a “Captain Scarlet and the
Mysterons” story
by Shades
“…Ow.”
Something far
too bright was shining in Scarlet’s eyes, and he was surprised to realise that
for once, it wasn’t Dr Fawn’s overhead surgical arc lamps. It was sunlight,
streaming in through a ragged hole in what he recognised as his vest, spread
out and propped up on sticks to make a rough sunshade over his head. A soft
thing under his head, smelling of sweat and blood, explained where his
turtleneck had gone to.
He reached up, pushed the vest off its props, and
carefully sat up in his makeshift bed of grass, automatically checking himself
over for any lingering damage. Paul's questing fingers encountered a clump of
matted dry blood and hair at the back of his head and a large dressing taped
over his back, not to mention the usual collection of thin lines of dried blood
– the remnants of the scratches and
scrapes he always picked up. “How on
Earth did it happen this time... and why am I still groundside and not on
Cloudbase for that matter? And where's Adam?”
His stomach snarled for attention and Paul quickly dressed himself
and looked around for his cap. He needed two things right now – food and
information. Hopefully, he could find both wherever Adam was. The SSC he could
see in the bushes was probably the best place to start.
0o0o0
“… Got it, Captain Blue out.” Adam Svenson
grimaced and closed the radio channel. Their mission to save a chemical plant
on the Russian side of the Caspian Sea had been a partial success. As far as
they knew, all the workers had been evacuated and the majority of the plant and
its vats of dangerous chemicals had been saved from sabotage by plastic
explosive, but the Mysterons had been getting sneakier lately. The plant
foreman had been a 'sleeper agent' and he'd attacked them with a broken length
of steel rebar yanked from the rubble of a guard post.
Scarlet, once again, had borne the brunt of the attack
that had delayed the pair of Spectrum agents long enough for the final set of
explosives to blow one of the larger holding tanks and released the Mysteron
threat of 'a tide of blood that shall burn the waters' – a nasty
combination of different chemical
wastes that was highly toxic, extremely acidic and blood red.
Blue reflexively glanced back to the spot among the
trees, where he'd hidden Scarlet and their Spectrum Saloon Car, damaged by an earlier adventure
involving a reel of braided steel cable and a very large tackle block. The car
was built tough though, and it'd held itself together long enough for him to
get Scarlet well out of the way of the curious onlookers and to this quiet spot
so he could recover.
“Though I'd prefer to get Scarlet up to
Cloudbase, if I could,” Blue muttered to himself, then checked himself and
grimaced in self-reproach. All available transportation, including Spectrum assets,
had been requisitioned to help corral this unprecedented environmental
disaster. The needs of one man were small compared to the socio-economic and
political fallout should the contamination spread, no matter how unique that
man was.
That less-than-cheery thought in mind, Adam turned and
strode back to the clump of bushes where he had left Scarlet to recover.
0o0o0
Scarlet had just finished turning the SSC inside out
in search of the food in his backpack that he knew had been tucked away somewhere in the car, and was quite sure
hadn't been eaten yet when a twig snapped behind him. He whipped around, one
hand dipping for the gun that should have been clipped to his waist, then
relaxed when he saw whom it was.
“Looking for this?” Adam asked, quite amused as he
held up Scarlet's red backpack, his own blue one hanging from his other hand.
“Yes, thank you!” Paul caught the packet of food that
his partner tossed to him and tore it open, seizing the energy bars first.
Experience had taught him that he needed the easy-to-process items first and
then the slower-burning carbohydrates. “I was starting to seriously consider
going after the songbirds,” he explained around a mouthful of nut-studded
chocolate bar.
“I wouldn't be surprised, I could hear your
stomach from here,” Blue teased gently, making no comment about his partner's
temporary ignorance of manners. The hunger Scarlet was left
with after a stint of retrometabolism could be quite extreme, depending on how
complicated the damage was. Besides, considering that one time he'd seen
Scarlet so hungry that he actually dove into a freezing cold stream after an
eel and ate it raw, this was nothing. “C'mon, we can go sit on the beach and
watch the recovery operation, since we're not allowed to help them.”
“Alright.”
0o0o0
The
sandwiches and other assorted edibles died a quick death as the two captains
sat out on the rough beach and Adam filled Paul in on what happened after he
'went down' during the foreman's frenzied attack. “...Fortunately he was
standing in the way of the chemicals after the explosives blew.” Adam paused to
tear off a bit of crust and throw it to a bird nearby. “I got you in the SSC
and got you here after reporting in to Cloudbase.”
“They
told you to find a spot with no witnesses and sit tight?” Paul guessed.
“Yeah.”
A
roar of engines interrupted them as the massive green bulk of Thunderbird Two
appeared over the waters to the south. The mighty International Rescue aircraft
stopped long enough to drop its cargo pod and release Thunderbird Four, before
returning back the way it came, presumably to pick up more gear while the
bright yellow mini-sub inspected the damage from below.
Scarlet
almost laughed at his partner's expression of longing as the monster cargo
plane flew overhead. “It's interesting, of all the secrets Spectrum has
uncovered, it's never been theirs,” he commented instead, combing some of the
dried blood out of his hair with his fingers.
“I
think it's more a professional courtesy,” Adam replied, distracted by the sight
of Thunderbird One taking off to lower some sort of sensing device into the
waters of the Caspian Sea and start trawling. “They do good work, so why
interfere?”
“Indeed.”
The hours crawled by, activity on the other side of
the lake slowly swelling as the sun slowly sank towards the east. An attempt to
repair the SSC had resulted in grazed knuckles for Adam and oil smears
everywhere for both men, and repeated calls to Cloudbase had earned them a
surprisingly testy 'Sit down and wait
out of sight, there'll be a pick-up for you before nightfall' from Lieutenant
Green.
Needless to say, both men were getting extremely bored
with their purposeless solitude well away from any and all activity, as well as
anyone who might have seen the formerly grievously wounded Spectrum officer
kicking at stones while pacing up and down along the shoreline.
Scarlet skipped his umpteenth pebble across the blue
waters, then cast a speculative look at the squat fir trees that shrouded the
edge of the lake. “…I haven’t climbed a tree for fun in years,” he said at
length, wandering over to the closest tree.
“Don’t even think of trying to get me in one of
those,” Adam warned good-naturedly as Paul grabbed a branch and vanished into
the foliage.
The scrawny tree actually listed over as the Spectrum
officer hauled himself higher up into the branches.
“Paul? I think you’d better come down, that
tree looks like it’s had enough,” Adam called after a couple of minutes,
mentally wishing that Lieutenant Green would somehow come up with a spare
helijet or SPV or something, so that
he could get his partner back to base and checked out by Dr Fawn, just to make
sure everything had come back together right.
“Alright, heh, I think you’re right, Adam.
This tree does seem a bit stunted.” Paul’s voice floated down from
three-quarters of the way up the tree, soon followed by rustling and the odd
snap of twigs as he made his way down.
The rustling then stopped for a moment, intensified,
then stopped again, accompanied by an ‘Oh hell’ and a few words the colonel did
not approve the use of when within earshot of the Angels.
“Paul?” Adam stood up, concerned. Maybe the
big stab wound hadn’t fully healed yet and he’d ripped it open again; it had
looked pretty deep, even to his moderately trained eye. “Paul, are you
alright?”
There was a momentary pause, then: “I’m stuck.”
“Stuck?”
Branches rustled. “Yes, stuck.”
Adam started laughing. He just couldn’t help it, doubling
over and laughing long and loud. Scarlet's mortified protest of 'Adam, it's not funny!' just made it worse.
Finally, gasping for breath, he staggered over to the tree, grabbed two of the
offending branches and bent them out of the way long enough for Scarlet to drop
out of the tree, fuming.
The pair returned to their previous spot on the
gravelly spit of beach, both silent for a time and watching the distant
recovery operation on the other side of the lake.
“Thanks,” Blue ventured after a time, seeking to salve
his partner's understandably bruised ego. “I needed that laugh.”
Paul took the statement, turned it over in his mind
and found that he agreed. Considering what Adam went through almost every time
they were sent out, it was worth making a fool of himself every now and again
for his partner's sake, even if it was unintentional.
“You're welcome, Adam.”
Fin
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