, and she felt the shelving against her back, the cold metal digging into her calves. She didn’t care, desperate only for him to douse the brush-fire he’d started.
She felt
his lips on hers – at last – and she almost died with relief, allowing her
fingers to entwine in his hair.
His
fingers traced a path along her thighs, up across the dip and curve of her
stomach, up to her breasts.
She panted
against his lips, her body arching forward.
Up, up,
his fingers continued, until they stopped at the soft skin of her neck.
Lieutenant
Sable woke up with a sharp cry, sweat glistening from every pore in his
body, despite the pervasive chill in the room, making his teeth chatter
against one another.
Disoriented, he felt the sheets sodden around him, memories of a dream
sliced through him.
No, not a dream, a nightmare.
A torrent
of fear swept through him and his hand flailed for the light switch.
Had to be a dream.
I’m sick, gotta be.
Do not fight the darkness.
He whirled his head around, his eyes catching the painting for the first
time. He held his head in his hands, trying to drown out the whispers.
The
pattern was clearer now. If he squinted he could make it out.
No,
he thought, not a pattern, more like –
A face.
He was
staring at an outline of a face.
He sat,
rooted to bed, transfixed with a fear so strong that it overwhelmed him.
The face
was smiling at him.
An evil
smile.
Sable
heard the whispers again.
Soft.
Sibilant.
The cold
seeped into his bones, and Sable heard the rustling sound, like the rasp of
dry scales against old leaves. Cold, cold, slithering around every muscle,
filling him with a deep darkness.
Reality unravelled like a thread from a frayed tunic, and before he blacked out, he thought he might have imagined a peal of low, insane laughter.
Symphony,
Destiny and Rhapsody Angels arrived at the reception area in sick bay, with
armfuls of flowers, chocolates and fruit.
“Hello,
Nurse Jackson, we’re here to see the invalid,” Rhapsody announced, taking
the lead.
“That’s
very sweet of you, ladies, but he happens to be fast sleep at the moment. Dr
Fawn thought it best if he had some heavy medication since he’s in a lot of
pain.”
Symphony
tried not to display her disappointment. “Is he all right?” she asked.
“Yes,
he’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Jackson replied. She took the flowers from
Rhapsody. “I’ll put these in some water and place them beside his bed, and
when he wakes up I’ll tell him you all called in to see him.”
On the way
out Symphony almost collided with Lieutenant Sable, who was coming into
reception.
“Sorry, I
wasn’t looking where I was going,” she apologised.
“Don’t
mention it,” Sable mumbled on his way past. Symphony thought he didn’t look
at all well.
Flight
Maintenance Technician Nick Leandros whistled happily as he sauntered along
the corridor on his way to the hangar bay. Only one more four-hour
shift and then he’d be winging his way to down to see his family. His mother
would fuss over him, and his four sisters would hang onto his every word,
and he’d lie on the beach and drink ice-cold ouzo, and maybe he’d get lucky
with Elena Andreadis again.
Lost in his pleasant daydream, he didn’t notice the patch of wetness on the floor, and practically lost his footing. Annoyed, he peered at the ground, and saw a smear of dark fluid which trailed back to a utility closet in the corridor to his right.
A little
concerned, Leandros turned the handle to the closet, and found it unlocked.
It was dark inside, and he fumbled for the light switch,
As the
light levels rose, he stared uncomprehendingly at the tableau before him,
and unconsciously crossed himself. He backed out of the closet, almost
stumbling as he did so, and leant against the wall, breathing heavily and
trying to swallow down the rush of bile that threatened to choke him.
At any
hour, the Control Room was a haven of peace, save for the diligent whirr and
chatter of the computers. However, in the moments before dawn, it seemed
especially tranquil.
Lieutenant
Verdigris was on-duty while Lieutenant Green took his allocated sleep
session in his quarters. She tapped one square-tipped nail on the console,
while her eyes roamed over the vast array of data presented on the giant
screens facing her. If anything out of the ordinary transpired, then the
industrious systems at the core of Cloudbase would relay the fact without
her even having to move an inch.
Verdigris
yawned, a gesture quickly stifled, and she glanced across at the imposing
form of her commanding officer. As ever, he sat ram-rod straight in his
chair behind the curved console, studiously regarding the contents of a
data-pad, and she wondered if he ever actually slept, as in, the real
deal, not the concentrated dehydrate from the Room of Sleep. That was fine
every now and then, but she didn’t know anyone who would choose to
substitute that for the genuine article when it wasn’t necessary.
The intercom crackled into life, and Verdigris snapped to attention. Nick
Leandros’s voice was hoarse, and his words chilled her:
“Get someone down to the helicopter hangar bay, something terrible has
happened.”
Ochre
strode along the corridor, and could see the small crowd of bodies,
technicians mostly, milling around in the corridor. He fought down his
irritation at the thought they were trampling over a potential crime scene.
“Everyone
back!” he yelled, and they all moved aside to let him through. “This isn’t a
sideshow, folks. Get back to your posts.”
Their
expressions turned to embarrassment at being caught gawping by a one of the
senior officers, and they immediately drifted away, leaving Ochre alone. He
took a deep breath before facing what lay within the closet.
As he
regarded Yvette Rousseau’s body, Ochre was filled with a deep sadness mixed
with revulsion at the way she had died. She lay against the back of the
shelving, her hands and feet tied together like an animal, and her eyes
stared beyond him – an appalling, desperate gaze that made him want to do
terrible things to the perpetrator of this crime. A flexible metal
hose protruded from her open mouth, and a thick, black liquid dribbled from
the torn lips, marking its passage as small rivulets down her neck, onto her
clothing and the floor. Ochre’s eyes travelled bleakly along the length of
the hose – and saw that it terminated at a small vacuum pump. The switch on
the unit had been set to reverse, so that the contents would have been
forced down the pipe under pressure.
Right into her damn lungs.
Yvette
Rousseau had been choked to death with engine oil.
*****
Grim-faced, Ochre recounted his harrowing discovery to Colonel White,
Captains Scarlet and Grey and Destiny Angel. Green had returned to his post
after his assigned sleep period, relieving a slightly pale-faced Verdigris.
“This is
no accident, Colonel,” he said firmly, “This is cold-blooded murder, and if
I’d followed up on my hunch I might not have had to put Yvette Rousseau in a
body-bag.”
White’s
lips had drawn paper-thin as he had sat listening. “You still believe
this is related to the Mysteron threat?” he asked Ochre.
“I really
don’t know. One thing is for sure, all the murders have taken place during
the night, perhaps that’s the ‘shadows’ the threat referred to. I had a
hunch that Lander might have been Mysteronised and then subsequently killed
Heidi, but I haven’t been able to corroborate that with any fingerprint
evidence from the lab. And there haven’t been any reports of sightings of
either of them since they – died.”
“What
about security camera footage?” Scarlet asked.
Ochre
shook his head. “I had Sable and his team run through some of it but we
don’t have anything that looks suspicious - yet.”
“We know
that the Mysterons occasionally use some unknown power to transfer matter,
even people,” Scarlet mused. “It wouldn’t be so hard for them either to
teleport an agent in, or even remove evidence from the scene of a crime.”
“Yeah to
both, unfortunately,” Ochre replied grimly.
“There
are a lot of dark corners on board this ship where someone could hide,” Grey
added. “We don’t have cameras everywhere.”
“Yeah,
like the corridors around the locker area,” Ochre agreed. “Whoever the
killer is, they know their way around the base, and where to go without
being seen.”
“Certainly
points to Lander,” Scarlet said. “As a maintenance tech, he’d have access
clearance to just about anywhere, and probably also knew where all the
security systems were.”
“Could
be, I need to sit down in a quiet room and try and piece what little
evidence I have together.”
“I do not
understand,” Destiny had been silent up to now during the discussion. “If
Rob Lander is our Mysteron, and he can move where he likes, why does he not
just plant a bomb in the engine room, and pouf - we are all dead in
an instant?”
“A fair
point,” White nodded. “But the Mysterons have always stressed that this is a
war of nerves – they deliberately want to instil a sense of fear and
uncertainty – to wear us down, slowly.”
“Yeah,
there’s nothing like a someone sneaking around and picking us off one by one
in a confined space to make us sweat all right,” Ochre said, with a deep
frown. “Our top priority is to ensure that no one does anything alone
tonight. That seems to be the killer’s favourite time, probably because
there are less people around. We have to make it difficult for him, or her.”
“We still
need to keep this base operational, Captain. That remains our top
priority,” White reminded him.
“Of course
sir, but we can insist that non-essential personnel stay in their quarters
with the doors firmly barred during the night hours, and have a skeleton
crew oversee the vital operations, at least until we find Lander, or Heidi
Muller.”
“What
about Angel One?” Grey asked.
“Security
detail on the flight deck,” Ochre and Scarlet answered in unison.
“We do not
need to be mollycoddled,” Destiny said, with a pout.
“Oh yes
you do, in this instance,” Ochre fired back.
“Are we
going to inform Spectrum Intelligence?” Scarlet asked White.
A few
strained seconds passed before the older man answered.
“No, I
would prefer this to be kept under wraps for now. I don’t believe it would
serve us any better to have more people on board this airbase.”
*****
While the
others were discussing the grisly details of Yvette’s death, Symphony was
begging Rhapsody to stand in for her, so she could slip away to see Blue in
sick-bay.
“I’m not
sure you should be going anywhere on your own,” the English girl insisted.
“After what we’ve just learnt about that poor girl.” She shivered. “It’s
just too horrible to imagine what she must have gone through. It couldn’t
have been a quick death.”
“I know,
but I haven’t seen Adam since he arrived.”
“Paul has,
and he said he was doing okay.”
“Not good
enough for me. Anyway, I have a theory that the killer only seems to strike
at night.” She waved a hand carelessly towards the wide curve of the
windows in the Amber Room. “It’s daylight now, so I’m banking on everything
being okay.”
Rhapsody
looked dubious. “That’s a pretty big assumption.”
“Well, no
one’s put out an edict yet, and I’m damned if I’m sitting around waiting for
something to happen. I won’t be gone for long, I promise.”
“Oh,
Karen, do be careful.”
*****
“You look
awful,” Symphony said, as she bent over and gently brushed back Blue’s damp
fringe away from his face.
Blue
opened one eye, said softly, “Gee thanks, Karen, you have a way of making a
guy feel good.”
“Well,
awful, but still adorable.”
He smiled.
“That’s better, otherwise I was going to send you to Nurse Jackson for
bedside manner lessons.”
“If you
weren’t in pain already, I’d punch you for that remark.”
“It’s
improving,” he said, trying to sit up, an action which resulted in his face
screwing up in a hard wince. He fell back down onto the propped up pillows.
“Well, maybe not that fast.”
“Maybe I
need to get dear old, Nurse Jackson to get you some more pain
relief,” Symphony said. The sarcasm in her voice belied her concern at how
pale Adam looked.
“I’ll be
fine, I hate taking that damn stuff.”
“Better
than hurting.”
“I have
funny dreams.”
“Jeez, so
do I,” Symphony remembered hers, which then moved on to the memory of what
had occurred during the wee hours of the morning.
“What’s
up?” Blue noticed the sombre look on her face.
“Did you
hear, about that helicopter technician?”
“No,” his
face became instantly aware, his eyes sharp. “What happened?”
Symphony
hesitated, if Fawn hadn’t seen fit to tell his patient, then she was going
to get in trouble if she got him all riled up when he should be
convalescing.
Nice one Karen, another ‘blurt- out- without-engaging-brain’ moment.
Still, it
was too late now. Blue’s interest was piqued, so she told him, and watched
as his face grew grimmer by the second.
“So what
are you doing wandering around by yourself?” he scolded her.
“I told
you, the murders only happen at night, probably that’s the meaning of the
Mysteron threat.”
“Which we
solved, already, may I remind you.”
“Ochre
thinks there might be another one, and I think he might be onto something.”
“Oh, you
do?” Blue’s eyebrows lowered. “I hope you’re not going to try to play
detective and end up doing something impetuous – ”
“Good
grief, you’re worse than Ochre. One little mistake – ”
“I’m not
talking about Culver – ”
“Oh yes,
you are.” She threw her hands up. “Just like men, to think they’re the only
ones who can go around solving the mystery. I’m not a defenceless little
nurse, you know,” she said, a trifle waspishly.
“That’s unfair, and you know it.”
Symphony’s
heart did a little trip. He really did care for her, but it didn’t stop her
feeling cross at the assumption that she was incapable of doing the job like
any one of the guys. She’d show the lot of them.
Jim
McWhirter was in his small office in the restaurant when he heard a noise in
the galley outside. He glanced at the clock, and there shouldn’t be
anyone here at this hour, the restaurant was closed and his first thought
was that the pastry thief had returned to the scene of the crime. Without
thinking, he carefully slid his chair back and stood up, creeping as quietly
as his large frame would allow – all the way into the galley.
He was on
the verge of shouting ‘gotcha!’ when the uniformed intruder turned,
and he found himself face to face with Lieutenant Sable.
“Oh,
hullo, sir,” he mumbled sheepishly, “What can I be doing for you? It’s a bit
late, isn’t it?”
“Never too
late for us security boys,” Sable replied. “I’m just taking a quick tour of
the tower, and I thought I’d just check in with you on my way past.”
“Well,
everything’s just fine here, sir. No problems.”
“That’s
good, I hope you don’t mind if I take a look around?”
McWhirter
nodded his head, it seemed a bit odd, but it wouldn’t do to argue with an
officer. McWhirter was only enlisted personnel, after all, what did he know
about ship’s security?
This time,
Ochre was doing it by the book.
It had
been awhile since he’d spent time with the forensics guys, and he’d mentally
kicked himself for not immediately treating the other two deaths as
suspicious, thus losing the chance of collecting every scrap of vital
evidence that might point them in the direction of the killer.
Yvette, in
all likelihood, would have struggled with her assailant before she was
overpowered, so there was the possibility that fibres belonging to the
clothes of the murderer, or even minute fragments of skin had been left on
her body and around the area of the crime scene. Ochre had immediately
made the decision to look for any evidence himself: Sable was a fine
security officer, but he didn’t have his background in homicide.
He found
several dark hairs on the floor, probably belonging to the murdered girl.
There was so much mess on her uniform it was pointless trying to check it
now, he’d bag it and get Fawn to analyse the entire thing.
Once in
the infirmary, after the clothes had been removed, Ochre did another sweep
of the girl’s body, the machine whirring softly as it travelled over the
curves and hollows of the pale, waxy skin, still warm to the touch. He felt
a righteous stab of anger at such a senseless death.
Swallowing, he got back to business, Yvette was dead, there was no bringing
her back; he had to make sure someone like her didn’t suffer the same fate.
“There you
go, Doc, all yours.”
Fawn
pursed his lips. “I told you, I have some knowledge of forensic analysis,
but I’m no expert.”
“I know
that, but it’ll take longer to send this stuff down to the surface and I
just have this hunch that we don’t have a helluva lot of time.”
“You think
there will be more deaths?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought
Lander was the killer?”
“I’m
thinking out of the box, assumptions have a nasty habit of leading you down
the wrong alley.”
Fawn
considered for a moment. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”
“How long
will it take?”
“Fibre
analysis should only take a few hours at the most, but if you want DNA
results, well, that’s going to take a bit longer, assuming I can isolate
anything from the detritus in the first place.”
Ochre gave
the shorter man a firm squeeze on the shoulder. “I know I’ve got the best
man for the job.”
Fawn gave
him a grim smile. “Flattery will get you no-where, mate.”
*****
On his way
out, Ochre dropped by the men’s ward to see how Blue was getting on.
“Itching
like blazes underneath this damn rib-cast,” the Bostonian snapped in reply.
Ochre
picked a juicy-looking black grape from the bowl standing on the bedside
table and popped it into his mouth. “When’s it coming off?”
“Not fast
enough as far as I’m concerned, and Fawn thinks I’m still suffering the
effects of concussion so he’s refusing to sign me back on duty any time
soon. I hate being cooped up in here when all this stuff is going on.”
“I take it you know all about it then?”
“Yeah, no
thanks to Fawn. Symphony told me, she – dropped by.”
Ochre
tried not to grin. “I heard they all did. What have you got the rest of us
haven’t?”
“Two
cracked ribs and concussion. You’re welcome to them if you
want.” Blue scowled at him.
*****
Chatting
with Blue reminded Ochre that Symphony had wanted to help out, so he tracked
her down and asked her if she’d look over the security camera footage. He
figured that a pair of fresh eyes might spot something that Sable and his
team might have missed.
“Gee,
that’s so exciting,” she said with a pout, when he’d finished.
“Listen,
it isn’t always the glamour stuff that catches the crook. Half the time it’s
the boring dog-work that uncovers the unloved little details, the unassuming
clues that point us in the right direction.”
“Huh,
you’re only saying that because you want to do the fun stuff.”
Ochre
rolled his eyes. “None of this is fun, Symphony, it’s serious. Three of our
people are dead, remember?”
She looked
immediately contrite. “Sure, sorry.”
“That’s
okay. So are you going to help me?”
“All right. Just don’t mention it to – anyone that I’m working on the case…”
“Who
should I mention it too?” he asked, with an innocent look. “Blue-Boy, for
instance?”
He
skilfully managed to dodge her punch.
That
afternoon, in the galley of the Officers’ Restaurant, one of the junior
cooks hauled a large side of beef out of the fridge units for lunchtime’s
stew. She opened one of the drawers and hunted about for utensils, a frown
settling on her face when the particular implement she was searching for
refused to materialise. She tried several more drawers and cupboards, but
failed to find the missing item.
“Hey,
sir,” she called to McWhirter, “Have you seen the big carving knife?”
McWhirter
called back, busy with some figures that wouldn’t add up.
“Nope.
Have you tried looking in the dishwasher?”
“I’ll
check,” she hollered back.
A few
seconds later, she wandered into the office. “I can’t find it anywhere.”
McWhirter
scratched his head, “Well, it’ll probably turn up somewhere. Just improvise,
lassie, it’s not like we haven’t got any other knives in the galley.”
*****
The day
had been a busy one for Ochre and the others. After a head-ache inducing
three hour meeting, they, Sable and his security team sat down together and
thrashed out a plan to minimise the number of bodies wandering around at
night, while at the same time ensuring the safety of the personnel who still
had to be out there manning the engines and the work consoles that kept the
massive carrier airborne and functioning throughout the night. A mug-shot of
Rob Lander had gone out site-wide with instructions for any personnel who
caught sight of him to contact the Control Room immediately.
Sable
offered his opinion when requested, but Ochre thought he seemed more subdued
than normal, not to mention a little pale and drawn. He motioned to the
Canadian when the meeting broke up.
“Are you
okay, Lieutenant? You don’t look too good.”
Sable’s
brows knitted together. “To be honest sir, I have been feeling under the
weather recently.”
“Have you
been to sickbay yet?”
”Sure,
yesterday, Dr Fawn thinks it might be a virus or something.”
“Virus,
huh? Any more than that?”
Sable
shook his head.
“You’re
supposed to be off-duty tonight anyway, aren’t you?”
Sable
nodded. “But I think I’ll be fine, sir, honestly.”
Ochre
looked unsure. Fawn usually slapped a quarantine on people with suspected or
unknown viruses, it was all too easy for such things to rush through a
closed environment liked Cloudbase like wildfire. “Well, go and get a few
hours sleep, and if you feel better you can help out tonight.”
Sable gave
a nod in agreement. “S.I.G.”
Night
fell, and Cloudbase had the impression of a ghost ship. Hangar bays, mess
rooms, gymnasium, and cafeterias - all were silent and devoid of people.
The majority of personnel from the non-essential functions had been ordered
to remain in their quarters for the duration of the night, and by now,
everyone on board the ship had been made aware of the fact there was a
potential Mysteron killer on board.
In the
crew berths, people sat, watching TV or playing cards in small groups, some
even sleeping. But despite the surface nonchalance, and careless banter, an
undercurrent of fear ran through the decks, especially amongst the female
contingent, whom the killer seemed to be targeting. The nature of Yvette’s
murder had left a disturbing pall in the air.
For the
remainder of the crew, manning the critical stations within
engineering, navigation, and the Observation, Monitor and Radar rooms, meant
that shifts had to double up, and in addition, at least one colour coded
officer and a security guard was assigned to stand watch. The Angels
insisted they didn’t need a guard outside the door of the Amber Room, but
that sentiment was swiftly quashed by the Colonel, who insisted that keeping
his strike squadron safe was more important than any notions of female
equality. Magenta’s half-joking remark that the other women officers ought
to hole up in their quarters was also met with the expected derision. .
Ochre
stood guard near the door of his assigned post within the muted cavern of
the engine rooms, where several control technicians sat at their floor to
ceiling consoles, their eyes fixed at the vast array of scanners constantly
monitoring the cahelium engines and auxiliary systems throughout the ship.
The Chief stalked the room a few feet away, and nodded at Ochre as he
passed. From the determined look on the man’s ruddy face, it was obvious
that no Mysteron was going to have the chance to harm any of his
crew.
Ochre
glanced at his watch. Those samples had been in Fawn’s hands for a good few
hours now, surely there had to be something to report?
“I was
just about to call you,” Fawn spoke through his head set.
“What have
you got?”
“I managed
to isolate fabric fragments from both the dust collection sample and the
fingernail scrapings, I subjected them to Raman and mass-spectroscopic
analysis and the electron-microgr – ”
“Skip the technical details, Doc,” Ochre interrupted gently. “Just give me the results.”
“All
right,” there was a tetchy note in Fawn’s voice, “The only match was with
the fibre construction used to make the maintenance department coveralls.”
Ochre
swore slightly, under his breath.
“So, it looks as if her killer was Lander, right enough,” Fawn finished.
“It
certainly points strongly towards it,” Ochre agreed, “But we need more
evidence. What about skin or hair analysis? Did you manage to detect
anything other than those couple of strands of Yvette’s that I found?”
“Yes, I
did actually, and I’ve got them running through the analysers now to extract
the DNA.”
“How long
before we have something?”
“Not for
while yet, even with all the advances in sequencing, it still takes time to
isolate the profiles, and bearing in mind the length of time that’s passed
since I last did a PCR or STR analysis, I just hope I’m not going to make
the wrong assessment from all of this.”
“Won’t
happen, Doc, I trust you. Keep at it and let me know as soon as you find
something.”
“S.I.G.,
Fawn out.”
Captain
Scarlet prowled E-deck, the clicking of his boots sounding abnormally loud
in the still, silent corridors. Ochre had suggested he be accompanied during
his wanderings, but that would make them short in the Observation Room,
since Sable hadn’t returned to duty. Blue was still in sickbay, so Scarlet
insisted he would be fine on his own, as long as he had his trusty pistol.
Ochre had looked doubtful, but Scarlet stressed that Lander was only a
maintenance technician and Mysteronised or not, didn’t have the skills in
hand-to-hand combat that he, or indeed, any of the senior crew, possessed.
However
confident he’d appeared to Ochre at the time, Scarlet couldn’t help feeling
a slight prickle of apprehension. Not for himself, but for the women on the
base. The thought of something like Yvette’s death happening to any of
the Angels was unthinkable. Under protest, Symphony had been told to
share quarters with Melody, and Destiny and Harmony were ensconced in the
Amber Room, with Navy for company and two guards at the door. Rhapsody
was sitting in Angel One, and it was Grey whom Colonel White had assigned to
the flight deck with another security guard. They were armed to the teeth,
so she would be well protected.
It didn’t
stop him worrying about her though…
“I can’t
believe we’re confined in our room for the entire night while the likes of
Verdigris and Copper are allowed to wander around doing their jobs,”
Symphony muttered loudly from the couch in Melody’s living area.
There was
a rustle of bedclothes, as Melody turned over. She turned on the lights, and
squinted at Symphony, who was sitting, with her arms wrapped around her
knees, her body language the personification of restlessness.
“Oh, come
on, Karen, we’re off-duty and it’s two am. We’d normally be sleeping, so
what’s the big deal?”
“We could
help, that’s what. I don’t like the idea of Rhapsody up there alone on the
flight deck with that loony running about.”
“She isn’t
alone, she has two guys with her, both packing ammo, and Scarlet’s wandering
around nearby. She’ll be fine.”
Symphony
chewed a nail. “Yeah, yeah, I guess,” she said, “but I’m not completely
convinced.” She got up and stretched, making her way over to the
desk-console. “Do you mind if I just have a look at the computer? I’ll keep
the lights low.”
Melody
yawned and turned over, away from the light. “Go ahead, honey, I’m too tired
to argue.”
Symphony
opened up a link to the security files, and when the screen appeared, coded
in her access password. Once into the system she started reviewing the
security videos. After five minutes she was bored out of her skull.
Scarlet
wandered along the deserted corridor towards the Interceptor repair bay.
Again, the strange silence seemed mock him. His scalp prickled and he
had the strangest sensation that he was being followed.
But when
he swivelled his head to look back, the corridor was empty.
There was
no one. The only sound was that of his breathing.
Scarlet
continued on his way, annoyed at his jittery nerves. He reached the large
access doorway to the Interceptor bay, and, although the place was locked
down for the night, he was determined to check it over; it was on his patrol
route and what better way was there to kill an Angel, than to sabotage the
planes? If they’d have enough trusted manpower, he’d have insisted, far more
than he had done, that his suggestion of a dedicated guard on the place had
been acted on.
Feeling more than justified, he swiped his access card through the lock and
slipped into the room as the door opened. At first he thought the
large room, now in semi-darkness, was silent except for the whirring of the
air-conditioning units overhead. Two sleek, white metal shapes of
Angel Interceptor craft took up most of the available hangar space, awaiting
their crew’s return when dawn broke. Yet, there was something on the
cusp of even his exceptional, Mysteron-enhanced, hearing that made him
pause. A noise… something that shouldn’t be there - the sound of
someone trying to suppress the sound of rapid breathing?
He froze.
What if
someone was in here? He recalled a conversation he’d had with
Ochre and the others - before they went their separate ways – and the
revelation that the killer had used items or objects from his victim’s job
to dispatch them. Ochre had stressed it was only his half-baked theory, and
possibly meant nothing, but it nagged at Scarlet now.
No one’s going to get the chance to tamper with these babies – not on MY
watch.
Silently,
he padded into the bay, sidling along the wall, attempting to keep to the
shadows, his fingers instinctively trailing to his hip and settling around
the handle of his pistol. He considered contacting Green on his
cap-mike, but instantly thought better of it. He had no intention of
alerting the Mysteron to his presence – and, if the colonel heard, there was
always the chance that there’d be a barney over what he was doing there in
the first place.
Carefully,
he moved towards the aircraft, his eyes darting here and there in the gloom,
ignoring the slight increase in his heart beat. Now, he couldn’t make
out anything beyond the whirr of the units above his head.
I’m really getting jumpy; there isn’t anything here but the Interceptors.
Then, he
heard another noise, behind him.
He’d
half-whirled around, his fingers curling to draw his pistol, when he heard a
sound like the snapping of a rubber band. Almost instantaneously this was
followed by an excruciating jolt in his chest, a burst of pain that sent
shock waves radiating into every muscle. He stumbled and fell to his knees,
blinded by the force of the electrical impulses. The fireworks exploded
within his body again and all he saw was a dark silhouette looming over him
As his brain fought the pain, recognition flashed through his mind as he glimpsed the features almost hidden behind the plastic faceplate.
He knew
who the killer was.
He knew,
but it didn’t matter.
Scarlet
fell into black unconsciousness.
With the extra workload, Lieutenant Green was a busy man in the Control Room. Unusually for him, he was on his feet, addressing an issue with Colonel White at his desk. On his main screen, a flashing red light was blinking silently. Since there was no one in the maintenance department to spot the fault either, it went entirely unnoticed that security cameras 73 and 74 were malfunctioning, and had been for some time.
*****
The
blackness seemed to have lasted forever when Scarlet drifted out of his
nightmare, and the first sensation he was aware of was a stinging pain,
which very quickly bloomed into a raging torrent of fire cascading along his
skin. He tried to move, realised he was pinned, his hands tied behind his
back and his ankles lashed together. He tried to speak but couldn’t, there
was tape restricting his lips – and he realised he was at the mercy of the
killer.
The vision
of Yvette Rousseau flashed into his brain.
He stared
in disbelief at the man squatting before him, dressed in a maintenance
flight suit. Somehow, unbelievably, he’d managed to silently sneak up on
Scarlet and zap him with an electronic Mysteron rifle, probably set at very
low power, otherwise he realised he wouldn’t even be feeling any sort of
pain right now.
“Why are
you doing this?” he wanted to say, but all he could hear was a muffled,
mewling sound from behind the tape.
“Evil
doesn’t have to explain,” his assailant murmured, almost as if he read
Scarlet’s thoughts. “But evil needs sustenance, and from the cries and blood
of the offerings he grows stronger.”
He raised
a gloved hand and Scarlet’s heart hammered in his chest when he saw the
glint of metal.
It was a
big, serrated carving knife.
Evil.
When evil comes from the shadows we shall reap.
Ochre had
been right after all, there was a double threat, and he was staring it in
the face.
The man
held up a length of something in his other hand, and in the gloom, Scarlet
had trouble making it out. It was pale and rubbery looking, and was covered
in red slime.
It took
three astonished seconds for him to realise it was an inch-wide strip of his
flesh.
Horrified, he glanced down, to see the deep swathes of exposed muscle and tissue on his arms and legs. The wounds seemed to quiver in anguish, crying blood.
Bile rose
in his throat as the figure tossed the flap of flesh onto the small pile
beside his feet. His torturer turned his gaze on Scarlet again and it was
like looking into the abyss of madness. A deep-seated insanity that bore no
resemblance to the often blank expressions of Mysteron constructs.
Scarlet
wasn’t worried about death; he knew his retro-metabolism would heal any
injury, however grave. But he could still feel – everything. Every
ounce of pain and horror.
He didn’t
want to die. Not like this. Not watching himself being hacked to pieces.
The knife
flashed again, slicing into the fleshy part of his upper thigh, searing its
way through skin and tissue. The pain was indescribable and sweat broke out
all over his body. A wave of nausea swept over him, making him feel dizzy,
and he realised he was going into shock again.
If someone
didn’t find him soon, things weren’t going to end at all well.
*****
Ochre
leaned back in the chair, massaging his temples with his fingertips. Unlike
Scarlet, the lucky sonofabitch, he needed some sleep, and with two
hours to dawn, he was feeling the effects of not having any.
He stared
at the scribblings he’d made on several sheets of white computer print-outs.
Data-pads were fine for most things, but when you wanted to throw out all
your brain’s random meanderings and make sense of them, sometimes getting
back to basics was best.
Lander was the first to die, but was it an accident? Or did someone else
kill him? Who? Captain Black? Could he have been the evil that came from the
shadows? He killed the maintenance tech, and disappeared. But why
would he make it look like an accident? To throw us off the scent?
He
returned to his observation that all the victims had so far been dispatched
by items they worked with. That was a pattern to it – and as he sat
considering, he thought of another one, even more sinister.
Each
victim had suffered a more grisly death than the one previous.
Asphyxiation at 40,000 feet might be considered a fairly gentle demise, but
forcible drowning in engine oil was a particularly harrowing way to go.
He hardly dared imagine what dreadful fate was planned for the next
potential victim, and he absently swallowed down the hard lump in his throat
with a swig of cold coffee. Like many of his compatriots in the force, he
had graduated from diapers by coming face to face with human nature at its
most sadistic – the serial killer. He knew from bitter experience that
those types of murder didn’t happen by accident, like crimes of passion, or
a bank job gone wrong. They were often worked out beforehand, even
elaborately designed and there was often an element of ritual to them. The
latter trademark was often what allowed them to be caught, eventually. Ochre
hoped he could figure it out before someone else got in this guy’s way.
His
epaulettes flashed white, and he almost jumped in his seat, as Colonel
White’s gruff voice sounded in his head-set.
“Captain Ochre, we have not received a check-in from Captain Scarlet in the last hour, and Lieutenant Green has reported a fault with the security camera in the Interceptor repair bay. Given Scarlet’s previous concern over that particular facility, I suggest you proceed immediately to the area with a back-up team. There may be a problem.”
No,
he thought, closing his eyes, a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach.
Don’t let it be…
“S.I.G
Colonel.”
*****
Ochre and
two security guards strode purposely along the access corridor towards the
Interceptor Bay. Without knowing what had become of Scarlet, he and White
had agreed it was prudent to keep the other colour officers at their
designated posts. Ochre keyed in the access code to the bay door, and
motioned to the guards to fan out as they entered. Ochre held a Mysteron
gun, and the guards had their pistols.
“Scarlet,
are you in here?” Ochre called out.
Silence
sang back at him.
Seconds
ticked by. There was no sound. No flicker of movement from within the
shadowy interior.
Ochre made
for the second Interceptor, towards the back of the bay, his heart beating
louder in his chest, the silence mocking him.
Then, in
the gloom, almost at the wall, he thought he saw something familiar.
A boot,
A
scarlet boot.
With each
step now he could smell it, the nauseous odour of violence, causing memories
to drifting up from years past. He moved closer to the scene and the scent
of death grew stronger, sending small waves of long-forgotten dread rippling
through his stomach. Ochre had spent five years in homicide, about as much
time as anyone could take before it drove you into the place where most of
the crazies ended up. He’d seen his share of the grisly, with murder after
pointless murder. But it never got any easier. It was always a shock.
Like this.
There was
blood.
Lots of
it.
God Almighty.
He stared
at the sliced-up body of Captain Scarlet and fought down the revulsion in
his guts – channelled it instead into a cold, hard anger. A determination
that this all stopped here – now.
But first
things first; he had to call sickbay, and Fawn would have to act fast. It
was going to take their genius doctor some doing to stitch Scarlet back
together again, assuming he even could.
Damn Scarlet’s arrogance, making the assumption he
could go wandering about alone.
Fawn’s
reply was terse and brief, that he would be there immediately with his key
med-techs. Whatever else he must have thought about this calamitous
situation, he kept to himself for now.
Next,
Ochre radioed Colonel White and briefed him on the situation. His commanding
officer’s voice held a barely disguised fury. “Use everything at your
disposal to find this Mysteron, Captain Ochre, we cannot allow him to commit
any more of his despicable acts.”
“You got
it, as soon as we get Scarlet to sick-bay, and Colonel, I suggest you put
out a base-wide bulletin, something to the effect that Captain Scarlet was
attacked and took some injuries, or something, but not that he’s dead, we
can’t afford everyone knowing about his retrometabolism, just in case he…
recovers.”
“He
will recover, Captain.” White replied crisply. “However, you have a good
point, and I shall arrange for Lieutenant Green to take care of it.”
“Colonel,
there’s something else that just struck me. I don’t know if Scarlet just
happened to be in the way, or whether the murderer deliberately sought him
out, but this is the first time he’s struck at a member of the senior
staff.”
“Yes, that
is a disturbing element. Perhaps the Mysterons are aware of the sixth sense
he possesses, and have decided to eliminate that risk of discovery?”
“Or, maybe
they’ve just stopped playing games with us, and intend to escalate the
situation. You could be next, sir.”
A few
seconds ticked by as White digested this possibility.
“I suggest
you have an armed guard at all times, Colonel, we can’t afford to lose the
head of Spectrum, if you’ll pardon the sick humour.”
“You are
excused, Captain, and much as I dislike it, I will concur with your idea.”
“I’ll
arrange it right away, Ochre out.”
As he
waited on Fawn’s arrival, Ochre scanned the grisly scene, attempting to see
if there were any clues. Scarlet had obviously been overpowered somehow, but
with what?
Even with
all the blood on the floor, there were no footprints leading away from the
scene towards the door, and there certainly wasn’t any sign of a murder
weapon. Lander had either teleported away from the scene of the crime, or he
was a real smart cookie.
Christ, you’d practically need a saw to do this much damage.
Ochre
twitched as he spied the strips of flesh lying in a small heap. Things
really were going bad. It didn’t seem to be enough that this sicko killed
his victims, but he seemed to increasingly want to want to torture them as
he did so. If details of this got around, people truly would be scared
witless.
Did Scarlet know who killed him?
It just
didn’t make sense, the elaborate ways of killing everyone, was it really
Lander? And if not – who? Ochre had to get those DNA results, but he knew
that Scarlet was Fawn’s immediate priority for the moment.
After what
seemed like an eternity, the Australian doctor arrived with his techs and
with grim determination they carefully but speedily placed Scarlet in the
chiller unit, their faces pale as they worked. Ochre skirted around them,
trying to preserve what he could of the murder scene. He knew they would
have no time for niceties with Scarlet’s body, the most important thing
right now was getting him into surgery. He only hoped that they weren’t too
late.
*****
The
infirmary became a hive of activity as Fawn, his medics and robot doctors
worked against time to resuscitate Captain Scarlet. In his bed close
to the entrance of the men’s ward, Blue couldn’t help notice all the
feverish to and fro-ing.
“What’s
going on out there?” he called over to Nurse Jackson. She wandered across,
smoothing down her uniform and wearing a slightly hesitant look on her face
as she approached him.
“I’m not
sure, sir, they closed the isolation ward a few moments ago.”
Blue’s
mind raced with awful possibilities. He’d cursed having to stay in this damn
place all night when there was a maniac skulking around the corridors of
Cloudbase. Sure, he knew that the Angels were under secure guard,
Scarlet had popped in to let him know what they were up to, but he didn’t
altogether trust his girlfriend to stay out of trouble. She had a nose for
it.
“Has someone else been hurt? One of the Angels?” he demanded, almost grabbing the young woman’s arm as an unholy fear suddenly coursed through him.
“I don’t
think so, to the best of my knowledge. I believe it’s Captain Scarlet,
but I don’t know any more than that. Dr Fawn insisted he and his team
couldn’t be disturbed.”
Blue sank
back against the pillows, feeling a wretched sense of relief.
Bad enough that it’s Paul, he thought.
But at least he has a chance of coming back from the dead.
*****
As soon as
Scarlet was wheeled off, Ochre instructed the security guards to cordon off
the area and then assigned two more guards to the Control Room. He
wanted to take a look at the two rogue security cameras, but he needed an
access ladder. He instructed a maintenance tech to send one up, and
while he waited for it to arrive, he dropped into the Amber Room. Scarlet
was like an older brother to the five girl pilots, and he felt that they
deserved to know the whole truth of his attack, and not sit around and
speculate on the awful possibilities. As luck would have it, all four
girls were together, since it was now dawn, and the curfew was considered
over. They were chattering quietly to Navy and Gray, and looked up as Ochre
entered. The grim look on his face must have been plainly obvious.
“Oh, God,
something’s happened,” Symphony muttered.
He told
them briefly, without peppering it with any of the gory details, the plain,
simple facts were bad enough. Shock washed across all of their faces,
the two men’s included, but it was Rhapsody who went chalk white, and there
was a soft thud as her bottom hit the padded couch.
“Get some
water, quick.” Ochre motioned to Symphony as Grey settled her back against
the couch.
“Fawn’s
doing everything he can, you know that,” Ochre said, in as reassuring voice
as he could. Symphony handed her the water and she took a sip. “He’s gonna
pull through, Dianne, he always does.” She gave him a wan smile, brief but
grateful.
Ochre and
Grey left Rhapsody in the other girls’ tender care, and went out of the
Amber Room.
“So, what
do you think we ought to do now?” Grey asked him.
“I’m going
back to the repair bay to take another look, and then we have to re-think
our options.”
Ochre
didn’t make it all the way to the end of the corridor. Symphony hustled out
of the Amber Room and practically ran towards him.
“Can I
have a minute?” she asked.
“Sure,
catch you later, Brad?”
The other
raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, merely waved an acknowledgement and
headed off to the Control Tower.
“We have
to stop this guy,” Symphony said through clenched teeth. Her hazel eyes
flashed with the obvious wrath she felt inside at one of their own
succumbing to the killer’s ends.
“I know, I
feel every bit as mad as you do, but it I don’t want you doing anything
dumb.”
“So you
keep saying; I’ll just keep doing the dog-work, shall I?”
“Yeah, and
stay in your room with the door locked. Your job is being a pilot; you’re
Spectrum’s first line of defence. I don’t think the colonel would be
too pleased if he thought you were going to put yourself in potential
danger. Besides, I don’t want the job of answering to Blue-Boy to add to my
troubles.”
“Huh,
coward,” she said with a sniff, as he turned away from her. He didn’t bother
to rise to her taunt, instead giving her a careless wave without looking
back.
If he had
done, he would have seen the way Symphony’s brows lowered in a V of
defiance.
*****
Around the
base, people stopped mid-task to listen to Lieutenant Green’s announcement.
The mystery assassin had struck again, and Captain Scarlet had been badly
injured, but Colonel White was confident he would pull through. Green
continued, stressing that everyone should keep calm, and that the senior
staff were doing everything in their power to track down the perpetrator and
ensure the safety of the crew.
Jim
McWhirter was lying on his bunk in the shared cabin in his crew quarters,
reading a crime novel, when the message came through the general intercom.
Listening in dismay, he felt a bemused sense of frustration at the way even
the tough boys at the top were going down like flies, and he couldn’t help
wondering what had happened to Scarlet. So far the murderer hadn’t
shot or knifed anyone yet. Then again, shooting wasn’t an option on
Cloudbase, not just anyone could wander into the armoury and get a gun,
although, if this guy was a Mysteron, they might be able to do just about
anything. He’d heard tales of their weird abilities.
Likely it
was a knife then.
A knife.
A small
coil of unease formed in McWhirter’s stomach and the book slid out of his
hand, unnoticed, as his musings triggered a recent incident.
The missing knife from the galley.
He hadn’t
given it a thought up to now.
Maybe he
ought to have reported it, just like he should have reported the missing
pastries.
What if….
No, that’s completely crazy.
He looked
at the momentarily forgotten book.
I’ve been reading too much of this stuff.
But the
insidious thought kept nagging at him.
*****
Ochre
found the ladder propped up in the corridor next to one of the
security-cams. He slid it along the wall and climbed up towards the faulty
unit, and almost immediately caught the faint whiff of something that he
recognised.
Burnt
plastic.
The cams
system had been fried, scanner, wireless connection, everything, as if it
had been subjected to a quick burst of electrical energy. The only thing
capable of doing that sort of damage was with a Mysteron gun on a low power
setting. Ochre frowned. They were held under lock and key, and the only
people with access were the senior captains, and a few members of the
security department.
Sable.
With
everything that was going on, Ochre had completely forgotten about him. He
paged the Canadian on his cap mike, and he had no reply. He was almost at
the point of heading around to the Lieutenant’s quarters when his voice came
on the line. He sounded groggy, completely out of it, Ochre thought.
“Did you
hear the announcement?” he demanded of the younger man.
“Huh, what
announcement?”
“Scarlet,
we found him in the Interceptor bay, it wasn’t pretty.”
“Is he all
right?”
“Fawn’s
working on him. And by the way, you don’t sound much better than the last
time we spoke.”
“I’m sorry
I didn’t turn up for my shift. I took some heavy-duty sedatives; they must
have knocked me out cold.”
“Well, I’m
sorry too, but no one’s going to get any more sleep until I’ve nailed this
sucker, so if you can, get yourself together and back on duty.”
Seconds
ticked by, and Sable didn’t reply.
“Sable,
you okay?”
“I’m…okay…sir. I’ll be there.”
The
connection cut, and Ochre couldn’t help wondering at the almost sullen tone
in Sable’s voice. Lucky he got any sleep at all, he thought, a
flicker of annoyance joining the general feeling of dread that had hung over
him like a cloud since finding Scarlet’s body.
Symphony
drummed her fingernails on the table and stared at the console in the Amber
Room. Melody sat a little away from her, at another console, engrossed in
her online Japanese lesson.
A chime at
the door caused both girls to look up and glance at one another.
“Can’t be
any of the captains, they have security access,” Melody said, with a note of
uncertainty in her voice. It was evident Scarlet’s death had shaken even her
tough-as-nails exterior.
“It’s
daylight, we’re bound to be okay,” Symphony said firmly.
“Yeah,
maybe, but we’d better just check who it is anyway.”
Symphony
padded across to the door and interrogated the caller.
“It’s Jim McWhirter,” the Scottish brogue
filtered through the intercom.
Symphony
recognised an urgent note in the Scotsman’s voice and opened the door
quickly.
“Hi there,
Jim, you got some pastries for us?” She made faces at McWhirter to tell him
to play-act in front of the other Angel, but Melody, waved at him and went
back to her studies.
“I have
actually,” he said in a loud voice, taking a parcel from under his arm and
handing it to Symphony.
“Oh
goody,” Melody shouted and she bounded across to grab her share before the
other girls came back.
Symphony
turned back to McWhirter after Melody had returned to her seat. “Did you
really just come with cookies?” she asked him in a low voice, out of
Melody’s earshot, “You sounded as if –“
“No, I
wanted to speak to you,” he replied, in an equally furtive tone. “Remember
you asked me to be on the lookout for anything suspicious?”
Symphony’s interest peaked. “Sure, I do.”
McWhirter
glanced past her shoulder, to check whether Melody was taking an interest in
their conversation. Satisfied she wasn’t, he continued in his quiet brogue.
“I know
they didn’t give out any details about how poor Captain Scarlet got
attacked. But we had a knife go AWOL, a big carving knife, and I’ve
searched high and low, it’s missing from the inventory all right. I didn’t
really give it much thought until I heard the announcement, and I got
thinking, since I read crime novels and suchlike, that maybe the killer
stole the knife and used it to – you know….”
“Woah,
wait a minute, Jim, have you any idea who might have stolen it?”
“Well, I
know everyone’s talking about it being Lander, but it wasn’t him I saw
behind the galley last night.”
“Someone
else, who?”
McWhirter
looked sheepish and his voice dropped even lower. “It was Lieutenant Sable,
and I know he couldn’t possibly have anything to do with it, but I didn’t
want to keep the information to myself, just in case.”
Symphony’s
eyes widened and she started thinking hard.
“Jim, I’m
off duty in an hour, I’ll meet you in your office, and we can talk some
more, okay?”
He nodded,
and headed back for the door, waving at Melody on the way out.
Ochre stood to address the assembled company in the conference room. It was unusually crowded, with Angels, Captains and Lieutenants taking up every available bit of space. Two armed security guards flanked the entrance doorway, a cohort for their Commander-in-chief, on Ochre’s orders.
“Right,”
Ochre said, “We made a cursory check of the base for this Mysteron, but
we’re going to have to do it more thoroughly this time so we can flush him
out into the open. Everyone who isn’t doing something vital on this base
will help in the search. I’ve split us all into teams and assigned areas to
cover.” He handed out flimsies and people passed them around.
“This’ll
take forever,” Navy said grimly.
“I know,
so the quicker we get started, the better. Any more questions?”
Verdigris
raised a hand. “How’s Captain Scarlet doing?”
There were
nods all around the room, and Ochre looked to the Colonel.
“I have
had no news as yet from Dr Fawn,” White said, “But be assured I shall inform
each and every one of you when that happens.”
“Okay,”
Ochre said, “Dismissed, and good hunting, everyone.”
Ochre
rubbed his eyes wearily, sitting at a console in the Control Room a short
distance away from Lieutenant Green. A couple of the search teams, led by
Magenta and Verdigris, had reported in, and so far, their areas were clean.
Ochre had the sinking feeling in his guts that no matter how many bodies he
threw at this, they weren’t going to come up with anything, but he had to be
seen to take action, there was little choice. He thought about the facts he
had at his disposal. The lack of visible evidence, the way the victims had
died, the lack of a murder weapon in the repair bay.
From the
start it seemed logical that the only way Lander could have died was by
Captain Black’s hands. It just didn’t make any sense that someone who had
been checked and security cleared to the nth degree could suddenly turn
killer. The Mysterons had to first destroy matter or people before they
carried out there threats. Lander had been killed, so the assumption sort of
made sense. But years of relying on his gut still niggled at Ochre. What
about those busted security-cams?
On a whim,
he accessed the cam files. Symphony hadn’t got back to him, and he doubted
very much that she’d even bothered to trawl through them. He keyed in his
access code and started to watch the video stream from the flight deck a
short time before the estimated time of Lander’s death. After twenty minutes
of nothing happening, he almost sympathised with her. He sighed, wondering
why he was bothering, after all, Sable’s team had already reported they’d
found nothing from this particular set of files.
He hit the
fast forward key when something caught his eye on screen. He stopped and
backtracked, squinting. There it was again, an almost imperceptible flicker.
Ochre looked at the figures on the bottom of the screen, noted that there
was a missing gap of nearly fifteen minutes in the timeline. The sinking
feeling turned to a churning.
It looked
a hell of a lot like someone had tampered with the scans.
“I have Dr
Fawn on the line, Colonel,” Green spoke up, and Ochre stopped thinking and
started listening. Maybe it was some good news for a change.
White’s
face seemed to visibly relax as he listened to his chief medical officer.
“That is excellent news, Doctor,” he said, loudly enough for the two other
men to hear. Ochre breathed a sigh of relief. Scarlet must be okay. He
felt responsible somehow for this whole mess, thinking that if he’d acted
earlier on his hunches, this might never have happened.
“Dr Fawn
would like to speak with you, Captain Ochre,” White added, “I am
transferring him to you now.”
Ochre’s
cap mike swung down. “Hi Doc, you have something for me?”
“Yes, I
thought you might be interested to know, that while we were in the process
of putting Scarlet together again, I noticed some scorching of the skin and
muscle tissue on the chest areas.”
The
churning in Ochre’s gut got worse and he walked away from Green’s earshot.
He wasn’t ready to share his thoughts just yet. “As if he’d been
electrocuted?”
“Yes,
exactly,” Fawn sounded surprised. “What made you say that?”
“The
sec-cams had their systems fried, my guess is with a Mysteron gun, and
you’ve probably confirmed that’s how Scarlet was overcome as well.”
“A
Mysteron gun? But how would Lander get access to one of those? The only
people who do are –”
“I know.”
Ochre cut him off, “And believe me, it isn’t a pretty thought. That’s why I
need those DNA results, fast.”
The more
Symphony thought about it, the more bizarre it seemed.
Sable?
He
couldn’t be a Mysteron, it didn’t make sense. No one had found his body.
McWhirter’s story had to be pure coincidence.
But what if it isn’t?
Like her
good friend, Captain Scarlet, Symphony had the dangerous combination of
rock-sold self-belief and an impetuous streak that had a habit of getting
her into trouble. Of course, she didn’t see it that way. All she saw was a
mystery that needed resolving, and she was damned if she was going to let
Ochre tell her to stay out of the way, like some bimbo who couldn’t make a
decision. She had a potentially vital clue, and if she were to tell him, no
doubt he’d just tell her to lock herself in her room while he checked
out Sable’s quarters.
She’d
faced a lot of dangerous situations during her time as a USS agent, and she
didn’t scare easily, so she wasn’t about to start sitting on the sidelines
now. Caught up in her excitement, it didn’t cross her mind how Blue would
feel about what she was about to do. She had the bit between her teeth and
she couldn’t see anything else but the goal.
She set
off for the Officers’ Restaurant, found McWhirter, and outlined her plan.
“Oh, I
dinna think that’s such a good idea,” he said, with a frown on his face.
“We’re
only going to be a few minutes, just to do a quick search of the place. It’s
small enough, it won’t take long.”
“I can’t
imagine anyone would be daft enough to leave a murder weapon lying around
where it can be found.”
“Well,
maybe we’ll find something else, something that points to his guilt.
I really don’t want to go accusing a senior Spectrum agent of something as
awful as this, if it isn’t true.”
“I knew I
shouldna have told ye.”
“No, you
were right to tell me.”
“But, if
he did – overpower Captain Scarlet, what chance do we have against
him?”
“I’m not
exactly a pushover myself, and you’re a well-built guy. And in any case, he
isn’t going to be anywhere near his quarters. He’s been assigned to search
the engineering area on Captain Ochre’s orders, so it’ll be perfectly safe.”
“But how
are you going to get into his room?”
Symphony
tapped her nose. “I didn’t spend all the time in the USS for nothing. There
are ways to override every electronic door-lock, if you know how.”
McWhirter
still looked doubtful, and Symphony played her trump card. “Well, if
you won’t come with me, I’ll have to go in alone.”
“Not on
your life, lassie. If you’re hell bent on doing this, then I’m
not going to let you do it on your own.”
Symphony
grinned. “We’ll be in and out of that room before he even knows we’ve been
there.”
It had
been awhile since she’d done anything like this, but Symphony was delighted
to see that she’d lost none of her old skills. Being a friend of an
ex-gangster didn’t hurt either, and she’d added a few more tricks to her
repertoire since meeting Patrick Donaghue.
McWhirter
stood behind her, keeping lookout for the pair of them, and a little bemused
at the speed at which Symphony was able to de-activate the mechanism.
“I hope we
won’t get into trouble for this,” he muttered.
“Don’t
worry, I’ll take the blame, if anyone happens to catch us, which they
won’t…ah, there we are!”
The door
slid open and Symphony entered the darkened room, followed by a nervous
McWhirter. The motion sensors activated and the gloom dissipated. Symphony
pulled out two pairs of transparent gloves and handed one to McWhirter. His
eyes widened.
“I feel
like a criminal,” he said quietly.
“No, we’re
looking for the criminal,” she whispered back. “Right, let’s start in
here. You have a look under the bed, and I’ll look in the closet.”
“What’s
that?” McWhirter said, pointing across the room, towards the long unit at
one wall.
Symphony
wrinkled her nose. “It looks like some sort of artwork.”
“Bloody
awful looking thing, pardon my language,” McWhirter added. “What’s it meant
to be?”
“How do I
know, I’m hardly an expert, and we’re not here for art appreciation, we’re
here to solve a crime.”
“Sorry,”
he mumbled in reply.
“It’s
okay, let’s just get on with it.”
McWhirter
pulled out the roll-out cupboard under the bunk, and Symphony opened the
tall closet to the side. The interior rack held two spare sable-coloured
tunics and charcoal sweaters and trousers, plus an assortment of mufti. She
glanced down to the pile of boots and shoes on the floor of the closet.
There was a black plastic bag tucked away in the back, and she pulled it out
over the footwear. She reached in to pull it out, and inexplicably, her
heart started beating a little faster, as if in anticipation of finding some
horrendous secret within its interior.
“Brrr…is
it just me, or has it gone chilly in here?”
Symphony
hesitated, and pulled her head out of the closet. She hadn’t been aware of
until this moment, but McWhirter was right. The temperature had dropped in
the room, and with surprise she watched the small plume of expelled breath
from her mouth spiral into the air. A sudden prickle of apprehension formed
in her stomach, and she almost regretted her impulsive action to come here
without back-up.
Don’t be silly, you’re imagining things, the thermostat’s probably just
conked out.
But it was
with slightly shaking hands that she ripped open the sealed bag, pulling out
several towels, and then – to her surprise – a pair of day-glo orange
coveralls.
She stared
at them for a few seconds, uncomprehending, until the dark splotches, with
their distinctive odour, faint but still strong, made her suspicions turn
into horrified realisation. The stains were dried engine oil.
The sound
of the outer door opening coincided with McWhirter’s grunt of surprise.
Symphony
whirled in panic, and met the level gaze of Lieutenant Sable.
It was
hard for Ochre to stomach, but all the evidence strongly suggested the
killer was someone with high level security access. The footage from
the cam-scans had been trashed, but the data would still be in the system
somewhere. He’d need the skills of Green or Magenta to burrow into it and
find what he suspected, that it would show exactly who Rob Lander’s killer
was.
But that
would take time. Time they didn’t have. Ochre felt it slipping away,
premonition telling him that it was a luxury that was about to run out, with
devastating consequences.
He made
the decision, better to make a mistake than be a fool – the stakes were too
high to worry about how his professional competence might be ruined if he
was in error.
“Get me
Lieutenant Sable,” he practically snapped at Green.
“S.I.G,
Captain.”
Seconds
ticked by as the younger man attempted to make radio contact, and then
Ochre’s epaulettes suddenly blinked.
“I’ve
got a DNA match,” Fawn announced in an unnaturally quiet voice, laced
with premonition.
Ochre’s
heart hammered in his chest. “Go ahead.”
A
theatrical second passed before Fawn announced what Ochre already suspected.
“It belongs to Lieutenant Sable.”
*****
The next
few minutes passed like some out of control nightmare for Ochre. Although
the DNA evidence in itself didn’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that
Sable was guilty, all the other things added too much weight to the
argument. He might even have stolen Symphony’s necklace and planted it in
Heidi Muller’s bunk to point to suicide on her part and cover up the fact he
murdered her.
Colonel White was safe here in the Control Room, his next immediate concern was for the Angels. His worry mounted when it transpired that Symphony seemed to have gone AWOL. She wasn’t in her room, or in sickbay visiting Blue. She could be anywhere on the base, realistically. After ordering Green to send out another base-wide bulletin warning to all personnel that Sable was to be considered extremely dangerous, he sent Grey, Magenta and Navy with their respective teams to cover the exits from Cloudbase, and on a hunch, Ochre sprinted for Sable’s quarters.
What if
his hunch was wrong?
And what the hell has happened to Symphony?
He’d half
considered telling Blue, but there was no time right now.
Ochre
skidded to a halt in front of Sable’s quarters, and hammered on the door.
“Sable,
open up!” he yelled. “Now!”
From
within the room Ochre thought he heard a muffled sound, and it sounded
awfully like it came from a woman.
His blood
ran cold in his veins.
“Symphony,
are you in there?”
He
hammered again, and the muffled whimpering grew louder, someone was
in there, and in terror of their life.
Fear
gnawing at his own vitals he contacted Green via his cap mike. “This is
urgent, I believe that Lieutenant Sable may have a hostage in his quarters,
I need you to override the door lock, fast.”
“S.I.G.”
Precious
seconds ticked by, and Ochre tried to avoid thinking of what might be going
on beyond the door. “Give this up now, Sable,” he shouted “You can’t escape,
so there’s no point in torturing her.”
From
within the room a voice answered. It was Sable’s. “I can’t stop it, inside
me, no choice…” Ochre heard the confused, almost pleading tone, and hoped
that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for him to talk him out of it.
“Of
course you have a choice, you’re a Spectrum agent, you can stop this right
now and no one else has to suffer,”
“No… it’s
too strong… too late for me… too late for her.”
“What’s
too strong? Sable, tell me, I’m listening, just open the door.”
Silence.
“Sable are
you listening, damn you! Speak to me!” He activated his cap mike.
“Green, what’s going on?” he snapped, “I need this door open now!”
“We’re nearly there…”
Seconds
ticked by, and Ochre banged with his fists again in frustration, thrust his
ear to the door, thought he could hear a sigh, then a muffled moan, then
almost stumbled as the door unexpectedly started to open, the brushed metal
scraping against his cheek.
He jumped
back, bracing his pistol double-handed, ready to storm the room.
Sable
crouched over a gagged and bound Symphony, one hand keeping her pinned to
the ground, and the other brandishing a raised knife, the serrated edges
smeared with red. The girl struggled, her sweater had been ripped open
so that one breast was exposed, and Ochre’s eyes were forcibly drawn to the
wicked sickle-shaped gash, the line of blood vivid against the paleness of
the skin.
His
fingers tightened on the trigger.
“Step away
from her, now!”
Sable
didn’t reply. He just grinned, and God help him, there was something
in that grin that made Ochre’s flesh ice over. The expression locked in the
eyes was pure evil, a strange unearthly light glowing in his brown eyes.
Was Sable a Mysteron?
His
fingers tightened on the gun further, his knuckles white, as he walked
cautiously towards Sable, continuing to hold his gaze, and trying to get a
good angle to incapacitate him before he had a chance to use the knife again
on the helpless girl at his feet.
The
expression in Sable’s eyes changed – from madness to grief.
“Kill me…
please,” he pleaded “I know what I’ve done…and I can’t live with it.”
Ochre
stopped moving forward, hesitant at the sudden change of mood. “Just
put down the weapon and step away… we can talk about it then…”
Sable
looked at the weapon in his hand, hypnotised by the thin line of blood on
the edge that had formed into one drop – balanced precariously on the very
tip of the knife. It fell, and he watched it splash onto Symphony’s cheek.
His expression hardened again and Ochre’s stomach tightened, realising that
Sable was sliding back into his highly dangerous state of mind.
“No, evil
must endure… the sacrifice must be made…” Sable muttered, and his voice was
almost inaudible.
He raised
the knife high.
Symphony’s
eyes widened in terror as its shadow loomed over her – and Ochre reacted
instinctively. He fired his pistol three times – imagining the target in his
head.
Sable’s
body jerked like a puppet on a string, thrown backwards by the force of the
bullets tearing into him, he landed and twitched spasmodically on the
ground. Ochre wasted no time and leapt across the room to wrest the knife
from his hand,
“The
voice… voice… and eyes… don’t listen… don’t look…” Sable’s words dribbled
from a slack mouth, making no sense. Then, his eyelids closed slowly.
Ochre
checked for a pulse. Nothing. Maybe the nightmare was truly over. He stood
up, and for the first time noticed the other prone body lying near one wall.
McWhirter.
Again, he
felt for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief that the Scotsman was alive.
Then he finally attended to the injured Angel, pulling the gag gingerly away
from his lips, although his voice was rather less gentle, caught as he was
between sheer relief and blazing anger. “I ought to leave you trussed up in
here and let Blue-boy see what a state you’ve got yourself into.”
She glared
back at him, and then whimpered softly, clutching a hand to her wounded
breast. “Hurts.”
Ochre bit
his lip. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations. With any luck a bit of
Fawn’s magic and gel wrap would heal it and barely leave a scar, but she was
damn lucky she didn’t suffer worse.
“What the
hell were you doing in here – and with McWhirter of all people?”
“Jim saw
Sable in the galley shortly before a big knife went missing, and when
Scarlet was hacked to bits we thought -”
“You would
play detectives. Well, it almost got you both killed.”
She
suddenly turned pale, shock finally setting in. “I can’t believe
it…Alex…that he did all of this…” her voice was a ragged whisper and she
gripped Ochre’s shoulder with what little strength she had remaining. “Why –
why did he do it?”
“I wish I
knew, Karen.”
A
clattering of boot-steps in the corridor heralded reinforcements, and Ochre
looked up to see Magenta and Gray appear in the doorway.
“It’s
about time you two arrived.” He helped Symphony to her feet. Magenta came
across to help, his face darkening as he saw her injury.
“Are you
all right?”
She
nodded. “My legs feel like rubber, and my chest hurts like blazes, but
otherwise, I’ll think I’ll survive,”
“That’s my
girl,” he answered with a satisfied grin.
“What the
hell happened?” Grey said, as he rolled McWhirter over to untie him. “And
what is he doing in here?”
“Looking
for his missing carving knife,” Ochre replied dryly.
“I can
hardly believe it, Sable – a Mysteron? “ Magenta said.
Ochre
nodded wearily. “Me neither. But all the evidence points to him being the
killer.”
*****
Ochre reported the situation to Colonel White as Fawn and his team arrived to take the casualties to the infirmary. Ochre decided against accompanying Symphony, since he had already had enough to deal with, and besides, he had no desire to become involved in the inevitable squabble that would ensue when Blue discovered she nearly had her chest re-sculpted for free.
Karen got herself into trouble, she can talk her own way out of it.
Dr Fawn
activated the Mysteron detector and keyed the parameters into the unit. He
pointed it at the bullet-ridden body of Lieutenant Sable, which lay on a
table in the morgue. After several minutes the scan completed and Fawn
stared at the resultant image.
He
frowned.
It was
perfectly normal.
Sable was
no Mysteron.
He wasn’t
sure whether to feel happy or sad about that fact. Far easier to attribute
the sort of atrocities the lieutenant had committed to a race of
malevolent aliens, than to imagine they resulted from the innermost, violent
desires of a human being.
He drew a
coverlet over the body; once the formalities were over they would prepare it
for dispatch to any surviving relatives.
The door
slid quietly open and Ochre entered the dead lieutenant’s quarters. Apart
from the blood stains on the carpet, it seemed surreally calm. How could it
be that only a few days ago he was laughing and joking with the guy over a
game of cards, and now he was cooling on a slab in the infirmary – a string
of murders to his name? Ochre felt the raw pain of loss sweep over him – for
the man that Sable had been, and for the other innocent victims of this
never-ending war between Spectrum and the Mysterons.
He ran his
gaze around the room, where it alighted on a gilt-framed canvas on the unit
against the bottom of the bed. In all the excitement, he hadn’t noticed it
before now.
He walked
closer. It was some sort of portrait, of a man, painted almost exclusively
in shades of red and brown against a black background. To Ochre’s untrained
eyes it looked half-completed, with only the aspects of the face
accentuated, and the hair and clothes simply represented as smudges against
the dark background. It gave the face a weird three-dimensional effect, with
the eyes especially disconcerting to look at.
There was
something about it….something that made his gaze hold fast and his skin
crawl, as if a thousand tiny snakes slithered up and down his spine.
He remembered the strange words of the dying man. His epaulettes flashed,
and he was grateful to drag his eyes away.
“Ochre.”
“It’s Fawn, Sable’s X-ray was completely normal. He isn’t a Mysteron.”
Ochre’s
mind spun at the news.
“You’re
sure.”
“Of course I’m sure. What sort of medic do you think I am?” Fawn sounded faintly indignant.
“The best,
Doc, my apologies, but things aren’t making any sense. I just can’t believe
Sable would turn killer without some sort of outside influence.”
“Well, frankly I can’t either. I haven’t seen any evidence of delusional or
suicidal tendencies in his psychological tests up to now, so, whatever it is
that’s happened to his mind, it’s very recent.”
Ochre
pursed his lips, thoughtful. “Yeah, I would have trusted him with my life
before this. Something’s happened to make him go loco…but what? I’m checking
his quarters right now; maybe I’ll find something that gives us some
answers.”
“S.I.G. Fawn out.”
Ochre
turned back to the painting, and noticed something sticking out beyond the
heavy gilt frame - a small sheet of paper. He pulled it out to read it,
finding out that the painting had been the property of an uncle, and sent to
Sable by his sister on his death.
Intrigued,
he pulled the picture away from the wall to inspect the back of it. At the
bottom of the old, slightly cracked wood he saw a date engraved towards the
bottom. 1692. Ochre was no history buff, but this was obviously an heirloom,
and an antique. And was it – he thought, with a chill of apprehension,
something more than that? Acting now on instinct, he activated the desk
console, and dialled into the ship’s logs, searching for the incoming supply
roster. The listings scrolled down and he scanned for delivery
of a painting. Finally, he found it, and he checked the date on the left
hand column of the log.
It arrived shortly before the Mysteron threat – and the killing spree.
All sorts of crazy notions whirled around his
head, warring with his natural pragmatism. It was pure coincidence, it
had to be. Next, Ochre overrode the security to get into Sable’s personal
files. There wasn’t a lot of mail, just a couple of notes that he’d
sent to his sister. She hadn’t replied either to those, or to the voice
messages that Sable had sent. Ochre frowned, trying to make a connection
with those facts and what had happened to the Canadian.
Engrossed
in his thoughts, still staring at the screen, he failed to see the eyes in
the painting begin to glow.
He rubbed
the back of his suddenly cold hand – and it seemed to him that the
temperature had dropped a few degrees, becoming almost chilly. He got up and
crossed to the environmental controls, and saw the displayed output.
No, this isn’t possible.
Something
made him turn to regard the portrait against the wall – and he had a most
peculiar sensation of the face looming out from the shadows of the
background – the eyes burning with a red fire. His heart started thumping in
his chest.
Shadows.
Evil.
He ran a
hand through his hair. If he was thinking logically, paintings, or any other
object for that matter had no influence over people or events. But the
Mysterons had certainly been known to affect inanimate objects in their
quest for revenge. All the same, the idea of imbuing an artwork with
some sort of hypnotising effect in order to influence someone to kill in the
manner of a serial-murderer seemed a hell of a convoluted way to go about
things, Ochre thought.
When evil comes from the shadows we shall reap.
The
decision came from deep within him – a place where logic and pragmatism had
no place. It propelled him across the room to the painting, and he
grasped the frame with both hands, hefting its weight against his tunic.
If this
was a Mysteron-induced artefact, it had to be destroyed.
He headed
for the incinerator in the bowels of B-deck.
Fawn
studied the monitors beside Scarlet’s bed in the isolation ward. His vital
signs continued to improve, including the all higher brain functions – quite
remarkable given the extent of the injuries he suffered. The inexplicable
powers of retrometabolism never failed to impress Fawn, and he judged that
within another twelve hours, Spectrum’s Number One agent would be back on
duty.
Next, he
checked on Symphony. She was propped up against a pile of pillows, looking
pale and rather sorry for herself.
“I think
that’s going to heal nicely,” he said, after taking a look at his handiwork.
“You were very lucky.”
She smiled
weakly. “I guess so, lucky and brainless, and I nearly got poor Jim killed
as well. Colonel White’s going to tear a strip off me. No, make that
several strips.”
Fawn
grimaced at her poor choice of phrasing. “I think there’s been quite enough
of that to last me a lifetime,” he said, “You just concentrate on resting,
and those are doctor’s orders.”
She
sighed. “How is Jim, anyway?”
“Mr
McWhirter is bruised and a little singed around the edges, but he’ll be all
right in a few days too.”
“That’s a
relief…” Symphony’s voice trailed off, her eyes widening in horror, looking
beyond his shoulder. Alerted, Fawn whirled – to see something that he
shouldn’t possibly be seeing.
“Strewth,”
he muttered under his breath, automatically moving in front of Symphony to
protect the girl.
The ruined
corpse of Lieutenant Sable shuffled towards them, a scalpel in each hand.
*****
Ochre watched as the painting trundled through the conveyer belt towards the incinerator unit. Within minutes it would be consigned to fiery oblivion. As the adrenaline slowed in his veins, he started to question his impulsive notion. And yet the feeling in his gut had been so strong, he couldn’t ignore it, and at the very worst, he’d get a lecture from the colonel about destroying private property.
*****
One
scalpel slashed, missing Fawn’s arm by a hairsbreadth, the other scraped
noisily along the side of the metal tray that he had grabbed from Symphony’s
bedside, using it as a shield. There was a demented stare in Sable’s sunken
eyes, and his movements were jerky, spasmodic, as if someone else controlled
the body. Fawn regretted not locking the morgue door, and he prayed that no
one else had paid the price already for his lack of foresight.
“Help! We
need help in here!” he and Symphony shouted at the tops of their voices.
Footsteps clattered outside the corridor of the ward, and a male med-tech
appeared at the door, skidding to a halt, frozen shock on his face as he
confronted what was supposed to be a dead man. Immediately behind him
Captain Blue stumbled into the doorway, his face pinched in pain, alerted by
Symphony’s screams in the next ward.
Fawn
yelled at him: “Blue, don’t be crazy, you haven’t the strength, get the
others!”
The
technician had recovered his senses and frantically hit the intercom,
gabbling into it. Blue grabbed a chair near the entrance and brought it
crashing down on Sable’s back.
“Good
man!” Fawn rejoiced, and started dragging Symphony from the bed, attempting
to get her out of the ward to safety. Blue raised the chair again, ready to
smash it into Sable again, when suddenly, without warning, his body started
to give off smoke.
“Oh, my
God, he is a Mysteron!” Symphony jabbered.
Blue
stopped, stunned for a few seconds.
Fawn felt
his legs start to shake…Sable was going to blow the entire base to
smithereens.
The wisps
of smoke spiralled from the body into the air, and within the haze, Fawn
could see red lesions breaking out on the pallid skin. What was left of
Sable’s body sagged onto the floor, and a high pitched keening sound issued
from his cracked and blistered lips, like air escaping from a balloon. It
looked like the corpse was burning from the inside out.
Fawn
continued to stare at the smouldering body, barely registering the sounds of
feet, those of Magenta, Navy and Grey barging into the ward. Seconds ticked
by, and there was no explosion.
Fawn’s
legs gave way at last. He drew a long ragged breath and sat down heavily on
the edge of the bed, as Blue staggered over to Symphony’s side.
*****
Ochre
heard the klaxon on his way back to the Control Tower, and he contacted
Green, who told him there was a situation in the infirmary. He raced there
to discover everyone milling around with grim and shocked faces. Blue was
sitting on the chair beside Symphony’s bed, and Fawn, Magenta and Grey
huddled around something obviously lying on the floor.
“Captain
Ochre, sir,” Navy greeted him. He wore a particularly haggard expression on
his face, Sable had been a good friend of his, and it was going to take a
while for them all to recover from the fall-out of these events. He could
see a few people spending time with the ship’s counsellor.
“Jeez,” he
muttered when he saw the blackened and almost unrecognisable body, all that
remained of the affable young man that had been Alex McLeod, Lieutenant
Sable. “What happened here?”
Fawn said:
“Sable re-animated somehow, he tried to attack Symphony and me.”
“Luckily
for us, Adam distracted him,” Symphony piped up.
“Yeah, but
I didn’t do that,” Blue pointed at the body. “He just started giving
off smoke and burning up.”
Ochre ran
a hand through his hair, took a deep breath. The coincidence was too
obvious. “When did this happen, exactly, I mean?”
Fawn told
him.
“I don’t
know how to explain this,” he continued, “But I found an old oil painting in
Sable’s quarters, and I – well, I thought it might have been a Mysteron
artefact, so I chucked it in the incinerator.”
Symphony
nodded her agreement. “I saw that horrible thing.”
“A
painting?” Magenta gave him an odd look.
“I told
you I didn’t have a reason,” Ochre insisted, “It just seemed the – right
thing to do at the time, and the timing fits, almost exactly.”
“Well,
something stopped Sable – or whatever he’d become - in his tracks,” Fawn
said, clapping a grateful hand on Ochre’s shoulder. “I just hope this time,
it’s finished.”
Ochre sent
his electronic report, and rubbed his temple. He hoped that it would finally
bring some sort of closure to the dreadful sequence of events on Cloudbase.
On a positive note, Scarlet was well on the way to recovery, and both Blue
and Symphony were back on light duties.
Following
Colonel White’s orders, Ochre had accompanied a Spectrum ground crew
to the sister’s apartment in the suburbs of Toronto, where they discovered
her body sprawled on the carpet behind a sofa in her living room. A heavy
crystal bowl lay close to the body, cracked and bloodstained. The
ground-based Spectrum pathologist concluded that she had died from a blunt
trauma to the head, and he calculated that the approximate time of death was
around thirty-six hours before the painting arrived at Cloudbase.
Despite
the Colonel’s decision that Ochre should document the whole bizarre affair
as a Mysteron incursion; there were still too many things that defied
explanation, and the Midwesterner mused glumly that there were many more
questions remaining than answers.
Was the Bereznik sub just a diversion? Or was it really a case of two
Mysteron threats for the price of one? Who killed Moira McLeod – Captain
Black? And with her dead, is that the end of it – or is her Mysteron
duplicate still out there – waiting to wreak more havoc?
How was it
possible that a painting could influence someone to commit such crimes?
Destiny had suggested, with a perfectly straight-face, that there might have
been some sort of supernatural element to the painting that the Mysterons
somehow took advantage of.
Ochre
switched off his terminal. It was probably better not to dwell on that one
too much.
Is it my imagination, or does Halloween come around quicker every year? No
matter how early I start, I still seem to scrabble to finish before the 31st!
As usual I an indebted to my long-suffering beta-reader, Marion Woods, (Why she puts up with me I have no idea!) for her unflagging help and support, and to Chris Bishop for her helpful suggestions and graphics, not to mention allowing me to post my darkest thoughts on her website. Any mistakes in the text are all mine.
This story used characters from TV series “Captain
Scarlet and the Mysterons” ©, which is the creation of Gerry Anderson and
Sylvia Anderson, and the rights of the series belong to Carlton
International. No profit was made from this story.
Happy Halloween 2008 to all.
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