Colonel White was pleased to see that
they were taking it seriously – all of them.
Cloudbase’s chapel had been decorated to be suitably sober and
respectful, rather than the peaceful, relaxing, light room it was wont to
be. At the front of the room, where the
simple altar stood, two flags ‘flew’ at half mast, one for the World Government
and one for Spectrum. There was a
beautiful arrangement of flowers on the altar and to the right hand side hung a
wall-mounted plaque bearing Spectrum’s coat of arms which commemorated their
fallen officers. Beneath it lay a poppy
wreath and a few individual memorials.
There was an excellent turnout; the
chapel was crowded for this, the first of the three services to be held on
board. The colonel was aware that across
the globe, in Spectrum offices, there were, had been or would be, similar
ceremonies going on throughout the day.
The serried ranks of the non-commissioned
personnel, technicians and support staff sat closest to the exits, giving way
to the almost indecently gaudy dress uniforms of the elite squadron and the
gleaming white and gold of the Angels, who occupied the front seating. The customary chatter and banter that
characterised the relationships amongst these dedicated officers had ceased, no
doubt out of respect for the sombre overtones of the occasion. The colonel took his place and waited with
bowed head for the chaplain to start the intentionally non-denominational
service.
Under the cover of the familiar music and
traditional readings, White allowed his poignant memories of past comrades to
soak into his mind. Not that they
weren’t always there, buried in some primeval level of his consciousness: the
resilient sailors of his first command, the eager volunteers during the brief
Civil War that had forged his reputation for effective command, men with more
enthusiasm than ability who had frequently been the cause of their own demise
and – unforgivably – that of their colleagues.
Time had dimmed the righteous anger he had felt, but not the
sadness.
After the war, feeling that whatever else
he achieved in the navy would be something of an anti-climax to his brief - but
undoubtedly illustrious - career, he took the opportunity that presented itself
and moved into the role of a field agent for the Universal Secret Service. For the next few years he was often working
alone across a continent riven by faction and
mistrust, as the fledgling World Government struggled to resolve the – often
centuries-old – wounds and resentments of rival populations. He’d built up a network of trusted agents
and seen some of them fall in the fight.
Now, the memory of those losses, every one of them as keenly felt as the
day they happened, hardened his features and drew down the well-rehearsed,
non-committal expression that belied the more tender sensibilities of his
character.
It took a special kind of man to live
with the responsibility of ordering other men to risk their lives – whatever
the cause – and he was not sure that he had ever been that kind of man, but
decades of command had provided him with an armour against the inquisitive eyes
of others, any one of whom might be seeking for a weakness to exploit.
The swelling voices of the congregation
brought the threat of tears to his eyes: many of the people here today were so
young and almost innocent as to the true nature of the enemy they now
faced.
They had answered Spectrum’s call to
fight against man’s evil to his fellow man.
All of them were eager to combat the unrelenting hatred that still
fuelled terrorists determined to crush anything that differed from their own
narrow understanding of what was ‘right’.
And now they found themselves fighting an alien foe: an entity to which
none of the accepted rules of human-kind could be applied. With every terrorist there was always the
hope that this mother’s son – or daughter – had a spark of humanity that could
be reached and fanned into the gentle glow of peaceful cohabitation with their
erstwhile foes.
We
cannot expect such deliverance from the Mysterons, he
thought grimly.
The chaplain’s
voice broke into his musing. ‘Glory be
to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’
That was his cue and he stepped up to the
lectern to read the final dedication.
He opened the book that lay before him and took a moment to gaze across
the chapel at the congregation.
From somewhere came the sharp recollection
of a poem he’d read – or had heard read at some similar gathering – and which had, at the time, moved him
profoundly.
In many acts and quiet
observances you absorbed me:
Until one day I stood eminent
and I saw you gather'd round me uplooking
and about you a radiance that
seemed to beat with variant glow
and to give grace to our
unity.
But, God! I know that I'll
stand someday in the loneliest wilderness someday my heart will cry for the
soul that has been,
but that now is scatter'd with the winds,
deceased and devoid.
I know that I'll wander with
a cry:
O beautiful men, O men I
loved
O whither are you gone, my
company?
All of these faces, all of these trusting faces, were looking to him to
express their feelings at this poignant moment.
Just
as they look to me to provide a solid, immoveable centre for their dangerous,
mutable world.
The responsibility overwhelmed him,
leaving him voiceless in the face of it, as it had always done. These faces were not so different from those
of the crew of his frigate or the cabal of his secret agents.
The dependable Captain Grey – a sailor,
like himself - experienced in battles where some of the men he’d commanded had
not returned to the comforts of San Diego or Marineville. A man who had struggled, with an almost
obsessive determination, to recover from the injury that had threatened to tie
him to a desk job and who now took his rightful place amongst the elite
squadron of men and women dedicated to saving their planet from their unknown
alien enemy.
Perhaps,
he is also the one man here who understands what I’m experiencing – that
clichéd but inevitable loneliness of command.
For one brief moment, their glances met and
the colonel saw a wealth of emotion in that quiet man’s eyes. In that instant he knew that Grey’s thoughts
were, like his own, with the long-dead men and women of his past.
Yes,
a kindred spirit indeed, the colonel thought, feeling
heartened by that fact.
Next to Grey sat the ebullient Captain
Magenta, his dark eyes suspiciously bright beneath his black hair and
brows. His bottom lip was sucked in and
clenched between his teeth. Here,
undoubtedly moved by the occasion, was the most unexpected recruit amongst the
elite officers: a man who had spent much of his career on the wrong side of the
law and who had, as a consequence, witnessed indiscriminate killing for no
better motive than money. It was to his eternal credit that he’d rejected the
world that lived by such rules for a chance to ‘do something useful’.
And
at what personal cost? He can never go back and wherever he does go, he’ll be a
marked man if his former associates ever realise what he’s done. He’s still rather like a fish out of water
here, although his uniform is certainly dazzling, even amongst the colourful Koi carp in Spectrum’s pond – to over-extend the metaphor,
somewhat. But, like the fighter I know
he is, he’s striven to fit in and he’s won the respect of his peers.
Next to Magenta was his field partner and
closest friend, Captain Ochre. It was
singular to consider that Ochre, a former World Police Corps officer, shared
some of Magenta’s problems. Spectrum had
duly arranged his apparent assassination in order to free their recruit from
the attentions of underworld bosses with grudges against him. A man who felt he had much to hide, Ochre
buried his past under a believable façade of mischief and cheerfulness. But there was a telling sobriety in him
whenever he was faced with danger, to himself or his friends, which spoke of a
man of selfless courage. For once, in
honour of the occasion, he had dropped the mask that hid him from the world,
and the laughter lines that were etched into his hawkish face gave Ochre the gravitas he strove hard to hide most of the time.
It’s
almost as if he’s afraid of the damage his forthright emotions might do if he
ever turned them loose, but his defences have gradually crumbled and there are
moments now when Ochre does give way to his passions. Which is no bad thing. Besides, he’s finally realised that you cannot
fool all of the people all of the time.
And there, beside him, sits one of the few men who saw beneath the mask
even before Ochre allowed anyone to really get close enough. That calm acceptance of his past
life-decisions did go some considerable way to pouring balm on Ochre’s
guilt-ridden psyche.
White’s attention turned to Captain Blue.
A well-educated, wealthy intellectual
with a well-deserved reputation for caution and perfectionism, Blue was perhaps
the most surprising success in the whole squadron. He had turned his back on a life of
high-powered business with the prospect of unlimited hedonistic pleasure, to
become a soldier.
And a bloody good soldier, at that.
Sitting ramrod stiff, his grey-blue eyes
turned attentively to his commanding officer, Blue was a picture of
correctness. Notwithstanding the unforgiving puritan-ethics he’d inherited from
his mother’s family of well-born New Englanders and the astute, logical mind
embodied in his powerful, Scandinavian-blond frame, the colonel knew this
officer was a surprisingly emotional man beneath his apparently calm patrician
features.
In fact, it had not taken long for White
to recognise in Blue that rare empathy that fires a man’s imagination and makes
him capable of entering into and – most importantly – understanding, the
complexities of another human being’s life.
He had also recognised that, while that empathy allowed Blue to judge
his friends with a sympathetic leniency, he was not so tolerant of what he
perceived as his own shortcomings. In fact, until, like his commanding officer,
Blue learned the hard way that any kind of war is a different world from the
common experience, he had been not only his own sternest judge, but an
implacable critic of any outsider who transgressed against his own moral
code.
But
once you understand that, it doesn’t take an Einstein to realise there’s no
point in trying to apply the cheap and easy moral principles devised in a cosy
world of peace and plenty, to the horrors and tribulations every war inevitably
brings. We’ve both learned that no one
has the right to condemn anyone for doing what they have to do to survive.
That lesson had been given to Captain Blue by
his friend and field partner, Captain Scarlet, who now sat beside him. The red of Scarlet’s uniform echoed the
centuries of traditional uniforms that had earned the British Army the
sobriquet of ‘Redcoats’ and it suited him to a T.
Scarlet had been born to be a soldier; it
was in his blood, the inheritance from a family steeped in military
tradition. He had hit his military
career running, reaching the conventional milestones of success years before
his peers even considered the possibility of achieving them.
White considered his young countryman. He
rises, like cream, to the top and he is unquestionably the outstanding recruit
amongst the elite squadron. Not for him the ‘catch-up-quick’ training on
how to fly supersonic jets or what constitutes acceptable military
behaviour. Not for him the struggle to adapt
to the restrictive life on Cloudbase; he had, in that old phrase, ‘walked it’,
but, I’m glad to say, with sufficient modesty and tolerance for his fellow
officers to deflect any embryonic resentment they might be reasonably expected
to feel.
As usual, Scarlet was sitting at the end
of the row, somehow looking slightly apart from the others, and somewhat
uneasy. His body was as rigid as Blue’s
beside him and his face was expressionless, but his pallor was not from any
repressed emotion. Captain Scarlet had
experienced at first-hand the malevolence and the power of the Mysterons. He had survived – and no one knew how – their
initial shocking attempt to first take control of and then annihilate all life
on the Earth.
That was the furnace that had forged the
steely resolve that ran like a mantra through Scarlet’s life: protect and defend. He regularly faced injury and death to
protect not only the planet they all shared, but more personally, the men and
women he now considered as important to him as his own family.
The measureless breadth of the
comradeship that existed between Scarlet and – especially, but not exclusively
– Blue, had proven resilient enough to overcome innumerable horrors or
hardships. It was no real secret from
anyone that that comradeship was what made Scarlet’s present life tolerable for
him.
And
although this bond might be the most significant, all of the elite corps have
forged similar bonds between themselves and I don’t doubt that each of them
will hold at every critical moment.
It’s an extraordinary and magnificent thing to behold in action. It has
saved so many lives. And I am profoundly
grateful for that.
All of this reflection had taken place in
a mere second or two of real time, but the colonel noticed that there was a
slight frown on the face of the youngest of the elite officers, sitting on the
end of the bench that held four of the five Angel pilots. The colonel had made an exception for the
occasion to allow the two standby Angels to join their off-duty comrades for
this, the most significant of the services.
Normally, only two of the young women were considered off-duty at any
one time.
Lieutenant Green was the colonel’s
right-hand man on Cloudbase, with a good deal more responsibility than his youth
led people to expect. At this moment,
however, his almost cherubic face was showing concern at his boss’s unexpected
delay.
Colonel White suppressed a smile: Green’s
almost as much of a perfectionist as Blue and he must be worrying that
something is wrong, that someone did slip a fatuous ‘trashy novel’ onto the
lectern. And if Ochre imagines I’m
unaware of his ‘threat’, he is very much mistaken.
All of the captains treated Green like an
indulged and precocious younger brother, barely aware of the resilience and
fierce determination of the young man who had almost single-handedly raised his
eight siblings after the tragic death of his parents.
Green tolerated this from a sense of
duty; he acted as the colonel’s ears and eyes on the base, an unofficial
channel by which concerns could be raised, worrying trends identified and
issues resolved before they became real problems. Maintaining easy-going
relationships with everyone was a pre-requisite of doing a good job, and the
young Trinidadian was not about to fail in his task.
But I
know everyone values Lieutenant Green’s integrity as much as I do – with
complete justification.
Now, White gave just the merest nod of
reassurance towards the young man and drew breath to read:
They
shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
He looked up at the attentive faces and
proclaimed the roll call of the known dead, culminating in, “Andrew Lawrence,
Captain Indigo; Alan Stephenson, Captain Brown; Space Navigator Niall Conway;
World Space Patrol Lieutenant Victor Dean and-” he paused for a split second
and sensed their surprise, and then he said it, as he’d wanted to ever since
that ill-fated day, almost two years ago, when they’d lost contact with the
Martian Exploration Vehicle, “Conrad Turner, Captain Black.”
The silence lasted just a fraction too
long for comfort, and the colonel could almost feel the wave of misgiving that
surged through the chapel. Although to
many of those present, Captain Black was simply a traitor who had thrown in his
lot with the enemy and who co-ordinated and implemented whatever lethal scheme
his alien masters demanded, the elite squadron knew the Mysterons’ ability to
control the actions of people and things was such that Conrad Turner may have
had no choice in the matter.
It was with considerable relief that
White heard Captain Scarlet’s clear voice break the tension to say, “Amen.”
As if they’d waited for proof that the
inclusion of that name would not offend their friend, the voices of the elite
captains, followed with some reluctance a few split seconds later by the rest
of the congregation, echoed: “Amen.”
As the last whisper died away, Colonel White
nodded his approval of his officers and said in conclusion, “Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.”
The chaplain came alongside, beaming her
approval at everyone present and the Service of Remembrance was over.
As he led the way out, Colonel White found
Captain Scarlet walking beside him. The
young man kept pace with him in silence until the crowd had dispersed and White
sensed that Scarlet was deciding whether to say anything, so he stopped and
looked at his officer with an open expression that invited confidences.
“Can I help you, Captain?”
Scarlet drew a deep breath and said, “You
do know the full quotation, don’t you, sir?” and before White could reply,
Scarlet recited:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gurgling from froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro Patria Mori.
The colonel hesitated. “Yes, I do, Captain Scarlet. I know my Wilfred Owen quite as well as you,
it seems. But did you know that the phrase originally comes from a Latin Ode, by
Horace. Roughly translated, it means: it is sweet and right to die for your
country. In other words, it is a great honour.
Granted, in this circumstance we are talking about the entire planet,
but I think the proposition still holds.”
“Ah, I see, sir – you’re going back to
the source; well, if you ask me, those pesky Romans have a lot to answer for,”
Scarlet said obliquely, and then abruptly changed the subject. “Goodbye, Colonel. I’m starting my 48-hour furlough. I arranged to leave Cloudbase this afternoon
because I didn’t want to miss the service.
And I am glad I didn’t; it needed saying, sir.”
White nodded in acknowledgement and was
about to wish his premier field officer a pleasant break, when Scarlet added:
“Maybe next year, you can add the name of the original Paul Metcalfe, Captain
Scarlet, to the list? Sir.”
He snapped a crisp salute and turned on
his heel, marching away before his commander could respond.
Colonel White felt the hot blood of
embarrassment flood into his cheeks as he watched the young man turn the corner
and vanish. There was a slight noise
behind him and he spun round angrily to see who had witnessed the
conversation.
Captain Blue was standing some way off
looking in the direction Scarlet had gone.
He turned to the colonel and saluted, presumably in order to deflect the
annoyance White knew was apparent in his expression.
“At ease, Captain,” he said, forcing
himself to speak evenly.
Blue did relax and moved a little
closer.
“Perhaps I should have consulted him?”
White mused, glancing up at the American apologetically. He knew he shouldn’t put the onus onto Blue’s
shoulders, but sometimes, when it came to Captain Scarlet, he found he needed
an interpreter of the man’s moods and he knew of no better one than Blue.
The captain gave the slight moue that
indicated he was undecided about something, and then he said, “He sees himself
as a pawn in some great, inter-planetary game, unwillingly moved about the
board by unseen minds full of malevolence.”
“It never occurred to me – I mean – I know the original Captain Scarlet was
murdered along with Captain Brown and Mysteronised, so that there was a replica
man under their thrall – a replica so accurate it fooled us all. I thank whatever Providence watches over us
that he was freed from their control by the events on the London Car-Vu and
restored to us as a comrade-in-arms.
But all of that doesn’t seem to connect to that individual. He’s just
the same Paul Metcalfe he always was to me.”
The younger man gave a rueful smile. “Yeah, we all tend to assume that, sir; and
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the right thing to assume. Remind him of all
that happened and he will get irritated: ‘as if I’m ever likely to be allowed
to forget it’ is what he usually complains to me about – especially in the white-heat of his frustration. No offence, sir.”
The colonel smiled and Blue continued:
“It’s all still too new for him, and it’s
all too easy to plunge him into contemplating some tormented alternative hell
where he never broke free from them.”
Blue glanced at his commanding officer
and, as if with a sudden need to confide, blurted out, “I think he feels guilty
that he survived and Alan and Conrad didn’t; that he’s free and Conrad’s still
enslaved. But don’t worry, sir; I don’t
think he’ll do anything stupid – unless you count driving too fast or sampling
the local ales at every pub until… well, you know the sort of thing. And anyway, it doesn’t last….”
Blue’s sentence trailed away so that
White was left uncertain if he was referring to Scarlet’s anger or the effect
of alcohol on his retrometabolised body.
Then the American added, “And he doesn’t
bear grudges. As I should know.”
White saw a fleeting expression of guilt
and sorrow cross his officer’s face, to be swiftly banished as Blue realised he
was being observed. He saluted again and
took his leave as if that revealing moment had never happened.
As he watched Blue walk away, following
his friend’s route towards the officers’ quarters, White realised that there
were two tortured souls in that friendship and he hadn’t even given one of them
a thought before now. He cursed himself,
not for mentioning ‘the events on the London Car Vu’, but for doing so without
any conscious appreciation that he was talking to the man who had been forced
to shoot his friend.
At the time, they had not known the
extent of the Mysterons’ power of ‘reversing matter’ to recreate an exact
likeness of what they had destroyed, and Captain Blue had believed he was
fighting the real Paul Metcalfe, who had – for some unknown reason – turned traitor. He had done his duty and saved the life of
World President at the cost of Captain Scarlet’s. It was the reason the World Government’s
highest medal for courage, the Valour Star, hung on his dress uniform, and the
reason Blue hated wearing it.
So
presumably, that was earned at some personal emotional cost, White realised.
When his friend’s body had been recovered
from the site of the car crash that had also killed Captain Brown, Blue had
told Dr Fawn that he dared to hope he had not killed his ‘friend’ after all,
but an alien doppelganger. But, the
body of the Mysteronised Captain Scarlet had been brought back to Cloudbase for
an autopsy, and once there, it had shown signs of returning life and consciousness. This ‘new’ Scarlet had no recollection of his
time under the Mysterons’ control, but did have all the memories and
characteristics of the original man.
So,
although Blue rejoices to have his friend back, there must be a residual legacy
from those dreadful events.
He made a mental note to keep an eye on
how things went once Scarlet was back on duty and maybe to ask the chaplain if
she thought there was anything they ought to be doing to help.
After all, Blue has a deep religious faith and
he might well have already spoken to her or be prepared to accept some
counselling from that quarter – if we keep it unobtrusive; he won’t thank us if
we make it clear we understand his feelings.
Still, she’ll know what’s best, I’m sure.
As
for Scarlet, even though his personnel form states ‘Church of England’ against
the entry for ‘religion’, he’s evidently one of the millions of ‘nominal
Anglicans’ who get baptised, married and buried by their Mother Church, but
rarely give the faith it represents a second thought.
Or
maybe not? White
mused, recalling not only the lusty rendition of the hymns Scarlet had given,
but also a sudden bright glitter in the surprisingly sapphire-blue eyes of his
compatriot as he had listened to that roll call of the dead. Another
puzzle for the chaplain…?
He turned into his own quarters and after
making a cup of tea, switched on his computer and groaned as he saw 149 new
messages in the inbox.
“No peace for the wicked…” he said to
himself, as he sat down at the screen.
But before he started to read through them, he sent the chaplain an
electronic meeting request.
Author’s Notes:
Quotations:
In many acts and quiet
observances you absorbed me, taken from ‘My Company’ by
Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968)
They shall not grow
old, as we that are left grow old, taken
from ‘For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
Dulce et Decorum est, by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
I’m not sure where this story came from. I was lying in bed one Saturday night,
listening to the late night programmes on BBC Radio 4, and I heard most of - I
had an ear infection and couldn’t really swear I heard all of – a discussion
about Sir Herbert Read’s war poetry. Some of the phrases from the readings, by
actor Samuel West, did indeed ‘move me profoundly’ and I immediately turned the
light on and wrote what was the first draft of this story.
It has changed and been refined from that first jumbled
version, not least by my having read the poems referred to in their
entirety. Given that all of them are
concerned with the Great War (1914-1918) it occurred to me that a Remembrance
Service on Cloudbase might well be an occasion for reflection. I wondered what they would do about including
Captains Black, Brown, Indigo and Scarlet, who all fell in the Mysterons’ early
attacks, in the roll of the honoured dead.
Brown and Indigo might be considered victims, but Black was active on
the enemy’s side and Scarlet was still amongst them. After all, the knowledge of Scarlet’s
retrometabolism is, we are told, a closely-guarded secret.
The friendship between Scarlet and Blue is well
documented in both canon and fanon, and I have myself considered in other
stories how the terrible incidents that happened in the first episode of ‘Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons’
might have affected both men.
I do not mean any disrespect to the fallen soldiers in
any war who are commemorated by any service of remembrance anywhere.
http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
My thanks go to my tireless beta reader- Hazel Köhler – who is ever ready with a handy semi-colon or a
glass of soave when the plots just won’t work out. Thanks are also due to the equally tireless
Chris Bishop, the revered Leaderene of the Scarletinis, without whom many of us would be all alone in
our fandom and of whose energy and enthusiasm I am
constantly in awe. When I finally work
out how she manages to cram so much activity into each day, I shall patent it
for myself and retire on the millions it earns me.
Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons™ was devised and
created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and brought to life by a talented team in
the 1960s. The copyright belongs to a
corporation, the inspiration belongs to the creators but the admiration is all
mine.
Marion Woods
26 October 2011
Other stories from Marion Woods
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