STORY: Jack Heston
ART: Mike
Adamson
This story first appeared in the SYNDICATED IMAGES
Fanzine, Issue 5, September 1985, published by Mike Adamson for ‘The Entropy
Express’, Australia. Text and pictures
taken from the fanzine, with the approval of the author of the story and of
Mr. Adamson. With all
our thanks. |
Paling
in the blue of dawn, blazing white stars sank coldly toward the Mediterranean,
the first rose of chill daylight touching the sky over the Sinai Desert. The
bitter night would soon be replaced by the furnace heat of the Middle East, the
sun burning down out of the cloudless heights.
Lights
dimmed, two vehicles stood nose to tail on the iron-hard ground by the ribbon
of bitumen that ran, ruler straight, across the parched emptiness. One was the
imposing, blue, gracile yet brutish bulk of a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, squat,
powerful, threatening even in immobility; the other was the much smaller,
bright signal-flare red knife-like hull of a Spectrum Patrol Car, her fin and
aerials catching the early sun.
The
SPV's port side armour hatch was run out, the injector seat lowered, and two
men stood by the SPC's hood, heavy parkas zipped against the cold, breath
pluming in the air before them. In the utter silence of the desert they spoke
in whispers, loath to interrupt the tranquillity of the hour.
Adam
Svenson, blond, American, alias Captain Blue, poured steaming coffee into
plastic cups and handed one to his friend, Paul Metcalfe, the unique young
Captain coded Scarlet. Blowing on his fingers, Blue opened a paper sack that
stood on the Patrol Car's hood. "What have we got?" he mused as
Scarlet sipped the brew. A moment later Blue lifted a packet of sandwiches and
frowned. "Stone-ground rye with avocado butter and matured
goat-cheese..." Scarlet made an uncomplimentary
noise and Blue added: "That's an Arabian delicacy, buddy."
"I
passed an Arab up the road," Scarlet returned, avoiding the proffered
packet. "He can have it."
With
a deep laugh Blue shook his head. "We got cheese, peanut butter and
chicken, all on white. I brought them from Cloudbase." Scarlet took the
sandwiches with a playful growl of annoyance and set his cup down on the long,
red hood.
The
two men ate in silence as the stars faded, the highway empty and deserted. Time meant little to those who roamed the
world by air or by road and only hours before Scarlet had been in Egypt, Blue
in Syria. They had met on the Trans-Sinai highway in anticipation of orders
they felt almost certain to come. "So, what do you make of this
affair?" Scarlet said at last.
"It
stinks of Mysteron involvement… Okay, the first time maybe not… The second almost certainly. That was-"
He glanced at his watch- "Nearly two hours ago. It's damned irregular to
receive the threat after the fact… But I don't see any other
explanation."
Simultaneously,
their epaulets flashed to signify incoming signals and their cap mics flipped
down. A moment later the smooth, hard English voice of Colonel White drifted in
the cool air of morning. "Captain
Scarlet, Captain Blue. It is confirmed. We received the Mysteron threat four
minutes ago and the World President has endorsed our immediate intervention.
Proceed at once to Jerusalem, rendezvous with Captain Topaz at the Dyan
Engineering plant. You know the gravity of this situation - speed is vital.
There are thirty million people depending on the shipment and it is now
Spectrum's responsibility to see that they are not… inconvenienced."
As
the Colonel received acknowledgement and signed off, Scarlet dusted his hands
and grinned. "He has a way of making things sound easy, doesn't he?"
He tossed down the rest of the coffee and Blue slid the thermos back into a
deep pocket in his heavy padded jacket.
"He
has…" the American drawled, watching Scarlet's smile. "Let's
go."
Scarlet
slid into the Patrol Car and fired up the big engine, letting its warmth after
the run from Egypt carry it as the demisters cleared the armour-glass windows,
and Blue rode the seat up into the rolling fortress. In another moment the SPV
grunted into exhaust-belching life and the two vehicles swung onto the
black-top, headed north for the capital of Israel, cruising at a steady 120
mph, well above the national limit, both with spinners and sirens making it
amply obvious that the world's security forces were moving on business; and
Spectrum always meant business.
The
Middle East had not changed physically in half a century. The cities were
skyscraper-magnificence, the country remained the unbeatable sands that rolled
wherever the wind sent them. Vast tracts had been environmentally adjusted,
oases had become forests, farms transformed yellow to green; but still the
desert clung to existence, ever ready to reclaim its lost territory, to bury
man's masterworks grain by grain and year by year.
The
two craft were reducing speed to enter the outskirts of Jerusalem in less than
an hour, the sun already hot on their metal skins, and a Police cordon had
cleared the area of Dyan Engineering, the huge construction plant that lay on
the east side of the ancient city. A vast technical organization, Dyan supplied
components and complete assemblies to almost every country in the world and it
was their scientific brainchild that the Mysterons had seized upon to exploit
in their punitive war against mankind.
Two
days ago the Dyan Engineering AGM-91 Hydrojet Generator that supplied power to
southern Burma from its installation at the mouth of the Irrawaddy River had
turbine-tripped, almost an impossibility in the age, and it had been tied down
to sabotage, agents of the sprawling Bereznik Alliance, the shadowy 'Other
Side' of Central Asia, the principal suspects. The AGM-91 had shaken itself to
pieces, would have blown the plant from the map but for the safeguards built
into the system that shut down the titanic machine before the suddenly
asymmetrically rotating turbo-impellers could shatter and cause the whole thing
to detonate. That single unit had run for almost two years without a hitch,
supplying constant, precise power flow to the consumers; and now they were
without power, the nights dark, the days quiet. Looting and the more violent
crimes were already in swing and unless the lights could be turned on once more
the country would tear itself apart, Bereznik insurgents ready to act at once.
Immediately
a replacement unit had left Israel aboard a giant World Army-Air Force
transport jet and despite its fighter escort a Bereznik suicide raid from
fighter bases in the mountains of Afghanistan had destroyed it over the Arabian
Sea. A second unit had been placed aboard a ship at Eilat and had put out that
very night for the Far East; it had not passed from the Gulf of Aden before
Earth's silent, faceless enemies had rubbed their hands with glee and set about
the next move in the colossal chess game of life, death and war. The freighter had blown apart and sunk 200 miles
off South Yemen two hours before dawn touched Israel, and at last the cryptic
threat had roared through the halls of Cloudbase as the headquarters of
Spectrum sailed through the sky. They had sworn to prevent the 'power of the
waters from reaching mankind,' and there was only one possible meaning.
Dyan
Engineering had only one more AGM-91 in stock; it would take them almost two
weeks to complete the next on the assembly line - it was an almost flawless
mechanism, it was in limited production and once installed was supposed to last
almost indefinitely. The secret of the device was that the impellers on the
gigantic main shaft of what looked much like a turbojet engine were not run on
lubricated bearings but were floating in a strong magnetic field and vacuum.
The surfaces never touched so there could be no wear, and even heat could not
transfer from part to part. The turbine could theoretically run infinitely fast
for no wear and maintain zero degrees, and only very little water pressure was
required to spin the unit and begin production of power; this meant that rivers
need no longer be dammed, simply momentarily interrupted in their courses.
Even
here in Israel the factory was within range of Bereznik strike fighters, and
WAAF jets patrolled constantly on combat alert. The Alliance had been spoiling
for some kind of limited war since the breakdown of the peace talks and it
looked as if an excuse had been found. The accusation had been made that the
generator facility in Burma was in fact a missile base with strategic range to
reach the Asian capital, that the free world was simply biding its time.
In
an odd way Scarlet could understand the Other Side's fears. All told, the
nearest analogy he could think of to the AGM-91, packaged for transport, was a
long range ballistic missile.
He
and Blue pulled into the plant yards in the long sunlight of the early hour, a
second SPV already standing guard, Spectrum officers throughout the plant
plying the Mysteron detectors over the employees. It was a rough business to
have to face a man and check him over, sure in the knowledge that if the
detector defined him as an alien duplicate, an enemy agent, he must be shot
dead instantly with a withering discharge from the electron pistol that every
man carried night and day.
The plant was a blaze of neon lighting, the dispatch building an echoing
cavern of steel girders and cranes. Backed into the hangar was a special road
transport trailer, the only one in Eurasia, built specifically to take the
AGM-91. The generator itself was close
to ninety feet in length and weighed almost two hundred tons; in its
shock-absorbent insulative steel shipping container, the trailer was carrying
two hundred and twenty-seven tons on its sixty-odd wheels, the whole
thing hauled by a 2500 horsepower tractor with a two man crew and fuel for
three hundred miles. Scarlet and Blue stood in the cool air of the building as
the overhead handling crane lowered the overwhelming jet-engine shape, with its
security sealed intake, exhaust and external fittings, into the cylindrical
case, twenty feet in diameter, the whole thing nearly thirty feet tall. Then, with the greatest of care, the crane lifted the lid of the
cylinder on its hinges and swung it over, dropping it coffin-like over the
unit. It closed with a dull, resounding thunk and technicians hammered
home the bolts.
"Well,
that's it," Blue said, with a pursing of his lips. "Now all we've got
to do is get the damned thing there. It's only three and a half thousand miles.
As the
crow flies!"
"More than four by road," Scarlet nodded. They had studied the
possible routes on their way to Jerusalem and already Spectrum's forces were
swinging into action all across Asia to ease the passage of the goliath.
"But one way or another -" He checked his watch. "That thing
will be in Burma not much over forty hours from now."
All
was haste, the controlled rush of professionals, and Captain Topaz and his
non-shade partner Sergeant Keating, reported to the Cloudbase men. Topaz
was a tall, sharp faced German, Keating an Englishman of smaller proportions.
There was little time for greetings, a handshake and a hello was all it could
amount to. There would be trouble on the road ahead, they knew it as an obvious
fact, and they each trusted that Spectrum picked its agents with the greatest
discrimination possible. If one wore the shades of Spectrum one was
automatically dependable
"We'll
have Helijet recon over every foot of the road," Scarlet explained by way
of briefing to the drivers, relaying the measures promised by Cloudbase.
"We'll have a clear run, local authorities in the countries ahead are in
co-operation and will have closed the major highways we'll be using at least
half an hour before we pass through. Fuel stops are being arranged, tankers
waiting at various points. As we pass through Iraq, Iran and Pakistan we will
have not only the WAAF combat air patrol but also the Angels. We'll be a
sitting duck on some stretches so we're going to need all the help they can
give us. Speed is crucial, the longer the run takes the greater the danger the
load is in… So keep her nailed to the floorboards. Now, Captain Blue will take
the point with SPV 89, of Lion Command, I will be trailing with the SPC and
will be available, along with local forces, for scout and follow-up duties. It
has to be over in two days’ time. We'll be averaging 150 mph night and day, so
this is going to be a back-breaker." He paused to glare at the gigantic
truck, and then glance at Blue. "Provisioned and fuelled in ten
minutes?"
Blue
nodded. "Lion Command are seeing to the vehicles now. The truck's ready,
checked and serviced an hour ago."
The Dyan technicians cleared away
the crane points and pulled back the service catwalks that clustered about the
container on its multiple sets of wheels, and the Cloudbase men shook hands
once more with the others. "Okay, then, gentlemen, in a little over forty
hours, with luck, we'll be in Burma. But it's a race, with who or what we don't
know but rest assured the Mysterons will make their move. They have sworn to
keep anarchy in Asia. If we're ready, let's get on with it." They
separated and jogged for their respective vehicles, the tractor wheezing into
life when the injector seats had carried the men up into its aeroshell cabin,
and Blue took the SPV onto the cleared roadway outside ahead of it as the
truck's immense length fed out of the building. As Scarlet took up the rear
point behind its battery of warning lights and chevrons he thought: goodbye
Israel. Picking the channel and flipping down his cap mic he said: "Scarlet
to Blue and Topaz. We're in convoy; lead on."
Forty
sweating hours of speed and risks; it gave them a certain savage pride to know
that they of all the world's people, of all the thousands in Spectrum, had been
entrusted with the delivery of the gargantuan device. It also gave them pause
to consider their vocation - did they really need that kind of pressure? Each
of them answered the question to himself in his own way and came at last to the
same conclusion. Of all the things in the world they could be doing they could
think of nothing that could compete with the tasks they performed in Spectrum.
With
his phenomenal powers of regeneration and concentration Scarlet ran alone but
Blue picked up a young Spectrum Sergeant from the Middle East-Africa Regional
Command, code-named 'Lion Command' and Sergeant Haroun would spell Blue during
the gruelling days to come.
The
convoy rumbled through the city of Jerusalem under police escort, threading out
onto the eastward link of the highway that flung itself toward the rising sun
across Jordan to Iraq, and once past the limits of human habitation Blue gave
the word and they sent their engines into the power band. The truck took some
minutes to ease its way up to 150 mph, gear after gear, but once that bulk was rolling
there was very little that could stop it. The SPV and the Patrol Car had a
quarter of their power left to give and could dance about the truck as the
situation required.
A
Spectrum Helijet of Lion Command, Spectrum Iraq, was overhead shortly, Lieutenant
Tangerine reporting all clear on the highway eastward. At that blistering pace
they ate up the miles, desert travellers warned off the road by heavy
logistical communications handled from Cloudbase and the separate local
authorities. Before 09:00 they crossed the border of Iraq and thirty miles
further the first tanker was waiting, Tangerine's SHJ landed nearby. The truck
decelerated from ten miles out and Scarlet put his foot down, going by the
goliath and the SPV to race ahead and check the refuelling point to his own
satisfaction.
He
found a 4000 gallon tanker manned by non-shade officers, their uniforms in
two-tone desert cammo, Lieutenant Tangerine greeting him in person. All were
Arabs with dark skin and black hair, and he took the shade-man's hand, eyes
screwed up against the glare. As a formality he scanned all present with the
hand-held Mysteron detector; it was quite unnecessary - his own peculiar,
built-in reaction to alien reconstructions never failed to alert him should a
Mysteron approach him even distantly, but it was a customary security measure
He did not seriously expect one of these men to have been Mysteronized and
found them quite clean. In moments more the stirring of dust in the hot air
proclaimed the arrival of the convoy and the truck wheezed to a halt with its
aeroshell and huge tires already coated with red desert sand. The Spectrum
vehicles were in similar condition, and Blue declined to debark the blue
weapons-carrier, maintaining radar watch, cannon at the ready. The fuelling crew
set to work and the pumps poured more than 500 gallons aboard the truck then
topped up the SPV's and Patrol Car's long range tanks; finally, from separate
tanks, refuelling the Helijet. At 09:28 exactly the convoy was on the move once
more, making the most of the remaining flat desert as Tangerine flew far ahead.
They would fuel again in Baghdad and from then on the going would be slowed
considerably, the Zagros Mountains rearing across the Iranian frontier from the
Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Persia.
Iron-hard
tires scrabbling bitumen, hot engines singing, they raced on to the east, mile
after sun-scorched mile, the white line a blur connecting the blue distance
with the noses of their craft. The SPV continued to run on point, half a mile
ahead of the truck, radar and detectors combing for hostiles, devastating
war-load ready for momentary release. Scarlet ran a like distance astern,
sensors hunting for signs of pursuit. They were alone but for civilian vehicles
pulled off the road that they passed in extended gray blurs and for the SHJ
that yet prowled in a spiral course, over the endless desert. Fifty thousand feet higher cruised WAAF
fighters under the control of a giant Airborne Warning And Command transport, every
instrument sniffing for Bereznik aggressors, their territory a scant thousand
miles away, well within the range of surface to surface bombardment missiles.
Yet
no attack was conjectured at this point, the chief danger was in southern Iran
and Pakistan which was where they would be in closest proximity to the weapons
of the other side and during that stretch they would be only too grateful for
the close attention of the Angels.
No
threat emerged from the blistering sky and by 11:00 they were met by a Spectrum
tanker outside of Baghdad. It was here at the ancient city that the road met
and joined with the longest road in the world, the Trans-Eurasian Highway. Four
lanes of black bitumen swept down from Turkey after crossing the Bosporus from
Europe. Now the convoy had room to manoeuvre as both the SPV and the truck
needed the better part of two lanes to themselves. But just a hundred miles
from Baghdad the farthest reaches of the Zagros Mountains rose imposingly over
the bleak terrain and in another half hour they were reduced to a sedate pace,
the truck labouring through gradients and turns, Blue's SPV ranging ahead
through the passes and cuttings that had been hewn from the earth as the road
raced about the foot of higher immoveable peaks. The highway curved south now
toward the head of the Persian Gulf and the next hundred miles took almost
three hours. It was a time of fantastic concentration for the truck drivers as
they eased the ungainly monster through the turns, feeling the terrific weight
of the load swinging back and forth on the suspension, and for Scarlet and Blue
as they sought every possible channel of attack. There were literally thousands
of ambush points in the mountains, invaders had known this of old, and the
three-dimensional computer graphics barely compensated for their lack of
knowledge. The tactical analysis computers showed them only so much and when
all was said there remained only their in-born sixth sense, noses that could
smell trouble. Natural suspicion and lack of trust were assets in their
profession and that pertained also to reading the geographical likelihood of
driving break-neck into a lethal trap. It was a thing of great simplicity to
drop ten tons of rock down a mountainside onto passing vehicles and, as
mechanized armies of the past had learned when fighting a guerrilla enemy, only
helicopter gunships made a tangible difference. Tanks could be taken out with
ease, only airborne mobility could yield victory.
Tangerine's
SHJ was replaced by another, piloted by Lieutenant Olive, out of the oil city
of Abadan, their next fuel stop. Time was rolling by at a ridiculous pace and
they prayed for straight road. On some stretches they wound it up to the 100
mph mark for a few minutes at a time, but the mountains were their bane. With
luck they would make up the time in a blistering run across the plains of
northern India tomorrow, but the folds of the Earth between Abadan and Karachi
would take a length of time to negotiate that was just not funny. As they
rolled to the east they passed from zone to zone; already it was half an hour
later in the day than their watches read and they moved them from Mediterranean
Time to Persian Gulf Time.
It
was not far short of 18:00, local time, when they pulled in at the Spectrum facility
at Abadan, to slide out of the roasting vehicles and stretch, drink
high-potency liquid foods and wipe the sweat from themselves. As the crews
laboured to fuel the convoy Scarlet stripped off his jacket and tunic and
tossed them into the SPC, to douse his head and shoulders in water, gargle and
spit into the sand, his retrometabolic ability keeping him on his feet after
eleven hours of race-speed driving over unfamiliar roads, calculating the odds
at every turn. Haroun had spelled Blue three times, Keating spelling Topaz
likewise. They envied Scarlet his stamina but not one of them really wished to
obtain it for themselves; to endure what Scarlet bore with seeming cheer was
inconceivable to one who had not known the cold grip of the Mysterons on his
soul, shaken free of it and come back fighting. Scarlet was unique and they
were prepared to let him be.
Stripped
to the waist, Blue drank deeply of the Dextrose fluid as the hot afternoon
struck gleams from their
shining skins. "Better than 900 miles in 11 hours...
Not bad, not bad. But not good enough." He spat thickly, shaking
his head. “Long way to go. We're losing minutes, gentlemen," he added to
the technical team. Only their terrifically high standard of physical fitness
made it possible; ordinary human beings would have long since been exhausted
and even these would tire soon: but they had that something that set apart the
athlete, the trained thinker and doer, those with the ability to overcome
hardship and see through anything they might begin with a dedication that went
beyond duty. The fight for the freedom of the united world was a vocation, even
more so now that Man was at odds with an alien something that he did not
understand. It would have been easy to give in, to cry quits, to pass the buck
to those with imagined broader shoulders; but they knew with a grim certainty
that Spectrum was it,
all there was and all there was ever going to be standing between a
prosperous and peaceful world and the darkness of barbarism and unfeeling
savagery. There could be no shirking, no matter the task.
The
convoy paused in Abadan for all of twenty minutes, then they were rolling
toward the darkening east. Ahead, the mountains folded and crumpled the earth
all the way to India and the night would be hellish. National forces would be
on the alert but their very proximity could be a danger; the Mysterons were in
no way discriminating regarding their victims: one life was as good as another,
one pair of hands as able as the next when under their remote manipulation.
There
was no point attempting to conceal themselves; the Spectrum convoy rolled with
all lights blazing, Olive's SHJ clattering overhead as World Army gunships
rattled through the passes and Police cleared straight stretches for them to
take best advantage. Without outside assistance it would have taken the better
part of three days to complete the run; even so the initial estimate of forty
hours was looking closer to forty-eight.
The
great highway had been blasted and scoured from the earth and in places bridges
spanned chasms and steep valleys. Sweeping curves, miles long, gave the
sensation of flying as they blazed by at full throttle, superchargers roaring,
the snow-capped heights seeming close at hand, green river valleys shockingly
far below, over the edges of soaring suspension bridges.
The
setting sun found them deep into the mountains, averaging 80 mph, a crawl on
steep turns, full boost on the straights. It was nowhere near quick enough but
all they could do was push to the limits. Technical needs could slow them down
but the Spectrum vehicles were built with ultimate dependability in mind, they
were meant to be driven hard for long hours and their trouble-shooting
computers monitored their conditions ceaselessly. Should spares or other
repairs be required they would be waiting at the next fuelling point, even
replacement vehicles should major faults develop.
Less
than optimum fuel economy could be achieved in the altitude and corner
conditions and they were almost dry when they pulled from a military tanker
outside the Iranian city of Shiraz, after 21:00, the sky darkened to narvik and
the stars beginning their wheel over the snow caps, blue in the light from
other worlds. Ravenously hungry, they took on supplies and mild concentration
enhancing drugs, changing drivers once more. The relief would fight them down
the highway as the relieved slept like a dead man, all but for Scarlet who,
though he also was tired, could summon strengths none would have believed had
they not seen it with their own eyes. At each fuel stop he would snatch twenty
minutes of dreamless sleep, fill his belly with warm protein fluid and be ready
for more. After this escapade he would sleep for twenty hours like the rest of them but while it lasted he neither wanted
nor asked for assistance. He knew he was inhuman but he had had no choice but
to come to terms with it. He was, however, not a freak. For him,
indestructibility was perfectly normal.
Cloudbase's incredible
bulk drifted with magnificent technological grace through the last rays of
sunset, 40,000 feet above the parched wilderness of western Africa, the sparse
cirrus clouds veils of ice against the growing night.
Below
the flight deck in the Amber Room, the Angels' duty lounge, all five of the chief
Spectrum strike pilots were at readiness, three of the knife-sleek white
killers ranked on the launch and recovery deck, the two remaining aircraft
ready to be lifted from the hangars and positioned as soon as the intercept
flight was away. With a last glance at the wall chronometer Symphony, tonight's
Leader, hefted her Perspex helmet and nodded at the injection seats.
"Let's go." With her went Harmony and Destiny, three white-clad aces
who settled into the angular shapes of the seats that nestled in the elevator
chutes, and as they strapped in frosted Plexiglas doors sealed them from the
Amber Room.
Above, in the
last horizontal rays of the sun, connecting tubes extended from the deck to the
under-fuselage hatches of the interceptors and breathing mix pressurized them,
the elevators lifting the seats up through the flight deck and locking them
into the cramped, instrument packed cockpits. Then the rams and tubes were
withdrawing and the pilots ran through the cursory manual checkout of their
devastating mounts.
Karen
Wainwright, thirty years old, red-haired American, alias Symphony, lazed
through the check, eyeing the main computer displays, preloaded from the
Cloudbase cortex, as she slipped on skin-tight black leatherette gloves that
gave her perfect grip in the cold, and reached to her belt to connect the twin
umbilical of her under-uniform G-suit to the seat mechanism and she felt the
slight tightening of her middle as warm water began to fill the suit. Under the
G-loading they could pull in combat it was the only thing that kept a pilot
alive; with their fractionally lower body mass women could stand an extra G or
more over a man's black-out figure, and that alone made them invaluable. She
checked the time display; five minutes to scheduled launch time. Looking over
each shoulder in turn she traded waves with Angels 2 and 3, the French Juliette
Pontoin and the Japanese Chan Kwan respectively, as they likewise eased through
their pre-sortie checks. Each of them had flown the world over and over, even before
their recruitment to Spectrum, and since had sent their hypersonic
death-machines to every corner of the planet, hunting out the Mysteron threat
and reducing it to so much smouldering junk.
The mission was laid out in detail, they had studied
it as they had in the old days when war did not move so fast, when
targets did not disappear. They would fly a standing patrol over the convoy
during the night and early tomorrow, a long time in the air but nothing for
veterans who had marathon solo'd in craft nowhere near as sophisticated.
With launch time two minutes away they fired up the systems and the pumps
hammered the ultra-high octane chemical fuel through to the turbo-ramjet
engines, each aircraft belching a streamer of flame twice its own length
as they ran their single engines to 50% thrust in static test before
reducing to idling, barely a trickle of fuel, enough to keep the
turbines revving. Launching from a platform almost eight miles up in the sky
saved a vast quantity of fuel.
“Angels 1, 2 and 3,“ came the mellow Caribbean voice
of Lieutenant Green from up in the Monitor Room. "Departure time. Your
telemetry indicates full function; Angel Flight clear to depart Cloudbase.
Angel Leader, immediate launch.”
Symphony opened her throttle to 10%
as the catapult delivered and her G-suit flooded as the acceleration hit her
hard between the shoulders, the red runway beacons that outlined the flight
deck marching away against the narvik sky, streaming by on both sides, and then
she was out over the freezing gulf and
running at slow cruise, Cloudbase falling away astern against the orange-gold
band of the horizon.
"Angels 2 and 3, immediate
launch," Green's voice floated to their ears and the two fighters that
stood side by side on the outboard catapults were spurting flame, racing along
the flight deck staggered half a second apart, chasing their Leader eastward.
Their nose struts folded neatly away and the trailing aircraft closed on Angel
1.
"Leader to Cloudbase; Angel
Flight away."
"Confirming clearance. Tactical
check in 15 minutes. Have a good flight; Cloudbase out."
The three fighters swung through a
blazing arc in the night sky and separated to safe cruise formation, a loose
Vic with 200 yard spacing, and locked the course into their navigation computers. This was one of the genuine perks, Karen
Wainwright thought as she nudged the throttles open to 80% and the turbo-ramjet
began to bellow. The power complex, certainly. To ride a savage metal bird
through the sky had always been the consuming, driving obsession of every one
of them, that was why they were here, and the thrill never wore off. Yet it was tempered with other, less dynamic
pleasures. It took less than three
minutes for the razor-like machines to slash their way to Mach 4 and then the
throttles were balanced to maintain that speed, a free ride obtained from the
tail winglets and the shockwave-configuration anhedral wings. They cruised at 60,000 feet through a
blue-black sky, their engine manifolds
glowing hotter than 1200 degrees shining in the blackness, their hulls
shrugging aside the temperatures of furnaces, their metals and alloys so tough
a welding torch could not even blur the finish.
Yet in the cockpits they each sat in a bubble of environment, a cocoon
of cool, stable air, and watched the world flow by, clouds over the desert
gleaming blue in the light of the summer constellations. From such altitudes one could see thousands
of square miles, the horizon was an incredible distance away and stars shone
above the rim of the world at an angle that posed the illusion that one floated
amongst them. This was the other perk, one that those who had never
flown could not properly appreciate. Up
here was tranquillity, peace, the majesty of science in balance with the nature
it had been created to understand and dominate.
But, on nights like this as they
raced with consummate ease through the star-shot heights, the Angels could
never resist glancing up to Polaris and searching through the great
multicoloured stars that were draped about the bowl of night and seeking out
the unobtrusive red point that was the planet Mars. Nothing compared to the
glories of Venus, Saturn or Jupiter, yet it held their fascination because of
its dark secrets. Up there in the craggy mountains and endless rolling plains
of orange dust, where Rock Snakes slept away the millennia, the chemical fire in their bellies their
shield against the cold of deep space, there
was a plateau ringed with sway-backed hills, and on that depressed plain
stood a city, ancient and alone, the only remainder of a race unimaginable to man, a race that had come
and gone, leaving only perfect mechanization and the tools of retribution to
guard a corner of their universe, they knew of man and made no overtures, but
on that terrible day that man had learned of them, and made the wrong overtures, the worst possible in
fact… it had all begun. That was three years ago and still Mars slept on below
the ancient stars, swinging in its orbit, devoid of intelligent life but
permeated with the awesome minds of those who had once walked the red sands and
who now warred against mankind. And men who knew lamented the wearisome truth
because the Mysterons had right on their side.
But not necessarily might. They were strong on their world,
unapproachable in the sky, but here on Earth Spectrum fought for the lives of
men who as yet did not even know what the war was all about. They could never be told the whole truth; mass hysteria, suicide and anarchy
would follow release of such news and every member of Spectrum was sworn to
total secrecy. But Spectrum held the
aliens at stalemate and that was all that really mattered.
Sixty-five minutes after leaving Cloudbase the Angels had decelerated to
Mach 1 and fallen in free-fall loops to connect with a WAAF strategic tanker
over southern Egypt, drawing aboard full internal fuel loads before breaking
free and climbing to economical thrust altitude. They would complete the last
1000 miles to southern Iran at the speed of sound; there was little hurry as,
should a threat materialise even at this early moment, they could be over the
convoy in 20 minutes.
East of Shiraz the Trans-Eurasian threaded through the passes and swept
for long stretches across massive valleys, the road wide and clear and
appreciably straight. The convoy wound it up to maximum boost, just under 160
mph for the truck, and they started to make up some lost time. To the tired men
it seemed as if things were going right at last, their joy seeing the
indicators above the 100 mph mark. They met a Spectrum tanker 300 miles east of
Shiraz, moving their watches forward once more, at a local time of 00:15.
Already they were an hour ahead of Israel and they still had so very far to go.
It seemed it was taking forever to get through the mountainous reaches of
Persia and they constantly expected to hear the jets overhead crackle out the
warning of a new Bereznik offensive and go swirling into the attack. Blue and
Haroun had rehearsed many times the AA defence of the convoy with the SPV
cannon, adapting the text-book strategies to suit the terrain through which
they passed.
Speed was everything. Speed and
more speed. Only with the AGM-91
installed in Burma could they rest easy, and the minutes ticked by without
care. Mile after mile, straight after straight, bend after bend. The road
unfolded to the horizon with each crest, dancing away before them like a
miracle. It would have been easy to become mesmerized, to have drifted away
into boredom, complacency or sleep; but when every curve could hold a roadblock,
every peak a sniper there was always the spectre of close death riding with
them, quite apart from the danger of driving so far so fast. The craft were, to
a certain extent, self-steering, avoiding obstacles by high-frequency radar,
the truck having computers that monitored the G-stress and load-shift through
turns, pulling the throttle back to control it should the strains go into the
red. The tolerances, however, were fantastic and full speed could be
maintained through the longer curves.
To stay sharp, awake and alert the Spectrum men talked
via radio, swapping reports, stories, outrageous jokes; anything that would
ease the strain. It would have been possible for the regional command
structures to supply fresh crews every so many hundred miles but the more
personnel involved the higher the risk went of Mysteron intervention. Every
fuel stop was an exercise in security,
the SPV usually covering Scarlet as he checked them over. Yet the fact remained
that Paul Metcalfe would have felt that sickening moment of falling, that
breakout of sweat if there had been an enemy agent present. It was infallible,
an echo, a reaction between a replicant and his own sensitized body. At last it
became a cursory formality to wave the detector over the crews as he looked forward
to a few more minutes’ sleep. Lieutenant Olive was still with them, his SHJ
fuelled for the umpteenth time continuing its tireless search sweep of every
foot of highway ahead, and the shade-man's copilot handled the craft as Olive
slept at his side under the dome canopy.
It
was 00:30 or just after when Symphony called down to the convoy with greetings
from the sky. Scarlet, Blue, Topaz and Olive managed a heart-felt hello, a
measure of worry lifting from their minds. The Angel Interceptor was a development
of the Viper jet, it was better in all departments, and more than a match for
almost any aircraft in the world. With Angels overhead there was little that
could get through to attack them; even bombardment rockets could be destroyed
in flight by missile or cannon fire. Tankers would keep the Spectrum fighters
fuelled as they orbited in a lazy, spiralling racetrack pattern far up in the
cloudless Asian night, a thousand feet higher than the World Army-Air Force
jets flying in relays from ground bases. It was a terrifically expensive
exercise to keep combat jets on alert and airborne for so long but Unity City
was treating the whole thing as a rehearsal for war, indeed the Asian theatre
was on war alert, had been since the sabotage of Burma's power. If the Other
Side was really spoiling then sooner or later the world must accommodate
them. The peacetalks had been going well and it was conjectured that it was in
fact the maniacally driven Lord Titan of the undersea realms who had spurred
the breakdown in relations. If the six dry-earth states who had refused joint
treaties with the rest of the world were to assume friendly relations it would
put Titanica and her three offshoot sister colonies out on a limb, without even
cursory support from ideologically opposed humans. Such was a fair assumption.
Titan did not want peace with Man,
his was as much a punitive war as was that of the Mysterons and it would be a
betrayal of his own ideals and convictions for him to court peace. With this in
mind the WASPs had also gone on full alert and the spectre of a Pacific
exchange loomed heavily in the World Senate.
For
the hours it would take to get the Hydrojet generator to Burma and install it,
and the days that would follow, the world balanced uncertainly on the brink of
wildfire conflict, the endless sniping and probing of opposing sides
threatening to boil over into bare-fisted anger. The world could not survive a
nuclear exchange; already far too many nuclear devices had been detonated on
Earth and any such war was almost certain to be conventional in nature. Neither
side wanted to inherit in victory a useless, dead world, Titan least of all,
and the tightrope walked by the restless brooding powers who advocated war was
the thinnest, slackest of all.
But
to the Spectrum men in the convoy that sped on through that Asian night such
thoughts were distant. For them there was only the road, the load and the
destination.
Two
hours before dawn they fuelled from a tanker at the eastern end of the valley
of the Haliri River where the road ran straight and fast and they could pull
full boost, and they moved it along quickly, pausing no more than twelve
minutes this time. The danger point was arriving and they could almost taste
the threat that hung in the air. From then on the Angels orbited closely,
pulling a combat fuel load every thirty minutes from the tankers that flew in
relays.
Bereznik
fighter bases in the mountains of Afghanistan were the biggest danger and the
WAAF control transport scanned hard for interdiction; and finally, with the
convoy just 100 miles from the border of Pakistan, they found that for which
they searched so thoroughly. The Airborne Warning controllers called out the
sighting, sending fighters peeling northward in arcs of death, flame-belching
afterburners racing like meteors through the night. Three flights were
approaching, staggered at altitudes of 70,000, 30,000 and almost zero feet,
each flight covering for the one below it. This was real war, not guerrilla
tactics, not sniping, not the terror of The Bomb; this was pure, hypersonic
death, the loving embrace of fighters, dancing like courting mantis. They
needed each other; without the enemy neither had reason to exist: but, like
unstable chemicals, once in close proximity to one another, there were often
violent reactions resulting in the dissolution of one or both.
"Angel
Leader to Air Force Combat Control," Symphony called, voice level but
hinting at the excitement she held tightly in check. "That's our convoy
down there. I'd appreciate taking the low group." The answer came back
positive and she rolled the fighter over on its back, the others following a
second later. In freefall the three girls let the planes plunge Earthward,
their computers showing them in simulation the action commencing a hundred
miles away where the Bereznik high group met the first WAAF missiles. At once
the night was lit with baleful red flares and the colossal power of shredding
engines, blowing fuel and the snap and roar of cannon and rocket.
The
mid group engaged next, leading the fighters down into the tangle of brutal
peaks that marched endlessly across the frontier and again the war hammers
thundered on the sky. Minutes passed on dragging legs and Symphony passed on
the data to the convoy. "Captain Blue, stand by for Anti-Aircraft defence,
Lieutenant Olive, standby inboard gun for AA assistance. We have four marks
contour-riding and they should be in your area in just over five minutes."
The
Angels drifted at low thrust 10,000 feet above the peaks, cold, dim, the
Bereznik machines slipping through gorges and chasms, following the courses of
rivers to gain an unimpeded run against the convoy. These, unlike the others
that hacked and brawled in the icy heavens, were bombed up for strike duties, wings
laden with Aerial Rocket Artillery, freefall bombs and cylinders of super
napalm. With a heavy warload they were slow and unmaneuverable, the fuel
penalty in achieving speed putting high supersonic dash out of the question.
"Gently,"
Symphony whispered. "They can eject that load and turn fighter on us in
half a second. If we play this right we can take them all in one pass. They'll
be on the convoy in one minute. so it's now or never. As they turn into the
next valley ... Attack!" Throttles ramming open, missile systems
engaged, the three white death machines hurtled down at a steep angle, G-force
squeezing the pilots until the veins stood out in their temples and they gasped
for breath and then secure radar-locks triggered the release and a pair of rounds
blasted from their nose blisters in lances of flame and they were pulling up
over the enemy aircraft, wheeling at Mach 1 across the face of the mountains.
Behind
them two of the Bereznik strike fighters blew apart with a roar that shook snow
from the peaks and lit the valleys like day, an evil pall of eye-blinding
chemical flame rushing across the sky. One aircraft ejected its warload and
engaged afterburners, rising like a thunderbolt for the Spectrum machines as
the last pushed fanatically on for its objective.
Missiles
snaked from its wingroots and Harmony sent her plane into a three dimensional
roll, out-turning the rounds as Destiny released chaff - aluminium foil to
blind the enemy radar - from within her airbrakes, every spoiler open and
throttle shut, to slide back and turn inside the other aircraft's radius; she
slipped into the cone of attack and her turbo-ramjet thundered with exquisite
power, driving her in fantastic spiralling turns after the enemy over the
mountains until she thumbed the electron gun and the lightning bolt leaped
across the sky to crackle the length of the other plane, shorting system after
system, wiping the computers with electromagnetic pulse, stalling the engine.
The Bereznik pilot could not even eject and the girl casually guided a missile
dead centre into the engine, then rolled her wings brazenly by the vivid
explosion.
Before
Angels 2 and 3 had taken up the challenge Symphony had sent her mount searing
after the last attacker. The first rays of dawn were reaching rosy fingers out
of the east, the snow caps glowing with dim fire. The other aircraft leapt from
side to side, shaking and shuddering with the forces the pilot loaded onto it,
riding the contours of the stone hills in an insane bid to land his ordnance on
the Spectrum convoy.
A
matter of a few miles ahead the truck ran with all speed for the mouth of a
gorge through which the road passed and Blue's SPV stood atop a shoulder by the
road, radar tracking, watching for the target, the cannon ready to spew AA
rockets skyward. The SPV itself was an almost untouchable fortress but the
truck and the SPC could disappear in even the lightest of the death the enemy
could rain down at them. The 1000 pound
bombs could pick up the SPV and toss it about like a ball. A hit…
The red-haired fighter pilot bit her lip
in concentration as she wound the Angel in after the Bereznik, cursing softly
as chaff fluttered in clouds that shimmered in the fragile light of pre-dawn, hanging tight to the flaming
engine manifold of the enemy as it raced in like a malevolent bird of prey, its
hideous weapons clutched to its belly like monstrous offspring. By comparison
the Angel had the beauty of the sword of justice, screaming in on target like
the unerring hand of God the unquenchable pursuer.
The Bereznik pilot knew his life was over
as he burst into the last valley and
the road wound like a silver snail track by the feet of the Eternal Hills, and he keyed his weapons release. Just a few more seconds, just a few
instants in the scheme of things... The truck, labouring like a cylindrical toy
for the gorge to the east seemed fragile, impossibly tiny and ineffectual and
the jet stooped like a hawk onto a rabbit.
With an almost indescribable
explosion Symphony’s missiles seared home against the other and the fuel,
missiles, rockets, bombs and napalm ripped in an outpouring of chemical fury
that filled the sky over the road, a ballooning gush of fire that raced,
streaming, through the peacock blue and rose between the peaks, and a
thunderclap that re-echoed like the voice of the Djin, bellowing back and forth
from peak to peak.
Scarlet's and Blue's hoarse
cheers died on their lips as Symphony shot through the oily cloud of smoke that
capped the blast, going into a climb, and whirling slivers of wreckage slammed
like flack into her underside. At once the engine faltered and stalled, then
refired, trailing a long streamer of yellow flame from the afterburner
manifold.
"Mayday, mayday, hit and going in!" she called, voice ready to
crack with strain but her sheer guts and professionalism guiding her hands as
she dragged the stick back and fought the nose up, her residual momentum enough
to send her up into the new daylight, 1000, 2000, 3000 feet in a lazy loop.
“Scarlet or Olive, I'm coming down in this valley, try to pick me up if you
can." Up near the height of the peaks the ailing, flame-gushing
aircraft rolled over at the top of the
loop. "Jettisoning canopy." She closed the release down by her left
hip and with a crackle of pyros the armour-glass bubble lifted and was torn
away by the windstream. “Ejecting now." She drew the faceshield bar down
over her helmet, eyes closed against the wind. The last thing she saw was the
instrument panel littered with red, the word EJECT flashing on the main
CRT, the mountains upside down before her, the dim blue sky below her, then with a deafening roar the
ejection charge fired the seat out of the dying aircraft and she was blasted
through space, the cold wind flapping at her uniform and slapping her
limbs with immaterial hands. Then came
the instant of freefall as the burn ended and the drogue charge fired, towing
out the main silk, and she decelerated sickeningly, coming upright, still
strapped safely in the seat, to ride it to the Earth below. She raised the faceshield
with the madness of the pro to catch the final instants of her aircraft as,
towing a comet tail of fire, it plunged nose-first into the face of a crag and
was gone in a rumbling orange blast.
Down in the thick shadows of the valley floor the
truck had pulled to a halt at the gorge mouth and the Spectrum men stood to
watch dazedly the ball of tangled, melting wreckage that had been an Angel as
it tumbled, rolling down the face of the cliffs, pouring an unending geyser of
bright flame.
Blue ran the armour ram out from the flank of the
SPV and jumped the last few feet to the stony ground as Scarlet pulled up,
window open, and they stared at the last vestiges of the initial explosion, its
pall of greasy smoke now a smudge against the blue of dawn. Then Blue flung up
an arm. "There!" He pointed up against the now glowing face of a
distant peak and Scarlet made out the red dot of the Spectrum parachute. He
took up binoculars for a moment to study the object beneath the silk then
nodded his satisfaction.
“The wind will bring her this
way. It’s too early for thermals. I'll
go get her -" But Blue was staring back up the valley at something closer
at hand than the descending Angel. "What?"
The
blond man pointed slowly. "What is that?"
A deathly hand grabbed Scarlet's heart as he swung the glasses and
focussed on the object that had caught Blue's eye and he drew a sharp
breath. A white parachute array was
tossed in the morning breeze a half mile away, a seat unit on its side, the
occupant hanging in the straps. "My God, the Bereznik pilot..."
"I didn't see him eject," Blue growled softly. "There was
no time for it, no time for anything... Do you think..?"
"I do indeed think," Scarlet returned just as quietly. At that
moment the valley began to reverberate to the sound of turboshafts as Olive's
Helijet appeared over the shoulder of a hill and another pair of SHJs winged in
from the gorge.
"Captain Amber of Tiger Command," came the thick Indian voice.
"You're on our doorstep, we thought we would come on ahead and give a
hand. Is there anything we can do for you?"
Scarlet dropped his cap mic. "Glad to hear from you, Tiger Command.
There is a little job… Half way up the valley there's an ejected Bereznik pilot
- we have reason to believe he may be a Mysteron agent. We'd be obliged if you
would do the honors."
"A pleasure, Captains." The two aircraft passed overhead and
settled to the earth near the billowing 'chute as Scarlet refired his roasting
engine and sent the Patrol Car racing back westward. Symphony was deep into the
blue shadows and swinging earthward, the breeze keeping her well clear of the
crags. She would land within a thousand yards of the road and he took the car
over the broken ground, the suspension adjusted, the tyre pressure
automatically increased. He maintained open loop to listen in on Amber's voice
channel as he pulled to a halt and slid out.
The Angel came to earth with a gentle thump, guiding the 'chute with the
bleed slats and setting the seat down almost at Scarlet's feet. As the canopy
collapsed and rolled in the breeze she released the harness and G-suit
umbilicals and stepped out of the only surviving part of her aircraft, to stand
grinning at Scarlet. "What'll the taxpayers say?" She laughed
finally. "That's three I've lost."
"Symphony, the enemy pilot," Scarlet said urgently. "Did
you see him eject?"
"No way," She shook her head as she eased off the
plexiglass dome. "Gone in a flash."
Scarlet touched his mic as he swung round to look back at the pair of
landed helos. “Captain Amber, Symphony confirms negative ejection. That man is
definitely a Mysteron."
Amber was playing it close to his chest. He and his co-pilot were
advancing warily on the Slavic pilot, the crew of the other SHJ, Lieutenant
Emerald and his co, boxing him in on the other side. They each carried electron
pistols and Emerald held the Mysteron detector. The Bereznik shouted incoherently in his own tongue,
hands on his head, trembling with a very real fear, and Scarlet and Symphony
were pulling in by the first SHJ before Amber made any kind of move. As they
strode up Scarlet whispered: "Blue, get in the seat, get your finger on
the trigger. Standby, I don't know what
for ... Just that gut feeling."
Emerald focussed the electronics package carefully, tuning the
reception, and shook his head in the growing light. "I'm sorry, sir.
Detector reads negative. This man is not a duplicate.”
The words galvanised Symphony and
she squeezed Scarlet's hand hard, her other hand going to the electron gun that
rode her left hip, complementing the conventional weapon to the right. Scarlet
slacked his own beam weapon unobtrusively as he stepped up beside Amber, whom
he now saw was a big Sikh, heavily bearded, turban wound in the colour of his
uniform, as were most of his men. Abruptly a wave of hot nausea hit Scarlet and
he clutched at the white-uniformed woman as his knees threatened to betray him,
the bile rising in his throat, and as his vision cleared he hissed: "Liar!"
The gun leapt into his fist and flamed brilliantly, the savage arc connecting
with the Slavonic pilot who screamed thinly and jerked in the halo of blue
sparks that earthed all about him. A moment later the man lay in a heap, fumes
pouring from his shrivelling form, whole parts of him vaporizing and blowing
away.
Regaining
his composure, Scarlet stabbed a finger at Emerald. "Get that thing fixed!" He turned a wearied eye on Amber.
"Tiger Command is better than this. What happened?" There was no
answer, and he knew it. Amber could but spread his hands and frown. "Okay,
okay." He strode over to the smoking remains and eyed them distastefully.
"We’re losing minutes, gentleman. Let’s go." Yet even as he said it
he felt that knot of apprehension in his guts that told him
watch out! The
Deceivers are still with you!
Without
grumbling the men turned back for their respective machines and Amber
approached Symphony, indicating his SHJ. "There is a Passenger Jet at
Karachi Airport. Could Tiger Command offer you a lift back to Cloudbase,
ma’am?"
Something
unspoken, something in Scarlet's tense stance, the way he seemed like a coiled
spring aching for release, held her acceptance. "Ah... No thanks, Captain. I think I'll ride with
the convoy a way.
We pass Karachi ...
I may take you up then."
With
a whine of turboshafts Emerald's Helijet started up and, blowing dust, heaved
into the air, to swing about over their heads and move for the stationary truck
and as Scarlet returned to the others the falling hit him again, strong,
sickening, and Symphony and Amber caught him. He fought his head clear and
forced his eyes to focus; suddenly, in his mind's clear vision, he could see
how the trap was working. "Blue!" he gasped, fighting for breath.
"Blue, the SHJ, knock it down, knock it down! Hurry!"
With
a rolling crash the AA rockets spewed from the smooth-bore gun that jutted from
the hatch in the SPV's foreplate and the Helijet blew apart in one more awful
detonation like all the others, the burning bits raining to the rocks of the
valley floor.
"Keep
your eye on the debris," Scarlet added. "We don't need any duplicates
behind our backs."
"How
did you know?" Amber asked stonily. "They were two of my best men you
ordered shot down. How?"
"I
know when Mysterons are around," Scarlet said distantly. “As I'm
sure you know. I was one, once... That gives me a kind of advantage, wouldn't
you agree?" He shortened his temper somewhat. "Emerald was a Mysteron
as well! That was why he gave a negative reading, there was nothing wrong with
the detector. Two seconds more and he would have got the generator and it would
have all been for nothing. The hell in Burma would have been two weeks away
from over, not a day."
Amber
could not fault the logic but like all men touched harshly by the war he was
withdrawn, quiet. "Very well, Captain. I'll be overhead from now on all
the way to the river facility. As you say, time is wasting."
Scarlet
drove back up the valley to where Blue, Topaz and their co-drivers waited as
Olive and Amber took to the air once more, the Lion Command officer almost at
his turn-back point. Once they crossed into Pakistan they were in the territory
of Tiger Command and would be for the remainder of the journey.
With
a shrieking rumble of jets Harmony and Destiny passed over the valley, the sun
striking flashes from their sharp, white hulls and Symphony called up to them,
setting their fears for her safety at rest, then calling Cloudbase to check
with Colonel White, informing him of her decision to cadge a lift as Scarlet's
co-driver from here on, pending possible developments. The Colonel was not
overly pleased having one of his best, irreplaceable pilots playing road games
in the mountains of Asia but as Scarlet seconded her request he had more faith
in his people's judgement than to recall her out of hand.
As
Topaz and his co fired up the truck the Angel shook hands with Blue with a
spark of warmth the others could not help noticing, and then she was unzipping
her uniform to reach under her tunic and tear apart the Velcro that closed her
G-suit. She let herself out with a grunt of relief and re-zipped her uniform.
"I've been known to go dizzy," she added with a small smile.
"So
have the men around," Scarlet said with a wink at the girl and a nod at
Blue. "Let's go."
When
Symphony slid into the Patrol Car she found the wheel before her and the red-clad
man with the passenger seat right
back. ''The Mysterons rarely ever pull
two jokes in a row. I've had two hours sleep in the last thirty... She's all
yours."
"Thanks
a million," the girl drawled, starting the big engine and guiding the
blood-red craft onto the highway, accelerating to catch the truck that was a
half mile ahead, Blue and Haroun already back on point.
Scarlet stirred four
hours later. Symphony yet guided the heavy car with ease, enjoying the power of
a beast that could lay rubber up to 200 mph. As the retrometabolic process
brought the man out of his sleep of regeneration she grinned broadly. "For
you that must have been the sleep of the dead. You didn't stir through the last
fuel stop. We're only fifty miles west of Karachi. Another hundred and we'll be
on the plains and really cooking... There's a flask of protein broth in the
chest." The man fell on the hot drink greedily and shook his head clear
with a little effort. "Status is: all quiet. We're on schedule or so Adam
tells me. The truck's behaving itself...
Word from Cloudbase is that Burma is burning. The looting and vandalism,
the killing, raping and out-and-out rebellion are incredible. There's a curfew in Rangoon and World Army
troops are moving into the north near the China-India border. It looks like
there's an insurgent force from Over The Line - mixed troops, Tong Vietkin and
Kwang Xaviar, probably led by Bereznik advisers Battalion strength." She
shook her head slowly. "Yanky Junglecats are on alert with the World Army
and our own Black Lightning 'cats are gearing up for one hell of a fight. If
the Mysterons start anything in the middle of that shindig we can kiss it
goodbye 'cause we won't stand a chance."
"They
don't do that," Scarlet said thinly. "They have never interfered with
man's own wars, they have never attempted to destabilize our own power blocks.
No, if this is war then it's the war Spectrum was created to fight instead of
indulging in scientific joyrides to Mars. It's just the inevitable, catching up
with us. And after the Mysterons I think the Bereznik Alliance won't have a
great deal up its sleeve that can surprise us any more.”
Neither
did his attitude surprise her; it was in an odd way how she felt herself. After
an alien foe who could control matter, after matching wits and guts with such a
thing, a merely human adversary seemed somehow less threatening.
Scarlet
drifted back into exhausted sleep as they raced for Karachi, oblivious but
cynically expecting of the world's troubles. They had a long way to go and time
was growing shorter all the while; and the fire and pillage tearing Burma to
pieces could only be alleviated by the restoration of full power to the grid.
Only when the lights went on could the hell be stopped.
He
slept through the next fuel stop also and Symphony let him be; there was plenty
of muscle with the SPV to meet a threat in the time it would take her to wake
him and she was confident that he would snap to wakefulness in the face of
danger with amazing speed.
The
Trans-Eurasian barrelled out straight as an arrow toward the Great Indian
Desert that straddled the North West Frontier from the Arabian Sea all the way
to Delhi, and with the Helijets rattling overhead and WAAF jets still circling
in the stratosphere, the Spectrum convoy, fuelled in Karachi, ran at 160 mph,
sirens and spinners braying their frantic message as they used up two lanes of
the road, civilian cars and trucks pulling over in fear of the hurtling
goliaths. Now was the time for them to make up the lost minutes and hours and
they intended to cut the arrival time back if possible.
When
Scarlet woke it was 11:00 local time and they were winding up the speed through
long, built-up turns as the highway snaked through the dry Aravalli Ranges.
These were about the last mountains to cross, as the road now curved in a
thousand mile arc north of the Vindhya Mountains across the northern plains
before following the course of the Ganges toward Bangladesh. As soon as his
head cleared he knew something was wrong.
"I don't know for sure," Symphony said, eyes red with
concentration. "It happened about an hour ago. Something began to wear in
the rear end - I think the dif has just
about had it. We could have taken a rock that cracked a seal or something. We
can barely keep up. When we get out of these mountains they're going to start
leaving us. Rear end temp is sky high and I think the fuel pump acting up
too."
"Time for a change of wheels," Scarlet said, rubbing his eyes.
"I think maybe something a little tougher just for good measure..."
He put through the signal and when his cap mic had dropped he addressed
Cloudbase. "Experiencing mechanical difficulties, requesting vehicle
replacement. SPV if possible; our position is -" He read off a string of
coordinates and a moment later Green's mellow voice came across the world to
him.
"One moment, please..." A few seconds of silence.
"Vehicle replacement; SPV available, SPV #136, collect from Tiger Command, Spectrum India. If you can make it another fifty miles or so it can
be waiting for you, fuelled and prepped, at the highway juncture to Udaipur.
Rendezvous with Sergeant Mauve."
"
S.I.G., Cloudbase." Scarlet smiled as he cut off transmission. "I
think somebody up there likes us."
They
had fallen some miles behind the convoy, which had not slowed to accommodate
them, by the time they were on the flat stretch east of the ranges, and the SPC
was ailing badly, overheating and pouring smoke from the exhausts, and they
pulled in by the gleaming, savage shape of a fresh SPV. They looked the worse for wear, tired,
sweat-soaked, when they handed over the other craft to the young Sergeant, and
Symphony caught up her helmet as she tossed Scarlet the keys. "You get to
drive now, chief," she sang as they waved to Mauve and jogged for the
armoured monster.
The
portside ram was out and he dropped into the seat, closing the four-point
racing harness, then with a sly grin slapped his knee. There was no other way
up short of a ladder so the Angel relented and climbed onto his lap. "Hang
on nice and tight,” the indestructible one chuckled as he hit the switch and
slipped an arm around her waist, the girl putting her arms around his neck.
"We have to stop meeting like this, cherie."
“Don't
get any funny ideas," the girl laughed as she disentangled herself from
him and took her own seat before the opposite control array, when the slab
armour had slid flush with the hull, and Scarlet started her with a roar from
the unbelievably powerful engine.
Smiling
over at her Scarlet swung the craft onto the road and they were pressed forward
in the harnesses by the acceleration, the bleak terrain cut by the four-lane
blacktop racing at them on the panoramic screens. "Scarlet? Paul, old
buddy, d'ye hear me out there?" Blue's voice was strained with fatigue but
the fire was still there. "You rolling or what?"
“Just
picked up a blue fortress, pal; we're coming like the wind. Anyway, never mind
the CB jargon." His tone changed from gruff and regulation issue to a very
bad Georgia accent that scraped the girl's nerves. "Jus' give me y'
20."
The request-for-location came through with a resounding laugh.
"About 30 miles ahead of you."
"Not
for long, my boy, not for long."
Far away on Cloudbase Green looked at Colonel White and the Old Man
smiled with a shake of his silver head. Radio procedure had gone out of the
window but these men had been on the road now for twenty-nine hours and had a
long way still to go; they were allowed any leeway that would ease the trip and
a blind eye turned to such slips of regulation cost little. Personally, White
would not have cared if they had conversed in pig Latin provided they got the
job done right the first time,
As good as his word, Scarlet made up the miles in minutes and the truck
now had a Pursuit Vehicle fore and aft. On that incredible run across the
shimmering plains of crowded, ancient India they raced about the truck with the
cheek of gargantuan power, practising AA and ground defence, refuelling without
fail every 295 miles. Tiger Command's logistical support was second to none.
Yet, as the day wore on in its heat and dust and they flew like demons
across the vast land, Symphony could tell that something was gnawing at
Scarlet. He was keeping it very tightly under control but it was threatening to
get the better of him. At last the girl said quietly: "Paul, are you going
to let it out or wait 'til you explode?”
“It’s that obvious, huh?" At her nod he went on: "Oh, hell…
Look, Karen, I think… I think I may have made a mistake, a bad one. A killer.
It only occurred to me a few hours back what was bothering me about the
incident back in Iran. It was not cut-and-dried by any means. Okay, the
Bereznik pilot was a Mysteron, there was no question about it. But the second
time the sickness hit me…" He chewed his lip in open worry. "Look,
Emerald had just taken off and was passing over us, I assumed he was the
Mysteron agent because of the negative detector reading."
"But?" The girl pushed gently. "What's bothering
you?"
"Maybe he was innocent; maybe the detector was faulty,
though it's a long shot. I could have ordered him shot down for nothing.
You see, I got sick as I walked past Amber." He shook his head in
disgust.
"Oh." The Angel could see the point and she licked her lips.
“That would mean that Emerald's and his Co's remains are in the wreckage and
that the real agent was left to walk away untouched. But he's up there in the
sky now - he could have attacked us at any time without the rousing of any
suspicions until it was too late.”
"He could. Or he could play the game through 'til the generator is
installed and we’ve all gone home, then sabotage it again.”
The scenario was a bad one and they knew once suspicions were held they
could only confront him, detector in hand, gun at the ready. It would be a bad
day for Spectrum if an enemy agent was free in the infrastructure, doing as he
pleased, and while there was a flicker of doubt they must follow it to whatever
conclusion occurred.
It
looked as if they would get a smooth ride but they knew it was too good to
last. It was just after midnight, local time, with just 500 miles to go, as
they passed through the jungle hills of Misoram, west of the Burma border, that
trouble struck with the force of a demolition hammer. After the endless, screaming
run down the plains to Bangladesh, then back into India at Assam and south
toward Burma, they had become concreted in the routine; and when the hills
leapt suddenly into lurid flame they were taken off guard.
The
insurgent forces were here and in a matter of moments three Tiger Command SHJ
gunships were pounding home Aerial Rocket Artillery and depleted uranium cannon
fire. Bloody explosions lit the jungle slopes as the convoy slowed, rockets
hissing through the night to crash dirt from the roadsides and thunder against
the SPV armour.
"Don't
stop, don't stop," Blue roared, nailing the accelerator and triggering a
terrific volley from the cannon that scythed down trees and flung bolts of
molten explosive through the wet, green reaches. "Amber, give us close
stuff. A cannon pass against the verges."
At
the request Scarlet's mouth tightened. "I hope I'm wrong," he mouthed
to Symphony, and then Amber's gunship was dipping over the trees, lines of red
and white tracer stabbing from the rotary cannon in the belly turret, a
crackling line of explosions tearing through the forest as the IR seekers
pointed out gun and rocket positions and the Sikh poured it in, hot and fast.
"All he has to do is slip his aim a few degrees…"
All
about the battle raged as World Army troops were inserted by helo and a tank
rumbled from a concealed blind. "They could have warned us we were driving
into an ambush," Symphony cursed, hanging on for her life as the SPV
shuddered, ringing like an awesome bell as an anti-tank round ricocheted from
the flank and went in mid air.
"Maybe
they didn't know it was a trap for sure and thought we had enough on our
minds," Scarlet said thickly. "That would be bloody typical."
The girl was handling the cannon for him and she sent the SPV's arsenal thundering
home in the forest all about as they raced on. The truck had taken a few hits
and rubber flapped messily here and there, the steel container smeared and
smoking. If they wrecked the AGM-91 it was all for nothing.
Speed,
as ever, was one of their greatest assets and Amber calculated that they would
be out of the ambush stretch in just under two miles. They went for it full
boost as flame raged over the forest and the loop crackled and hissed with the
battle rhetoric. It seemed that the two sides had been moving cautiously about
each other for some time, feinting, avoiding contact, and the arrival of the
convoy was the trigger that abandoned discretion. But both the World Army and
Spectrum were ready and their military overkill was all prepared, no force too
great to employ.
With
a shivering crash massive trees were blasted from the earth to fall in a
hopeless confusion across the road 1000 yards ahead of the racing convoy and
Blue gritted his teeth as he stabbed the trigger to send HE rounds scything through
the night dead centre on the great trunk that blocked the two-lane. In a ball
of dark flame the wood broke into uncountable splinters, the foliage roaring
into a wall of licking redness. Hanging tight to the controls, he put the SPV
through the attempted barricade at full power, bulldozing the fragments clear
in shoving collisions that wreathed the craft in flame as rocket and cannon
fire showered her, only her speed bringing her through without loss of the
superheated tires. "We need aerial
fire suppression up here for the truck," Blue growled, emerging from the
ambush zone into the deceptive calm of night and swinging the SPV to a
broadside halt and ramming his last rounds into the forest. "Topaz, bring
her through full throttle - give them an instant and they'll have the rubber
from under you."
SHJs
beat up the rain forest to both sides of the road and the truck, bellowing at
peak revs crashed through the burning remainders of the barricade, Scarlet's
SPV right behind it, a last squirting of tracer leaping after them.
Chancing
one glance back, Scarlet was struck speechless with the awful beauty of
war. It seemed the whole sky was
burning, the redness shot through with uncountable bolts of tracer, Spectrum
gunships continuing to strafe with gun and rocket, trees burning for miles; and
appearing from the eastern side of the engagement came the crowning horror, the
evil silhouette of a Spectrum Type 2 Junglecat striding forth, arms waving
fiendishly, knocking trees imperiously aside with single, lashing blows, its
hull lit from end to end with sprinting detonations as every turret belched
forth fire.
This
was the war Spectrum was created to fight, but the inevitability of it did
nothing to soften the grimness. The military was a necessary evil.
"Amber
tore into them for us," Symphony said softly. The confrontation would be
soon; as they raced onward, battered, low on ammunition, the end was now in
sight and the night would draw to a close about the time the AGM-91 was no
longer their responsibility. "He's acting like a man, not the distant
invertedness of a Mysteron agent.”
"Granted,"
Scarlet nodded. "I'm not sure, I
just have that feeling." He did not look at her as he spoke, but kept his
eyes glued to the screen, the endless highway that snaked now down the
coastward hills above the Bay of Bengal passing below their tyres. Blue's
magazines were empty and he had requested Scarlet to take over the point right
after the engagement. Amber was remaining with them to the last and ahead, a
massive Army, Police and Spectrum combined operation had put an impenetrable
ring about the power station ready for their arrival.
As
the final hours slipped away Scarlet did not confide his suspicions to Blue,
holding them radio-silent for what that was worth, and the Angel could see his
resolve slowly growing. He had listened to his own supposedly infallible senses
but had interpreted their warning incorrectly. He had never done it before and
it was eating into him like a burn. He had murdered loyal officers and let the
enemy walk free - he would rectify the matter at the first opportunity and
neither of them was facing it with anything but dread.
It
was 04:42 when the Spectrum convoy, blackened, the worse for wear, but mobile
and victorious, pulled into the light of portable floods in the yard of the
great power station that stood up-river of the Irrawadi Delta, where the river
retained its full flow, and with almost infinite relief relinquished charge of
the unit to the massive local security forces. A squad of Cloudbase agents were
also on hand and when they had debarked the hot, stinking vehicles Scarlet,
Blue, Symphony, Topaz, Haroun and Keating were surrounded by the back-slapping
crowd, cheers and congratulations roaring in their ears. They had done what
even the WAAF could not and got the unit here despite the best efforts of both
Bereznik and the Mysterons.
But
still Scarlet brooded blackly and Symphony knew it was about to come spilling
out. She looked about for Amber and it came as no surprise when Scarlet asked
his whereabouts.
"He
flew on to the coast, sir," an officer answered. "An SHJ has crashed
at the mouth of the delta and he's checking it out for possible -"
He
didn't get a chance to say ‘Mysteron involvement’. Scarlet already knew. A
Mysteronized SHJ was all they needed at this moment and Scarlet used it as his
excuse to commandeer a Tiger Command aircraft and send it racing the last
hundred miles for the Gulf of Matraban. Symphony stuck with him, unshakeable,
and he was deeply grateful for her concern.
In
the racing helo they said not a word, Scarlet grinding his teeth. Am I
right? he thought over and over. Even if I'm wrong I can’t help but
check it out. Oh, God, am I wrong? I
just don’t know. They closed on the
shores of the ocean over the
sleeping villages and fields of the mighty delta as the flush of pink spread
out of the east with the promise of the new day and in 20 minutes they saw the
running lights of Amber's Helijet where it lay above the tide line forty yards
from the burned out remains of another Spectrum machine. As they came in for a
sand-scattering landing by the first craft the knot of apprehension tightened
in Scarlet's stomach until he could stand it no longer. The wreck might not be
fresh at all; it might in fact be the very machine that had guarded them all
day and within its mangled cockpit might be the remains of Amber. The real Amber.
With
short breath and racing hearts Scarlet and Symphony left their helo and stepped
down the beach for the worklights that burned. Had Amber drawn them out? Was
this to be it, the culmination of the whole affair? With blood rushing in his
ears the indestructible man all but ran for the wreck, detector in hand, right
finger tips brushing the butt of the electron gun he had slid away at his right
hip. There could be no room for mistakes.
The
tableau that met their eyes was baffling, inconsistent and terrifying, and they
came to a halt, the ocean roaring at their right, the whole back-lit in the
glow of predawn. Amber stood with his detector ten feet from another Spectrum
officer, one neither recognised, his uniform of indefinite colour in the poor
light. They stared at one another, frozen like statues, and Scarlet felt the
bile rising as the world swam about him.
I
was right!
he thought savagely as he beat it
down. But which? Who's mesmerizing who? "Which?" he growled in
frustration. He could not - would not - repeat a mistake. "Which?!"
For what seemed an eternity the pair held their deathly silence and
then the stranger's eyes slid to Scarlet and he smiled like a grinning skull as
his hand flicked to the electron gun at his side.
Scarlet
was faster, his speed born of tortured nervous energy and the gun barked
harshly in his fist in the blink of an eye, the blue arc searing across the gap
to dance about the stranger and leap, painfully bright, to Amber. The
incredible discharge earthed through them and with a cold, echoing death cry
the Mysteron crumpled, falling apart before their eyes as Amber fell to the
sand.
Shock
held Scarlet rooted for several seconds before he dropped the gun and ran to
Amber's side, kneeling by the Sikh and lifting his head to peer at the dark
eyes. Was there anything left? A flicker of life yet beat in him and the eyes
opened, pupils dilated, to stare into Scarlet's.
"Symphony,
call the local base, blaster case, we'll be with them in 20 minutes,"
Scarlet snapped, voice rough, over his shoulder, before whispering to Amber:
"I'm sorry. I didn't know. But I had to be sure. I had to."
"I
know that," Amber murmured so quietly that his voice was almost lost in
the waves. "I should have been quicker…
Should have taken him first… I'd have done the same."
Whether
the Indian would make it to the hospital they did not know but as the Angel
lugged the stretcher from the helo and Scarlet knelt in the fine sand with him,
the indestructible Captain knew in his own soul that he had been taught an
ever-fresh lesson by circumstances. Trust your instincts. They've kept you
alive, they always will. You were right. Stop doubting the instincts that
retrometabolism gave you, they're the only weapon you've got left. But such
thoughts could not take the anguish from him; for him and the others, their
Road to Mandalay had been paved with sweat, fear and the blood of no few. The
unit was here and with luck the skirmish would fade out to normal tension;
despite all, the world went on. The pain of the individuals in it was a
triviality.
And
the dawn came up like thunder... Out of China, 'cross the way.
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