Operation: Minerva

By Siobhan Zettler

Chapter 6

Things were not adding up.

Scarlet stood in the shower, letting the stream of hot water rinse away the film of grime and the mingled scent of death and spilled coffee as he reviewed the situation mentally one more time. He wished he could have sent a few haunting memories down the drain along with the soap suds.

Something was badly out of whack. Very badly out of whack. And he was having an unusual lack of success in pinpointing whatever it was that was gnawing holes in the back of his mind.

Ochre’s not back yet, he kept thinking. He hasn’t found her either.

Had that been a part of the Mysteron’s plan? Colonel White seemed to think so, though the Colonel hadn’t said as much verbatim. Scarlet knew the Colonel though---well enough that he could read almost as much into what he didn’t say as he could into what he did. But what was it that Colonel White wasn’t saying? And why wasn’t he saying it? Scarlet had had enough of not hearing things from the late Doctor Weller, he simply didn’t need any of it from---

No, stop that.

If Colonel White wasn’t saying something, there would be good enough reason for it, and he could certainly stomach whatever resentment he felt about it based on that alone. Andrew Weller had paid dearly enough for his mistakes, if mistakes they had been. Nonetheless----

It’s something with real security clearance. Obviously not something that Colonel White wants generally known. What did she tell him yesterday? What did she say that can’t be shared? How deep and dark a secret is this Minerva-thing anyway?

If it was above his own security clearance, well---so be it, then. He could live with that. It was hardly the first time. But as for the rest of it----well, there were holes there too. Great, gaping, big holes. The timing was all wrong, for one thing, and it just wasn’t like the Mysterons to foul things up so badly.

How did they ever suppose they’d get Doctor McLaine in front of four---no, five, counting me---Spectrum agents? Armed Spectrum agents. Even if they’d managed to kill her, what hope did they have of successfully reconstructing her with that kind of a witness party? Damn stupid. And we had Roan and Teal and a contingent of Spectrum Security to boot. Why didn’t they just wait? Another thirty minutes, if that, and then all three of them would have been in that lift---Spectrum escort and all---and headed for some dark corner for a conference of their own. A huddle without, for damn sure, Spectrum tagging along. An hour, tops. One hour more, and we all could have been dead in that elevator and even Sanchez and the maintenance crew wouldn’t have been down in the power plant to find the wreckage......

Teal and Roan were still snooping around downstairs, were in the process of tearing Weller’s office apart trying to figure out where Weller had found the gun. That office had been scanned. Repeatedly. There had been no trace of a weapon, not even a hint that there was a vault of any kind where it could have been hidden. No anomalies. Or none that had registered.

It was possible, he supposed, that the Mysterons - who could make Captain Black disappear on a whim - could have just dropped the thing into Weller’s pocket after the last security check.

How do we ever fight that sort of thing? he wondered bitterly. How can we ever even hope to win against that sort of capability?

He would have to discuss it all with Magenta when Magenta got back. Haul Roan and Teal into it and see if they had any fresh and novel viewpoints. Let them listen, try teach them something, salvage anything at all positive out of the whole mess. Scarlet prayed for the weather to hold that long at the very least. Mountains, blizzards and helijets were not necessarily good for a pilot’s health and well-being when taken collectively. Even if one was a crack helijet pilot like Magenta, who actually preferred the heavy aircraft over a faster, sleeker fighter.

Scarlet had seen the weather scans, knew himself what they meant and took a moment to speculate that the Mysterons might have planned that too. It would be all too easy to ditch Magenta on the way back, if the Colonel didn’t recall him first. Ochre was still out there, skirting the edge of a survival ordeal, no doubt reviewing his winter survival training. And Blue and Gray were already out of the game, long since.

Scarlet reached out and shut off the water.

It was not exactly a rosy picture.

Fortunately, the water wasn’t deep. It was one small mercy.

And in spite of the frigid cold, in spite of the wet, Tylan McLaine managed yet again to elude Ochre’s own unsure grip as they struggled free of the ice and the lake. She gained her feet, slipping repeatedly on the wet, near-frictionless surface, and began to stumble for shore nearby, going for low ground a few hundred feet along the ledge.

But Ochre was moving too, fired by a temper that the icy dip had done nothing to quench. He was furious. He was enraged. He was outraged...

Twice! Twice, dammit. Twice in as many days she’s tossed me into cold water!

She reached the shore first, but only a few steps ahead of him. The shock of the cold was beginning to register fully as he tackled her again, taking her down into the snow, rolling with her, succeeding somehow in pinning her flailing arms under his own, ending with them splayed back above her head. For a moment he just let her struggle beneath him, allowing his own limp weight to hold her there.

He panted, sucking in deep breaths---icy air, snow still falling. Captain Ochre lifted his head to lean over Tylan McLaine’s face, his eyes glaring as they locked with hers, his angry brown meeting her frightened blue-grey and there was something there that he’d never seen before---

Suddenly, he leaned in closer and his mouth found hers in a fierce kiss that stunned the both of them with its intensity.

She exhaled explosively, eyes going wide, blinking with surprise. And Ochre let go abruptly as he realized what he’d just done and staggered to his feet with his teeth chattering.

He pulled Zil up after him and gave her a rough shove to make her move. ‘Find that cabin,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Before we both freeze to death!’ He began to move too, knowing that the temperatures were due to drop sharply with the coming dusk. Hypothermia was imminent.

It had become suddenly all too conceivable that they were both going to die up here.

Zil was realizing it too, and she nodded a mute, hasty assent before starting off in what Ochre hoped was the right direction.

It was a difficult climb. The storm worsened on a brutal, lashing wind. He called Cloudbase to verify their position, and been encouraged to hear that they were almost on top of the cabin’s location. Magenta was on his way back with a helijet---but Ochre knew it was already too late to hope for rescue that way----there plain wasn’t sufficient visibility for an air-lift of any kind. Ochre soon enough found himself entirely dependent on Zil’s sense of direction, reliant on the hope that she still knew where she was going, because he just didn’t anymore---and Cloudbase could only be so accurate with a position fix---in this murk, thirty feet off the mark would mean a miss altogether.

Neither of them would have made it alone. He simply wouldn’t have found the place, and he doubted whether she could have made that steep climb alone under those conditions. Ochre lost count of the times that they’d clung precariously to tough rootholds that he believed saved their skins on several steep inclines.

Who put a cabin up here anyway? he kept asking himself. They ought to be shot.

It wasn’t far, she kept saying. He hoped not. He prayed not, and he was not the praying kind.. Not far, maybe, but it was certainly the most demanding part of the entire ascent. He decided afterwards that it was only the sheer physical exertion of the climb that had kept the imminent hypothermia at bay.

A seeming eternity later, when the snow was swirling more than ankle-deep around their feet, their destination finally hove into view.

‘Here...’ Zil breathed, exhausted and shuddering with the cold. ‘We’re here!’ Her voice cracked with relief.

Ochre stopped short, for a moment unsure just what she was talking about.

Here? There was no cabin to be seen. He cast his glance around, peering into the snow-whipped twilight. But there was still no cabin. Zil was fording her way through a drift of snow, making for a dark outcropping of rock. He followed, as much to get out of the wind as to see where she thought she was going.

On closer approach, he saw that it wasn’t just an outcropping of rock...

There was a ledge of stone, yes, but under it was a smoothly rounded wall, some portion of a domed structure set against the face of a cliff.

Cabin?

There was no cabin---and the edifice that was looming there in the darkness before him was the farthest thing he could have imagined from the preconceived notion of a sawn-log and ramshackle shelter that he’d had in mind. It was a prefabricated dome lying there in the gloom, its graceful, fusion-formed permamold sides sweeping off into the murk under the ledge.

No damn wonder Melody couldn’t spot it from the air....

‘Com’on!’ Tylan urged, tone echoing the misery that for just a moment he’d forgotten. ‘Och! Com’on!’

‘I’ll go first!’ he yelled suddenly through the chattering of his teeth, recalling what he was doing up here at all. ‘Where’s the door?’ With numb, stiff fingers, he pulled his electron gun from inside the frozen flap of his jacket, wondering just how badly his aim would be spoiled by the shivering if he were to need it.

She crossed though another drift, making for a dimly outlined doorframe on the otherwise unmarred surface of the dome. With unsteady hands, she fumbled for and found a magnetic key-card somewhere inside the combat fleece. She pushed it into a slot, and a foot-square panel glowed to life beside that doorframe, bright green and vivid in the darkness. She brushed snow from the panel and then pressed her hand flat to it for scanning----

A print-keyed palm-lock.

Print-keyed!

Ochre swore inwardly. What was this place? This so-called recreational retreat? Why hadn’t Spectrum been told about it? And---the solid chill that sank to the pit of his stomach had nothing to do with the weather---just how much did the Mysterons really know about it?

Everything.

Absolutely everything.

Every single friggin’ damn thing that Todd Carey and Andy Weller and Arthur Prince between them had known.

Including how very, very isolated it was up here.

The door hummed to life, gliding smoothly into a recess in the wall, revealing a short, starkly empty entry corridor. Dim lights came on automatically. Ochre slid past Tylan McLaine, scanning for some evidence of tampering, something, anything that might indicate whether or not someone had gotten here ahead of them.

Carey’s still missing. No one knows where he is.....

‘Todd Carey got a key too?’ he demanded---harsh question, harsh tone. Not that the Mysterons necessarily needed a key. God! It was cold up here---if this wasn’t safe refuge, he thought desperately, then....

Then they were dead. Might as well surrender. Hell, just ask the Mysterons what it was that they wanted done---

She stepped over the threshold, staying right behind him. ‘No....no, he didn’t take it with him to Africa. No reason for him to do that. Andy checked. Andy knew where it was.’ Her hand hit the control panel on the inside wall, closing the door, cutting off the wind. She pushed past him and went to the far end of the corridor, using the keycard and opening that door too.

He got in front of her again, gun up as more lights deeper inside came to life. She punched more buttons.

‘Nobody’s been---Och, really----no one’s been here! Records show no entry.’

‘Lock it.’ Ochre told her. ‘Lock it---change the codes if you can.’

‘Can’t.” she shook her head without turning. ‘Can’t change the codes---it takes dual authorization. But it’s alarmed. No one can get in without tripping it.’

Better than nothing. She shoved him further into the cabin---the dome, the whatever, looking more and more like the misery he was feeling himself.

It sounded like truth. Reluctantly, aching, Ochre lowered the gun and looked around, finding himself inside a room that could have been pulled from the pages of a better-living magazine. His boots sank in the carpeting, a high-pile, high-priced complement to the furniture that sat before a wide stone fireplace trimmed in brass. The whole room was done up in tasteful warm tones that belied the chill in the air.

Colonel White, who wasn’t often wrong, had really missed the mark when he’d said the place lacked most of the amenities....

The thought made him shudder again, reinforcing what he’d thought when he’d laid eyes on the place. She was busy at another panel. More lights came on, but most of them flickered out immediately. She cursed under a visible breath, seeming to have expected something more.

‘I was told,’ Ochre ventured irritably. ‘That there were no power lines run up this way.’

‘Well then, I’d guess that your information was out of date!’ Zil snapped right back, hearing the you-lied-to-us tone in his voice. ‘You’re welcome to spend the night elsewhere if you don’t like it!’ Her voice was all stinging ice, as cold as the blizzard outside as she continued punching at the buttons.

Raw emotion stabbed through Ochre as he opened his mouth, only to shut it again without speaking because he wasn’t sure precisely what he was going to say or just what it was that was prompting it. But that only lasted for a brief few seconds.

‘Nothing...’ he began finally, feeling it as a warm flush crept up his cheeks. ‘Would please me more! But I’m afraid I’ve got orders to stick around a protect your miserable, ingrate hide whether I like it or not!’ He jabbed an accusing finger toward her chest as he spoke, furiously punctuating his words.

She slapped his hand away. ‘I neither need nor want Spectrum’s protection!’ Zil countered hotly. ‘I never did!’

‘Well you’ve got it anyway, and maybe, just maybe, if you’d tried to co-operate just a bit it would have---’

Her voice rose to cut him off, near hysteria touching it as she went livid, yelling until the syllables cracked. ‘Andy and Arthur tried co-operating! And a whole fat lot of good Spectrum did them!’

Ochre reacted as if he’d been struck, physically recoiling back a step. For a long moment there was no telling what that accusation had done to his already roiling emotions and he came up blank for an answer---just utterly, totally, completely blank.

Zil spun away with her fists clenched and he thought she was going to pound the wall. She jerked her gaze back around as if she was going to go on, but all at once her shoulders fell and she ran out of nasty, ugly things to say.

The truth was nasty and ugly, sometimes.

She made a limp gesture towards the fireplace. ‘There’s no heat right now. I’m gonna build a fire.’

White Flag. Ceasefire. Truce. Whatever.

‘I’ll---’ Ochre threw his own gaze around helplessly. ‘I’m---gonna look around.’ Lame answer. Really lame. She didn’t respond. She just turned to the fireplace and he vacated the living area willingly enough, dropping that conversation without having to think about it twice. He made a swift check of the kitchen and combined study/den, those being the only other rooms on that level. There was an upstairs---a loft sort of affair with several bedrooms and a bathroom, all as opulent as what he’d seen downstairs. She’d been right---as far as a visual inspection would reveal, the place was as secure as she’d indicated.

Finally he shut himself into one of the bedrooms, and with a long sigh, pulled down his cap mike to report to Cloudbase.

He couldn’t get through, and tried for Scarlet instead, wondering if there was something besides permamold in the dome’s construction, and just how far that extended. Perhaps it was just a facing on the cliff---he tried to configure the interior, thought that maybe the so-called cabin was built into caves----and if he was under half the mountain, there was no way his radio was going to reach Cloudbase....

He managed to raise Scarlet, but the channel was bad. It confirmed his suspicion about the place---the static was characteristic of scan-shielding----another probable reason that Melody hadn’t been able to find it. His reception was poor, and Scarlet complained of his transmission before he did anything else.

‘Thought we’d lost you for good, Ochre.’ Scarlet said, worriedly. ‘Report?’

‘Wet and cold and tired.’ Ochre replied wearily. ‘But I’ve got Zil and we’re at the cabin.’ He supplied no details. ‘We’re safe enough for the time being. Can you raise Cloudbase for me? Can’t seem to reach them from here between the storm and the mountain.’

‘S.I.G. Ochre---hold on.’ There was a brief silence. Ochre closed his eyes, waiting, shivering. ‘Ochre? Colonel’s coming---standby.’

‘Thanks.’ Ochre mumbled.

Scarlet’s voice clouded suddenly with concern. ‘Rich? Rich---are you all right? You don’t sound it.’

I can imagine....

He clamped his jaw down on the shivers. ‘Yeah---well, like I said, I’m wet and cold and tired. Had an unexpected dip in the lake. The ice broke.’ Praying again, he hoped that Scarlet wouldn’t ask him what he’d been doing on thin ice in the first place. ‘And then,’ he went on, to pre-empt any inquiries. ‘We had a rough hike in that storm out there just to find this place. Not to mention Godzilla---’ he broke off as Colonel White’s voice came on-line.

‘Ochre---you’ve got Doctor McLaine?’

‘Yes sir, she’s here.’

‘And just where might that be, Captain?’

What the hell kind of a question was that? Hadn’t Scarlet told him? Or was the Colonel fishing for information? ‘I’m somewhere up on the side of a mountain, sir,’ he replied, going fishing himself.

‘The cabin, Captain?’

Colonel White’s voice confirmed it. Damn. He’d known what was up here then. Why hadn’t the rest of them been told? ‘Yes sir, we’re at the cabin.’

‘And how about Doctor McLaine? You don’t think that she’s---’

‘Nossir.’ Ochre said flatly, knowing the question before the Colonel even got it out. ‘No, Colonel, she’s not a Mysteron.’

And please don’t ask me how I know....he wished inwardly. He’d hardly be able to explain that he knew because he’d kissed her to find out. It was not precisely a method listed in the book, and a far cry from proof, but----

But he wouldn’t have kissed a Mysteron. Not that. No. Never.

Never, ever that....

There was a short pause, as Colonel White weighed his tone of voice. God...he knows I’m stuck on her. Figures how stupid I’m getting, just couldn’t miss it yesterday, dammit....

‘Colonel, if she’d wanted to kill me, she had plenty of opportunity on the way up here.’ Ochre supplied, when the pause went on longer than he thought necessary. And that was true enough. One well-placed kick on any of those steep inclines would have done it and very neatly, too.

‘All right, Captain. As long as you’re satisfied. How is Doctor McLaine?’ Colonel White re-phrased his question.

‘Difficult, Colonel White. And not especially pleased with Spectrum at the moment either.’

‘Over Doctor Weller and Mr. Prince, I presume.’

‘The problem in a nutshell, Colonel. Any advice for me, sir?’

‘Patience only, Captain Ochre. I think this whole Operation has been harder on her than you realize. She’s never had to deal with Mysterons before, and, unfortunately, Doctor Weller did too good a job protecting both her and Arthur from certain realities. Today the Mysterons caught her right up in the middle of something she wasn’t at all prepared for. Take care of her Ochre. She’s absolutely vital to the Minerva Project. I believe she’ll come around, Captain. She’s just got to do some thinking about it first. You’ll find she’s quite a realist, under all of that other nonsense.’

Take care of her, Ochre repeated silently. Who’s gonna take care of me?

‘Yessir,’ he said aloud.

‘Captain---’ Colonel White’s voice was suddenly mimicking Scarlet’s concerned tone. ‘Are you well, Captain Ochre?’

Ochre caught himself again. ‘I---will be, thanks, Colonel. I’m just a bit tired, sir, that’s all.’

‘Hmmmm. Well, there’s not a great deal we can do for you in any case. This weather’s got you socked in for the next day, at least.’ There was a thoughtful pause. ‘Just one word of advice, Captain---you’re going to have to trust her. She’s got sense. Just trust her, Captain Ochre.’

Trust her. Ochre closed his eyes and did not immediately reply. I do already, didn’t we just establish that?

‘Yessir,’ he said at length. ‘I’ll stay in touch.’

‘Do that, Captain. And Ochre---thank you. It’s been a long haul today. Do what you can to get some rest. We’ll keep you advised of any new developments elsewhere.’

‘S.I.G. Colonel. Ochre out.’ Ochre closed off the channel and rubbed at his forehead wearily, aware, suddenly of a throbbing headache and the renewed shivering that served to remind him he was still standing around in wet clothes. The cabin wasn’t warm, though it had seemed that way at first, once they were out of the howling winds and the driving snow.

A great way to catch pneumonia. He could just hear what his mother would have had to say about it.

He turned, heading back downstairs, sincerely hoping that Zil had, in fact, gotten a fire under way and blazing.

And that she’d maintain the ceasefire long enough for him to curl up and get some sleep for a couple of hours.....

Colonel White leaned back in his command chair when Ochre went off the air, not liking the way that Ochre had sounded.

‘Scarlet,’ he said suddenly. ‘Are you still there, Captain?’ It had been a patch-through, not a direct transmission. Another worry, that was.

‘Yes, Colonel.’

‘How’s Ochre, in your opinion, Captain?’

Scarlet didn’t have to hesitate looking for an answer. ‘He’s exhausted, Colonel. He would have been coming off-shift this morning when the bottom dropped out down here. And then he hiked off after the Doctor while the rest of us mopped up. It really is rugged ground out there, and we both know how long it took him to catch up to her.’

‘That’s understandable enough---but he sounded worse off than that. Or is it my imagination?’

‘No sir, it’s not your imagination. Seems they had a dunk in the lake, and a wet hike from there up to the cabin. He’s suffering from exposure, I’d say. It’s not exactly...ah...balmy down here, sir.’

‘Now there’s an understatement if ever I’ve heard one, Scarlet. Why didn’t he say something?’

Scarlet paused. ‘Probably because he knows there’s no helping it anyway. You as much as said so yourself.’

‘Well....it’s true enough, however we want to look at it.” Colonel White grumbled, half under his breath. His brow crinkled with a frown at the complication. They couldn’t afford to have Ochre down too---especially not Ochre, under the circumstances---

Scarlet was volunteering himself again. ‘Sir, I could try to get up to the cabin myself and---’

‘Absolutely not, Scarlet! Stay put and don’t be thinking that I don’t know what the weather’s doing down there. You’d never make it. I’m already thinking about pulling Magenta back here to Cloudbase. Ochre and McLaine will be safe enough where they are for now. Just give Ochre a few hours to rest up. Stay in touch, all the same. I’d daresay even a Mysteron agent would have trouble reaching them where they are right now.’

‘Yes, sir. How are Blue and Grey?’

‘Oh, they’ll be all right. Grey’s got a concussion, but he’s up and grumbling about it. And as for Blue---well, he’s been making noise about having been decked by a girl. Embarrassed, I’d say. But he’s got a broken collar-bone and he’ll be out of the action for awhile with it. Doesn’t heal quite the way you do, after all.’

‘Thank you sir. I’ve nothing new to report here other than we’ve got all remaining personnel isolated in Administration. Maximum security is in place. Not that it proved very effective earlier today.’

‘Spectrum is Green, Captain. Stay on your toes. I’m very sure that the Mysterons aren’t through with Minerva yet. They’ll make another move, you can count on that.’

‘Understood, Colonel. Scarlet out.’

As the speaker on his console fell silent, Colonel White let out a long breath and drummed his fingers on the board, disliking more and more the way things were shaping up.

‘I don’t like it, Lieutenant. I don’t like having my people scattered around and cut off from one another like this. They become too vulnerable...it looks like we gambled badly, counting on this storm to protect us.’

‘We don’t know that yet, Colonel,’ Green offered optimistically. ‘It could work to our advantage yet.’

‘Perhaps. Thank you, Lieutenant. But I’d feel a great deal better about the whole business if Ochre hadn’t had such a rough go of it. Damn that woman anyway---they shouldn’t be up there at all.’

‘But at least they made it.’

Colonel White nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Yes, they did, and we can be grateful for that much after all. Still, now that he’s there, there are things that Ochre should know---and doesn’t yet.’

Green sat silent for a moment, thinking, it was clear from his features, that there was no reason Ochre couldn’t be told whatever it was that Ochre didn’t know---even if Green himself couldn’t be let in on it.

Green had it halfway figured out already.

Why did I promise I’d keep her secret? Am I being twice the fool that Weller was? But there’s time yet. Time for her to ‘fess up herself, and likely she will, especially with Ochre, so----

‘I think he suspects though, Colonel.’ Green said at last. ‘He’s a good man and---’

“Oh, definitely, Lieutenant. There’s no doubt but that he’s one of the best we’ve got. But he’s still human, Lieutenant Green, and we humans have our weaknesses and our limits. Weaknesses and limits that are precisely what the Mysterons like to push. Let’s just hope that Doctor McLaine hasn’t already pushed Ochre’s too far....’

It was time to head downstairs again. Captain Scarlet left the communications room once he’d signed off with the Colonel, in a state of relative reassurance that Ochre wasn’t going to freeze to death out there and Godzilla McLaine was once again nominally within Spectrum’s protective custody.

Feeling somewhat less than charitable and sympathetic, Scarlet supposed she had to be suffering at least as much as Ochre was, and hoped she wouldn’t be able to muster any further difficulty for the man. He wondered if it had been a mistake not putting more personnel out into the field after her - though initially, none of them had imagined that she’d have managed to elude Ochre for so long. And it had been too late, once they’d come to that determination. Scarlet himself would have arrived at the same detector-less conclusions that Ochre had; when it came to the Mysterons, no help was often better than help that you couldn’t trust.

At minimum, the two of them had reached a place of comparative safety. Scarlet would not stop worrying about them altogether, but he could at least devote some unclouded thought elsewhere in the short term. He knew that Ochre could take care of himself. And Ochre had handled Godzilla just fine all week.

Scarlet still needed to talk to Roan.

He summoned the lift and waited patiently for it to arrive. Scarlet stepped into it when the doors opened and keyed in the office level, exactly as he imagined Andy or Arthur must have done earlier. He shut his eyes, laying a hand on the control panel and concentrated for a moment, trying to reach out, trying to detect any hint of residual Mysteron influence in the reconstructed elevator car.

But there was nothing; the lift stopped at the requested level and Scarlet left it no further enlightened than he had been when he boarded it.

He found Weller’s office in total disarray, Teal and Roan having stripped the desk, credenza and files to their respective bottoms, apparently without having found any enlightenment of their own in the process.

Scarlet stepped over a box of file folders toward the center of the chaos. “Well,” he let out a long breath and glanced from one Lieutenant to the other. “Anything to report?”

“Nothing, Captain.” Roan shook his head, obviously frustrated with that.

“There’s nothing here that doesn’t look like it belongs, sir.” Teal added, more matter-of-factly.

“All we seem to be missing is Weller and Prince.” Roan added sullenly.

Teal looked up at the ceiling. “He’s still sulking, sir. Kick his butt.”

“I’m not here to kick butt,” Scarlet said quietly, fixing his gaze on Roan. “But I would like you to stop sulking, Lieutenant. I won’t pretend that you didn’t have a bad experience here today. But that does happen sometimes when the Mysterons are involved. It happens quite frequently. You are not responsible for what happened to Weller and Prince.”

“I should have been in the lift with them. Why would Weller want to keep me out? They had plenty of privacy in the office. It’s not like it was going to take us hours to get down there.”

“Roan,” Teal stated his fellow Lieutenant’s name firmly, as if he’d already been over that ground once with him.. “Thank the man - he saved your life.”

“He convinced me,” Roan said. “It was....it was like he’d really heard you, even though I hadn’t.”

Scarlet’s brow furrowed. “It’s very possible, Lieutenant,” he said slowly. “That Weller did hear me. The Mysterons can throw voices. And I’ve witnessed them using mine before.”

A troubled look crossed Roan’s face. Teal’s too. It was a spooky thought.

“But how did they even know? That Weller was in the lift and I wasn’t, I mean. And why stop me? Why not just let me go along for the ride?”

Scarlet settled himself on the corner of Weller’s desk, the same place he’d been sat not even twenty four hours ago, arguing with the man. “We’re not likely ever to find out how, Lieutenant. And as far as why---well, I think there are two possible reasons. Firstly, you might have been able to do something about it. They undid the suspension cable, we saw that from the wreckage. Whatever force or power or energy that they used to do that could very well have been disrupted if you’d discharged your electron gun that direction. We know for a fact that electrical fields interfere with Mysteron influence.”

Scarlet’s glance went to the electron gun in the holster at Roan’s hip, nestled right behind the more standard Spectrum issue pistol. All field officers carried both weapons nowadays. The electron guns had improved immeasurably since the successful demonstration of the original, if cumbersome prototype. The upgraded versions looked like guns now, though they operated on totally different principles. They were not projectile weapons; if anything they were far more like portable linear accelerators with a laser targeting beam and a tiny, shielded chamber that housed a radioactive alpha-particle source in the barrel. They were engineered such that the laser emission and a split second burst of focused hard radiation between them served to ionize an accurate path to target and kept the following nano-second long discharge of high-energy electrons from grounding out on any nearby object before it could find its mark. The Mysteron guns were remarkably effective and compact, even if they were heavy as sin to haul around, and limited in the amount of charge that they could carry. It was enough, usually....

He did not suggest that the Mysterons could well have disabled that, too.

“Flight 104, sir?” Teal queried. The entire Lake Toma incident was considered textbook evidence, these days. It was a studied case at Koala Base, a lesson obviously not lost on all recruits.

“I wouldn’t necessarily be here otherwise, Lieutenant.”

The suggestion seemed to make Roan feel better. Though he frowned again after another moment of reflection. “So I should thank the Mysterons for saving my life instead?”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “Disquieting, isn’t it?”

“And the second possible reason, Captain?” Teal went on, to keep his current partner from dwelling on it.

“It’s far more speculative. Something that Doctor Conrad was hypothesizing about, since you’ve mentioned Flight 104. He’s a brilliant theoretical physicist, you may recall.”

“I’m not sure that was in the book, but I’ll take your word on it, sir.”

“He can do in his head the kind of math that makes my brain hurt just to look at. He has a number of theories about the Mysterons and their ability to recreate exact duplicates of their victims or target objects. One of them is that it just may not be as easy as it seems for them to make a reconstruction. They use unknown resources and a process that we don’t understand, but is obviously possible to do. Doctor Conrad thinks it may be a difficult and somehow expensive process for them, in terms that we simply don’t yet comprehend. He’s working on it.”

“So....” Teal speculated aloud, following that train of reasoning. “Another reconstruction---like Roan here---was maybe more than they needed or wanted to pay for?”

Scarlet shrugged. “Throwing my voice had to be cheaper and easier.”

Roan’s troubled look went to consternation. “I’m not sure I like it either way, Captain.” Roan picked up the scanner again and activated it, muttering under his breath. “I’m either too dangerous to take along or I’m not worth the trouble....”

Roan started in on the walls one more time, now that some of the clutter was out of the way. Scarlet watched for a moment, deciding Roan’s funk was not as deep as it had been and about to tell the kid not to take anything the Mysterons did too personally when the scanner bleeped once and loudly.

Roan stepped back, and repeated the sweep, rewarded with second bleep as he did so.

“It didn’t do that the last time.” Roan said, his attention suddenly fastened entirely on that section of the back wall. “Teal....”

Teal was there in a heartbeat. “It didn’t do that any of the six times we scanned it before,” he confirmed, running a hand over the same area and finding a seam there in the wallboard. “Captain, I think we’ve got something here----” Teal gave that section of expensive wood paneling a hard shove; something there clicked and gave under that pressure, and the panel swung suddenly inwards on a narrow cavity there behind.

Roan swore once, low and explicit, as Teal pulled out his hand torch to shine it into the access. Scarlet himself crossed the room for a better look with his own pulse racing, wondering, hoping perhaps that they’d finally stumbled onto something to do with the real Minerva at last.....

“Teal...what have we got?” Scarlet asked, unable to see past Teal’s broad shoulders and into the black well beyond.

But it was Roan that answered, with an absolute certainty, as if the whole thing had abruptly fallen into place even though he couldn’t see what was there any better than Scarlet could----

“It would be a secret passage, sir.” Roan said.

The fire that Zil had built, Ochre was grateful to discover, was a hot blaze, almost too big for the hearth, but welcome all the same---already the chill in the living room was beginning to dissipate.

It made him realize just how cold he really was, and the shivering became very nearly uncontrollable.

She was sitting in front of that fire, huddled in a blanket looking wilted and morose. She turned as he came down the stairs and rose to her feet, favoring her left leg.

‘”You’re hurt,” he said. “Zil, you’re---”

“I’m fine,” she countered. “Now get out of all that wet stuff before you catch pneumonia or something.”

Thanks, Mom....

“There’s lots of blankets. I’m gonna fix up something hot to eat. But here’s some hot coffee in the meantime.” She was pouring coffee into a mug from a battered enameled pot she’d had in or near the fire, and pressed it into his hands as soon as he got close enough.

Ochre clutched at it, letting the heat warm his palms as he sank to his knees on the stone, surprised, really and truly surprised that he’d been gone long enough for her to get this much done. Gladly, he gulped down some of the brew---

And gasped. It was coffee all right---but that wasn’t all. “What’s in this?!” he sputtered, trying not to spill the stuff.

“Something stiff. It helps---trust me.” Zil turned, making no apology for the addition and headed kitchen-ward, leaving him alone with the fire and the slow warmth of the spiked coffee seeping into his veins.

Silently he quoted the regulation prohibiting the consumption of alcoholic beverages while on active duty and drained the mug anyway, in no frame of mind to follow the book on this one. Alcohol wasn’t good for hypothermia. Vaso-dialation; he’d actually lose more body heat, never mind the warm glow that the stuff provided short-term. He knew that, surely she did. But he wasn’t outdoors anymore...the fire would make up for any heat losses here and now. And the warm glow---so what if it was alcohol induced---did actually help, steadying him long enough to strip off the wet uniform and drop it onto the sodden pile that the fashionable combat fatigues and lacy underthings made to one side of the hearth. He followed the example, kicking everything away before wrapping himself in a blessedly dry and warm blanket that Zil had thought to set close enough to the fire to take some of the chill out of it.

Ochre allowed himself to sink down in front of the fire for a second time and closed his eyes, letting the heat wash his face and dry his hair into whatever tangle it would. He waited for the shivering to subside, poured himself another coffee, leaving the alcohol out of it on that second round. He wanted the caffeine---he needed the caffeine, because he was going to go to sleep any second if he didn’t get some kind of a stimulant into his blood and his brain before he----

Zil touched his shoulder, startling him. His head swam.

That was the booze, he told himself, again quoting the appropriate regulation. He tried to focus his attention on the plate that Zil had just shoved into his hands.

“It’s not much right now,” Zil was apologizing. “Isn’t too much here that’s quick and easy. Sorry.”

Ochre surveyed to meal, hungry because he hadn’t eaten all day, but queasy with the thought of putting it down. He needed something down there with the spiked coffee though---it was no wonder at all that his head was swimming....

It was a canned stew and not his favorite. He picked at it anyway, and did actually feel better once there was something solid in his stomach. It countered the booze---but it countered the caffeine too. He was getting warm and comfortable and the full belly would put him to sleep as fast as anything.

I’d better get up, better move around a bit or else...

Zil was tossing more wood on the fire, pulling logs out of a stack of firewood from an alcove that backed onto the inside wall of the entry corridor. No lack of that apparently. Should give her a hand, he thought, should get up and---

“Where’s the flue to this thing go?” he asked suddenly. “Where’s the chimney come out?”

He was alarmed. He hadn’t even thought of it until that moment, that it was a direct outside access---and not secure. Not at all secure, if there was someone out there with a nerve gas cylinder to drop down the pipe....

“Roof,” she answered. “Top of the dome, under the ledge. Not very easy to get to, if that’s what you’re thinking. Screened. Caged, to keep the squirrels and the pack-rats out. Can’t get there without a ladder, if that makes you feel any better.”

The fresh logs caught fire, began to burn furiously. Dry hardwood. No smoke, or not much. If the chimney was under the ledge, it wouldn’t be easy to spot, not even with an infra-red scope. A heat seeking missile might be fooled, if there was---

Ochre shook his head. His imagination was running wild. Nerve gas and heat-seeking missiles---Todd Carey hauling them up mountainsides in the Blizzard of the Century. Not even the Mysterons could be so masochistic.

Hope not, anyway.

Zil moved back, sitting a little further away from the blaze. He moved too---the heat was fierce, really. He let his glance wander the room. Nice decorating. As nice as the house.

Lacking most of the amenities.... Colonel White had said. Sure. But maybe the Colonel hadn’t known at that point. She must have told him after he and Scarlet had been briefed.

Second time he’d thought that today. He wondered if he dared ask about the place, wondered what kind of reaction the question might provoke.

Neither one of them had spoken for a time, content enough just to be warm and comfortable after the day’s events.

She finally broke the silence. “Och?” she said, a small, hollow voice with a question in it.

“What?” Neutral and non-combative. He just didn’t have the energy.

“I---I want to apologize. I behaved badly today.”

Ochre heaved a sigh. “It’s all right.”

But she shook her head. “No. No, it’s not all right! How can it possibly be all right?” A note of irritation crept into her voice. “I---panicked. I panicked and I reacted and then I ran without even stopping to think about what I was doing.”

He didn’t reply. Couldn’t very well deny any of that. It was a pretty fair assessment, in fact.

She went on, lots of remorse now. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life before. Never. But Andy made us take these self-defense courses, both of us. Just----just in case, he said.”

Like, just in case of combat.

Goddamned if Weller hadn’t been right.

“I’m sorry. All I saw was Spectrum shooting at my friends and---”

“They weren’t your friends. Not at that point. They were Mysterons.”

“You think that helps?” Her voice hit a strained note. “They’re dead one way or another and I just didn’t think---not until---until later. After. I said I panicked, didn’t I?” She sniffed, stifling what sounded like a sob, and Ochre turned, looking at her for the first time since she’d started talking---

Tears. Long, wet tracks running down both cheeks. More welling up as she just kept staring into the fire....

It took him aback. This was not a Tylan McLaine he’d seen yet. Not the same one he’d fought tooth and nail back at the lake. Surely not the same one he’d been fencing and bickering with the week long----

“I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, Och---” that came out in a whisper, as if that alone were enough to explain everything. Her eyes closed and the gathered tears tumbled down into the wet tracks after the others. “They’re all dead---Andy and Arthur and Todd too. They’re all gone and everyone’s dead....”

“No,” he objected earnestly. “No, Zil---listen to me---you’re still alive and the module is still secure. The Mysterons don’t have Minerva. We’re still ahead in the game.”

Wake up, Zil. Wake up and see it.

“Yet,” she said bitterly, sniffing. “Not yet, that’s what you mean.” She looked down, avoiding his gaze, pulling her blanket more tightly around her shoulders. She was trembling again, but this time it wasn’t from the cold.

Ochre ached for something to say, but nothing that came to mind seemed adequate. She had lost what had probably been the two most important people in her life; long time friends, associates and---and something more, in Andy’s case, anyway. Of course she had panicked. What else could they have expected? Death was an occupational hazard in his line of work. Loss of life was an anticipated occurrence, a statistical probability that Spectrum operatives simply accepted as a part of the territory.

Tylan McLaine wasn’t a trained Spectrum operative, she was----

At the moment, very grief-stricken, frightened and lonely, and coping with what had to be the crisis of her normally well-ordered life, facing murder---both attempted and accomplished---with a threat to the world hanging in the balance.

And still, she was being realistic enough.

Because, no, the Mysterons didn’t have her or the module---yet.

Ochre stretched out a hand for hers and waited. It took a minute, but she finally put one of her own out from under the blanket and he gave it a reassuring squeeze---one that she just accepted without protest until the trembling had stopped.

‘Och?’

‘Yeah?’

‘When the Mysterons---” she cast about for words. “When they...copy...someone, do they really know everything that person knew?’

There was an edge to the question that told Ochre she was close to panic again. She’d asked that question before. She already knew the answer.

“Yes.” There was no reason to elaborate.

She squeezed her eyes shut again, anguished by the unchanged response, and nodded tightly to herself. The hand under his clenched, trembling renewed. This time he ended up with both arms around her, holding on until she finally fell asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. It seemed to take forever. Ochre left his chin resting there on her head, still staring into the fire as he wished with an increasing desperation for that release himself.

But it wasn’t a good idea not to have a watch posted. Not a good idea at all. He willed the sleep back, and bolstered that will by remembering that the Mysterons had managed to kill both Andy and Arthur, despite of all of Spectrum’s best efforts to the contrary.

They were not going to get Tylan McLaine.

Not unless---very old, and suddenly true cliché---it was over his dead body.

Captain Scarlet closed his eyes and forced himself to relax as he peeled the headset off and shut the communications board down. It had been close...too close at times, but they had done it. The helijet was down and down in one piece thanks to Demeter’s advanced radar tracking systems and some very agile seat-of-the-pants flying on Magenta’s part; skills that had not only gotten the helijet down, but had parked it safely inside one of the hangars too. Scarlet hoped he’d never have to talk anyone down through this sort of muck again as long as he lived.

The radar scans said that the worst of the storm hadn’t even hit them yet.

Colonel White had wanted to recall the helijet. Magenta had wanted to try coming in, had even been entertaining notions of finding the cabin on Ochre’s radio signal....except that Ochre’s radio signal was a lousy thing right now. Water in the circuit boards or something, between the pool yesterday and apparently some lake today. Tough as their caps were, it was a miracle the thing was working at all, if moisture had gotten in and frozen there, damaging the microcircuits.

If that was the problem. Scarlet had a good many ifs gnawing at him.

Scarlet’s glance went to the coffee pot, and found it direly in need of a refill. He took care of that and then went to lean heavily on the windowsill, staring out into the thickly swirling snow that had already accumulated to several inches on the ground.

Two snowmobiles with Security men and bearing Magenta appeared from nowhere out of the storm and pulled up in front of the building, stopping there for just a moment, before peeling off into the darkness again, making a final round of the security perimeter and the hangars and sheds. Scarlet did not particularly envy those men their assignments; they would trade off with Teal and Roan later, both of whom he’d dismissed for a few hours of rest after a day that had been long and full of unpleasant events for pretty much everyone.

A moment later, Captain Magenta was divesting himself of his colored, regulation Spectrum parka and helping himself to the freshly brewed coffee. He sank into one of the lounge chairs and looked over toward the bowed window, where Scarlet was still perched on the broad sill.

“I feel like I could rewrite the definition of harrowing.” Magenta commented.

Scarlet smiled faintly. “Caffeine,” he stated mildly, “Won’t do much to soothe your frazzled nerves.”

Magenta shrugged. “Should’ve been back sooner, before the soup got that thick. But the Colonel made me stop and take a nap while I was there. He still thinks we can’t run on coffee.”

“Well, that would be because the Colonel very sensibly never drinks enough of the battery acid they try pass off as coffee on Cloudbase to find out that it does work for that.” Scarlet found Cloudbase coffee tolerable, but not nearly as good as Demeter’s. At the moment, Scarlet was avoiding the brew, excellent as it was. Because it would keep him up all night if he indulged.

“Hmmm.” Magenta nodded agreement with that appraisal. “This is much better, I’ll say that for Weller & crew. Seems like he generally went for the best of everything. Did I miss much while I was out?”

“Extrication of a couple of bodies. A hair-raising hike for Ochre before he finally got where he was going. And just a little unwarranted excitement exploring the secret passage outside Weller’s office back door.”

“Weller’s what?”

“Secret passage. Grey said a few very unprintable things when he heard that particular tidbit. He’d been over the mine schematics. He’d been looking for it. That’s why he’d had the kids scanning it so often, not just to give them the practice.”

“Brad doesn’t miss much.”

“No, he doesn’t. Weller had his tracks covered. There was a hidden corridor behind the back wall in Weller’s office. Lined with high-grade scan-shielding. Class stuff. Expensive, like the coffee.”

Magenta raised his cup. “What was he hiding?”

It was Scarlet’s turn to shrug. “Not much, apparently. Unless we’ve missed something again. It was nothing but a concrete and cinder block corridor that led to a spiral staircase that went up an old service shaft to ground level. Exited into a janitor’s closet in the Residency. No secret vaults, no hiding holes, no connecting corridors, nothing of interest at all. I was looking for Minerva, but didn’t find it. The janitor’s closet, however, is just a couple of doors down from Weller’s own quarters. Roan thinks he probably just used the route to sneak his girlfriends in and out. It seems to have no serious purpose.”

“Lined with expensive scan-shielding.”

Scarlet shrugged again. “That bothers me, too. But only the wall was shielded. Could be that Weller just didn’t want any biotech regulators to know about it.”

“Sounds highly illegal.”

“That was my first thought. It isn’t, apparently. At the quarantine level, yes, but not from Weller’s office. Demeter’s Security didn’t make much of it, though they seemed as surprised as we did to find it was there. They did, however, also think it sounded very much like something Andy would have. We tend to forget what an eccentric Weller was. You’ll have to take the tour.”

“You have any second thoughts? Educated guesses? Hunches? Gut instincts?”

“Not about the tunnel. But I have a few about her.” Scarlet shifted where he sat, letting his voice trail into silence.

Magenta waited. “Such as?” he prompted.

“It’s nagging at me that she ran...and I’m thinking that she ran for a reason. One that the Mysterons know. And it’s almost as if they scared her into it.”

“They wanted her where they could get a clear shot at her?”

“Not impossible. But if that’s it, then they must’ve missed their opportunity. Ochre doesn’t think they got her.”

“Hope he’s right. Ochre usually is. ” Magenta drained the last of the coffee from the mug. “Maybe she was taking herself out of the hazard area. Weller never wanted her here at Demeter.. That was all her idea - she even convinced the Colonel it was okay. Maybe she re-thought it.”

Scarlet shook his head. “It happened too fast. That was panic, not a reassessment.”

“Fair enough. What else?” Magenta got up, went to refill the mug.

“Nothing specific. Just a bad feeling.”

“Those work too, most of the time. What about?”

“About....whatever it is that we’re missing.”

Something obvious, Scarlet thought inwardly. Something like Minerva itself, for one thing, the mystery gizmo that no one from Spectrum had laid eyes on as yet. Something like why Colonel White wasn’t telling all he knew. Something like why no one had seen hide nor hair of Todd Carey or Captain Black recently. Something like why Weller and Prince were dead for no apparent good reason and Godzilla McLaine had gone AWOL---

“You should sleep on it.”

“Not tired.”

“The hell you’re not. I’m under orders to put you to bed. It’s been a long day for everyone. And you only skip the caffeine when you want to sleep. Think no one knows but Blue knows that?”

“I think maybe I work with too many observant people.” Scarlet decided he wouldn’t argue the point. “I can take a hint.” He abandoned his seat at the window, left the snow and the chill behind him there. “We’re trying to figure out if Weller-the-Mysteron might have left the office by the back door while we were all still waiting for your SPJ today. The kids say Weller and Prince locked themselves in there and didn’t come out until I told them you were nearly here. I need you to look over the security records for the relevant time frame to see if Weller might have disabled the sensors or alarms in the corridors between the janitor’s closet and Weller’s quarters. Hack it if you have to---Demeter’s security says if anything was changed it either wasn’t logged or it’s been key-locked above their authorization. Weller could have done that. Talk to Taylor. It seems obvious now that the back wall was opened, and maybe even deliberately left ajar for us to find----after the fact.”

“Rubbing our noses in it?”

“Something like....” Scarlet sighed with frustration, heading for the door. “Don’t give me any more than four hours,” he said.

“Set your own alarm. Take six.” Magenta’s glance went to the window. “Nothing about to happen here by the look of that out there. Other than the perimeter tripping off every other minute or so. We’ll try not to cry wolf.”

“You’re in charge.” Scarlet handed off command, then paused in the doorway. “Colonel White told Ochre to get some rest too, but....” One more time, Scarlet’s voice faded into silence with the bad feeling multiplying inarticulate apprehensions in his gut. He was never going to get to sleep, not for six minutes, never mind for six hours...Scarlet shook his head, unable to pin it down.

“But?”

“Dunno, Pat,” he said. “Just don’t let Ochre sleep for too long.”