A 'Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons' story for Halloween
by Marion Woods
Her simple brain could
only just remember a time when she wasn’t always alone, when others had shared
the dark waters where she made her home, but slowly they had disappeared and she
did not miss them or seek them out. As
much as she was capable of deliberation, she considered that her solitude was
good. Although there were fish and the occasional unwary animal, food was not
plentiful, so no competition meant there would be enough to eat.
When the water grew cold she returned to her nesting inlet and curled into the
mud, sleeping away the short days of winter.
Spring came early and
although the days were still short she woke from her hibernation to a
deceptively bright sun that had yet to warm more than the shallows. When she
realised she was awake and the air was warm and the sky light, she moved
sluggishly out into the water. For a
while she floated, stretching and turning over in the shallows to wash the mud
and accumulation of slime from her skin.
As her body accustomed itself to movement and her joints flexed and stretched, a
hunger grew until she realised she must eat to begin replenishing her wasted
stores.
The first hunt after
hibernation was always difficult: she moved far slower than in the warmer
weather and the prey had the advantage of speed. But she knew she must eat soon and eat
well, or face starvation: this was the eternal truth of life on the knife edge
of an existence at the uttermost limit of the natural habitat for her kind.
With an ungainly splash
that scared all nearby fish away, she struck out to hunt. The prey had scattered and this forced
her to move into still deeper water.
Her limbs felt stiff and the water was so much colder than expected that it
seeped into her bones. For hours she
searched and found nothing, wasting precious energy in chasing the swiftly
darting fish she saw. The early light was fading as the short
spring day drew to a close. She had
slowed even more when, tired and hungry, she surfaced and gulped a lungful of
air before diving once more on a final hunt.
She caught nothing and
when she rose from the depths this time, the sky was almost dark and the sun had
vanished behind the surrounding hills.
Mournfully, she bellowed her frustration into the emptiness and turned to
head for the far shore where the comparative warmth and safety of the inlet
beckoned. The surface water
felt a little warmer, so she floated, seeking what little heat there was to
combat the weight and tiredness that suffused her bulky body.
Along the shoreline she
saw a young deer coming to drink and with the merest movement of her tail
steered towards the wary mammal. Now
the darkness was her ally, allowing her to get close; and, as the animal dropped
its head to drink, she used the last of her energy to dart forward and grab its
neck in her powerful jaws. It was a
successful strike and however much the animal struggled
it was never going to escape those razor-sharp teeth.
When the struggling
stopped, she heaved herself from the shallows and started to rip the still warm
flesh from the bones. It wasn’t much
of a meal but it would get her through the night.
When the time came to
find a mate, it meant the search was long and took her far from her usual
territory, but driven by that overwhelming primal urge, she kept searching. The first male she encountered was
old but she accepted his advances, leaving as soon as she could and making her
way back to more familiar waters. Now she had no wish to meet another for they
would be a threat to her unborn young and her instinct to preserve the next
generation was more powerful than any other – even self-preservation.
And tomorrow she would
hunt again.
Cloudbase, somewhere over the
Atlantic
"I see the silly season
has started already," Captain Scarlet said ruefully, throwing the
tabloid newspaper down on the table. He was in the Officers' Lounge with
Captain Magenta and Captain Ochre and they both looked up enquiringly.
"Whazzup?" Ochre reached for the newspaper.
"I suppose it makes a
change from celebrity love-lives and TV shock-horror exposés," Scarlet replied,
“but it is scraping the bottom of the barrel somewhat."
Ochre shrugged and
passed the paper to Magenta.
"'Monster sighted at
Loch Ness - report page 4 and 5," Magenta read aloud. He looked up at
Scarlet. "Nice photo," he commented dryly, as he opened the paper.
"Nice photo!" Scarlet
repeated scathingly. "It's probably a log or an otter or a model..."
"Don't look at me when
you say that," Ochre protested cheerfully. "I've never been to Scotland."
"You aren't the only
model-making geek in the world," Scarlet responded, with a wry grin at the
American, before he added, “Sadly…”
"Says here the
photographer was a clergyman of unimpeachable credentials and he was stone-cold
sober when he saw the monster and took the picture," Magenta reported.
"'This is the best proof ever provided that Nessie exists' – it says so, right
here."
"And the moon is made of
green cheese and the Tooth Fairy leaves money under your pillow," Scarlet said,
rolling his eyes at his friend's gullibility.
Ochre felt a spurt of
irritation at this cavalier dismissal of the evidence. "And the Mysterons
are invisible and you're indestructible," he said, taking the paper from
Magenta. "Consider this, Scarlet: we manage to believe all sorts of
unbelievable things without a problem – so why not this?"
"Yes, I grant you those
things sound unbelievable, but we’ve
had enough proof to substantiate their existence since their first attack,”
Scarlet retorted. “But a prehistoric monster living undetected in a Scottish lake?
You'll be telling me next that Bigfoot is for real and unicorns exist."
"Sure they do - the
leprechauns who live at the bottom of my garden race them round the Fairy Rings
in the fields," said Magenta in his broadest Irish brogue.
Scarlet laughed.
"Okay, you guys! You can believe what you like, but I choose to remain
sceptical.” Ochre and Magenta shared
a pitying glance. Scarlet’s grin broadened and he continued, “I’ll see you
later; I'm off to play squash with Rhapsody."
"Like we’d believe
that," Ochre remarked, as the
Englishman left.
Colonel White looked
round the conference table at the assembled officers and announced: “Any other
business?” There was a muttering of
negatives and shaking of heads.
“Then I have one final item,” he continued.
“Some of you may have seen the recent photograph of what they’re calling the
Loch Ness Monster.” He glanced around the table again to see a universal nodding
of heads. “The authorities are furious
that a photograph got out, but despite their best efforts, it seems someone –
and an unimpeachable someone at that – got through their security cordon and was
able to capture the shot on their communication device.”
“You don’t mean it is real?” Magenta gasped.
“I do not know if the
‘Loch Ness Monster’ per se is real,
Captain, but the World Navy is setting up another expedition to find this creature, if it exists. A few years ago the WASPs sent a Stingray
sub to scan the loch and they reported that they ‘found something’ but couldn’t
identify it. The World Navy feel they can go one better and they have asked Spectrum if
we would like to be involved-”
“Whatever for?”
Captain Scarlet interjected.
The colonel glanced at
him and explained, “They think that as we specialise in the weird and wonderful,
this would be right up our street, if you really want to know, Captain.”
“But we don’t specialise
in the weird and wonderful,” Captain Blue reasoned and then paused. “Well, apart
from the Mysterons, of course.”
“And they’re not
wonderful,” Melody Angel chipped in, “just weird.”
“Yes, I agree,” White said, his expression genial and his tone relaxed. “However, I do consider that we need to
foster good relations with other military organisations and so I am inclined to
send-”
“Not me!” Scarlet
interjected. He had never been a very good sailor but since his Mysteronisation
his propensity to suffer from sea-sickness had become worse. Doctor Fawn rationalised this with the
hypothesis that as his senses had been enhanced by his retrometabolism, his one
‘weakness’ would have increased in ratio.
White shook his head.
“No, Captain, not you. I was going to ask for volunteers.”
“I’ll go,” Captain Grey
said quietly. “Be nice to be on the
water again.”
“And me,” Ochre said,
raising a hand. “I’ve never been to
Scotland before and I reckon I should give the old country the once over, at
last.”
“Very
well. Captain Grey and Captain Ochre will be
assigned to Operation Nessie, in affiliation with the World Navy. Please amend the daily orders
accordingly, Lieutenant Green.”
“S.I.G., Colonel,” the
lieutenant replied.
Grey and Ochre flew to
Inverness where they were met by Chief Petty Officer Kerr, who drove them from
the heliport to where the canal opened out into the loch, and the ship had
anchored waiting their arrival.
“There she is, sirs,”
Kerr said, smiling in amusement at the expression on the Americans’ faces, as
they drove up. “The good ship Seagull.”
“But it’s got sails,”
Ochre stammered. “I thought we were getting a proper boat – you know: a metal
one with an engine.”
“The ship is fitted with an engine for
manoeuvring and for when there isn’t enough wind,” Kerr explained. “She’s been refitted with every modern
aid; you’ll be safe enough, Captain.”
“It looks damn small to
me,” Ochre replied ruefully. “I
guess I’m just used to the boats on the Great Lakes, and they’re enormous
compared to this one.”
“Ships,” Kerr corrected.
Grey gave the officer an
apologetic smile. “We’re both
Mid-Westerners, Chief, and on the Lakes all the shipping’s called boats –
however big they are. I’ve been a
naval officer, so I grew out of that habit, but my colleague’s never had that
chance.”
“Aye, well, then maybe
that’s excusable. But The ‘Gull is a ship – albeit a wee one –
and if you’d ever gone looking for a lifeboat you’d know why she’s a ship. She was a brig of the line until she was
decommissioned and sold to a wealthy arms manufacturer in the 19th
Century. The navy got her back
during the Second Commonwealth, after the Atomic War.
Now she’s used for training and for special operations, such as this.”
“Why The Seagull?” Grey asked curiously, as he handed Ochre his kitbag from
the boot of the car.
Kerr seemed happy enough
to explain: “When the military got her back from the arms manufacturer’s family
she was called the ‘Sweet Saucy Sally’ – and no self-respecting navy ship’s
going to be called that, gentlemen.”
“She’s a fine ship,” Grey said, admiring the
vessel as they walked to the gang plank.
“I’m looking forward to sailing on her.”
Ochre glanced at him and
muttered under his breath, “You
would.”
They were allowed time
to settle into the small, Spartan cabins they’d been assigned. Ochre kept banging his elbows and
head as he stowed away his kit and personal belongings.
He was not impressed.
A sudden knock on the
door which opened immediately afterwards, revealed Grey.
“All stowed away?” he
asked.
“This place is a rabbit
hutch. I can hardly move in it
without bashing bits of me on the bulwark,” his field partner complained.
“You get used to it,”
Grey assured him. “These aren’t
cruisers of the kind Blue’s people own or the sort you take your vacation on,
you know. They’re working ships and space is at a
premium.”
“Thank heavens Cloudbase
was built on different lines,” Ochre said, a rueful expression on his face.
“You can’t swing a cat in here.”
“We’re the lucky ones on
Cloudbase,” Grey said, as they walked towards the bridge where the captain
expected to discuss the mission with them.
“We’re on board all the time, so our quarters are more generous than those of
the rostered support staff.
They have to share quarters and
washrooms.”
“I know,” Ochre
protested. “You make it sound like I
walk around the place with my head in the sand.
I only meant that as guests I kinda thought we’d have… the most
comfortable cabins, I guess.”
“They almost certainly
are the most comfortable cabins,” Grey remarked. “But, Rick, try and remember we’re not
here for a vacation.”
“I know; you don’t have
to get preachy with me, Brad.”
“Look, it all sounds
rather farcical, I agree, and the World Navy has been known to go off on a
tangent at times, but the colonel isn’t the type to send two officers off to
investigate something like this for the fun of it.
I reckon he has a hunch there’s something in this.”
Ochre paused at the foot
of the steps up to the bridge. “You
mean, the Mysterons have recreated a prehistoric monster and they’re planning to
send it to destroy the great cities of the world?”
It was never easy to
tell if Richard Fraser was being serious or not, and Grey was at a loss to read
his friend’s mood now. He settled
for mockery and replied:
“Magenta’s been letting
you borrow too many of his collection of B movies. Let’s just act like professionals and,
with any luck, we’ll have a relaxing cruise and win friends and influence people
in the Navy, so that the colonel thinks we’re the bees’ knees. Okay?”
“S.I.G., Captain Grey,
sir.”
Rolling his eyes at what
was an obvious piss-take, Grey replied patiently: “Come along, Ochre; let’s
report in for duty.”
Commander Reynolds was a
grizzled veteran, probably about the same age as Colonel White, but there the
similarity ended. Reynolds was short
and stocky, with coarse features that gave the impression he was a bit of a
‘bruiser’. Yet, he gave a half-smile
of welcome and saluted the two Spectrum officers.
“Captain Grey and Captain Ochre, I presume? Welcome aboard.”
Grey and Ochre saluted
in return and shook the commander’s proffered hand.
“Allow me to introduce my fellow officers,”
Reynolds said. “Lieutenant-Commander Jack Kemp is my First Officer, and
Sub-Lieutenant Hilary Parker is the Navigation Officer.”
The other officers in the small wheelhouse saluted. Reynolds continued, “The other naval
officers are off duty, and we also have Lieutenant Benjamin Prugh, of the WASPs
with us, an experienced hydrophones and sonar operator. He’s currently getting
his equipment set up in Engineering.
Naval High Command has decided that, despite the failure of the previous
attempts to ‘find’ the Loch Ness Monster to produce any real evidence that the
beast exists, this time it is going to throw everything it has at the problem.”
“Is it a problem not
knowing if Nessie is for real?” Ochre asked.
Hilary Parker answered
him: “Well, the local tourist industry would prefer that we left it an open
question, Captain, if we can’t produce a living, breathing monster, that is; but
the Navy feels its reputation is at stake. The last survey that was conducted
here was inconclusive, again.” Her accent identified her as a fellow North
American – probably from the North West - and Ochre gave her a friendly smile as
she concluded, “I think the Navy just wants a definitive answer – either way.”
“So,
why this sudden interest? Has ‘Nessie’
been interfering with shipping or rampaging about destroying villages?” Ochre
persisted. Like Grey, he felt sure there was some hidden underlying imperative
that justified two of the elite colour captains going fishing for monsters in a
remote Scottish lake.
Reynolds pursed his lips
for a moment and then obviously decided he needed to reply. “That’s the exact problem, Captain. The World Government
have
been financing extensive fish farming along the loch as part of the World Food
Programme. Things were going well
until this summer. Something has
been attacking the fish farms and killing thousands of tons of fish.”
“Okay…” Ochre said
uncertainly. He looked at Grey
for help.
“That doesn’t mean there
is a monster in the loch,” Grey reasoned.
“It could be otters, seals or dolphins…or all three.”
“Yes, it could,”
Reynolds agreed, “but neither otters, seals nor dolphins would attack a man.”
“What happened?” Ochre
gasped.
“This is top secret,” Reynolds said, “even most
of the crew don’t know.”
“Has the Navy told
Colonel White?” asked Grey perceptively.
Reynolds hesitated as if
the question worried him.
Grey improvised. “We need to confirm that you have told
Spectrum everything so that we’re sure we have all the available information,
Commander.”
Reynolds looked
reluctant and continued to say nothing.
“If it helps, remember
that as Spectrum officers you might say that ‘Secrecy’ is our middle name,”
Ochre said quietly.
After a short pause,
Reynolds exhaled and continued: “Well, I guess you have a right to know. It was about six weeks ago. One of the Fish Farm wardens heard a
noise out in the fish pens, so he took to the water in his launch. He went towards the disturbance at the
most distant pen, somehow his boat was overturned and he was thrown into the
loch.”
“Did he see anything?”
Grey asked.
“We don’t know. They found what remained of his body the
next day. Something had bitten him
in half…”
“Oh, hell…” Ochre
grimaced at the vision this information created.
“We don’t know what it
was,” Reynolds concluded, “But if there is a large marine creature – especially
a dangerous one - unknown to science and living in the loch, the Navy wants to
be the one that discovers and deals with it.”
“I can assure you that
Spectrum is more than willing to lend its support,” Grey replied. “Colonel White is anxious to avoid any
potential threats that might arise from the findings of the mission.”
Ochre gave him a bemused
glance, but held his tongue.
“Thank you, Captain
Grey. We will be ready to start the
research sweeps tomorrow morning.
Until then, please make yourself at home.
Hilary, would you show our guests around the ship?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I will see you at
dinner, in the Ward Room at 1900 hours, gentlemen.”
Hilary Parker was a
tall, solidly-built woman, with short, brown hair and brown eyes. She was level-headed enough to know that
even ‘glamorous’ military officers were just men when it boiled down to it, and
young enough to still be impressed at meeting two Spectrum Colour Captains.
It didn’t take her long to realise that Grey was familiar with all things
maritime whereas Ochre was a typical ‘landlubber’ who couldn’t tell a frigate
from a battleship.
“I hope you’re a good
sailor, Captain,” she remarked to Ochre, as he lost his footing on a ladder and
slithered down a few rungs, cursing.
“I’ll do okay,” he
replied, with a rueful grimace at his clumsiness. “Cloudbase is often described as an
aircraft carrier floating at 40,000 feet.”
“Then The Seagull would be the airborne
equivalent of a hot-air balloon,” she replied.
“We’re a lot smaller.”
“He’ll quickly get used
to it,” Grey said.
“I’m sure.” She smiled
and after the short tour was over, she left them in the Ward Room to return to
the Bridge.
“I’ve done some sailing,
you know,” Ochre explained to Grey over a mug of coffee. “On the lakes.”
Grey nodded; coming from
the cities of Chicago and Detroit both men were familiar with the Great Lakes.
“You might find this is a bit small in comparison,” he said.
“Loch Ness is big, but not compared to Michigan-Huron. You’re talking under
22 square miles compared to over 45,000.”
“S’just
a puddle then,” Ochre said carelessly, with a shrug. “How can they not find
something – if it’s there - in something that small?”
“It gets pretty deep –
for a puddle,” Grey explained.
“750-odd feet at its deepest, compared to about 920 for Michigan-Huron, and it
is very dark and murky, due to the peat in the surrounding land.”
“Okay, so it’s a deep,
muddy puddle,” Ochre quipped.
Grey grinned. “I wouldn’t let the Brits hear you call
it that,” he advised, with a raised eyebrow.
His companion gave a
beaming smile in response. Then he sobered up to ask, “You reckon there’s really
anything in all this, Brad?”
Grey shrugged. “They’ve found stranger things at sea,”
he said thoughtfully, and refused to say any more about it.
The two captains spent a
productive evening in the wardroom getting to know the crew of The Seagull. The officers were a fairly
multi-cultural bunch who, it transpired, had been brought together for the
mission. Commander Henry Reynolds was an
Englishman who had been a career sailor and was now approaching active-service
retirement age. It was apparent
from his attitude to the mission that he felt he had drawn the short straw when
he’d been told to go monster hunting.
Nevertheless, the Spectrum officers both got the sense that he intended to do a
good job.
Lieutenant Torin Johansson, was Norwegian: a
fair-haired, hatched-faced man, who, Captain Ochre soon discovered, had a dry
sense of humour and a sharp mind.
Johansson made no secret of the fact that he too was determined to make a
success of the mission and intended to use it as a step towards his next
promotion.
Hilary Parker was the
only female officer on board, although, as she explained to the ever-interested
Captain Ochre, there was another woman amongst the crew. Hilary was from British Columbia and
although this was her first overseas posting, she was confident and
self-assured.
Captain Grey had been
slightly alarmed to hear that there was a WASP Hydrophones officer amongst the
officers. He had been a captain in the WASPs before
joining Spectrum and the organisation was not so big that it was impossible they
would have met before. However,
Prugh proved to be a very young American who had not been in Marineville during
Grey’s service there. He was tall and skinny, and barely spoke unless spoken to.
He clutched his Hydrophone earphones and kept fiddling with them.
Ochre glanced at Grey
and muttered: “I recognise a nerd when I see one.”
Grey raised one eyebrow
and replied, quietly, “Takes one to know one, Model-Man.” And Ochre had the
grace to smirk his acknowledgment of the justice of that dig.
Lieutenant Averey Ekwensi was a handsome,
young Congolese man, with an infectiously friendly smile. Like Parker, this was
his first overseas posting and he admitted to feeling the cold ever since he’d
arrived, at which his colleagues laughed.
“You wait until it snows,” Hilary Parker warned
him.
“By then I shall hope we
have found what we came for,” Ekwensi replied. “And I can take my leave and return to
the sun.”
Commander Reynolds
excused himself early from the gathering in order to get some rest before their
early start. Hilary Parker went
next, saying that she was on duty as navigator and then Prugh bid them a
hesitant ‘goodnight’, and slipped away.
Johansson and Ekwensi
were prepared to entertain their guests for as long as necessary and after some
general conversation, Grey asked:
“This is an unusual
crew; I know it was brought together for this particular mission, but I must
admit, I had anticipated a crew of Brits.”
“We were all especially
chosen,” Ekwensi said. “The World
Navy considered carefully who was needed to make this a successful mission.”
“How ‘especially
chosen’?” asked Ochre, looking from one officer to the other with an air of
interested innocence that did not fool Grey for a moment.
Johansson sighed and
glanced at Ekwensi before answering. Ekwensi gave a slight nod, as if of
approval, and Johansson explained: “The Loch Ness Monster is probably the most
famous example of the genus Cryptid
that have been reported in many locations around the world, Captain; but it is
not the only one. Many lakes have
reported sightings of unknown animals and strange beasts, some are obviously
legends and some are obviously hoaxes.
Some are not. Consider – for many
years science believed the Coelacanth had been extinct since geological times,
yet in 1938 they fished one out of the southern African seas. So who can ever
say that something is truly extinct?”
“You should ask the dodo
to answer that one,” Ochre muttered.
Johansson ignored the
remark and continued: “The persistent
sighting of these Cryptids even led the World Zoological Organisation and the
World Ecological Society to jointly put up a prize for evidence that leads to
the substantiation of these sightings.
The World Navy has decided to go for the ‘Big One’ and to conduct a thorough
search of Loch Ness.”
Recalling Reynolds’
admission that not every officer knew about the attack on the fish farms or the
warden, Ochre played along. “A prize? Our colonel never mentioned that.” He glanced at Grey, relieved to see that
his partner grasped what he was doing.
“How much?” he added.
“One million,” Ekwensi
replied.
“And as much kudos as
any organisation needs to justify its continued existence,” Johansson added
cynically.
“Jeez…” Ochre exclaimed.
“We’re on a glorified treasure hunt!”
“That isn’t why we’re
here,” Grey reminded him. “Spectrum
is here to ensure that if there is anything in the loch,
it has no potential to become dangerous.”
“So; you guys are all
marine… crypto-zoologists,” Ochre mused.
“I am a sailor,” Ekwensi
said, “but, in the same way as my colleagues, I have a special interest in the
mission. When I was a child, back
home by the banks of the Congo, I saw Mokèlé-mbèmbé.”
“You saw who?” said
Ochre.
“A large, unknown river
animal, said to live in the Congo River and Lake Télé,”
Grey answered, rather to Ochre’s surprise.
Ekwensi smiled. “Yes, indeed, Captain. Mokèlé-mbèmbé is
not as well-known as Nessie, but he is well-documented to exist.”
Ochre scratched his
head. “So, you claim to have seen
one of these Cryptids, then?”
“I don’t claim – I did
see it,” Ekwensi said firmly. “I and
my brother were fishing along the river. We saw it very clearly and it was not
far away, so I know it was not a crocodile or a hippo, or a snake, or any of the
things that the sceptics say I saw.
It was Mokèlé-mbèmbé, or one of them.”
“Okay,” Ochre said
uncertainly, and turned to Johansson.
“And have you seen some mythical beast as well?”
Johansson gave a silent
chuckle. “Yes, Captain Ochre; you
have hit upon the very secret of the crew’s cohesion. We have
all
seen a Cryptid: Averey,
Hilary, Lieutenant Urner – our engineering officer,
who you have not yet met – and me.”
“Okaaay…” Ochre considered what to say next. “And that’s why you were all chosen for
this mission?”
“Yes.” Johansson poured himself another drink. “It is too easy to find people who do not believe, so the Navy decided to make
the crew ‘believers’ – if you will call us that.” He took a sip of the beer and added
thoughtfully, “Although, I do not think Commander Reynolds is a believer. Perhaps the Admiralty wanted to temper
the enthusiasm of us all?”
“So… out of the people
on this ship, four have seen… water-dwelling monsters?”
“Five,” said Grey
quietly.
Ochre glanced at him in
surprise. “You
too?”
Grey heaved a sigh and
gave a slight nod of his dark head. Ochre was staring at him in utter disbelief,
so he began to explain: “Long before I
joined Spectrum, I was on leave in Chicago with a friend. We decided to go diving for shipwrecks in
Lake Erie. I saw…” He wrinkled his brow and paused to consider
what to say next. “I saw something, it looked like a water snake,
but it was bigger than any I’d ever seen: it had to be 20 to 30 feet long and
about a foot thick. It had large
eyes on the side of its head and a smooth skin – not scaly, as far as I could
see. It swam past me, but started to circle
back.” He gave a slightly
embarrassed laugh. “I got out of the
water pretty damn quickly, I can tell you.”
“Jeez,” Ochre muttered.
“I’m surrounded by ‘em…”
That night, as Cloudbase
was making its way slowly across the Atlantic towards North America, the
Mysterons’ threat was heard through every communication speaker across the base.
THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE
MYSTERONS. WE KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR
US, EARTHMEN. YOU ATTACKED OUR
COMPLEX ON MARS, AND YOU WILL PAY A HEAVY PRICE FOR YOUR ACT OF AGGRESSION. THE
REVENGE OF THE MYSTERONS WILL EMERGE FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE AGE OF DARKNESS.
Colonel White and his
sleep-tousled officers met in the Conference Room to discuss what this might
signify and how they could prevent it coming to fruition. Nothing they could think of sounded very
plausible and the colonel was becoming frustrated at the lack of probable
targets. It was Captain Blue
who raised the possibility that it might be connected to the mission at Loch
Ness.
“How
come?”
Scarlet asked.
“The legend of a monster
in the loch goes back to the 6th century,” Blue explained, “and
that’s in the period known as the ‘Dark’ Ages in Europe.”
“And the use of ‘depths’
does suggest water,” Rhapsody added, nodding her head.
“But the Navy’s on a
wild goose chase,” Scarlet protested.
“Everyone knows monsters don’t exist.”
“But does the Monster
know that?” Rhapsody asked sweetly, smiling at her compatriot.
Colonel White ordered
Lieutenant Green to contact Captain Grey on
The Seagull and alert him to a potential Mysteron attack.
Grey listened and then
explained about the attacks on the fish farms and the death of the Fish Warden.
“Do you think ‘Nessie’ has been
Mysteronised, Colonel?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Captain,
but I suggest you and Captain Ochre go to Amber Alert and report in every 4
hours. I want to know of every
sighting or potential sighting and any further attacks.”
When the communication
link was closed, the colonel looked at his other officers.
“The research staff can
continue scanning for other possibilities, but for now, we’ll consider Loch Ness
as the site of the proposed Mysteron threat. We’ll reconvene this meeting at 0600
hours. For now, everyone get some
sleep…”
The Seagull got underway at first light, slipping away from the
quay with a minimum of fuss. Ochre
woke up to the gentle creaking of the timbers and the swell of the water and,
momentarily confused as to where he was, sat up quickly, banging his head on the
low ceiling above his narrow bunk.
So he was not in the sunniest of moods as he made his way to the Ward
Room for some breakfast.
Captain Grey was already
there, munching through a plate of bacon and scrambled egg and slurping strong
coffee.
“’Morning,” he said to
his colleague.
“Hi,” Ochre replied. “You been here
for long? Aww, there’s no bacon
left…” he protested from the serving counter.
“No.” Grey shook his
head. “But I imagine most of the
crew ate before we weighed anchor.”
“Yuk;
porridge. I hate porridge.”
Ochre sat at the table
and nursed a cup of coffee while Grey finished eating and then updated him about
the Mysteron threat and his conversation with the colonel.
“So, we might be
fighting a Mysteronised monster?”
Ochre mused. “Things just keep
getting better.”
“There may still be a
rational explanation for what happened,” Grey replied, although his expression
was sceptical.
“You really meant it last night, didn’t you,
that story about the serpent in the lake?” Ochre said.
Grey nodded. “I don’t know what it was I saw, but I
know it scared the hell out of me, Rick.
Afterwards, when I’d calmed down, I tried to rationalise it and even did
some research to try and explain it.
I discovered that there have been reported sightings of something in Lake Erie
before, just like there have in the Congo River and Loch Ness. So, whatever it was, I’m not the only
person to have seen it. I can
accept that there are things we still don’t know about this planet; I did a lot
of travelling while I was in the World Navy – and so did Colonel White, of
course – and then, I transferred to the WASPS and, let me tell you, you see a
lot of strange things in the deep ocean.”
“Everyone’s seen the TV
shows about the odd things that live near deep sea vents and the weird creatures
that live on them,” Ochre replied, although without the usual scepticism in his
tone.
Grey nodded.
“Well, what struck me most about them was that they were just getting on
with their lives; the fact that mankind didn’t know a thing about them was of no
concern to them, and why should it be?
Consider this: most of this planet is still inaccessible to us; we can’t
breathe there and we can’t stand the immense pressures, and yet we still
consider ourselves the masters of this planet.
Let me tell you, Rick, there’s nothing like the deep ocean to make you realise
just how limited the powers of a human being are.
It’s an environment as hostile as any on Mars, or out in deep space, and
it is right on our doorstep. I have
to accept that there are things we can’t know about it or about the life that’s
adapted to survive in it.”
Ochre gave a murmur of
agreement; he was fascinated by Grey’s unusual openness and didn’t want to spoil
the mood.
Grey continued: “So, I
guess I’m prepared to be open-minded about ‘Nessie’ – and all the other Cryptids
– I can hardly refuse to believe that other people have seen something as
inexplicable as something I’ve seen myself, can I?”
“Does Colonel White know about what you
saw?”
Grey gave a slight
shrug. “It isn’t in my official
records; I wasn’t on duty at the time so there was no need to log it. Quite
apart from the possible doubts it might well have cast on my reliability. But, if you ask me, there is very little the
colonel doesn’t know about every one of us.”
“And yet he still
employed me…” Ochre said, with a spark of amusement in his dark eyes.
Grey gave a wry smile. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? He employed all of us: a desk-bound
sub-mariner who thinks he saw a monster, a gangland boss with a heart of gold, a
chain-smoking gadget-freak who’d never been a field officer, an
over-conscientious Head of Security with a powerful guilt complex, an uptight
weapons expert with a rash streak, a forensic expert with a fear of flying, and
a maverick cop… with attitude.”
Ochre sniggered as he
recognised descriptions of all of the elite captains, including their late
colleagues Captains Brown and Indigo.
“Not content with that
bunch of misfits, he topped it off with a world-famous hero-turned-astronaut
who, despite his reputation as a harbinger of peace, in one panic-stricken
moment brought this planet into more danger than it has ever faced,” Grey
concluded.
“The Mysterons,” Ochre
replied. After a moment’s pause, he added, “Do you think they might have some
connection to these Cryptids?”
“I honestly don’t know,
Rick. If they have been watching us
for aeons they may’ve tried taking over other species before us. I mean, the dinosaurs ruled the Earth for a
long time, the Mysterons could have used retrometabolism on them and we’d never
know. Maybe there are scattered
colonies of retrometabolic Cryptids – although, frankly, that idea scares me
even more than my encounter in Lake Erie did.”
“Yeah, but none of these
Cryptids have attacked anyone, have they?
You don’t see them rampaging Godzilla-like around the planet wreaking
havoc. If they have been
Mysteronised they’ve kept it quiet and – until now – we’ve barely given it – or
them - a thought.”
“Did you read the dossier Green gave us before
we left Cloudbase?” Grey asked thoughtfully.
“Somehow, in all the
excitement, I forgot to,” Ochre admitted, managing to sound contrite.
“Well, it pays reading. Green’s included a table from the World
Zoological Organisation that shows that the incidents of reported sightings of
known Cryptids – and some new ones - have been increasing over the past 12
months. All over the world from the Bunyip in Australia to the Storsjoodjuret
in Sweden, people have been reporting strange creatures in the deep waters.”
“You’ve just made them
up,” Ochre accused him.
“Read it and weep, Rick.
I have a sinking feeling that the Cryptids are on the move…”
The Seagull was making its way smoothly across the unruffled
surface of the loch when Grey got to the wheelhouse. Commander Reynolds nodded ‘good morning’
and Johansson, who was standing beside him, gave him a welcoming smile. CPO Kerr was at the wheel and Parker was
consulting the navigational radar.
Reynolds waited until
Grey was beside him and said, “Prugh is testing the hydrophones. This part of the loch is well mapped, as
the boats need to follow the correct channels to the canal lock. Parker is
comparing the readings and relaying them to Prugh in the temporary hydrophonic
room, under that tarpaulin tent arrangement on the deck. So far, we seem to have the
correct settings and the readings are true to what we know. Once that’s calibrated sufficiently, we
will move out into the deeper water and start the sweeps across the loch.”
“And if we spot an
anomaly?” Grey asked, watching the radar-scope flashing the depths and shoals of
the approach with interest.
“We have remote cameras
and a submersible that can be launched quickly,” Reynolds explained. “There’s also a motorboat and two
dinghies, should we need to get into the shallower parts of the loch where The Seagull cannot sail.”
“Who’ll go in the
submersible?” Grey asked.
“Ekwensi has the first
watch.”
“I’d like to be included
in the service rota,” Grey requested firmly.
“As I expect you know already, I’ve been a sub-mariner and I’m familiar
with the protocols and procedures.”
“Gladly,” Reynolds
agreed. “Do you need a wetsuit?”
Grey smiled. “No, I have my own, thank you.”
“And
your colleague, Captain Ochre?”
“Ochre would be out of
his comfort-zone in a submersible, but he’s the best man you could have beside
you in a crisis.”
“You anticipate a
crisis?” Reynolds was surprised and did not trouble to hide it.
Grey glanced at him.
“If we find ‘Nessie’, then, yes, I anticipate that would be something of a
crisis.
Do you have contingency plans for that eventuality?”
Reynolds averted his
eyes and struggled to keep a straight face.
“There you have me, Captain; I admit I‘ve neglected to make any provision
for the possibility that we might find ‘Nessie’.”
Captain Grey looked
surprised. “I suggest you put it on
your ‘to do’ list, Commander, after all, isn’t that exactly what the Navy is
hoping you will do?” he said reasonably.
Over the next few days
Captain Ochre grew accustomed to the rolling and pitching of The Seagull as she ploughed back and
forth across the loch, although he’d have been more uneasy if he’d known that
the weather was considered very clement for the time of year and the loch was
calmer than expected. The routine
on the ship was a strict naval one, far more rigid than that the colonel imposed
on Cloudbase and which Ochre had, until now, considered draconian.
He fretted under the restrictions and rather resented the way Grey integrated so
easily with the other crew members.
However, he found most of the crew friendly enough and more than willing to make
allowances for the only ‘landlubber’ on the ship.
The main problem was
that he wasn’t allowed to do anything technical, although when they needed an
extra man to ‘trim’ the sails they expected him to muck in. He was also allowed to watch the radar
and sonar blips on Prugh’s state of the art equipment
and listen to the hydrophones, when Prugh needed a break. He complained to Grey that he might as
well ask for a lift off the ship and back to base if that was going to be the
full extent of his involvement.
“You’ve got to be
patient,” Grey responded. “This is a
serious mission and you can’t expect to be allowed to do anything you’re not
trained to do.”
“I should never have
volunteered to come!” Ochre snarled, and, however reluctantly, Grey was
beginning to agree with him.
Nevertheless, it was
Captain Ochre who first reported a large anomaly on the hydrophones. It was a squally day and the overnight
wind and rain had washed vegetation into the dark water, Prugh had already sent
the automatic underwater cameras out to identify several clumps of floating
debris, so, when he handed over to Ochre and went to get his lunch, he cautioned
the older man against getting too excited.
“If every blip I’ve
heard today was a cryptid there’d be a whole herd of them out there,” he joked
nervously, as he prepared to leave the tented cabin and descend to the galley.
“Is more than one
cryptid called a ‘herd’?” Ochre asked, but Prugh had already hurried away and so
his question remained unanswered.
With nothing better to do, he amused himself trying out the various options
while he settled to his spell as hydrophonic duty officer. As a job, it was about as exciting
as radar watch on Cloudbase, but at least he felt he was contributing to the
mission.
“A
shoal of cryptids? A pod of cryptids? A pride of cryptids – yes, I like that one
best.” He checked that the radar and
hydrophone sweeps were aligned and muttered to himself,
“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Nessie.
Let’s get this show on the road, eh?”
There were always
anomalous clicks and beeps on the scanners; the loch had a population of wild
fish as well as the farmed ones and there were other boats out and about their
business too, so it took a while to get attuned to the background noise. It was five or six minutes into the
shift before Ochre became aware of a sounding, deep down and moving fast across
the loch towards the near shore. He focused the hydrophones and fine-tuned
the radar, frowning in concentration.
Suddenly it dawned on
him that this …whatever it was, was swimming against the flow and circling round
as if searching for something – or hunting!
He forced himself to
calm down and called the command centre.
“I have a large anomaly
on the scanners…” He read out the co-ordinates. “Moving
erratically, but in the general direction of the shore. It’s deep… and fast.”
“Launching remote camera 3,” Ekwensi replied over the radio. He didn’t sound as excited as Ochre felt,
presumably because he’d spent the morning filming clumps of floating vegetation.
“What can you see, Averey?” Ochre asked, after what seemed like a long time.
“There is something there,” Ekwensi replied, slowly. “I
can not get it into focus; it moves too quickly.”
“Something… big?”
Ochre was having difficulty stopping himself from running up to see for himself.
“Hold, please.” The comms link went quiet, apart from the distant rumble of
voices, as Ekwensi consulted with the other officers.
“What’s going on?” Ochre
demanded in frustration. He
concentrated on the scanners again and reported: “It’s moving off… further out into the
lake. It can’t be debris, unless the
current’s suddenly reversed for no good reason.
It has to be something alive.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Ekwensi’s voice came back
online. “We are going to launch the sub.”
“Whoa! If Grey’s going out in it, then I want to
be on deck,” Ochre demanded.
“Lieutenant-Commander Kemp has recalled Prugh to the hydrophone station
and the Captain is coming to the command station. You
can come on deck once Prugh relieves you,” Ekwensi explained.
As he finished speaking
the launch stations siren sounded and a few moments later Prugh burst into the
room to take over the hydrophones.
Ochre pointed to the pad
where he had jotted down the trail of co-ordinates and Prugh nodded, focussing
the scanners onto the location and starting to refine the signal and increase
the definition.
“I’m going to assist
with the launch,” Ochre told him, although he doubted the young man registered
the information at all. Prugh had
apparently morphed from the self-effacing techno-geek they knew into a focussed
professional, determined to provide accurate information to his colleagues and
oblivious of everything else.
“Right… see you,” Ochre
said, more for his own satisfaction than anything else, and he hurried onto the
part of the deck where the sub was stowed.
When he got there, Grey
was already suited up and consulting the charts and co-ordinates with Hilary
Parker. He took a second to
acknowledge his colleague and then turned back to the chart.
“What do you think it
is?” Ochre asked, excited in spite of himself.
“Could be salmon,”
Hilary said, although her voice betrayed her own excitement.
“Bloody big salmon,”
Ochre muttered. “I saw the sonar…”
Grey smiled and put a
hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll
take a picture of it for you, Rick; the one that really got away.” He laughed, glanced around to see that he
could not be overheard and then continued, “Who knows, we may have found a new
species and it will be known as Cryptid RicardusFraserii…”
Ochre grimaced and gave
a hollow laugh as he followed Grey to where the sub was ready to be winched
overboard.
“Just as long as it
isn’t a Cryptid Mysteronimus,” he muttered, as his
colleague prepared to embark.
“Remember: Captain Black thought there was nothing to worry about on his
expedition to Mars and we’re all
paying for that mistake. Watch yourself out there, whatever you find – okay?”
Grey glanced at Ochre
and recognised the serious expression of concern on his friend’s face. “S.I.G., Captain,” he replied.
The navy’s submersible,
Tiamat, hit
the lake surface with a jolt and then sank slowly into the choppy water. The heavy duty chain played out slowly
until the vessel was submerged and Johansson’s voice came over the radio:
“Clearing the mechanical hawser… three, two, one. Hawser clear. You are free to dive, Tiamat.”
“S.I.G.,” Grey replied,
as he checked the controls and switched on the first bank of powerful
searchlights. The sub was small and
cramped – a far cry from the comparatively spacious Stingray subs he had
commanded in the WASPS, but he had also had experience of these single-manned
rovers and so it wasn’t too disorientating.
The wide-beam lights
shone into water that was murky and full of floating silt and debris. Even with them on the visibility was poor
and he realised he would have to navigate by sonar and hydrophonic dead
reckoning. He input the coordinates relayed from
Prugh on the ship, and the Tiamat
began to turn and move out towards the deeper water.
The further he went from the shore, the deeper and darker the water grew,
so Grey switched on another bank of lights and peered through the dense
blackness.
“You are almost at the last location we have for the anomaly,” Prugh
said.
“Last
location? You’ve lost it?” Grey
asked in surprise.
“It remained static and then sank,” Prugh explained. “At
least, I think that’s what it did… it sort of vanished.”
“Oh, did it?” Grey muttered, recalling with some
concern the various occasions when Captain Black had been in danger of capture
and had been transported away from the site by his alien masters. It was not a comforting thought. He switched on the third and final bank
of lights and pointed them downwards into the black abyss of the loch.
Outside the small,
round, thick-plated portholes, Grey could see the tendrils of plants and twigs
from bushes and trees that had been washed into the loch swirling in the wake
caused by the single propeller he was using to manoeuvre the craft, but beyond
that there was nothing but a murky gloom. He cut the power to the engine and
allowed Tiamat to drift. Once submerged and silent in the water,
he had expected to see some fish or other creature swim by, but as the minutes
ticked passed nothing moved. The
hydrophones were silent and he couldn’t see anything on the scanners. It was preternaturally empty, as if
something had scared the normal inhabitants away.
He increased the scope of the hydrophones, reaching out into the darkness
and listening for the tell-tale signs of life.
“Seagull to Tiamat, is everything okay?” Ochre’s voice sounded edgy
and very loud in the intense silence.
“Yes, Seagull; I’m
conducting a broad sweep with the hydrophones and then I’ll conduct a detailed
sonar search of the loch bed around here.
The preliminary readings show we must be in one of the deepest parts of
the loch.”
“S.I.G., Tiamat. Lieutenant
Parker concurs with that,” Ochre reported.
“Lieutenant Prugh still has no
readings on his scanners. Whatever
it was seems to have vanished.”
“Yes, and that’s exactly
what I don’t like about it,” Grey confessed. He increased power to the hydrophones
again and strained to hear anything recognisable.
“One more sweep and I’ll switch to the sonar,” he reported.
The moment he finished
speaking his eardrums were assaulted by a loud, high-pitched signal. He yelled out in pained surprise and
dragged the headphones off.
“What’s the matter?” Ochre was yelling.
“Something’s approaching
the sub at speed,” Grey managed to gasp out, his head still ringing with the
shock of the noise.
And then he saw it – or
as much of it as the small portholes allowed him to see.
“Oh, my God!” he
exclaimed, just as his world turned upside down.
On The Seagull, Ochre was calling urgently into the radio:
“Come in, Captain Grey!
Grey, what’s happened? Come in, Brad… come in!”
Prugh came over the
internal radio. “Something huge and fast
moving has collided with the Tiamat,” he explained. “It
rose out of the depths at a tremendous speed.”
“What is it?” Ochre
demanded.
“I don’t know, sir, but I don’t think it’s inanimate,” Prugh replied.
Ochre glanced defiantly
at Parker. “I bet it isn’t a
frigging salmon, either,” he muttered.
“Look!” Kemp was
pointing out of the observation window in the direction the Tiamat had gone. The other officers followed the direction
of his finger.
The water was seething
as something writhed and thrashed about at the surface. A wide cylinder of air bubbles rising
from the depths created a net that effectively trapped anything inside it. One
enormous flipper came up and rolled over to smack down again with a thud that
created ripples strong enough to rock The
Seagull as they spread across the loch.
A long backbone rose from the water, arching into a hump as it dived back
down, two giant rear flippers propelling it back into the depths.
“Nessie,” breathed
Parker in astonishment.
“I don’t care what it is
- that fucking newt is attacking the
Tiamat!” Ochre yelled. “We’ve
got to get the sub out of the water – and quickly!”
When the Cryptid attacked, Grey was thrown from his seat and his head
banged against the corner of the control panel, leaving him slightly stunned. The
Tiamat
was rolled over and over by the great beast as it rose from the depths and
batted it aside with one powerful sweep of its flipper.
When the sub stopped
rolling, Grey re-orientated himself and started to
examine the vessel to see if anything was still working. When he touched the control panel a spark
of electricity told him all too graphically that there was little chance of
getting the sub’s engines to restart.
The comm link was also out of action and there
was no way to contact the surface for help.
By the time he had
surveyed that much of the damage, the Cryptid had surfaced and was diving back
towards the crippled vessel for a second attack. One more powerful swipe sent Tiamat spinning across the loch away from
the shore and Grey was rattled around like a pea in a whistle. Breathless and bruised, he grabbed onto
the emergency hatch lock to steady himself and saw with horror that there was
water seeping through one of the portholes.
There was no way the sub
would take another direct hit.
With every option but
one closed off to him, Grey acted quickly.
He was already in a wetsuit and – as he always did – he had taken the
miniature aqua lung kit that he’d been working on for the last few years with
him. There was more than enough air
for him to get to the surface, as long as he could get out and away from Tiamat unseen.
He fastened the oxygen
tanks onto his back and adjusted the mouth piece so that he was prepared if the
Cryptid managed to break the sub apart before he was ready to leave. Then he went to the emergency stores and
broke the seal. Inside were
emergency flares, an inflatable dinghy, a first aid kit and rations. Working quickly he rigged the flares to
go off as the dinghy was inflated and using tape and bandage from the first aid
kit, he attached the inflation stopper to the emergency hatch.
From the undamaged
porthole, Grey could see the Cryptid had dived under the sub and was now
surfacing again for another attack.
He exhaled and then put the respirator into his mouth.
“Goodbye,
Tiamat,” he whispered, and as the great beast approached, he opened the
emergency hatch and launched himself into the cold, dark water.
As he had intended, the open door activated the inflation device for the
dinghy and the emergency flares went off inside the sub, sending beacons of
brilliant magnesium-white light out of the portholes. As the
Tiamat
spun round, the light hit the Cryptid and with a frightened rumble that shook
Grey’s very bones, it swerved away and back into the darkness.
Grey kicked for the
surface: up – straight up – he told
himself, not daring to look back to see if the beast was returning.
He hit the surface and
shook the water from his face, surprised by the fact that it was still light
above the loch and that in the distance he could see The Seagull. He waved
and then started swimming for dear life towards the ship.
Deep below him, the
flares had gone out and as the light died the Tiamat, flooding and dead in the water, was slowly spinning to the
loch floor. Grey kept swimming,
pumped by the sheer flood of adrenalin that swamped his body,
his heart was thudding against his chest so much that he could hardly get oxygen
into his protesting limbs.
Gotta keep going… Oh, Sweet Jesus… let me keep going…
On the deck of The Seagull, Johansson and CPO Kerr were
about ready to launch the motor launch, when they saw, deep below the surface,
the flash of light that signalled Tiamat’s
death throes. In the
hydrophonics
room, Prugh reported the deep cry of alarm and fear
from the Cryptid. Ochre ran to the
deck and was scanning the surface of the loch, urging the men to get the launch
out there as soon as they could. In
the distance they could see the rotating beacons of light, sinking into the
depths and to their surprise, some distance away from
The Seagull, towards the middle of the loch, the Cryptid surfaced again. This time they could see the head, with
massive jaws lined with the rows of sharp teeth, ideal for ripping flesh from
its prey.
‘Nessie’ reared up into
the water and arcing into a dive, it went down into the water, after the
crippled vessel.
“Grey can’t have
survived that,” Johansson said in utter misery.
Kerr nodded agreement.
“I hope it was quick and merciful.”
“Get that launch out
there,” Ochre snapped. “I won’t
believe it until I have proof.”
“Captain Ochre, I know
he was your friend, but no one could survive that,” Johansson reasoned.
“Launch it,” Ochre said,
his hand moving to the Spectrum pistol at his hip.
Shaking their heads, the
men obeyed.
Ochre went to the rail
and stared out into the distance.
There was something, small and vulnerable in the choppy water…
“Look!” he cried,
pointing. “There’s Grey! Get that boat in the water… now!”
Kerr shouted with
delight as he focussed on the swimmer and they got the launch down as quickly as
they could. With Johansson
steering, they raced out to Captain Grey and Kerr and Ochre hauled the exhausted
man into the launch.
There were plenty of
willing hands to lift Grey on board The
Seagull and Ochre went with them down to the small Sick Bay below deck.
Doctor Järvinen shooed everyone out, except Ochre and between them they stripped
the wetsuit off Grey and dried him.
“He does not seem to be harmed,” the doctor
said, as he examined the strong body while they dried it. “He has much shock and perhaps a
concussion – see here? His forehead is bruised.”
Grey’s dark eyes
fluttered open and he struggled to focus.
“Rest, my good Captain
Grey,” Järvinen said. “You are on The Seagull and all is well for now.
I have something for you to drink and you will sleep.
In the morning you shall feel much better, I promise it.”
“Ochre?” Grey gasped
desperately.
“I’m here,” Ochre
reassured him, and took the frantically groping hand in his.
Grey stared up at the
blurred face before him and gasped, “Rick, it was the cryptid… we’ve found the
Loch Ness Monster. They do exist.”
He gave a weak smile and
as the doctor held a potion to his lips, drank and quickly sank into a dreamless
sleep.
After reassuring himself
that Grey was going to be all right, Ochre went along to the wardroom, which had
been doubling as a chart and conference room during the day, and found Commander
Reynolds and his officers debating what to do next.
“I estimate that it was
12-15 metres long,” Prugh was saying as Ochre entered the room, “and it moved
quickly and was highly manoeuvrable, so I can’t be totally accurate without
taking further readings.”
“But what is it?” Reynolds asked with
exasperation.
Ochre replied, “Grey
said it was a Cryptid – and I don’t think any of us who saw it would argue with
that.” He looked around at the
others and no one disagreed. “Grey
says we’ve found Nessie.”
“But Nessie’s never
attacked any one or any thing before,” Johansson protested.
“That …thing was out to kill,” Kemp said
firmly.
“Maybe no one or no thing has come that close to it before?”
Ekwensi said thoughtfully.
“Mokèlé-mbèmbé is known to attack when confronted.”
“That has never been proved,” Parker replied
quickly, “and there are no reports of any other cryptid appearing hostile.”
“Well…” Kemp began, but
he was interrupted by Reynolds.
“Be that as it may, the
loch must be closed to shipping while that thing is out there. I am not prepared to risk civilians being
attacked. I will inform the local
authorities and Naval Command in London.
It is possible that they’ll send a warship to hunt the creature down.”
“What?” Parker
exclaimed. “We can’t do that, sir! Whatever this is it is a new species,
unknown to science – we need to study it and protect it – not slaughter it!”
“I doubt you will find
the civil authorities consider keeping the loch closed to shipping indefinitely
while boffins paddle in the shallows looking for footprints – or whatever it is
they do – is a practical suggestion, Lieutenant, “ Reynolds said. “And now we have evidence that ‘Nessie’
will attack humans, it has to be considered dangerous.”
“It was frightened,”
Prugh said suddenly. “I heard its
cry – it was deep and low and it was frightened.
Maybe that’s why it attacked the
Tiamat?”
Several officers started
talking at once and, with a shake of his head, Ochre left them to their
argument. He went to his cabin and
contacted Cloudbase to report in.
“And you’re sure that Captain Grey will be all right?” Colonel White
asked immediately Ochre had explained what had happened.
“Yes,
sir. Doctor Järvinen says he’s shaken and
bruised but intact. He gave him a
sleeping draught and thinks he’ll be okay tomorrow.”
Ochre paused and then volunteered his opinion, “I think he was lucky.
I saw that…cryptid and it could’ve swallowed him whole.”
“Has Grey been able to tell you anything at all about what happened?
Anything that might suggest Mysteron involvement?”
“No; all he said was
that we’ve found Nessie and ‘they’ do exist.
I’ve just left the World Navy arguing about what to do next. Commander Reynolds wants the loch closed
to shipping while their warships round the beast up and – presumably – kill it.
Some of his officers are not in agreement.”
“I agree that it is wise to close the loch; if this is a
Mysteronised creature, then there is no limit on what
it might do.” The colonel paused
thoughtfully and then continued: “We can’t
know – we may never know – when the
creature was Mysteronised, assuming it has been. Nessie, or a whole colony of Nessies, might’ve lived for blameless millennia in the loch,
but having recently died - of natural causes or with a little help from our
alien friends – been retrometabolised and ordered to attack humans. Either way, I agree with Commander Reynolds,
the creature is a threat.”
“What do you want me to
do, Colonel?”
“I want you to stay with Captain Grey, and keep me informed of the plans
the navy’s making. I will send
Captain Scarlet to the Admiralty in London to see if he can be of any
assistance. They may want to send in the WASPs to
search the loch and it maybe that, given his unique abilities, he would be the
ideal person to attempt to hunt down the creature and… render it harmless.”
Ochre pulled a face.
“Harmless as in ‘d-e–a-d’, sir? I guess that’s one
solution, but perhaps it’s wise to consider that although Captain Scarlet is
indestructible he isn’t indigestible and it might be beyond even his powers to
recover from being Nessie’s lunch.” Hearing the colonel’s habitual ‘humph’ of
disapproval at his remarks, Ochre thought it wise to add, “Sir.”
“Captain Scarlet knows the risks, Captain,” White replied, “as does every Spectrum agent. It is obvious
that this cryptid is a danger to shipping and it may move out of the loch into
busier and more important shipping lanes.
That cannot be allowed to happen.
However, I take your point and I will ask Spectrum Intelligence’s
Research and Development facility to give some thought to how we might deal with
that threat of danger. For now, you
remain with Captain Grey and keep me informed.
White out.”
“S.I.G.,” Ochre said,
but he doubted the colonel had kept the link open long enough to hear him.
When Grey woke the next morning Doctor Järvinen
was at his side.
“How are you feeling,
Captain Grey?” he asked kindly. “You
have slept well, I think?”
“I feel fine, Doctor,”
Grey replied, although he grimaced as he tried to sit up. “I ache a bit… that’s
all.”
“You are one lucky man,
I am thinking,” Järvinen said, with a smile.
“All the crew are thinking much the same, but
you will tell your story only once, eh?
I will send for Captain Ochre.
He was here to see if you were awake earlier but I sent him to get some
breakfast.”
“I hope there is more
than porridge left for him today,” Grey remarked, with a wry smile.
“You should have some
porridge; yes indeed. It would be
fortifying for your body.”
Grey gave a weak smile.
“Okay, Doc; I’ll take my medicine.
Bring it on.”
Järvinen gave a beaming
smile and went to call through an order for his patient.
The bowl of porridge was
delivered by a beaming Captain Ochre.
“Hi there,” he said, as
he laid the tray on the bedside table top. “You’re looking much better than you were
yesterday when we pulled you out of that lake.”
“Yeah, seems like I owe
you my thanks for that.”
Ochre shrugged with a
friendly grin. “Hey, you’d have done
the same for me. Now, eat this
before the Doc throws me out as a bad influence.”
“You may stay as long as
you like or until Captain Grey is too tired to talk to you. I have no concerns,” Järvinen said. “I shall be in my office if there is need
of me.” He pointed to a small alcove across the room. “Captain Grey, if the pain is great, I
have pills that will help.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Grey reached for the bowl and spooned
some of the porridge into his mouth, feeling warmth seep through him as he
swallowed the food.
Järvinen left them alone
and Ochre watched him go. He turned
to Grey and asked mischievously, “Do you think he’s a proper doctor?
I mean, shouldn’t all properly trained doctors have the same bedside manner as
Fawn and bawl everyone out if they dare to try to visit a patient?”
“Fawn hasn’t got a
bedside manner any longer; he’s got a ‘what-are-you-still-doing-here’ manner,”
Grey said cheerfully, adding in-between spoonfuls of porridge, “I think he’s
developed it especially to use when he’s itching to do more tests on Captain
Scarlet – again.”
Ochre chuckled. “Yeah, poor Scarlet, he really got the
short straw when he ran up against the Mysterons.”
He glanced at his friend. “He
sends his ‘best’, of course – Fawn, I mean.
I got the impression he thought you’d got yourself knocked about where he
couldn’t administer his own brand of healing on purpose.”
“I didn’t intend getting
myself knocked about at all,” Grey replied, once he had finished the cereal.
“I had no idea that was going to happen – none at all.”
“You told me last night
that we’d found the Loch Ness Monster and, from what I saw, I think you’re
right. Why did she attack you? I mean there’s no history of her being so
aggressive. What happened?”
Grey shook his head,
wincing slightly at the sudden ache the movement generated. “I don’t know; but maybe it was the
lights? I had turned on all three
banks of lights and shone them down where I thought the cryptid had gone. Then it appeared, rising out of the
darkness and coming straight for Tiamat.” He shifted uneasily and tried to explain
what he remembered to his attentive friend.
“The portholes on the
sub are small and thick to withstand the pressures of a deep dive, so what I
could see once it came close was limited.
I saw its head and rows of very sharp-looking teeth. A longish neck and
flippers – diamond-shaped flippers.
I think it hit the sub, maybe with a flipper and maybe unintentionally, but the Tiamat span out of control and that’s
when I hit my head and I may have blacked out for a moment. The second hit was – I think –
intentional but I wasn’t going to stay around for another one.”
He went on to explain
about the way he had rigged the inflatable and the emergency flares and slipped
out of the sub, leaving the cryptid to deal with the vessel and cope with the
blinding light show he had devised.
“I don’t think you
killed her,” Ochre said, as Grey’s story came to an end.
“I wasn’t trying to, I just didn’t want it to kill me!”
“The Navy are upstairs planning what to do next,” Ochre explained,
“They’re going to close the loch and Colonel White agrees with them.”
Grey grimaced, shrugged
and sighed. “Closing the loch is a
good idea; I guess we can’t run the risk it might be Mysteronised. It’s big enough to do damage to even
large ships if it gets out of the loch into major shipping lanes…”
“Hold on – this is a
fresh water lake, right? All of the
major shipping lanes tend to be out there in the big, blue oceans. No giant newt, even if it is
Mysteronised, is going to be able to get out to the shipping lanes and even
then, she might not survive in sea water.”
“Salmon cope,” Grey
reminded him dryly, “and the Mysterons have ways of moving things about to suit
themselves…”
“Yeah.” Ochre sat silent for a long moment and
then said in a rush: “It is just that it seems so unfair, Brad. Until recently there’s no evidence of
Nessie hurting anyone and now, just because we’ve found her they’re planning to
send in the heavy ships to blow her to Kingdom Come.
You said yourself, we may have scared her into
attacking the sub. Strikes me as
pretty flimsy evidence for assuming she’s dangerous.”
“Take it from me – it was dangerous,” Grey replied, noting
with some amusement how Ochre’s sense of chivalry led him to the defence of the
cryptid almost from the exact moment he had started to consider it a female.
He continued, “But I do see what you mean, Rick.
Maybe we can convince the colonel to talk the navy into granting a stay of
execution, at least while we investigate further?
I, for one, would like to know what we’re up against before we slaughter it – assuming we can. Preventing the Mysterons from carrying out
whatever they have planned means we’ll need to deny them the corpse of the
animal – if they haven’t already retrometabolised it, of course. The prospect of trying to do that
while it’s still in the water doesn’t exactly appeal.”
“Hmm,” said Ochre
thoughtfully. “It certainly won’t be
easy to avoid electrocuting everything in the loch. If you explain that to the colonel he can
hardly refuse us the chance of capturing it and getting it on dry land, can he?”
Grey spoke to Colonel
White for some considerable time over the communication link. Then, some hours later, the colonel
called Grey; he explained that he had done better than just ask the World Navy
to grant a ‘stay of execution’, he had informed them
that Spectrum would take over the mission.
London Naval HQ had blustered and protested, but Spectrum had the
authority to override them and there was little they could do to prevent it
happening while they took their protest to the World Security Council for
adjudication.
“However, I expect,
results, Captain,” said White. “I want
answers and I want them quickly.”
“S.I.G, sir,” Grey
replied.
“And how exactly do we
find answers? And answers to what?” Ochre protested, when Grey gave
him the news.
“Whether Nessie is a
Mysteron, of course,” Grey explained, “and we won’t be doing it alone-”
“Don’t tell me,” Ochre
sighed dramatically. “Captain Scarlet’s going to arrive on his white charger to
save us all from Nessie the newt?”
Grey smiled and clapped
a hand on his shoulder. “Wrong – the
Old Man told me he’s sending Fawn and Green.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall and concluded cheerfully, “They should be here before your bedtime, my
young friend!”
Ochre’s expression of
pure astonishment remained Grey’s favourite memory of the mission for a long
time after.
Doctor Fawn immediately
insisted on giving Grey a once-over when he and the
excited Lieutenant Green arrived on The
Seagull, so while Green got what information he could from Ochre, the doctor
examined Grey and got the story from the horse’s mouth.
“You were lucky,” Fawn
said, as he indicated Grey could put his shirt back on. “But you’ve got the heart and lungs of an
ox, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
He turned suddenly and
took a snapshot of the captain with a Mysteron detector.
“I wondered why you were
here,” Grey said, only slightly put out by the incident.
“Colonel White’s a
cautious man, Brad.” Fawn watched
the photograph emerge as an X-ray picture and smiled.
“But he’ll be relieved to know you’re good to go.”
“Don’t you think Ochre
would have noticed if I’d been killed and Mysteronised?”
Fawn slipped the
photographic evidence into his medical file.
“Ochre’s clever – far cleverer than he likes to admit – but even he can’t
tell a really accurate Mysteron replicant from the real thing. Besides, it was him who told the colonel
the monster could’ve swallowed you
whole.”
Grey nodded.
“I understand, but you’re sure I’m not a Mysteron now, Doc?”
Fawn gave his friend a
dry glance. “SIRAD’s Mysteron
detector is the best proof we have.
I’ll have to trust it.”
The men exchanged
friendly smiles.
“I bet Ochre’s got Green
all wound up about monsters already,” Grey remarked, as they prepared to join
their colleagues. “Why did the
colonel send Greenie with you and not Scarlet?”
“I’m surprised you
haven’t worked that out for yourself,” Fawn replied. “Green was in the WASPs as a hydrophones
operator. He’s familiar with all the
equipment and he suggested to the colonel that with two systems, it would be
possible to triangulate where the monster was and take appropriate action.”
“Ah-hah,” Grey said
thoughtfully, as he followed the doctor back to the Ward Room. “So it had
nothing to do with Scarlet’s mal-de-mer after all?” he asked innocently.
Fawn’s deep chuckle just
about reached his hearing.
Having been reassured by
Captain Grey that Prugh was a recruit from after their time, Green was confident
that the WASP lieutenant was unlikely to pose any threat of a security breach.
The days when he had served on the Clam subs for the WASPs and in Marineville’s
Control Tower seemed an age ago, but you couldn’t be too careful about
protecting your identity.
Green spent so much time
on Cloudbase these days that being afloat again seemed strange; nevertheless, he
was enjoying being aboard The Seagull
and looking forward to working with another skilled hydrophones operative. Prugh was waiting and ready to start.
He moved from the control panel and allowed Green to sit and open a second sonar
channel. They started calibrating the soundings
against known data and the readings from the terrestrial posts. Before long they were working
together like old friends…
Captain Grey sought out
CPO Kerr and asked him to help prepare the launch to take the mobile sonar
equipment that Green had brought with him.
The Scotsman was pleased to see the Spectrum captain up and about, and
said as much.
“We all thought you were
out a goner, out there, Captain.
That beastie was in a rare fit of temper,” he said.
“My colleague thinks I might’ve frightened it
with the lights from the Tiamat. I suppose that could be the reason; after
all the depths of the loch are very dark.”
“Aye, well, the water’s
awful peaty,” Kerr explained. “It’s one
of the reasons they say something might’ve survived in the loch without it being
known about.”
“Have you ever seen
Nessie – before the Tiamat was
attacked, I mean?”
“No, I never have. I would’ve said I was sceptical about
Nessie’s existence, until then.”
“And
now?”
Kerr gave a slightly
cynical smile. “Once the loch’s open
I’d say the tourist board will be beating a path to the shore.”
Grey smiled back. “You’re probably right,” he said, as
Captain Ochre appeared with the first of the equipment.
They all got to work. It was now imperative that they wasted as
little time as possible in starting their search.
Admiral Sir Walter
Nugent listened to Captain Scarlet’s argument with every appearance of
attention.
“And you say Spectrum
believes this submersible was attacked by the Loch Ness Monster?” he asked,
raising his dark eyes from the papers on his desk to stare at the young man, as
Scarlet stopped speaking.
“Yes,
sir. It was witnessed by several of the men on
board The Seagull as well as two
Spectrum officers.”
Nugent looked down again
at the papers and re-read the letter Captain Scarlet had delivered from Colonel
White. He knew the colonel was not
given to flights of fancy or practical jokes having served alongside Sir Charles
Grey in the British Navy before the Civil War, but he still found the whole
concept somewhat preposterous.
“And Vice-Admiral Teddeman authorised this… expedition?”
“Yes,
sir. Colonel White said that it was the
Vice-Admiral who invited Spectrum to participate.”
Shaking his
distinguished head, Nugent gave a rueful smile.
“Between you and me, Captain Scarlet, I sometimes wonder if some parts of
the World Navy haven’t got too much time on their hands… However, you can assure
Colonel White that I will assign one of our submarines to assist the expedition.
I’m sure there must be at least one not fully occupied with naval matters.”
“Thank you, sir,”
Scarlet said, trying not to grin.
“Go and get some lunch,
Captain. If you come back at about
two o’clock I’m sure one of my flag lieutenants will have chosen the lucky crew.
Mind you, if you do catch Nessie, I want a framed photograph of it for my wall;
otherwise no one will ever believe me.”
“Yes,
sir.” Scarlet saluted and marched smartly out
of the office before the urge to laugh got the better of him.
In fact what Scarlet got
assigned to him was one of the Zeidae class of mini-subs, Z359, known as ‘John Dory’. He was
rather pleased that his instructions were to rendezvous with the vessel at
Inverness, rather than on the Clyde for the journey to Loch Ness and he flew up
there in an SPJ direct from London.
Commodore Rupert Holland
greeted him on the quayside and conducted him aboard.
“So, we’re to take you
to join your colleagues in Loch Ness,” Holland said, as he showed Scarlet to a
‘break-out’ area, where a coffee machine stood.
“That’s right,
Commodore. Spectrum is undertaking
an expedition with the World Navy.”
“It’s
okay, Captain, Admiral Nugent’s flag lieutenant told me what’s going on. It seems we are to protect our colleagues
and yours while they hunt for Nessie.”
“Did the flag lieutenant
also tell you that there have been recent attacks on local fish farms, resulting
in the death of one man and that the expedition’s submersible has been attacked
by some large underwater animal?”
“Flags didn’t go quite
that far,” Holland admitted; as he handed Scarlet a mug of hot coffee, his
expression was one of deep concern.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“My colleague, Captain
Grey, was able to swim clear, but it was touch and go,” Scarlet explained. “I really don’t want you to take this
mission lightly, or to scare you into thinking there is inevitable danger in the
loch, but you will need to be ready to take action, Commodore.”
Holland could see that
Scarlet was serious about the possible dangers they faced and his expression
grew grave. “Well, the John Dory is armed and although we don’t
carry many weapons, we have a couple of missiles and some light armaments.”
Scarlet sipped his
coffee. “That might be enough to
kill the animal.” He didn’t mention
that if the creature – whatever it was – had been Mysteronised it would probably
be impervious to anything the John Dory
could throw at it – at least, in the long term.
Holland turned to leave,
but he said, over his shoulder as he walked away, “Oh, come on, Captain!
If the thing is alive we have more than enough firepower to stop it in its
tracks.”
“If it is alive,” Scarlet muttered to himself.
When the John Dory came alongside The Seagull, Scarlet went aboard and
after the introductions were completed, he and the other Spectrum officers held
a private meeting.
“It is my understanding
that the colonel wants it dead because we can’t risk the Mysterons using it
against us. And they mustn’t be able
to retrometabolise the corpse. Whatever they plan to do has to stop right here.” Scarlet
glanced around his colleagues, inviting discussion.
“The Mysteron threat is
obscure enough to mean almost anything,” Ochre said. “Just because Blue thinks it has something to do with Nessie, doesn’t mean it actually
does.”
“I know; but we can’t
think of anything else,” Scarlet admitted.
“And we can’t risk of doing nothing because Blue might be right - especially since the attacks on the fish farms and
the warden and now on the Tiamat. If ‘Nessie’ attacked civilian shipping
there’d be panic.”
Grey shrugged. “I’m inclined to think that the attack on
the
Tiamat was more from fear than
aggression.”
“And the warden, was
that fear?” Scarlet asked abruptly. “It bit him in half!”
“I know; I thought it
might do the same to me,” Grey reminded him pointedly. Scarlet gave a brief nod. “Who knows what prompted that attack,”
Grey continued. “Maybe it was
disturbed while feeding or the warden attacked first?”
“I wonder why it hasn’t
attacked the fish farms before.” Fawn said suddenly. “They’ve been there for
years now and Nessie’s ignored them.”
“Perhaps she’s not very
bright and the realisation that there’s a fast food outlet on her doorstep’s
only just dawned?” said Ochre.
“Maybe there’s more than
one?” Fawn mused.
“Oh please, no. One is more than enough to deal with,”
Scarlet said. “I think Spectrum’s on
a hiding to nothing here. Whatever
we do the media will have a go at us: kill it and we’re barbarians, don’t kill
it and we’re putting people at risk.”
“How are we going to
kill it?” Green asked.
“We need to get it out
of the water before we do anything,” Grey said.
“We track it and then we
corral it into shallow water,” Scarlet explained. “If possible, we catch it but if not, I
will kill it. I’ve been adapting
some of the armaments on the John Dory
and I have a viable harpoon which will explode once embedded in the flesh.”
“Nice one,” Fawn
muttered, in a tone that implied the opposite.
“Not from choice, Doc,”
Scarlet remarked, with a wry smile. “But if I don’t want to end up like the
warden, I need to be prepared.
Besides, even retrometabolism needs something to work with.”
Fawn nodded. “You’re right, Captain; we need to be careful
when we confront the… cryptid. We
don’t know what we’re up against.”
“Could we photograph it
from the air?” Ochre suggested. “If
we used the Mysteron detector that’d at least clear up the issue of whether it
was Mysteronised, at least.”
“That’s an idea,”
Scarlet agreed. “Lieutenant, will
you please ask the colonel to equip the Angel jets with a detector? If they can spot the creature from the
air, they may just get a chance to use the detector.”
Green nodded and opened
a channel to Cloudbase.
“The sonar rigs are
ready,” Grey confirmed, as Green relayed their idea to the colonel. “We should start the search. This is a big loch and not every anomaly
is a cryptid.”
Green confirmed that the
Angel Jets would have a Mysteron detector aboard and rose to go to his post as
Scarlet dismissed the meeting. The
second phase of ‘Operation Nessie’ was underway.
The Angels patrolled the loch during the hours
of daylight without success: there were no sightings of Nessie.
The sonar sweeps identified numerous anomalies that turned out to be nothing
more than floating debris or matter that was unidentifiable by the remote
control cameras. Soon it wasn’t only
Captain Scarlet who was getting frustrated by the lack of success.
“I am being pressed by the Navy and by the civil
authorities to give them some indication of how much longer this will take,
Captain,”
Colonel White informed Captain Scarlet.
“I wish I could tell
you, sir,” Scarlet replied. “We
can’t really search for 24-hours a day and the daylight hours are getting
shorter. She has had hundreds of years to perfect
her camouflage skills and I’m afraid we just we can’t find her.”
“How do you propose to intensify the search, Captain?”
“Well, we have thought
about trying to get her to come to us, sir, by launching remote submersibles
with strong lights attached, to see if we can entice the cryptid to attack
them.”
“Then I suggest you
get on with it, Captain. This is a
Spectrum mission not a health cruise!”
“S.I.G, sir.”
Captain Ochre’s model
making skills came in handy when they rigged the lights onto the remote
submersibles that usually held the cameras.
The main problem was the additional batteries necessary to keep the lights as
bright as possible, but he was able to resolve the problem with a little
ingenuity. Grey devised a search pattern taking into
account known sightings of the cryptid and the possible areas it might inhabit
and the next day they were ready to start.
“Sadly, it seems that
nobody’s told Nessie that today’s the day we get acquainted,” Ochre complained,
as Prugh relieved him for the late afternoon shift on the sonar sweep.
They’d been searching
the loch in a methodical way since early light, but without success – there
hadn’t even been a good enough reason to launch the light arrays.
Prugh shrugged. “Maybe Nessie doesn’t need to feed every
day, Captain? And it’s been cold, so
she might’ve holed up somewhere to keep warm – or as warm as she can in this
loch.”
“That’s a point,” Ochre
agreed, as he collected his radio cap from the spare chair and made ready to
leave. “I wonder what she
finds to eat; we could lay on a supply to entice her out.”
“Do you want to see her
killed?” Prugh asked.
“Not really,” Ochre
admitted, “but if we don’t find her soon, the World Government will probably
order us to bomb the loch dry, so I reckon she stands more of a chance if we
find her – and soon.”
He made his way to the
Ward Room where Scarlet and Fawn were pouring over the charts of the loch and
marking the areas they’d already searched.
“Prugh suggested that
Nessie’s sleeping the bad weather away,” he told them. “He also said she might not need to feed
every day, so it might be a few days before we spot her moving about.”
“That’s true,” Fawn
agreed. “Some reptiles don’t always need to feed every day, but she’s a big
animal, so chances are she’ll feed frequently.”
“What’d she feed on,
Doc?” Ochre asked, as he sat beside them with his hands wrapped around a cup of
coffee. “When she can’t get wardens and submersibles, I mean.”
“I would expect it to be
a piscivore, although I’d also expect it to take whatever meat it can get.”
Fawn grew thoughtful and the other two looked at him expectantly.
“It’d explain the attack
on the fish farm, for sure,” Scarlet remarked as the silence lengthened.
“Yeah,” the doctor said
thoughtfully. He stood up and wandered away to a computer terminal.
Ochre shook his head.
“Maybe he’s going to invent an anti-piscivore cream to put Nessie off the idea
of snacking on any human she encounters?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Scarlet
replied without conviction.
“If something doesn’t
happen soon we’ll be back on Cloudbase facing a lifetime of shifts in the radar
room.” Ochre stretched. “Mind you, at least I’d be able to
stretch my legs properly. This
boat’s way too small.”
The idea that Fawn had
been working on was revealed over the evening meal. He joined the other Spectrum officers in
the Ward Room and when a suitable languor occurred in the conversation he said:
“I’ve been doing some
research about the loch.”
Scarlet gave his friend
a grin. “Well, the Blue-boy’s not
here so someone has to, I guess. What’ve you come up with, Doc?”
“It was something we
were talking about: what the cryptid would eat.
Did you know that there has recently been a government-sponsored
eradication programme in respect of the wild salmon in the loch?”
“Whatever for?”
Ochre gasped.
“Seems
they carry parasites or diseases that threaten the farmed fish. Of course, with the density of livestock
in the fish farms, any parasite or disease would spread like wildfire. So, the World Government funded a
programme designed to prevent interaction between wild and farmed stock by,
effectively, removing the wild population.”
“They never learn, do
they?” Grey muttered. “Tampering with
natural ecosystems is bound to create more problems than it cures.”
Fawn nodded.
“So it would seem, and my hypothesis is that in this case over the past
five years they’ve managed to remove so many of the wild fish that the cryptid –
or cryptids - are starving.”
“More
than one?” Scarlet asked doubtfully.
“A small population
never that numerous, probably slow to grow to full size and become mature enough
to breed, but you need more than one to continue a species, Scarlet, and I can’t
quite believe that a single ‘Nessie’ has survived since the 6th
Century when the legend started – if not since the dinosaurs died out 65 million
years ago. There has to be more than
one. As the wild fish stocks
declined, their food source was depleted, so the animals had to attack the fish
farms or starve. Until the farms
expanded and the wild fish were being eradicated there were no records of
attacks on the fish farms or on human beings.”
“Jeez: so Nessie isn’t
vicious, just hungry?” Ochre said.
“I think so,” Fawn said.
“And that means we have
the perfect bait for our trap,” Scarlet said.
“Salmon…”
Ochre glared at the
Englishman across the table.
“Sometimes I really hate this job.”
“C’mon, Rick,” Scarlet
reasoned, “We can’t risk lives by allowing the cryptids – however many there
might be - to remain in the loch. If
Doc’s right, then the attacks will become more frequent.”
“Did I say I didn’t
understand that? I just think we’re
complete bastards as a species and occasions like this one make me think the
Mysterons might actually have something a case.” Ochre pushed back his chair, nodded
farewell to everyone and left the Ward Room in a moody slouch.
Scarlet waited until the
door closed behind him and then said to Grey: “Get on to the Fish Farms and
arrange for them to send us some salmon in the morning so that we can entice
Nessie to the shallows during daylight.
I want the submersibles working all day, back and forth to attract
attention. We have to close this
down as soon as we can.”
“S.I.G.,” Grey replied,
although he did not sound enthusiastic at the idea.
“This isn’t a big game
hunt; this is a mission to prevent human deaths and thwart any plans the
Mysterons might have that include the cryptid.”
Scarlet glanced down for a moment and then raised his sapphire-blue eyes
to his colleagues. “Spectrum can’t
afford sentiment when lives are at risk.”
The others nodded and
gradually, the meeting broke up as they went to prepare for the forthcoming
operation their field commander had outlined.
It was barely daylight
when CPO Kerr informed Captain Scarlet that the Fisheries had sent a pen of live
salmon from their stocks as well as a vat of fish heads and offal to use as
bait.
The navy crews had been
briefed and they took to the launches to scatter the offal around the area,
while Kerr and a small detachment lowered the live salmon into the inlet they
had chosen as the best place to corral the animal, should it appear.
Scarlet was kitted out
in a dive-suit with a pair of the miniature aqua-lungs Grey had developed
strapped to his back. They were
small enough to allow freedom of movement and still had
provide
enough air to give him a chance of avoiding the cryptid underwater. He had two modified harpoons, both equipped
with explosive charges, as well as a conventional gun. He had considered taking a Taser,
but Fawn had convinced him that unless the creature was out of the water it was
too dangerous. Since Spectrum had
learned that the Mysterons were vulnerable to electricity they considered that
Scarlet might well share that weakness, although they had never attempted to
find out.
The submersibles were
out, lights blazing as they trawled back and forth across the loch and Prugh and
Green manned the sonar phones on The
Seagull and John Dory.
Ochre, Fawn and Grey waited on the deck with
Scarlet, scanning the surface of the dark and still water for signs of movement.
After the first hour, Hilary Parker brought them out mugs of hot coffee and
reported that there was still nothing on the sonar scans.
“Still,” she said
reassuringly, “the sun’s come out and the day will be a fine one, so if Nessie
is going to hunt, today would be an ideal day for it.”
“I hope you’re right,
Hilary,” Scarlet said, with a dry smile. “We can’t afford to wait much longer
without taking drastic action.”
She
glanced
skywards for a moment and replied, “I guess that’s why Spectrum’s got jets
patrolling the loch? Commander
Reynolds asked me to tell you that they’ll be here in about 5 minutes.”
“The
Angels? Good.
They’re going to try and monitor the cryptid if it’s out in the deep
water where we can’t,” said Scarlet, adding, “but if
they have to they will shoot or bomb the loch.”
Ochre knew that Captain
Scarlet had never been good at waiting for anything, he understood that his
friend thought of himself as an archetypal ‘man of action’ and genuinely found
having nothing to do a trial; but his repetitive requests to know whether there
was anything to report from the sonar scans were starting to get on Ochre’s
nerves.
In a rare flash of
insight he understood why his father had so very quickly lost patience with him
and his brother for asking ‘are we there yet?’ on the long drives to make duty
visits to elderly relatives.
He stared at the small
screen and pressed the hydrophone headset to his ears in studied concentration
as he saw Scarlet approaching again: this time I won’t answer at all, he
thought.
To his surprise Scarlet
tapped his shoulder and said: “Rick, Prugh’s got a
reading – can you confirm it?”
Ochre glanced at the
co-ordinates written on the piece of paper Scarlet was holding in front of his
eyes, and adjusted the range of his hydrophones.
Frowning, he replied,
“Yes, there’s something – something moving.”
He glanced up at the Englishman.
“I don’t think this is flotsam.”
Over the radio he heard
Lieutenant Green confirming that he too had a reading and reported his
co-ordinates, so that Green could triangulate the position.
Grey hurried over to
consult Scarlet, and Ochre lifted one hydrophone speaker from his ear, so he
could hear clearly.
“They’re ready to launch
the mini-sub.”
Ochre joined Grey and
the two captains went to watch the mini-sub move from alongside The Seagull and dive into the stygian
gloom of the deep water towards the middle of the loch.
Scarlet stood stock
still, waiting. His heart thumped as
the adrenalin rush built in his body, firing his muscles for fight or flight. His breathing deepened as his alien
haemoglobin stored more oxygen against any impending danger. His mind focussed
on the task ahead cutting out extraneous thoughts and
concerns: whatever he had encountered before he was now about to undertake the
most unexpected challenge.
He had grown used to
situations that anybody else would consider extraordinary; since the Mysterons
had begun their War of Nerves against their neighbouring planet every Spectrum
agent had become blasé to the extent that nothing was that surprising any more.
However, he had never once imagined he might be required to fight a beast which,
until very recently, he had considered nothing more than a myth.
He was a career soldier,
trained in armed and unarmed combat, and he was not being immodest when he
acknowledged that he was bloody good at it, but nowhere in his training or past
experience was anything remotely useful in formulating tactical moves for
dragon-slaying.
His deep indrawn sniff
of insecurity, coupled with a slight shuffle as he unconsciously adjusted his
stance, caused both Ochre and Grey to glance at him in palpable surprise: he had
been so still for so long that they’d forgotten his presence.
“You okay, Paul?” Ochre
asked.
Scarlet dragged himself
back into reality and gave a curt nod.
“Update me,” he muttered.
“Green says the anomaly
is approaching the bait. The Angels
haven’t been able to get a clear shot of it, so we’re no
nearer knowing if it is a Mysteron,” Grey replied succinctly.
“Right,” Scarlet said,
as he exhaled deeply. “Then I need
to be on the water.”
He checked he had all of
his gear, covered his face with the scuba mask devised by Captain Grey and then
jumped from the gangway, down into the cold, dark water of the loch.
The shock was almost
enough to take his breath away, but his training, as much as his alien-enhanced
stamina, quickly cut in, and he struck out for the surface feeling in control. He could hear Lieutenant Green’s voice
reporting the hydrophones and sonar readings in relation to his position and
orientated himself in the direction he expected the
Cryptid to approach.
He felt its approach
before he saw or heard it. The
current in the water grew stronger, pushing him backwards as it rolled over him. He fought to stay upright and pushed for the
surface to get his bearings and take another gulp of air through the snorkel.
He was further away from
the fish pens than he wanted and so he started to swim towards them, sure that
the Cryptid would be making for the food they represented. The sweep from the giant flipper caught
him by surprise and sent him tumbling in free-fall through the water. He got an
impression of immense size and weight as something swept passed him. He struck out to follow the rapidly
disappearing bulk as it moved on towards the fish pens.
Over the microphone he
heard Green’s voice almost screaming in excitement:
It’s breaking the surface towards the pens! See? My God. Look at the size of that hump! Get ready – fire at
will!
To Scarlet’s relief he
heard Grey’s authoritative voice cut in:
Belay that order!
Do not fire! Captain Scarlet’s in the water… Wait!
The Cryptid had dived
into the depths and was no longer visible, but Prugh’s
steady voice was relaying depth soundings data – presumably while Green recovers his composure, Scarlet thought with
a grim smile as he manoeuvred himself to what he hoped would be an attacking
position.
Anomaly
is rising, quickly, towards the fish pens, Prugh said. You
should be able to see it any moment, Captain.
The first clear glimpse
Scarlet got of the beast was of a large reptilian head at the end of a long,
muscular neck. The creature had
small eyes and prominent nostrils, and its wide jaw was lined with rows of
razor-sharp teeth. The head alone was formidable
enough but the body emerging into view at speed was vast: a ridged, flexible
backbone, four diamond-shaped wide paddle-like flippers and a powerful tail,
tapering away in the gloom.
They named you right, Nessie – you are a monster… Scarlet thought, as for
one brief moment the creature fixed its gaze on him. Scarlet aimed the harpoon gun and fired.
The dart seemed to move
at snail’s pace through the water and with a glancing blow finally it embedded
itself in the creature’s shoulder.
The vast body rolled with the impact, but to Scarlet’s dismay the charge did not
detonate – the impact could not have had sufficient force to penetrate the rough
hide deeply enough. A low rumbling
sound hit Scarlet with some force and seemed to shake him to his bones. Before
he could get the second harpoon fitted ready to fire he realised the beast was
coming for him.
He jinked sideways and
managed to avoid the deadly bite, but the flipper hit him and sent him spinning
deeper into the water. The cryptid
followed, circling for the kill.
Scarlet took the time to
slip in the breathing mouthpiece of Grey’s aqualungs in and drew a deep breath.
The resulting air bubbles from the tanks seemed to confuse the cryptid, which
swerved away but it circled again, perhaps a little a little more wary now of
its small, but clearly dangerous adversary. Scarlet
made best use of its hesitation to fix the second harpoon.
Come on then, he thought, there’s only you and me, Nessie, and one of us isn’t going to come out
of this lake alive.
As if it read the
challenge in the man’s mind, the cryptid suddenly darted forward. Scarlet felt the sharp teeth pierce his
wetsuit and tear the flesh from his left hip to knee as he tried to avoid the
deadly bite. His silent scream
allowed the mouthpiece to fall from his mouth and he felt the cold water flood
into his throat and down into his lungs.
He shook his head to
clear it and, as the blood flowed from his wound, he kicked for the surface with
every ounce of his remaining strength.
The Cryptid was watching, perhaps sensing that it had delivered a fatal
blow and its prey was weakened it was waiting to deliver the final bite.
Scarlet saw the muscles
in its powerful body tense for another attack and he
pointed the harpoon down towards the beast.
Just before he lost consciousness, he pulled the trigger.
Everything went black.
Ochre was hanging from
one of the upper rigging ropes and shouting down reports of what little he could
see.
“There’s blood in the
water!” He pointed to where the water was
roiling with the battle between man and beast.
“What can you read from
the sonar?” Grey demanded of Green.
“The anomaly is still moving towards Scarlet,” the lieutenant replied
anxiously.
Ochre yelled that he
could make out Scarlet and that he was trying to get to the surface.
“Get the boats out there
and pick him up!” Grey yelled to CPO Kerr, pointing out to where Ochre was
indicating he could see their colleague’s body. “If you have to blow that creature out of
the loch, do it!”
The boat had just cast
off when an explosion erupted from the water, quickly followed by another boom
which created such waves that Ochre, still clinging to the rigging, was almost
thrown from his perch.
The cryptid leapt from
the lake in its death throes: its lower jaw had been ripped from its head and
was hanging useless. The roar of its
agony echoed around the loch, deafening in its force and the onlookers all knew
that the chances were it was dead before its bulk hit the water again and sank
below the surface.
“Get Captain Scarlet
out, now!” Grey ordered and watched with concern Kerr steered the boat out to
search for the body.
“He’s dead, sir,” Kerr
reported, as they dragged Scarlet from the water and laid him in the boat. “Looks like Nessie’s filleted his leg an’
he’s lost an awful lot of blood.”
Doctor Fawn, who had
been watching from the banks near the fish pens
instructed Grey to order the body brought to him immediately.
“I’ve got a medijet on
standby at Inverness, it’ll be here in no time,” he explained.
Grey passed on the order
and by the time Kerr had reached the bank and Fawn was clambering down towards
his patient, the sound of the approaching medijet was
clearly audible. Minutes later, Fawn
boarded the plane with Scarlet’s body and they were on their way to Cloudbase.
The Naval vessels had
been busy securing the carcass of the cryptid and towing it to the shore. Grey and Ochre joined the other officers
and went across to examine ‘Nessie’ at close quarters.
It was clear to see
where Scarlet’s harpoon had exploded and almost torn one flipper from the body,
exposing the ribs and internal organs.
Conversation was
prevented by the roar of the Angel jets overhead and the naval officers watched
in amazement as one of the trio swooped low over the shoreline, before following
the others and disappearing over the hills to circle round.
“Your planes are still
here?” Commander Reynolds asked the Spectrum officers, once the noise had died
down.
“Yes, why shouldn’t they
be?” Ochre replied, his eyes scouring the sky for the approach of the planes
once more. “The mission’s not quite
over and they were sent from Cloudbase in case they could assist with the
mission.”
“A wasted journey, in
effect,” Parker said, “as Captain Scarlet managed without any help.” She looked away her eyes awash with
unshed tears. “I wish we could’ve helped; maybe that would have saved him.”
Ochre laid a sympathetic
hand on her arm. “Scarlet’s tougher than most and Fawn’s a miracle worker, of a
kind. Don’t write either of them off
just yet.”
“You may be right,
Captain,” Kerr said, “and I admit I’m no medical man, but to my way of thinking
that young man was dead and gone.”
Ochre could do nothing
but shrug and turn away. He knew, as
did all of the elite captains, that Scarlet had
survived every wound he’d taken and even returned from the dead through the
mysterious alien power they knew as retrometabolism, but it was hard to explain
that to people who had witnessed him suffering on a mission.
Moments later a message
came through: “Rhapsody Angel to Captain
Grey.”
Grey’s radio mic dropped
down for him to respond. “Go ahead, Rhapsody Angel.”
“I have taken a scan with the Mysteron detector, Captain,
and the result is negative. I
can confirm that the Cryptid is not a Mysteron agent. Colonel White has asked me to remind you
that the body of the animal must, therefore, be dealt with using an Electron
Rifle to prevent any retrometabolisation taking place.”
“S.I.G., Rhapsody;
message received and understood,” Grey replied.
He turned back to the others to see Hilary Parker peering gingerly at
the ruined head of the great beast.
“Looks to me,” she said,
as she stood up and grimaced, wiping her hands on her trousers, “as if one of
the harpoons must’ve gone down its throat from close quarters. There’s a lot of damage down there. What
do we do with her now?”
“The Navy Board want the body shipped to one of their secure facilities, so
that their scientists can perform an autopsy,” Reynolds replied.
“I don’t think Spectrum
can let that happen, Commander,” Grey said firmly. “I am under orders to have the body…
incinerated.”
“Besides, you don’t need
an autopsy; I can tell you what killed her: two direct hits with a harpoon gun.”
Ochre rolled his eyes.
“Captain Grey, I
understand that you are merely carrying out your orders, but I must protest,”
Reynolds said, ignoring Ochre’s remark.
“This is a major scientific breakthrough, we
have a duty to ensure science learns all it can from the corpse...”
“And finally crushes the
legend of the monster in Loch Ness?” Grey interjected, “ruining over a thousand
years of belief and single-handedly destroying the tourist industry around
here?” He shook his head. “I have a
feeling that if the World Government gets to hear of it, they’ll hold the Navy
responsible for the ruin of the major part of the local economy of an isolated
region.”
“We won’t ruin it, we’ll
confirm it,” Parker reasoned.
“With the dead body of
‘Nessie’,” Ochre reminded her. “I
agree with Grey; it’d be better to say our search was inconclusive and let the
loch keep its mystery.”
“I have my orders,”
Reynolds said firmly.
“And so do I,” said Grey
with equal firmness. “And I think you’ll find that if it comes to the test, I
outrank you, Commander. I suggest you take your crewmen back to The Seagull and contact the John Dory and make arrangements for the
reopening of the loch to civilian and commercial vessels.”
He turned to Ochre and
said, “Let’s get this over and done with, Captain.”
“S.I.G.,” Ochre replied.
Captain Scarlet was
lying propped onto his right side in Cloudbase’s Sick Bay. He was hungry and bored.
The first problem he had
dealt with by calling one of the nurses and asking her to order him a
substantial meal from the canteen.
She had shaken her head at him, then smiling, remarked that if he could ever
bottle his metabolism he’d make a fortune in the dieting business, for he never
gained an ounce despite eating the most prodigious meals.
Scarlet had smiled and
not bothered to reply. The nursing
staff saw him when his retrometabolism was working and then it was true that his
appetite was prodigious, but he usually had no appetite to speak of and often
had to remind himself to eat. In
fact, he considered meals as a social event more than a necessity and he would
go along with Blue or Rhapsody to keep them company.
The boredom was more of
a problem. Usually Blue or Rhapsody
would be keeping him company during his medical incarcerations, but she was on
duty and still out at Loch Ness, from what Fawn had said, and Blue was on a
mission with Captain Magenta. Fawn
claimed to know nothing about that and unable to reach his radio cap, Scarlet
couldn’t contact anyone else for more information.
He was feeling very
sorry for himself when the door opened and Colonel White came in.
“Don’t get up, Captain,”
the colonel said, with the merest of smiles on his face.
“Yes, sir: I mean…
hello, sir.”
“I thought I would come
and debrief you while you recovered; save a bit of time later,” White said, as
he pulled up the chair in which Blue usually waited out his friend’s recovery.
“Sorry, sir; but I can’t
type a report when I’m immobilised like this,” Scarlet said, with satisfaction.
“You can’t type a report
when you’re hale and hearty,” White remarked ironically. “I am seriously considering sending you
on another report writing course, Captain.”
Scarlet grimaced. He could and did – sometimes – produce
perfectly acceptable reports, but he preferred not to and the ever-obliging Blue
would usually complete them while he was waiting for his friend to recover.
“Perhaps you can just
tell me what happened at Loch Ness?” White suggested, “And I’ll rely on Grey to
fill in the details.”
Scarlet nodded and told
the colonel all he could remember of his fight with the cryptid.
“I don’t know if I hit
the beast with the second harpoon, sir; but I’m guessing I did, or I wouldn’t be
here.”
“Preliminary reports
suggest there were two explosions, so I imagine the second one did hit and
triggered the first explosive charge as well,” White confirmed.
“Was Nessie a Mysteron?”
“There is no evidence
that it was Mysteronised.”
“So, we killed her for
nothing?” Scarlet said regretfully.
“We can never be sure,”
White said. “The Mysterons could
still have tried to use the animal and once we killed it their opportunities to
use the cryptid against us increased.
That’s why I have ordered Grey and Ochre to ensure the corpse is destroyed with
the Electron Rifle. There will be no
proof the Loch Ness Monster was ever found.”
“Back
to the status quo?” Scarlet mused for a moment before nodding his head. “Better than the alternative of one dead
monster, I think, Colonel.”
“Yes, indeed.” Colonel White stood to go.
“Colonel, where’s Blue?”
Scarlet asked.
“In
the Orient. There’s been a theft of plague bacillus
from a secure medical unit. It seems
the Mysterons may have been talking about the reappearance of the Black Death,
rather than the Loch Ness Monster. Once you are fit for duty I want you to join
them there, if they haven’t sorted it out by then that is.” White hesitated at the door and
continued, “I regret what’s happened at Loch Ness, Captain, but you know as well
as I that we cannot risk doing nothing.”
“No, I understand. Poor old Nessie; she really was a victim
of ‘friendly fire’.”
“He, Captain. The cryptid was male.”
Scarlet smiled a little
sadly and his commanding officer returned the smile as he turned to leave.
The old male had been
more virile than she’d expected for all of her eggs had hatched. She had guarded them carefully and herded her
nestlings into a safe and secluded shallow, where she watched over them and
found food for them until they were old enough to fish for themselves. Now they were dispersing along the loch shore
and only three remained in the nursery shallows.
The winter was coming.
Soon she would leave to bury herself in the sand and sleep away the dark days
while her young would have to fend for themselves.
If she encountered them when she woke, she would not know them for her own and
they might find themselves becoming a breakfast snack for their mother.
She turned and looked
across the loch to where the strange floating islands used by the bipeds were
still busy moving the fish pens away, back to their original site. She had taught her young to avoid the
dangerous upright creatures and stay away from their food caches. There was still enough for all, if you
knew where to look for it.
She dived and went
hunting for her last meal of the season.
Author’s notes:
My thanks go to Hazel Köhler for beta-reading my story and
assuring me that it made sense. It’s
taken me a long time to complete and I thought there might be numerous plot
holes I hadn’t spotted. If there are
– or you spot any other mistakes in the text – the fault is mine.
Thanks are due as well to Chris Bishop, the doyenne of
webmasters, for her wonderful site and for all the positive vibes and
encouragement she dispenses to struggling authors.
Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons™ belong to some corporate
entity, but the characters belong to the fans who continue to carry the flag for
our favourite heroes. So
thanks too to everyone connected with bringing the show to our TVs and to the
comics, novels and fan fiction that have expanded the Scarlet Universe to what
it is now.
Thanks to you too, for reading the story which I hope you
enjoyed.
Marion Woods
27 October 2014.
Other stories from Marion Woods
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