The Spectrum Organization had realized early on that if it needed its personnel
to be capable of facing any conceivable threat to world peace, then those
personnel needed to know how to defend themselves without the use of the various
weapons in its formidable arsenal. For there would be many times, in the course
of personal combat, when those personnel had to be able to fight hand to hand
against opponents who had access to weapons that simply outgunned them.
Some techniques taught for the
purpose had not changed in centuries.
These techniques included the
various martial arts that had come from Southeast Asia, most of whose countries,
such as Mainland China, Island China, Japan, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam,
Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Kashmir, Bangladesh, and Burma, to name but a
comparative handful, had consolidated themselves into the United Asian Republic
as the World Government of Earth was being formed. One such martial art was
judo, which derives from jujitsu and is of Japanese origin. Martial artists wear
an outfit called a gi,
meaning “uniform,” whose tunic is secured at the waist with a belt whose color
denotes the wearer’s degree of skill in a martial art; the black belt is highest
of these. Judo is no exception. Its black belt has ten dans, or degrees, each
higher than the last. The fifth dan denotes absolute mastery of judo; the dans
from six to ten, also called red-belt dans, are all honorary.
Martial arts instructors, called sensei, always hold black belts in the
martial arts in which they are skilled. Spectrum Organization Angel Flight pilot
Chan Akiki Kwan was no exception. Her black belt in judo was of the fourth dan,
and as such, it qualified her as a sensei
in judo. On this day, a Monday, she was carrying out such duty. Her students in
the dojo, or training arena, were
all members of the senior staff of Cloudbase, the Spectrum Organization’s mobile
command headquarters, as she herself likewise was, and included its Supreme
Commander-In-Chief, or CINCSPEC, who was its generalissimo-admiralissimo. These
students were Paul Stephen Metcalfe, Adam Gregory Svenson, Bradley John Holden,
Juliette Marie Pointon, Dianne Roberta Simms, Karen Judith Wainwright, Edward
Michael Wilkie, and Charles Mason Gray, the last of whom was CINCSPEC. All wore
gis.
Kwan was now addressing Holden,
whose gi was charcoal gray.
“Captain Grey,” she was saying,
using Spectrum’s reference to Holden, “will you please join me in demonstrating
the technique we’ve been practicing?”
“As you wish.” Captain Grey got to
his feet.
“Harmony,” said Svenson, who wore a
blue gi, “this wouldn’t by any chance be a
rematch of how you cleaned Grey’s clock the day Black evaluated us in
preparation for our becoming senior staff of Cloudbase?”
Laughter from the others followed
his remark. Kwan, whom Spectrum called Harmony Angel, could not keep from
grinning herself.
“No need, Captain Blue,” she
responded, using official Spectrum reference to the Massachusetts financier’s
eldest son. “That was a score the two of us settled between ourselves four years
ago, the year before any of us heard of the Mysterons for the first time.”
Gray, whom Spectrum called Colonel
White, said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “Really, Blue! Now’s not the time
to hold grudges.”
“Especially not with a lesson to
finish,” Harmony Angel said. She and Captain Grey bowed to each other. Then she
rested her right hand on his left arm.
Gripping Harmony Angel’s left arm
in his right hand, Captain Grey allowed her to approach him with a measure of
suddenness. Then he used her leverage to upset her balance and, his arm crossing
over her waist, brought her to the mat as per the training she had been giving
him and his colleagues. That accomplished, he allowed her to get back on her own
feet.
“Well done,” added she. “That
finishes this lesson.”
Metcalfe was the first to rise from
the floor. Untying the belt of his gi,
which was a brilliant scarlet in color, he pulled off its tunic first,
exchanging it for first a long-sleeved black turtle-necked tunic with roundels
on its sleeve cuffs and then a sleeveless scarlet suede doublet with a ring-pull
zipper that went all the way down its right front. Then he pulled off his gi’s trousers, revealing himself to be
wearing, beneath them, tight black breeches with stitched-in permanent front
creases, which were bloused over scarlet cotton hosiery. Pushing his feet into a
pair of knee-high scarlet leather boots with outer metal side-zippers,
cuffed-topped stove-pipe uppers, and wide leather bands across their vamps, he
pulled the zippers closed in a way that bloused his breeches into the boots.
Lastly, Captain Scarlet, as Spectrum knew Metcalfe, strapped a black leather
cincture around his waist; hanging on this was a black leather holster with a
semi-automatic pistol inside it.
Speaking for the first time, he
said, “It’s been almost too quiet here on Cloudbase. The Mysterons are almost
certain to strike somewhere.”
“Yes, they are, Captain Scarlet,”
Colonel White agreed. “It’s just a question of two key factors. Where... and
when.”
A crackling on Cloudbase’s public-address system seemed to answer both
questions. Captain Scarlet noted grimly, “It looks like we’re about to get our
answer.”
And sure enough, a booming deep
slow voice followed.
“This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know that you can hear us, Earthmen. We
will continue to take our revenge for your unprovoked attack. Our next act of
retaliation will be to throw Harmony out of tune. Hear us, Earthmen, and take
heed. We will throw Harmony out of tune.”
Captain Scarlet spared a glance at
the Harmony Angel. She had bowed her head.
“They’re after me,” she whispered.
“I just know it. What I don’t know is how.”
Going to a bulkhead intercom unit,
Colonel White said, “White to Control--Lieutenant
Green, bring Cloudbase to yellow alert.”
“S.I.G.,” was the prompt response
from Spectrum Organization CompOps Chief Seymour Roger Griffiths, Colonel
White’s aide, whom he had addressed as Lieutenant Green.
“Right, let’s all get out of our gis and back into Spectrum uniform,”
Colonel White snapped. “We have to figure out exactly what the Mysterons plan to
do to Harmony--or her family.”
“There’s another consideration--do
they plan to assassinate officials of Nippon’s government?”
“What is that supposed to mean,
Harmony?” This from Captain Grey.
Her head still hanging, Harmony
Angel explained, “The air-taxi service my parents used to operate before they
passed it on to me has become essential to travel over the archipelago of
Nippon. Officials of the various ministries make extensive use of it--”
“--and so does the Emperor of
Japan, as well as the current Director-General of the United Asian Republic,”
Captain Scarlet noted. “If any of the regular routes of Peking Taxi Service were
to fall victim to the Mysterons while the Emperor and/or Prime Minister of
Japan, or the United Asian Republic’s current Director-General, were aboard one
of those taxis...”
He did not have to finish. The
political repercussions could be disastrous, and the Kwans would “lose face”
with the rest of Nippon society for allowing, or failure to prevent, such a
tragedy. Already Captain Scarlet had failed, once before, to prevent the
assassination of the previous United Asian Republic Director-General, a mission
that had still proven his loyalty to Spectrum.
The Colonel’s jaw dropped in horror
at the implications, and he snapped sharply, “Then all of you double-time it!
You all know what this implies for Spectrum!”
Matsuo Tanaka, Prime Minister of
Japan, had had a long conversation with the World Congress. This conversation
had been entirely in English, a language he understood perfectly and spoke well.
From what the Speaker of the World House Of Representatives had said to him, he
had reason to fear that he and his Emperor were both under Mysteron attack. The
Spectrum Organization would gain much face if it successfully protected either,
most of all both.
Tanaka was not a defenseless man
himself. He held a black belt of the ninth dan in judo, and one of the students
of his dojo, which he had closed down to enter
politics, had been a certain Chan Akiki Kwan. She had much face for both of her
efforts to establish the world record for shortest time successfully
circumnavigating Earth nonstop by air--first for aborting her effort to rescue
people in trouble, and second for completing her flight.
The business her parents had
operated before passing it on to her, Peking Taxi Service, was essential to
Tanaka’s job, for he used its taxis extensively to travel from point to point on
his native Honshu Island. Judging from what the World House Speaker had told
him, he had reason to believe it might come under attack.
“Chan Kwan,” he said in English,
“wherever you are, I hope you know that we need help.”
Harmony Angel was on her way to
relieve Magnolia Blossom Jones, a.k.a. Melody Angel, from alert duty in the
Angel alert interceptor when Colonel White, himself now back in uniform, called
out to her. “Wait, Harmony!” said he.
“What?”
“You’ll be on your way back home,
so to speak. I’m appointing you as temporary field commander of the Angel Flight
for this mission. You’ll be reporting directly to Captain Scarlet.”
Stunned, Harmony Angel could muster
no other response than the usual “S.I.G.” But she was in a daze as she
acknowledged the newly-cut orders.
Captain Scarlet, himself in no such
daze, snapped back, “Colonel, do you think that’s wise?”
“How do you mean?”
“The Mysterons have made personal
threats against members of Spectrum before. For all we know, this could be one
of them.”
“You heard me tell Harmony that
she’ll report directly to you. Since you are our ’indestructible’ agent, it’ll
be part of your job to see to it that she herself isn’t directly harmed.”
“S.I.G.,” Captain Scarlet
acknowledged with a wry smile. “The trick will be figuring out exactly who’s in
the hands of the Mysterons.”
The answer to Captain Scarlet’s
question could have been found on Honshu Island, at the Tokyo base of Peking Air
Taxi.
Captain Black, who had once been
Conrad Turner,
was currently in the dispatcher’s office of that base, in the company of a woman
who resembled the dispatcher in every detail. The original dispatcher, whose
name was Tomoko Kobayashi, had a scratch at the base of her neck, and next to
her was a black-finished shaken
that had been dipped in doku, a
poison that, after the long complex process of extracting it from
chrysanthemums, could be used to kill quickly and silently. For it simulated the
effects of a heart attack when injected into the bloodstream, and the smallest
scratch was the most needed for the purpose. Both shaken and corpse rested on the office
floor.
Tomoko Kobayashi was under Mysteron
control.
Less than an hour before, Captain
Black had thrown the doku-treated shaken, the tip of one of whose blade edges
had scratched the neck of the original Kobayashi. As this had occurred whilst
she was on a break, she had had no time to react or call for help.
In the deep slow voice of the
Mysterons, Captain Black said to the Kobayashi likeness, “You know what you must
do.”
The Kobayashi likeness said
nothing. It was clear from her attitude towards Turner, however, that she fully
intended the Mysteron instructions
to be carried out.
Captain Black knew that Peking Air
Taxi’s Tokyo base had arrays of x-ray cameras built into its internal security
system. For his masters the Mysterons to carry out their plan to “throw Harmony
out of tune,” which meant publicly discredit Chan Kwan, Harmony Angel of
Spectrum, before Nippon’s people, whose culture took honor and reputations very
seriously, they needed to deceive the Earthmen working there into believing
Harmony Angel was a Mysteron when actually she was not. If Captain Scarlet came
there with her, deceiving them into believing
he
was still a Mysteron would be easy; the retro-matter of his body was impervious
to Roentgen radiation. Deceiving them about Harmony Angel would be the real
trick. Captain Black knew that in order to do this, he had to make the cameras,
when scanning for Mysterons, show false positive readings for her. Hence he had
to set up the internal security cameras for takeover. In order to do that, he
had to set up their central control operator for Mysteron takeover. Doing that,
as he saw quickly, would be a pushover. The operator, named Fujio Sato, was
grossly fat, and he often dozed off in his chair.
Captain Black scratched Sato’s
carotid artery with the doku-coated shaken he had used on Tomoko Kobayashi less
than half an hour before. In the second of death, Sato’s face momentarily
twisted in pain.
Twin rings of green light swept
Sato’s corpse, then traced a spot next to his chair. Within seconds, an exact
likeness of Sato stood next to Captain Black.
Fujio Sato was now under Mysteron
control.
“These are your instructions from
the Mysterons,” Captain Black said to Sato’s likeness. And he went on to outline
what the Sato likeness had to do.
Three interceptors of the Spectrum
Angel Flight were skyborne; Harmony Angel, serving as Angel Leader, was in the
interceptor that headed the formation. With her, serving as wing-pilots, were
Juliette Pointon, the flight's Destiny Angel, who flew the port interceptor, and
Karen Wainwright, called Symphony Angel, who was flying the starboard
interceptor. Behind their wedge formation was a Spectrum Passenger Jet, with
Captain Blue at the controls; Captain Scarlet was navigating.
“I don’t remember ever having
visited Japan,” Captain Blue was confessing to Captain Scarlet. “Do you?” He had
a C38 Mysteron detector hanging around his neck.
“No, Captain Blue,” Captain Scarlet
responded. “I may be a trained historian, but I’m afraid my knowledge of the
history of Southeast Asia, sad to admit, is rather sketchy.”
“As sketchy as your memories of
your activities as a Mysteron?”
“No--those memories are detailed
enough now. Thanks to Black.” Captain Scarlet shuddered.
“Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten.
He restored your Mysteron memories when you joined International Rescue earlier
this year.”
“He’d hoped to break my will to
keep fighting them, and he failed. It makes me wonder....”
“What?” This from Captain Grey, the
third passenger of the jet.
“Why do they handle their powers so
well...and me, who used to be one of them, so poorly?”
“Well, your report on Mysteron
psychology in layman’s terms certainly poses a possibility.”
The retro-metabolic human smiled at
the idea. He was a likeness of the original Captain Scarlet who retained the
personality of the original. That original was a World Army-and-Air Force
general’s son who had earned degrees in technology and mathematics, in addition
to history, in the University of his native Winchester, England. Then he had
become the “First Captain,” or valedictorian, of his graduating class of the
West Point Military Academy, from which he had enlisted in the World
Army-and-Air Force as a buck private in order to earn a WAAF officer’s
commission the hard way. Volunteering for the Special Forces, he had risen
quickly through the ranks of the WAAF to become the youngest colonel in its
history and its top weapons expert. In all that time, before the Mysterons had
re-created their exact likeness of him, he had been presented with plenty of
opportunities to observe combat psychology as a layman in the science.
As a pro-Earthman Mysteron, the
Captain Scarlet likeness had actually become the real Captain Scarlet. With his
power of retro-metabolism, which had made him virtually indestructible, had come
an increased curiosity about the way the discorporate aliens inhabiting the
Valles Marineris area of Mars viewed comparatively more primitive Earthmen. He
had recently written his speculations into a treatise that had become required
reading for Spectrum senior staff.
“Well, I am a trained historian,
true enough,” was all Captain Scarlet said aloud. “But I’m not that good a
xeno-psychologist.”
The Mysteron likeness of Fujio Sato
was working to prepare a computer program for the security cameras that would
generate false positive readings of given individuals, and to gear that program
for Chan Kwan. As he did this, the Mysteron likeness of Tomoko Kobayashi was at
work on carrying out her own instructions from the Mysterons.
Captain Black watched them work,
then nodded to each as they finished.
Later, in an employees’ lounge, he
was explaining to the two employees his masters had taken over, “Even if
Spectrum personnel do successfully evade our blockade, we will still be able to
throw Harmony out of tune. The Prime Minister of Japan makes extensive use of
this air-taxi service for much of his travel.” He unfolded a route timetable
printed in both Japanese and
English, and laid it out on the table in front of which the likenesses were also
sitting. “You know his itinerary,” he said to the Kobayashi likeness. “Indicate
the route that he is most likely to take to reach his current destination,
according to his travel plans.”
Without a word, the Kobayashi
likeness pointed to a series of numbers.
“The flight crew for that air taxi
consists of three members,” Captain Black went on. “I will arrange for their
takeovers.” He rose from his chair and walked over to a coffee machine. “Would
you care for some coffee?”
Less than fifteen minutes later,
three men in flight crew uniforms were drinking coffee Captain Black had offered
them.
Half an hour later, twin rings of
green light swept the doors to three recessed bunks on a wall of another lounge,
inside which were the corpses of the flight crew members. They had taken naps on
the bunks within the two hours before they were due on the flight deck. Thanks
to a bland poison and a massive overdose of sleeping medicine Captain Black had
brewed into the coffee, they would never awaken.
The same twin rings traced empty
chairs in the lounge to bring the flight crew under Mysteron control,
re-creating exact likenesses of the original flight crew members.
Captain Black entered with the
Mysteron likenesses of Kobayashi and Sato. The flight crew likenesses were
drinking coffee as though nothing were wrong. Something, of course, was VERY wrong. The Mysterons had taken
over five employees of Chan Kwan’s old firm.
Of the six who were now seated in
the lounge, only Turner spoke.
“Today,” he said in the deep slow
voice of the Mysterons, “we will throw Harmony out of tune.”
Matsuo Tanaka was in conference
with Emperor Matsuhiro. Their conversation was conducted in Japanese, the first
language of both men, and Tanaka had his amanuensis--not a machine, but his own
secretary--sitting nearby to transcribe it.
“I wonder if we should cancel our
planned trip to Kyoto this afternoon, given the possible harm that the Mysterons
can do to us or our honor,” Tanaka was saying.
“Matsuosan,” the Emperor retorted,
“we cannot change plans at the last minute simply because we may fall victim to
what a Mysteron can do. The Supekutoramu--” he used that
phrasing to refer to Spectrum because both supekutoramu
and bunkou both mean “spectrum” in
Japanese, but to use bunkou
would have been too vulgar for someone like him--
“can protect us against Mysterons; that’s what it does.” He smiled. “If it eases
you, I would prefer to change my plans. But that we cannot do. The Mysterons,
besides, will only harm us if it will harm your former student or her fellow
Supekutoramu.”
“It will,” Tanaka said. “They do
not announce an attack without making such an attack. I lost one of my good
friends, the Director-General of the United Asian Republic, to what the
Mysterons did.”
“Then we will have to see to it
that Supekutoramu Ninja is on our flight with us. That is all.”
Tanaka and the amanuensis both
bowed and left.
At the Tokyo base of Peking Taxi,
Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, Harmony Angel, and Captain Grey were all under
drawn weapons and being led into the building at gunpoint. No sooner, however,
were all four inside it, along with their armed escorts, than a series of alarms
went off.
“That female Bunkou member is a
Mysteron--hold her!” the burliest and tallest of their escorts said in Japanese.
“What did they just say, Harmony?”
Captain Grey asked.
Harmony Angel’s voice was filled
with horror when she answered. “They think
I’m
a Mysteron!”
“WHAT??”
The next moment, they were
surrounded on all sides with drawn semi-automatic pistols.
The office of the Security Chief, Takashi Uchida, was next to that of the
dispatcher.
Captain Blue had handed over his
Mysteron detector to Chief Uchida. “Use it on Harmony only,” he said. “Captain
Scarlet is exempted from having it used on him--even though I’m not allowed to
explain why he is.”
“How do I use it?” Chief Uchida
said in English.
“You know how to take pictures,
don’t you?”
“Hai,”
said Chief Uchida, Japanese for “yes.”
“Take one of the girl,” said
Captain Scarlet. “And only the
girl, as Captain Blue instructed.”
Chief Uchida brought the detector
to his eyes and asked, “Which button do I push?”
“The top one.” This from Captain
Grey.
Chief Uchida pointed the detector
at Harmony Angel and pushed the top button on it. “How long do I have to wait
for the picture to develop?”
“About five seconds,” Captain
Scarlet said. “The image should be a skeletal view.”
No one noticed Conrad Turner
standing immediately outside the door.
Chief Uchida pushed the bottom
button, and the image emerged from the detector, all right.
But to the shared horror of the three Spectrum captains and
Harmony Angel, it produced a photographic view of her in monochrome!!!
“This only PROVES that she’s a
Mysteron!” the Chief roared.
“That can’t be! I used that
detector on Harmony herself not fifteen seconds after we landed!” As he was
speaking, Captain Blue pulled another image, time-stamped with the detector’s
serial number, out of his sleeveless blue suede doublet; this one showed a
skeletal view.
“Will you two pull yourselves
together?” Captain Scarlet snapped. “It’s obvious that someone’s tampered with
the image to make it produce a monochrome photographic view of Harmony, and I
think I have an excellent idea just who.”
Captain Blue and Captain Grey
exchanged significant glances. They knew who he meant.
But it was Harmony Angel who said
it for all of them. “Captain Black.”
“Yes,” Captain Scarlet confirmed.
“And I’ll bet he’s right outside the door at this very moment, using his
masters’ powers to tamper with that detector and make it give false positive
results!” He sprang for the door and opened it wide just in time to behold
Captain Black fading out. As the ache in his sinuses died away, he turned to
Uchida.
But before the retro-metabolic
human could say anything else, Captain Grey wrinkled his nose, sniffed, and
complained, “What’s that smell?”
Chief Uchida sniffed. “Someone is
dead.” He handed the Spectrum personnel back their ordnance. “I’ll take your
word that the detector results are false--I have to now. I saw Captain Black
fade out too.”
As he was nearest the door, Captain
Scarlet had to wait for Chief Uchida to reach him with his pistol. But once he
had it, he said, “Blue, Grey, Harmony, follow me. You come along too, Chief
Uchida.”
They slipped out of the office and
stole down the corridor to the next office over. “The smell gets stronger the
closer we get to that door,” Captain Blue noted with a grimace and a shudder.
“It does smell like someone died.”
“Blue...Grey...cover me,” Captain
Scarlet said. “I’m going in.” As Captain Blue and Captain Grey took positions at
the left and right door jambs, their pistols drawn, Captain Scarlet tried the
door knob. It did not respond. “Locked,” he added. “I’m kicking it down.” He
raised his right foot and hurled himself at the door, foot first.
The lock gave way, and the door
swung open. Barely recovering his footing from his mighty kick, Captain Scarlet
looked around with pistol drawn. That was when he noticed the corpse on the
floor.
“That’s Tomoko Kobayashi,
the base dispatcher!” Chief Uchida gasped in recognition. “But that can’t be!
She’s on duty in her cubicle!”
“You mean you thought she was,”
Harmony Angel corrected.
“Chief Uchida, I’m afraid you’ll
have to face facts,” Captain Scarlet said sternly. “This base’s dispatcher is
now in the hands of the Mysterons.”
“There’s probably another Mysteron
on this base,” Captain Grey noted. “Who’s your assistant in charge of the
internal security cameras?”
“That’d be Fujio Sato,” Chief
Uchida said. “Fat, lazy lout...I could never understand why we even hired him.”
“Maybe because he’s good with
computers,” Captain Blue remarked.
“He can’t possibly compete with
Lieutenant Green!” scoffed Captain Scarlet.
“He doesn’t,” said Chief Uchida.
“The base’s computer systems are all long overdue for a major overhaul and
upgrade. Maybe your Lieutenant Green could give them one.” At the apparent lack
of comprehension from the three captains, he went on, “Yes, I have followed
Lieutenant Green’s work improving certain computer systems, since we do have
Spectrum personnel serving in our security detail. His improvements have earned
him much face here, and--”
“Those improvements won’t help you now, Earthmen!!!” came a sudden shout in English from outside the office
door.
It was the Mysteron likeness of
Fujio Sato.
“We
will
be avenged!” he went on, his voice that of a raving psychotic. “You will never survive the Mysterons!!!”
With that, he charged forwards, holding a broken-off broomstick in his hand.
Captain Scarlet had no time
to use his pistol, and was forced to grab the Sato likeness in a judo hold as
the latter charged at him. That done, he threw the Sato likeness over his
shoulder in a judo upper right shoulder throw. But instead of allowing himself
to be thrown to the floor, the Sato likeness was carried out the window of the
office, which shattered under his weight and out of which he fell, landing on
electrical wires that were strung on cross-arms near the tops of electric poles
below them all--and on the top of one of the poles itself, grounding and
short-circuiting the power lines!!!
The impact with the high voltage
caused his body to burst into flames as the Mysteron likeness of Fujio Sato was
destroyed. As that happened, the power inside the building temporarily winked
out and then came right back on again.
“Well, fry one Mysteron,” Captain
Blue quipped mirthlessly, looking about to gag. Not squeamish, he was,
regardless, nauseated at the putrid odor of burned flesh that now assaulted
their nostrils.
“I had forgotten that judo, being
based on jujitsu as it is, can be used to kill,” Harmony Angel admitted. “Nicely
done.”
“Well, I hadn’t actually planned on
killing him,” confessed Captain Scarlet. “But the Mysterons do consider their
likenesses of objects or people expendable once they’ve done with them.”
“Should we call the local electric
company to get the body down safely?” Captain Grey asked.
“S.I.G., Captain Grey,” agreed
Captain Scarlet. “No sense in any further interruptions in our job--or that of
Peking Taxi.” He allowed the mike of his radio-cap to drop in front of his
mouth. “Scarlet to Angel Two--maintain surveillance of all departing Peking Taxi
flights for the next four hours. Seek and report. Codeword katana. Mysterons on grounds. Repeat:
Mysterons on grounds.”
“S.I.G.,” the voice of Destiny
Angel responded. “But I am curious, Captain Scarlet; why only four hours?”
“Because I’ll be grounding all
other flights from this base after that time period except in case of extreme
need--critical flights to hospitals and the like.”
“Captain Scarlet, does a planned
flight of both the Emperor and the Prime Minister of Japan qualify as critical?”
“That it does, Destiny, especially
since Harmony and I will both be on board to see to it that no harm comes to
either of them.”
“S.I.G. Destiny out.”
“Blue, you and Grey stay here to
try to trap Kobayashi--if she doesn’t try to attack us first. She may have
instructions from the Mysterons to keep us away from the Prime Minister and the
Emperor.”
“S.I.G.,” Captain Blue
acknowledged. “But what about Harmony?”
“I am with Captain Scarlet,” was
her response. “The flight crew may be in Mysteron hands, and they may have plans
against the Prime Minister and the Emperor. We all heard the Mysteron
threat--they mean to discredit me in the eyes of my own people.”
“S.I.G.,” Captain Scarlet said,
grinning. “Just leave the dangerous stuff to me.”
The Chief shook his head after the
two left. “That man has dragons in his brain. Does he really think he can stop
the Mysterons?”
“Chief Uchida,” said Captain Grey,
“the most you can do is trust him on this.”
“I’ll take your word for it--I have
to. But does Captain Scarletsan think he can gain face with us by preventing our
two most beloved governmental figures from being assassinated?”
“We’re not in this business for
concerns of honor.” This from Captain Blue.
Captain Scarlet and Harmony Angel
were on their way to the dispatcher’s cubicle, where both knew the Mysteron
likeness of Tomoko Kobayashi was most likely to be holed up.
Suddenly, Captain Scarlet’s sinuses
caught fire.
“She’s very close by,” he said
through a haze of pain. “She obviously wants to stop us from getting to that
flight--”
“KIAI!!”
The Kobayashi likeness brought him
to the floor from behind with a karate flying kick, knocking his radio-cap off
as he fell. Grimacing from the pain in his lower back, he nonetheless summoned
his training in unarmed combat to roll over and get to his feet.
“Take it from a gaijin, Kobayashi--you have no idea what honor is,” he shot
back through his pain.
“It does not matter what you mean
by honor, Earthman!” the Kobayashi likeness snarled at him in English. “You have
NO honor with the Mysterons!”
“Tomoko, will you quit that?”
Harmony Angel demanded in Japanese. “You hardly sound original!”
“Don’t you dare talk to me in that
Earthman’s language, Earthwoman!” The Kobayashi likeness was still using
English. “Soon, Harmony,” and she sneered the call sign, “we WILL throw you out
of tune!”
Captain Scarlet took advantage of
that moment to kick the left shin of the Kobayashi likeness, with the hard heel
of his right boot, hard enough to make her left leg break at the point of
impact. As it snapped under the heel of his boot, she grimaced in pain and
grabbed her left shin with both hands, limping away from him on her good right
leg.
“Let’s get to that air taxi before
she recovers--that’s an order!” As he spoke, Captain Scarlet grabbed his
radio-cap and hurriedly threw it back on his head. “Blue or Grey can destroy her
after we’ve gone--the Emperor and Prime Minister are our main concerns!”
The two Spectrum personnel darted
off towards the lobby entrance, but this time, there were no guards to block
their way.
“We have to get aboard that taxi,”
Harmony Angel reminded him. She gestured down a side corridor. “This way to the
flight line.”
“Lead the way,” was all Captain
Scarlet had to say.
“I would advise you to be careful,
Captain Scarlet. Captain Yasuo Shinke, Commander Yoshiki Yamamoto, and
Lieutenant Hiroshi Tachikawa, the flight crew for the Emperor’s and the Prime
Minister’s planned air taxi, are all probably Mysterons, as I said earlier. And
they may already be on board the taxi. Moreover, the regular workers may still
think we are Mysterons ourselves.”
“Well, the Security Chief, Takashi Uchida, certainly vouched for us--however
reluctantly,” was his response. “And thanks to him, we have carte blanche
for the entire base.”
“But will that be enough?” As
Harmony Angel spoke, she and Captain Scarlet were making their ways down the
jetway to the cargo compartment on board the planned flight. They got there just
as the compartment was being loaded.
“It’ll have to be.” Captain
Scarlet, barely managing to conceal himself amongst the taxi’s freight, stowed
away on board the craft. “Come on.”
Harmony Angel followed him on
board, thankful for her comparatively small size.
The Mysteron likeness of Captain
Yasuo Shinke made his way up the passenger steps to his taxi’s cockpit.
Following him were the Mysteron likenesses of Commander Yoshiki Yamamoto and
Lieutenant Hiroshi Tachikawa. All three had instructions from their masters to
assassinate both Japan’s Emperor and the Prime Minister of the Cabinet, and to
do so in a way that would humiliate Chan Kwan, known as Harmony Angel.
“These Earthmen will be just so
many victims of our masters,” the Shinke likeness said in English. “What is of
greatest importance is that we will make Spectrum’s Harmony Angel lose face with
her people, never to regain it.”
“What about the Earthman Captain
Scarlet?” asked the Yamamoto likeness.
“He is of no consequence,” said the
Shinke likeness. “He cannot possibly stop the plans of our masters.”
The Tachikawa likeness asked, “What
will be the best way to bring about the deaths of those two Earthmen so that
Spectrum’s Harmony Angel will lose face with her people permanently?”
The Shinke likeness smiled cruelly.
“Crash this taxi with all aboard.”
The Mysteronized flight crew
members did not know that in the cargo hold, Captain Scarlet and Harmony Angel
were listening in on their every word. Harmony Angel, for her part, was
horrified.
“My parents invested their souls in
this air-taxi company!” she whispered. “Whatever reflects on them will also
reflect on me--Crown Prince Susumu would never allow me to be forgiven if we
failed.”
“Well, it’s obvious that Captain
Shinke, Commander Yamamoto, and Leftenant Tachikawa mean to see to it that we
don’t stop them.”
“So what do we do?”
Captain Scarlet grinned in the
darkness of the cargo hold in spite of the severe sinus headache from which he
now suffered. “We stop them, of course.”
Harmony Angel could not keep from
grinning herself.
On the ground outside the jetway,
Conrad Turner, who was not unaware of what Captain Scarlet and Harmony Angel had
done, spoke to the Mysteron
likenesses of the flight crew members.
“Captain Shinke, Commander
Yamamoto, Lieutenant Tachikawa, take heed. This is Captain Black, relaying
instructions from the Mysterons,” he said. “Two Spectrum personnel have boarded
your air taxi by way of its cargo hold. One of them is Spectrum’s Harmony Angel,
whom we wish to ’throw out of tune,’ or discredit. The other is Captain Scarlet.
See to it that they do not interfere with your carrying out your instructions
from the Mysterons to crash your air taxi with all aboard. I will again remind
you three--we must see to it that the Emperor
and the Prime Minister are both assassinated in a manner that will humiliate
Spectrum’s Harmony Angel beyond recovery.”
On board the air taxi, the flight
crew likenesses nodded, fully intending the Mysteron instructions to be carried
out.
Back at the base, the Mysteron
likeness of Tomoko Kobayashi, recovered from Captain Scarlet’s defensive
measure, was back in the dispatcher’s cubicle the original Kobayashi had used in
life.
“The Spectrum personnel now on
board your taxi must not be permitted to get to you,” she was telling the
likenesses of the flight crew members in English.
“What I wouldn’t give for a
Mysteron rifle in my hands at this point,” Captain Scarlet muttered under his
breath. “But you ran the business for at least a year after your parents died;
you know your way around the aircraft. Don’t they have electrical systems that
can be exposed?”
“Hai,
they do,” Harmony Angel answered, realizing what Captain Scarlet was saying.
“Maybe if we get any one of them down here, we can maneuver that one into
attacking us and send him directly into the main electrical transformer.”
“Exactly. We’d effectively be
’judoing’ him into destroying himself.”
Laughing, Harmony Angel said, “I’ll
make a second-dan black-belt judoka
out of you yet, Captain Scarletsan--mark my words!” He was already a first-dan
judo black belt, thanks to her tutelage.
“I’d wait on that till after we
prevent you from being humiliated--and
save the lives of the Emperor and the Prime Minister.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“First we try to get to the flight
crew. They’ll have instructions from their masters to prevent us from
interfering with them, so we’ll see to it that they can’t carry those out.”
Peking Taxi Service Flight 1945
nonstop from Tokyo to Kyoto was now accepting aboard, as its sole paying
passengers, Emperor Matsuhiro, Prime Minister of the Cabinet Matsuo Tanaka, and
all ten of the total members of their known
security details.
Neither the Emperor nor the Prime
Minister had a need to know, at that point, that they also had an unknown security detail on board--Captain
Scarlet and the Harmony Angel, both of whom were non-paying stowaways.
The Tomoko Kobayashi likeness spoke
to the flight crew likenesses again, but now in Japanese, for which she had
earlier expressed contempt. “As per our instructions, you are to travel on
course for no more than an hour, then turn back and attempt to land without seeking clearance.”
Captain Blue was in communication
with Cloudbase. “I’ll have to requisition an SPV, and I may have to use its
power pack to catch either Scarlet or Harmony.
“Absolutely NOT!” Colonel White
shot back in horror. “Use that pack to fly parachutes to them.”
This made Captain Blue cringe; he
should have remembered that option. “Spectrum Is Green,” he acknowledged with a
sheepish grin. Then suddenly, he chuckled nervously.
“What the devil is so funny, Blue?”
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” was the
sheepish, unsmiling apology. “I’d almost forgotten that Scarlet and Harmony can
take care of themselves.”
“Well,
they’ll need all the help they can get. Requisition that SPV.”
“S.I.G. Blue out.” With that,
Captain Blue made his way over to a small hangar near the base’s main building,
unzipping the pocket on the lower left side of his sleeveless blue suede doublet
as he did. Approaching the guard, he said, “Request SPV 3936.”
“Identification?” the guard asked
in response.
“Captain Blue, Spectrum.” As he
spoke, Captain Blue pulled out his identification card and unfolded it. It read:
“This certifies that Captain Blue is a member of the Spectrum Organization.”
Below that, it bore the signature, “Colonel White.” Encoded into the holographic
layer covering his photograph were his credentials. The guard broke a small
holoscanner out of a pocket of his uniform, touched it to the card, and waited
till it flashed green. Then he said, “Inside the hangar. I’ll open it for you.”
He made his own way over to the door of the hangar, broke out a ring of keys,
fitted one to a lock on the left side of the door, and turned it clockwise. That
done, he struck a red button, and the hangar door rose to reveal Spectrum
Pursuit Vehicle Number Three-Nine-Three-Six.
“Where do you keep the emergency
parachutes for your flight crew members?”
The flight was skyborne, and
Captain Scarlet knew that the flight crew likenesses would make their move in
less than an hour. He brought down the mike of his radio-cap.
“Scarlet to Blue,” he whispered.
“I’m on board the air taxi with Harmony. And keep the volume of your responses
low--the flight crew members are all Mysterons, and they know we’re here.”
“Scarlet, exactly where on board
that air taxi are you and Harmony?” Captain Blue murmured.
“We’ve stowed away in the cargo
hold. Thankfully for the both of us, the Emperor and the Prime Minister like to
travel light; there isn’t much in the way of cargo.”
“Do you have any plans?”
“Not solid ones--but we do have
ideas.”
“Just don’t waste your life doing
your job.”
“S.I.G. Scarlet out.”
Captain Grey was in touch with
Symphony Angel. “Approximately how many security personnel form the entourages
for the Emperor and the Prime
Minister?” he was asking her.
“When they were boarding the air
taxi, I counted only ten,” was her response.
“Only ten? Scarlet’s gonna need a LOT of
parachutes to get them all off board!”
“I heard that, Grey,” Captain Blue
broke in from aboard SPV 3936. “I’ve GOT a lot. Fourteen, in fact. Twelve for
the Emperor, the Prime Minister, and their security details; the last two for
Scarlet and Harmony.”
“Now you’ll have to get those
parachutes to them,” Symphony Angel reminded her boyfriend. “And that air taxi’s
already skyborne, so you can’t get them in through the cargo hatch.”
“Oh, yes, I can, Symphony,” Captain
Blue retorted. “In the meantime, the Mysterons had already taken over Tomoko
Kobayashi, the base dispatcher, before we even got into the building. She and
Fujio Sato, another Mysteron, had rigged the internal security system so that
it’d think Harmony was a Mysteron herself. Grey, are you keeping tabs on her?”
“She’s lying low for now, since
Scarlet broke her leg,” Captain Grey responded. “But her masters fight a war of
nerves; it’s just a matter of time before she makes another move.”
“What happened to Sato?”
“Scarlet used the judo training
Harmony’s given us to pitch him through the window, and he fell on top of a
power pole and some power lines--the high voltage destroyed him instantly.”
Symphony Angel, not motionsick,
sounded like she was gagging. “Oh, God. Destiny, are there any other unusual
activities going on at your end?”
“Non,
Symphony--not a one. Only the air taxi carrying l'Empereur, le
Premier Ministre, et leurs groupes de sécurité.”
“HUH?”
“Oh,
pardonnez moi--I mean the Emperor, the Prime Minister, and their
security details.”
“The one Scarlet and Harmony are
aboard. Symphony, follow it--its flight crew may double back and try to make it
crash with all hands aboard, and Scarlet’s probably trying to prevent just
that.”
“S.I.G. Symphony out.”
Closing channels himself, Captain
Blue pulled off his radio-cap and exchanged it for a radio-helmet. The one he
found himself wearing was blue and black in color, and he had the ugly feeling
of déjà vu as he
recalled one hideous time when he had had to use a power pack near the London
Car Vu Sky Park Tower. The rest, as Captain Scarlet could have reminded him, was
history, as they said.
He strapped on the power pack and
tethered the package of parachutes to one of the straps.
The
Mysteron likeness of
Lieutenant Hiroshi Tachikawa, whose original incarnation had been flight
engineer of Peking Taxi Service Flight 1945, was suspicious of Captain Scarlet.
(Had that wretched Earthman set some sort of trap for him, he thought? Hadn’t
they done enough damage with that unprovoked attack three years before?)
He descended into the hell-hole of
the aircraft, where many critical components were located. In that cubicle, he
suspected, the two Earthmen who had stowed away could get at him. And if they
got at him, they could get at Captain Yasuo Shinke and Commander Yoshiki
Yamamoto. So went his Mysteronized thinking. Thus he carried a pistol with him.
It was a duplicate of the semi-automatic pistol that Conrad Turner had carried
as Captain Black of the Spectrum Organization.
However, as he descended to use it,
he heard Harmony Angel’s voice call out to him and shout mockingly in English,
“What’s with the gun, Hiroshi? Don’t tell me--the big bad Mysteron agent is
chicken!”
“You’ll pay dearly for your insolence, Earthwoman!”
was his enraged response, which he also spoke in English. “Neither you nor the
Emperor or Prime Minister will get off this air taxi alive!”
“Honestly, Mysteron--can’t you come
up with something more original than that?” Captain Scarlet was somewhat
exasperated at the near-cliché speech patterns the Tachikawa likeness was using.
“We know what you’re planning to do--don’t be a fool!” He was speaking from very
near the onboard circuit-breaker panel. Harmony Angel was ahead of him, at a
much safer distance. His having to be so close to high voltage made Captain
Scarlet nervous.
Back at the base, Captain Grey had
requisitioned a Mysteron rifle, which was designed to fire Cherenkov radiation.
This radiation, visible as the bright blue flash observed when an electron beam
is accelerated to high velocity, is as poisonous in its own right to normal
Earthmen as it was to Mysteron likenesses of them.
Whenever fired from a Mysteron
rifle, Cherenkov radiation overloaded the retro-matter of Mysteron likenesses
with so much electronic energy at a time that its ability to absorb electronic
energy could not keep pace. The direct result of that overdosage bombardment was
a paradoxical reaction in the retro-matter, and the electronic energy then
prevented cellular division rather than accelerating it.
He was addressing Colonel White.
“I’ve requisitioned a Mysteron rifle, and I mean to use it on Tomoko Kobayashi
when she makes her next move.”
“The question is, Grey, will she make a next move?”
“Better safe than sorry. I’m sure
you’ll agree.” The former WASP officer grunted in pain and held his back.
“Though the weight of this damned rifle is making my back hurt like hell.”
“I’m afraid the Spectrum Research
Centre is making no progress on that Mysteron pistol--you’ll remember what
happened with it after I pulled Scarlet off furlough to test it last time.”
Captain Grey shuddered. “If he’d
managed to test it, there wouldn’t be
a Captain Scarlet now.”
“Just trap Kobayashi if she makes a
next move.”
“S.I.G. Grey out.”
Captain Blue was skyborne, using
the power pack. “Blue to Destiny,” he said. “Run a recon sweep of the cockpit.
Seek and report.”
“S.I.G.”
Destiny Angel brought her
interceptor close to the cockpit of Peking Taxi Flight 1945 and paralleled its
course. “Strange...” she mused aloud.
“How so?”
“There appear to be only two flight
crew members in the cockpit--the pilot and the navigator. I do not see the
flight engineer.”
“He probably headed below decks. I
hope Scarlet and Harmony can handle him.”
The Mysteron likeness of Lieutenant
Hiroshi Tachikawa had entered the cargo hold. “Come on out, Earthmen--there’s
nowhere for you to hide!” he called out in English.
“Or you!” Captain Scarlet reminded
the Tachikawa likeness. “Tachikawa--” and his tone became mocking-- “I’m
laughing at this ’superior alien intellect.’” His voice dissolved in a sardonic
chuckle.
The Tachikawa likeness could stand
it no longer. Letting out an ear-splitting war-yell, he charged directly at
where the voice fix had told him Captain Scarlet was, heedless that he was
headed directly for exposed high-voltage electrical wiring. Pale and sweating,
Captain Scarlet employed one of the oldest tricks in the book. He sidestepped to
dodge. The Tachikawa likeness slammed directly into the wiring, and Captain
Scarlet, momentum carrying him safely away, could only watch in horror as the
high voltage destroyed the Tachikawa likeness with an ugly sizzling sound.
“Fry two Mysterons,” Harmony Angel
muttered, about to vomit from the stench of burned flesh.
His composure recovered, Captain
Scarlet said, “Right--now how do we get to the other two still on the flight
deck? They won’t dare come down here.”
“Leave that to me.” Harmony Angel
wore a sick smile. “You forget, I knew the original Yasuo Shinke and the
original Yoshiki Yamamoto. They were not
judoka.”
“How will that help us?”
“You saw, this morning, how
proficient in judo Grey is. Five years ago, he was not a
judoka
either.”
“You plan to use judo on them?” The
retro-metabolic human gestured warily to
the exposed wiring, near where the corpse of the just-destroyed Tachikawa
likeness had fallen to the deck. “How can I keep from being destroyed myself in
that case?”
“Contact one of the others.”
Allowing his radio-cap mike to
drop, Captain Scarlet said into it, “Scarlet to Blue--do you have any parachutes
for us?”
“Blue here,” came the response.
“That I do. Fourteen of them.”
“Keep them at the ready in case
Harmony and I fail to regain control of this air taxi.”
“S.I.G. By the way, I just had
Destiny check the cockpit--there are only two flight crew members there. What
happened to the third?”
“He literally took more power than
he could handle from the air taxi.”
“So he did go below decks, as I
speculated to her. Did you electrocute him?”
“Not exactly--I would say he
electrocuted himself.”
“I see. Spare me the details for
now--I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”
“S.I.G.,” Captain Scarlet said with
a smile. “Scarlet out.” He turned back to Harmony Angel. “Go above decks. You
know those two are Mysterons. Bait them
down here.”
“Will you get rid of Tachikawa’s
body?”
“Of course. And of Shinke’s and
Yamamoto’s in turn if they bite the bait.” Harmony Angel made no move towards
the flight deck. “That was not a request, Harmony,” Captain Scarlet added in
gently chiding tones.
“Spectrum Is Green,” was the
acknowledgment he received.
Harmony Angel allowed her head to
emerge onto the flight deck from the hell-hole. “Looking for me, Mysterons?” she
teased.
“You sneaky Earthwoman!” the Yasuo
Shinke likeness snarled. “You’re about to be thrown out of tune!” With that, he
drew another duplicate of Captain
Black’s Spectrum-issue
semi-automatic pistol and fired--but missed.
“Just as bad a shot as ever, I see,
huh, Yasuo?” With that, she
grabbed his left foot. Screaming in surprise, the Shinke likeness found himself
tumbling into the hell-hole. Hugging its side tightly to avoid being struck and
dragged down with him, Harmony Angel could only watch as he fell and struck the
deck head first.
In the cargo hold, Captain Scarlet
grabbed the badly dazed Shinke likeness and threw him directly into the exposed
wiring in order to destroy him, using the Shinke likeness’s body to insulate
himself from sharing it. As he did
this, he was trembling nervously.
On the flight deck, the Yoshiki
Yamamoto likeness was struggling with Harmony Angel, but with the original
Yamamoto not having been a judoka,
he was no match for her. Using the uchi mata,
or inner-thigh throw, she cleaned his chronometer.
In the cargo hold, Captain Scarlet
grabbed the Yamamoto likeness, having to overcome fierce struggling from him. Sweating with effort and quite nervous since he was
so close to an exposed electric source, he flung the Yamamoto likeness back
first into the exposed wiring, where the high voltage destroyed him. The look of pain and horror on the face of
the likeness just before he toppled over and crashed to the deck was appalling
to see.
Harmony Angel regained the controls
and executed a return course.
At the base, the Tomoko Kobayashi
likeness was livid with insuppressible rage as Peking Taxi Flight 1945 executed
its 180-degree turn too soon.
But she had no time to respond, as
Captain Grey managed to break into the dispatcher’s cubicle and fire the
Mysteron rifle, bad back and all. Her face contorted in pain and sorrow as she
was destroyed. “Grey to Blue,” Captain Grey said. “Fry one Mysteron.”
“Scarlet here--you mean fry three,” Captain Scarlet’s voice broke in.
“The entire flight crew of Flight One Niner Four Five was composed of
Mysterons--and I do mean ’was.’”
Inside the cargo hold, there was an
insistent knocking on the hatch. “Open up! We’ve got three dead Mysterons to get
rid of before we can land this thing!”
Captain Grey could not keep from
laughing. “Scarlet, you heard him--open the hold and let Blue get them out.”
“S.I.G., Grey--Blue, could you give
them parachutes to guarantee that they land where we can recover the bodies?”
“Hold on, Scarlet, who the hell is
flying this bird?”
On the flight deck, Harmony Angel
broke in and explained, “Harmony here--that would be me. I’m taking us back to
the base, where the Emperor and the Prime Minister can take another taxi to
Kyoto. They’ll get there...only about an hour and a half late.”
“S.I.G. Blue out.”
After she and Captain Scarlet broke
contact with Captain Grey, Harmony Angel went back into the passenger
compartment. She addressed the passengers, saying, “We have been diverted back
to Tokyo, and a different flight will be waiting there to take you all to your
destination. It’s good to have you aboard...and a tremendous relief that you’re
all alive.”
That was when Matsuo Tanaka beheld
the face of the pilot--and that she was outfitted in an Angel uniform of Supekutoramu,
not the customary uniforms of
Peking Taxi flight crew members. As Captain Scarlet came out from behind the
cockpit hatch, Tanaka gasped in disbelief, “Chan Kwan?”
Horrified at her own recognition of
Tanaka, Harmony Angel blurted, “Sensei?”
Captain Scarlet himself demanded to
know, in his own disbelief, “Harmony, are you telling me that you know the Prime Minister?”
“Oh, so sorry, please,” was her
embarrassed response. “Captain Scarletsan, meet my former judo sensei, Matsuo Tanaka, Prime Minister of the Cabinet of
Nippon.”
Addressing Tanaka, Captain Scarlet
asked, “Let me get this straight. Harmony learned judo from you?”
“Captain Scarletsan, I was not
always Prime Minister of the Cabinet!” Tanaka said with no small measure of
irritation. “Nor was Chan Akiki Kwan always with
Spectrum. Before I chose to enter politics and public service,
I ran the Kodokan Dojo, and Chan was one of my best students.” He peered
curiously at Harmony Angel. “So Spectrum calls you its ’Harmony Angel’ now, eh?”
“Hai.”
Emperor Matsuhiro grinned. “The
members of the flight crew--were they Mysteron agents?”
“Hai.”
“And am I to understand, then, that
both you and Captain Scarletsan destroyed all three of them between yourselves?
“Hai.”
This from Captain Scarlet himself. He had remembered that “hai” is Japanese for “yes.” “That we did,
Your Imperial Majesty.” He remembered the Emperor’s proper title of respect from
what little briefing on Japanese culture Harmony Angel had had time to give him.
The Emperor and the Prime Minister
smiled broadly. “Chan Kwan, Harmony Angel of Spectrum,” said the latter, “this
day, you and Captain Scarletsan have gained much face before our people.”
“How did we do that, Mr. Prime
Minister?” Captain Scarlet asked.
“By successfully protecting us both
from Mysteron assassination,” the Emperor explained. “If not for your having
stowed away aboard this taxi, Nippon would now be mourning both of our deaths
and Chan Kwan and all the surviving members of her family would have lost too
much face ever to regain any. You see, whosoever fails to protect either or both
of us from being slain when it is within his or her power to do so shames
himself or herself irredeemably before all of Nippon.”
“I’m going back to the cockpit to
bring us in for the landing,” said Harmony Angel, too tired to feel gratified.
“And I’m going back to the cargo
hold to help Captain Blue get the corpses of the flight crew phonies off board,”
said Captain Scarlet. “It’s all over. The Mysterons have failed.”
It took three hours for the
Spectrum Police to finish screening all the other employees of Peking Taxi to
see whether there were any other Mysteron likenesses that Captain Scarlet and
his team had missed. Thankfully, there were none. After Flight 1945 had landed
at the base and everyone was off board, Harmony Angel addressed Hitachi Takamsa,
in whose hands she had left Peking Taxi to join Spectrum. In Japanese, she said
to him, “His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Matsuhiro and Prime Minister Tanaka,
along with their security details, are to be booked on the next flight to Kyoto
on a deadhead basis. They had paid their fare on this aborted flight.”
“We heard the story of how you and
Captain Scarletsan protected them from assassination,” was his response, in
English. “It’ll be part of the folklore of this service for years to come.”
“How did you know?”
“We followed it on radio channels,”
said he, smiling. “You won much face with us, that’s for sure!”
“Nothing can change that we lost
five good personnel to the Mysterons. Worst of all for me was two of those the
Mysterons took over having tricked you into thinking I was a Mysteron myself.”
Tanaka, on his way to his flight,
called out, “Harmony!”
Turning to him, Harmony Angel
asked, “Yes, sensei?”
“His Imperial Majesty has invited
Captain Scarletsan to be his guest at an evaluation tonight.”
“Who is being evaluated?”
“You.” Harmony Angel’s jaw dropped
in surprise. “Seeing what you did today, I figured you may deserve to be awarded
a black belt of the fifth dan.”
Captain Scarlet was close enough to
hear, and his eyes widened. “For saving your lives?”
“That’s only part of it. She’ll be
judged as well.”
It took half an hour for Captain
Scarlet to clear it with Colonel White. Emperor Matsuhiro’s intervention helped
ease the burden, but the CINCSPEC insisted that Captain Scarlet be ready for
recall to Cloudbase on a minute’s notice.
“I would not have it otherwise,”
the Emperor said. “Captain Scarletsan would not have been invited had he and
your Harmony Angel not prevented the Mysterons from assassinating us.”
“I understand that Tanaka is
Harmony’s former sensei,” the
Colonel said.
“That he is, Colonel. He’ll be
assisting in conducting Harmony’s evaluation.”
That night, Captain Scarlet was in
the Kodokan
Institute, judo’s first and greatest dojo, as a guest of His Imperial Majesty
the Emperor Matsuhiro. On the great mat were Matsuo Tanaka, Prime Minister of
the Cabinet, and Harmony Angel. Both were in
gis.
Tabi socks covered their feet.
Over the following two hours, the
two demonstrated the various kata,
or forms, of judo. They began with the
Randori-No Kata of free practice forms, which consists of two kata: each with fifteen distinct
techniques, the Nage-No Kata of throwing forms and the Katame-No Kata of grappling forms.
Demonstration of these as tori, or
user of the techniques, was among Harmony Angel’s tests for the godan, or
fifth-dan black belt, shidoin
rank. Tanaka was the uke, on whom
the techniques were being used, which required Harmony Angel to throw him thirty
times. The Katame-No
Kata, which they
demonstrated second, consists of osae-komi-waza, or holds, shime-waza, or chokes, and kansetsu-waza, or joint locks.
Old style self-defense forms, the
Kime-No Kata, were
demonstrated next. These were followed by the modern self-defense forms,
the Kodokan Goshin Jutsu. Then came the Ju-No Kata forms of “gentleness.” The five
forms, taken together as the Itsutsu-No Kata,
were forms which Captain Scarlet knew all the judges were scrutinizing with the
most sedulous, or thorough, care.
Ancient forms, the Koshiki-No Kata,
followed. Finally came the Seiryoku Zen'yo
Kokumin Taiiku-No Kata; this was the maximum-efficiency national
physical education kata.
Captain Scarlet never took his eyes
off the judges as they evaluated Harmony Angel. Finally, she and Tanaka bowed to
each other and left the great mat.
“Chan Kwan, will you please turn in
your belt?” the head judge, Noboru Kano, instructed. She complied. Rising, Kano
tied another belt, also black in color, but having Hiragana and Katakana
characters embroidered into it in red, around the waistband of the tunic of her gi. With that, he presented her with a
plaque inscribed in Japanese in both Hiragana and Katakana characters and in
English in the Roman alphabet.
“Chan Akiki Kwan,” Kano went on,
“allow me to congratulate you on your successful advancement to the rank of godan, black belt of the fifth dan. Wear
this belt with honor and dignity for all the days of your life.”
He bowed to salute her.
“And in respect to His Imperial
Majesty the Emperor Matsuhiro,” he added with a smile, “we will retain shiran-kao, which in English means ’keeping
a straight face.’ or ’the face of him who knows nothing,’ in regard to your
service in
Spectrum.”
“Not an easy task, what with all
the television cameras and video cameras around,” she retorted.
But Captain Scarlet only grinned.
He had been prepared for that possibility, having requisitioned one of
Spectrum’s photographic jammers to prevent just that on Colonel White’s
instructions.
“Sayonara,
Captain Scarletsan,” Tanaka said. “Do come again.”
Within the hour, the only clear,
unjammed footage that would ever exist of the demonstration was being shown in
the Cloudbase theater. The Colonel was quite pleased with the performance of
this youngest and smallest of “the daughters he had never had.”
PARKER GABRIEL’S OTHER CAPTAIN SCARLET RELATED WORKS
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