A Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and Thunderbirds Crossover story

By Shades

Notes:

Following on from the events of Crossing Paths, there are some choices to be made...

Blood, violence, main character death. Mind your heartstrings and you may need tissues.

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Chapter 1

Man-made lightning arced between the exposed beams that held up the ceiling, the air tasted like ozone and Scarlet’s hair crackled with static as he checked that the door to the control booth was solidly locked and would stay shut despite the frantic pounding on it.

Until 1134 hours this morning, local time, this complex had been a state of the art facility dedicated to bringing Nicola Tesla’s vision of wireless energy transmission to life.

Now it was a ruin, half collapsed due to Mysteron sabotage.

Turning away from the booth and the anxious faces that peered out at him through the thick, mesh-shielded glass, Scarlet flattened himself to the ground and crawled on his belly. He’d ditched everything with more metal than a zip, armed only with a carbon-ceramic knife as he hunted Black.

He’d spotted the Mysteron agent ducking into the doorway of the main generator room just seconds before the bomb went off, toppling the central transmitter and, in the words of the head engineer, creating an electrified atmosphere around the building and the perfect opportunity to capture Black before the Mysterons could whisk him away. Of course Blue had argued with him about it, right before Paul gave him a hearty shove and locked him into the control booth with the rest of the staff. Yes, he agreed that it was highly risky, but the chance to get his hands on Black was worth it.

A trail of blood-spots was his guide, leading him to a tangle of rubble and cables with a grievously injured Black caught up in the centre of it all.

To Scarlet’s complete and utter shock, Black smiled when he spotted him.

“Paul, it’s me!” Conrad gasped out the words.

“How do I know that?” Scarlet demanded, moving closer and half-lying on a block of concrete to better see him.

“You don’t.” The words were accompanied by that familiar sardonic grin that he remembered from the early days of Spectrum. “Now shut up and listen, we don’t have much time. If the Mysteron City is the transmitter, I’m the relay station for their will, they need me here as a focal point. If you get a chance to destroy me, do it. The Mysterons will lose their ability to act here on Earth until they find another puppet. As for them and the War, you can forget about trying any more negotiation, as things are right now they won’t. The Mysterons deal in absolutes and archetypes, they’re inflexible, they can’t change their response until the situation itself changes and they absolutely will not change as long as the status quo is in their favour. Gain the upper hand, not just exploiting a weakness, but an advantage, and they’ll be forced to come to the bargaining table for their own survival. Once their word is given, it can be trusted. It’s how they work.”

Scarlet felt his heart skip a beat. Getting on an equal footing with the Mysterons seemed impossible, much less an advantage, but if Conrad had broached the topic he had to have an idea on how to do it. “Of course this could all be a Mysteron trick,” was his cynical thought, “but we have to take that chance.” “What do we do?” he asked out loud.

“Use the principles that are letting me talk to you to threaten their entire existence. You can forget about destroying their central power supply, it’s buried too deep, but it can be threatened. Frequency shifts, Paul, interference and changes. Ask Jeff about Carnaby.” The words poured out of him in a rush, each one underlined by urgency.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Scarlet protested.

“It will.” Again the sardonic smile. “I’ve had a long time to think about what to do, but I have to be cryptic and talk in a language they don’t understand, they’re literal beings but in an unusual way. They’ll be combing through my head after this to see what they’ve missed, if I told you plainly they’d come up with defences.” He visibly steeled himself. “You’ve got a knife, right? Cut my throat, brain degradation from lack of blood supply should muddle the memories enough to hide precisely what I’ve told you. Quickly, the power station is failing, they’ll take me away soon.”

“You’re retrometabolic as well?” Paul asked, startled.

“No.” Conrad’s expression turned grim. “They won’t let me stay dead.” He lifted his chin. “I’m dying already. Do it Paul, if nothing else a mercy cut will at least give me a few moments of peace.”

“S.I.G.” Scarlet nodded, instantly grasping what was being asked of him. The angle wasn’t ideal and Conrad was almost outside of his reach, but he’d worked with worse. Knife in hand, he reached through a narrow gap between two latticed supports and bright red blood spurted as he drew the keen edge of the knife across the side of Conrad’s throat. Conrad gasped, gurgled, and Scarlet could swear he smiled as he slumped over the wreckage. But he barely had a moment to process the sight as Conrad’s body faded from view.

0o0o0

“Is that all that he said?”

“Yessir.”

Hours later in the Control Room on Cloudbase, Colonel White was sitting forward, elbows on the edge of the desk and hands clasped before his face, eyes lost in thought as he brooded over what he’d just been told. Before him sat Scarlet and Blue. Still rumpled and dirtied from the mission, they’d come straight to their commander to pass on the information from Conrad. White’s brows drew close together as he attacked the riddle. There was only one Jeff that he knew that Conrad knew he knew, that was the only easy part. “Lieutenant,” he looked over at his aide, “I want everything in the computer about ‘Carnaby’.”

“Yessir.” Green started typing commands into his control panel.

He turned his attention back to his two senior officers. The odd tension between the two of them hadn’t escaped his notice, but they hadn’t drawn it to his attention either, so he hadn’t remarked on it. “They’re adults, I’m sure they can handle whatever it is or will bring it to those they trust if they can’t,” Charles told himself. “You are both on stand down for the next twelve hours. I expect your written reports on the events of today by 1300 tomorrow. Dismissed.”

White acknowledged their ‘S.I.G’s, waited for them to leave, then got up and strode over to the observation tube to watch the clouds drifting past. “What on earth does Jeff Tracy have to do with ‘Carnaby’?” he pondered. “This may require a visit, there’s no way I’ll chance a ‘phone call. If the Mysterons did manage to recover anything from Conrad I wouldn’t put it past them to somehow eavesdrop on our communications, but I’ll wait for what the computer says first. Jeff and his ‘boys’ are good, but I’d rather not involve civilians if I can avoid it.”

0o0o0

“I’ve really put my foot in it today,” Paul realised as he and Adam made their way through the base to the officer’s deck. Outside of what was needed for the mission, the flight back home or the debrief, Adam hadn’t deigned to acknowledge him at all in a version of the ‘cold shoulder’ that was somehow all the more cutting because he wasn’t being completely ignored but instead handled with a cool and aloof professionalism.

“Should I say something...?” Paul wondered as they finally entered ‘officer country’. It was empty at this hour, everyone else off on missions or on duty. “I think I should,” he decided, “best to get this over with sooner rather than later.”

He was formulating exactly how to broach the topic when Adam beat him to the draw, stopping just beside his cabin, turning and fixing him with a hard look.

“What the hell was all that about at the facility, Paul?” Adam demanded, gesturing widely in his aggravation. “I’m your partner and your backup, how the hell was I supposed to do my job locked in a room with the civilians?! What if Black hadn’t been trapped? What if the electrical field hadn’t let Conrad out for a bit and Black had grabbed you and done his vanishing trick, where the hell would you be then, huh?”

Eyes wide, Paul took a half step back. Adam was actually furious with him, a rarely seen temper boiling up to the surface. Evidently the events of today had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“I’m a grown up, Paul,” Adam went on to say, “I survived the same selection process and training that you did, I’ve earned this uniform,” he tapped his vest, “and I’ve got just as much a right to be out there as you do!” he paused, then added, “It’s my choice to be out there with you, and it’s my choice to take that risk, stop taking my choices away from me!”

Paul was shocked, standing there with his mouth open but no sound coming out. He needed to say something, but his words had deserted him completely. This clearly had been brewing for a very long time, and the knowledge that he’d hurt Adam like this was a proverbial punch to the gut. A literal one couldn’t have hurt more than this. He had to sort this out now, before things could fester and the wound deepen any more.

While all these thoughts ran through his head, Adam stared at him, eyes narrowed, then snorted and turned away.

“Adam,” Paul started, reaching out to grab his left arm and pull him back.

He didn’t expect Adam’s right fist as the taller man whipped around and took a swing at him. It was only Paul’s reflexive jerk and turn that kept that fist from smashing his nose flat, turning it into a glancing hit across his cheekbone that still had enough power behind it to make his eyes water.

“He’s lost his rag!” was Paul’s lightning quick realisation as he switched himself into fight mode. “Got to get him under control!”

A split second after the first hit he sensed more than saw Adam’s left fist coming up at his gut for a powerful uppercut. Paul swept his right forearm around to block it, then he whipped his hand over, grabbed Blue’s wrist and forced Adam’s arm up against his chest to trap it. Blue immediately lashed out with his right fist again, he deflected it and caught that wrist too, then shoved Blue back to pin him up against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Adam’s instinctive knee to the groin was a dirty move, but he saw it coming and twisted his hips to take the strike on his thigh instead, gritting his teeth against the pain.

The whole fight had only taken a handful of seconds, a quick and vicious scrap between two men completely in tune with how the other fought, fuelled by high temper and bubbling frustration.

“Hey! What the hell?!”

Scarlet didn’t resist when Ochre got an arm around his chest and pulled him back, letting go as Grey inserted himself in front of Blue, one hand on his chest to keep the other man in check.

“Never do that to me or anyone else again!” Adam snapped out the words, his fury etched with a fear that bubbled just below the surface. “Because if the Mysterons get you... If they take you back... We’re...” He swallowed hard. “Command are going to make us kill you, and next time...” He hesitated, then clearly made himself finish the sentence: “Next time... you won’t be waking up again. We know how to kill replicants now.”

“I...” He couldn’t help it, the tactician in him automatically running the scenario. He’d already mused over the first part of this possibility before, the Mysterons getting hold of him again was one of his worst nightmares coming true, but this time he tabulated both the damage that could be wrought by the Mysterons working through him again and what stopping him would do to the people closest to him. Paul had to fight back the bile at the thought of what it would do to Adam. There was absolutely no question that if Adam had to pull the trigger again it would break his best friend in ways that would never, ever heal. “Adam... I’m sorry...”

“Don’t be sorry,” Adam snapped. “Be better.” He shook off Brad’s hand and stalked off, vanishing into his cabin.

In the utter silence left in his wake, everyone heard the two tone beep of both the privacy lock and the security lock engaging.

“Leave him alone, Paul.” That was Brad, speaking before Paul had a chance to act on the thoughts slowly coalescing in his head. “You can try talk to him again in the morning, but don’t you dare try it right now.”

“... Understood.” Paul stared after Adam, still stuck on how and when and where he’d so royally ballsed this up and how it’d gotten this bad right under his very nose. He hadn’t just hurt Adam, he’d wounded him deeply, and hadn’t even noticed it!

“C’mon, you need to get some sleep. Adam’s not going to stay angry at you forever.” Rick took his arm and guided him over to his cabin. “Like Brad said, he’ll have cooled down by morning. Hell, odds are he’ll turn up at your door in the middle of the night, you know how he can’t leave a problem alone, and this sounds like a big one.”

“... S.I.G.” Paul let himself be taken to his room. Odds were good that Rick was right and he’d wake up to a chime from the intercom and be putting the kettle on shortly after that for a good, long talk, but Rick was also very right that this was a very big problem. “I just hope this can be fixed,” was Paul’s concern as he entered his door code. “I’ve hurt him badly, and I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

Chapter 2

As night fell over Cloudbase, sleep was elusive for many of the occupants of the base.

Still in the Control Room despite the late hour, Charles looked over the summary of results that Green had handed him and felt the familiar flare of frustration. “Almost fifteen thousand results just for organisations, products, businesses and locations, double that if you include alternative spellings, and over half a million if you include people’s names.” He tossed the slip of paper onto his desk and sat back in his chair, chin in hand as he brooded. “... I don’t like this, but it looks like I’m going to have to speak to Jeff face to face. I’ll need to be clever about this, the less attention drawn to International Rescue, the better, so that means one visit, maybe two at most. Now, what was it that Scarlet said...” Charles turned to the notes he’d made shortly after the captains had left the room and skimmed over the page until he found the section he wanted. “Frequency shifts, interference and changes...” he muttered, not realising he was speaking aloud.

“Sir?” Green turned away from the computer. He’d been trying to adjust the search parameters to get something more useful out of the lone word ‘Carnaby’ but he hadn’t had much luck yet.

“Just thinking out loud, Lieutenant,” White said, then paused and looked at the younger man. “Green? Those words, if they’re describing a solution, what would you say the problem is?”

“Some sort of transmission,” was the prompt answer. “A signal or relay system, sending and receiving messages and data, frequency hopping, radio and communications, signal clarity, signal interception and jamming and preventing it, encoding and code cracking. Radar, radar jamming, figuring out how to defeat jamming.” He made a gesture towards his computer interface. “Cyber security and hacking too.”

“But all technology based, correct?” White asked, rubbing his chin in thought.

“Affirmative, sir.”

“If this is a technological problem and solution, I will need someone who is at least aware of, if not familiar with, all the technology that Spectrum has available and how it could be applied, and is also conversant with all that we know about the Mysterons,” White pondered, turning the possibilities over in his mind. He pressed a few buttons on his own console, then turned to the screen behind him to study the world map he’d just called up. “Lieutenant, when is the next courier flight to Spectrum Research and who’s taking it?” he asked, his eyes still on the map.

A few key clicks, then: “Tomorrow evening, 1900 hours. Lieutenant Peach is taking a packet of documents from Sickbay and Engineering.”

“Hn, and the next couriers to the London, Darwin and Auckland offices?”

More key clicks. “London is in twenty minutes, Darwin in six hours, forty minutes, and Auckland is... tomorrow at 1350.”

“Hm.” White spun back around, took four fresh sheets of paper and quickly wrote out his messages. They were carefully reviewed, one or two additions were made, then each was folded and sealed into a Rainbow-Clearance document wallet, the highest level of security that existed in Spectrum, and carefully labelled with the codes for their destinations. “Tell Peach that this is to be hand-delivered to Doctor Giardello,” he ordered as he handed the wallets over. “The other three are to be taken to the commanders for each office. For Auckland and Darwin, the courier is to wait for the answer and bring it back in writing. No part of the question nor its answer is to be communicated electronically at any point, not even via phone call.”

“S.I.G.”

0o0o0

Feeling absolutely wretched, Paul sat on the small couch in his dimly lit cabin, hands wrapped around a cold mug of tea and ignoring the soft music he’d put on in an attempt to help him wind down enough to shut down and sleep. After Rick saw him to his cabin he’d washed, changed and tried to sleep, but the proverbial black dog had started circling so he’d gotten up again, hoping to work his way through things before the dog could lead him down into a dark place.

But fending off the proverbial black dog wasn’t easy, not with the knowledge of what he’d done.

The revelation of how he’d hurt his best friend out of a surfeit of desire to protect him, to safekeep him from things that would do permanent harm, rested on his shoulders like so many lead bricks. “And if I’ve hurt Adam, I’ve absolutely hurt the rest the same way,” was his grim conclusion. “But he knows I didn’t mean to hurt him, that I’d never intentionally demean and belittle him like this. It was done in ignorance, not ill-will.” He was holding that thought tightly to keep himself from sinking into the proverbial morass of depression and despair at how badly he’d treated those closest to him.

It didn’t help that right now there was absolutely nothing he could do to start fixing things. “I need to make a proper apology to Adam, but I can’t do that until Adam is ready to talk to me.” Adam’s fits of temper were far rarer than his, but because of that rarity they were all the more intense and long-lived. If he knocked on the other man’s door right now he’d be liable to get his nose broken. “And not necessarily by Adam, either,” Paul shifted on the couch. “If I bug Adam and Karen finds out, she’ll come after me and the other Angels will hold me still so she can get a clear shot.”

Letting out a sigh, Paul cursed himself and his blindness to it all for the umpteenth time, got up, dumped the tea in the sink and considered what he could do. Dianne would be on standby in the Amber room, but going to her was off the table right now, he didn’t deserve her company. Wandering the halls wasn’t an option either, Fawn had been keeping a close eye on him lately and if Adam wanted to find him, he wanted to be findable. “The walls are closing in though, I need to get out of here or I’m going to do something stupid.” He thought things over for a little longer, then came to a conclusion. “The Promenade. It should be empty and Adam knows he can always find me there,” Paul decided, going to his dresser to pick out some comfortable civvies. “That’ll do.”

0o0o0

“This was a good idea.”

A short time later, dressed comfortably in ragged jeans, an Arsenal jersey and well broken in sneakers, Paul was standing at one of his favourite spots in the garden, a fresh mug of tea in hand, his back against the window frame and his right shoulder and head resting against the glass, looking down the runway towards Angel One. He couldn’t tell who was in the hot seat tonight – the fighter was too distant for him to make out any features and it was too dark to pick out her hair colour – but it was reassuring to not be entirely ‘alone’, as it were, by having someone else within his field of view even though they were quite separate.

He shifted his gaze from the pale form of the Interceptor up to a sky that was currently a patchwork of ragged streaks of gathering cirrostratus clouds and the velvet night sky, spangled with so many stars it was like handfuls of glitter had been cast across the vaults of the heavens.

Sipping his tea, Paul let his thoughts drift as he contemplated that sky, picking out what constellations he could see. Anyone posted to Cloudbase soon made a hobby of astronomy, meteorology or both. It was hard not to, not with this stunning vista so close to hand, and news of any unusual sights went through the base intranet like wildfire, drawing any off-duty members of the photography club with cameras in hand as they tried to capture those moments for those who couldn’t leave their posts.

He smiled to himself as he recalled the one time they’d been in the right place at the right time to cross paths with the Aurora Borealis. People had bolted from their bunks to catch a glimpse of the eerie display, crowding at portholes and windows. Even the Old Man had gotten up to see it, then he surprised them all when he went one step further, messaging the group of them and bending the regulations to permit the off duty captains and Angels up into the Control Room to gaze out through the observation tubes and wonder at the shifting lights dancing above them, seemingly close enough to touch, but at the same time all too far away.

“There’s something profound in that,” he mused, shifting slightly to stand upright as his shoulder got cold, “the illusion of being close and at the same time not, but I’m too bloody tired to try and delve into it.” He sipped the tea, now lukewarm and the mug half empty, and passed it from hand to hand as he looked down at the floor, brows knitted in thought. “Maybe that’s my problem. I’m too close and it makes me too afraid to lose them...” Paul grimaced and shook his head, wrenching his thoughts off that track. “No, no, not going there. I am not about to start distancing myself from people. That would be a spectacularly bad idea. But...” he huffed a sigh and finished the tea before it could go cold. “It explains why today happened. I get so afraid of losing Adam or one of the others that I react out of that fear and do something stupid.” He passed the mug from hand to hand as he pondered how on earth he was going to express all of this in a way that made sense. Thanks to his regular sessions with Pastor Juniper and Doctor Orchid he understood the inside of his head a little better, but articulating to others how he felt and why he felt that way was still a challenge.

He was so lost inside his thoughts that he didn’t realise he had company until he caught an unexpected flash of movement and colour out of the corner of his vision. His startle response had him getting clear of the window and drawing the mug back, ready to launch it at the intruder, then his brain caught up with his eyes, what he was seeing properly registered and he stopped himself before he could finish pulling back in preparation for the throw.

Adam was standing there, arms crossed over his chest and looking at him evenly. Like him, Adam had gone for comfortable civvies – jeans, an old Harvard sweatshirt and gym shoes – items that protected him and his emotions like their uniforms protected their bodies.

The silence between them was exceedingly awkward and Paul had no idea what to break it with – specifically which words to use that would give a natural opening into a useful conversation – so he was exceedingly grateful when Adam spoke first.

“I’m sorry for hitting you, I’m not sorry for what I said.”

Paul nodded. “It needed to be said,” was the answer he settled on, giving in to the urge to swap the mug to his left hand so his right was free to pick at his watch strap. “I, ah, I do need a smack upside the head sometimes.”

“‘Sometimes’?” Adam asked, one eyebrow raised in a mannerism they’d all picked up off the colonel.

“On at least a monthly basis,” Paul amended. Internally he was heartened; if they could at least tease a little, Adam was open to letting him fix this.

There was another silence, less awkward than the first, then Paul wordlessly pointed to a nearby pair of chairs that faced each other. Adam nodded, turning and leading the way over to them.

When they were seated, Paul kept hold of the mug, needing something to keep his hands busy before he shredded his watch strap, took a breath and gathered his courage. The start of an apology was always the hardest part. “Adam, I’m sorry. I didn’t listen, I didn’t respect you, and I made a decision for both of us without your input. I’m sorry for all of that.”

Adam looked at him for a long moment. “You got scared again, didn’t you?” he asked knowingly, clearly recalling the stuff up that Paul had made with Dianne near the start of the War and making the connection between that day and today.

Paul nodded, once again eternally grateful that he had a best friend who knew him so very well. It stung to admit it, but Adam was spot on with his assessment. “I did. How do I make this right?”

“Listen to me next time, and if I say I’m coming, let me come.” Adam sighed and sat back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes as the rigours of the day made themselves known. “Look, I get it, sometimes it’s something that only you can do. I haven’t made my peace with that yet, and to be honest I don’t think I ever will – seeing you run off and knowing I can’t follow you is damn hard – and sometimes bringing what’s left of you back is worse.”

Paul listened to all of this in silence. It... it wasn’t easy to hear, not in the slightest, but Adam needed to say this and he needed to hear it, to acknowledge and understand the cost of his actions that the others had to pay.

“But like I said, I’m an adult, and I’m your partner, and I’m your friend,” Adam went on. “Watching you run into danger on my behalf... it kills me sometimes, to know I can’t help... that I can only watch and pick up what’s left.” Adam stopped for a moment, looking away to give himself the space to haul his emotions back to where they belonged, then looked back at him. “If I say I’m coming, I’m coming. Trust me and trust my judgement when I make that call about my safety and the success of the mission. Clear?”

“Crystal.” Paul nodded sharply. This wasn’t fixed yet, he knew that and that it would have been foolish to think that one late night conversation when they were both exhausted would have been enough to sort everything out, but things were going in the right direction and that would be enough for now. “So... joint session with Orchid tomorrow once we’ve written the report?” he ventured. “She, ah, she may have been strongly ‘suggesting’ that she should talk with the both of us at the same time.”

“Mm, she’s been saying the same to me.” Adam nodded, giving him a wry smile. “Yeah, let’s do that.” He yawned, a jaw-cracking one that had him blinking in the aftermath and Paul wasn’t surprised when he yawned too. “Let’s book that in the morning. I need to sleep before I crash out right here.”

“Agreed,” Paul nodded, getting to his feet. “And Adam? Thank you. For everything.” He made a vague gesture and hoped that Adam would understand what he meant. “Thank you for what you do for me, including picking up what’s left of me, lending me sanity and pulling me up short.”

“You’re welcome, Paul,” Adam responded as he also stood, then flicked him a little smile. “But I’ve gotta correct you on one point: I’m a test pilot, did you really think that was sanity I was lending you?”

Paul laughed at that, turning to lead the way back to the officers’ deck and feeling his heart lighten.

They were going to be okay.

Chapter 3

Two days after the Tesla mission, Scarlet and Blue were having breakfast at the table the captains always claimed in the commissary, quietly eating and ignoring Ochre’s growling at the world in general from his usual station at the other end of the table. Halfway through his own breakfast, Rick had woken up enough to complain about ‘morning people’ and mornings in general, but he was still two coffees short of the point of being civil.

One particularly salty remark of his had the two of them look at each other and grin. Rick did not like any hour before 0800, but by general accord, everyone agreed that for some reason he was particularly incompatible with 0600 and, short of an emergency, it was both wiser and safer to let him boot up at his own pace.

“Ochre, you’re going to start scaring people if you carry on like that,” Paul remarked with a grin, having decided to ignore common sense and poke the bear.

“Shut it, you damn Pom.” Ochre clutched his coffee and glowered.

“Wow, five words at once, you must be almost awake.”

Rick clearly considered throwing his mug at Paul, looked at the contents, decided it was too valuable to waste and settled for flipping him off instead.

Paul chuckled and went back to his porridge.

Adam watched the exchange with a small smile, taking a break from the crossword he’d cut from the morning paper in the Officer’s Lounge before Brad could get at it.

The midnight conversation with Paul had been followed by a morning one, more comments were passed between them while they bashed together a legible report over lunch, then they’d had a very, very long talk with Orchid in the afternoon. After dinner they’d met up again in his quarters for another check in with each other. It turned into a sort of group debrief when their respective Angels had shown up with Grey and Magenta in tow, since by now both news and rumours about the mission had been spread around the top flight officers, fuelled by the numerous handwritten orders that White was sending out in sealed pouches. Grey had swapped with Ochre at shift change, but he stayed in the conversation thanks to the wonders of instant messaging.

The talks had continued well into the night and culminated in an email to Orchid asking for a group session with all of the captains and a separate session for Blue, Scarlet, Symphony and Rhapsody – the string of ongoing conversations had highlighted how they’d all fallen into some bad habits that needed breaking.

“It’s a shame we had to run head-first into a brick wall before we realised there was a problem, but at least we recognised it and we’re looking to see if there’s any others around,” Adam thought as he picked up his pen and went back to the crossword. “Now, let’s see... five letter word, ending in ‘go’, ‘parasitic borrowing until they have nothing left’...”

“Excuse me, Captain Bue, Captain Scarlet?”

Both men looked up to find Lieutenant Clay, one of Green’s acolytes in all things communications and radio, standing by the table.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Blue spoke for them both since Scarlet was halfway through a mouthful of food.

“The Colonel wants to see you in the control room at 0700, he didn’t say why,” Clay reported, looking just as perturbed as they were. Usually summons would be via the tannoys or the intranet, but a messenger? That was unusual.

“We’ll be there, thank you, Lieutenant.” Blue told her.

“Sirs.” Clay nodded to them both and departed.

The three men shared looks, their banter and breakfasts forgotten and replaced with a wary watchfulness. Unusual happenings, especially with what happened on the last mission, could only mean one thing: something big was on the horizon.

0o0o0

At precisely 0700 the two captains were seated before Colonel White’s desk along with Melody Angel, who was just as much in the dark about everything as they were.

“I believe I have a lead on deciphering at least part of Black’s message,” White began as soon as they were all settled. “He was referring to Jeff Tracy. We’re going to be paying him a visit to ask about ‘Carnaby’ and taking Doctor Giardello from Spectrum Research with us so that he can hear any technological details first hand and can ask any questions immediately.”

That got some significant looks between the captains and the Angel as the colonel’s odd behaviour suddenly made sense. Ever since the threat against International Rescue, the colonel had been very, very careful to keep Spectrum as distanced from IR as possible. It was a bit ‘shutting the barn door after the horses have already bolted’, but it made a lot of sense to do what they could to keep the Mysterons’ attention off IR and any of their associates. Adding in that this was related to stopping the Mysterons once and for all, well, resorting to hand delivered messages and face to face (and probably unannounced) visits was very sensible in the light of the Mysterons’ suspected ability to electronically eavesdrop.

“What’s the plan, sir?” Scarlet asked.

“The doctor is already enroute to New Zealand via London, he’ll be meeting us at the Papakura military base in Auckland,” White began. “Spectrum Auckland have procured and outfitted a civilian Airbus H175 helicopter for our use, adding in extra fuel cells and removing the transmitters. Spectrum Darwin have arranged for fuel dumps for our use. Melody, you’ll need to fly nape of the earth for portions of this, especially on the approach to Tracy Island.” He waited for their nods of understanding, then went on. “We’ll be taking the regular courier flight to Brisbane and flying civilian from there. Pack only standard civilian or civilian-passing items.” At that, there was a look flicked at Scarlet who had once forgotten that boot knives weren’t part of a normal person’s load out and had a very interesting time at Heathrow as a result, “Your uniforms and personal equipment will be sent ahead to Auckland. I don’t anticipate needing them, but it would be foolish to not be prepared.”

“How long should we pack for?” Melody asked.

“Three days,” White decided after a moment’s thought. “The courier leaves in forty five minutes from hangar two. Any questions?” He waited a beat, then when there were none he stood. “Dismissed.”

Chapter 4

Standing on the balcony with his mid-morning coffee in hand, Jeff took a moment to simply appreciate the fact that he could take the time to watch the birds wheel and dip through the sky, smell the frangipani blossoming below the house and feel the wind ruffling his hair.

Yesterday had been a hell of a rescue that had added a couple of grey hairs to his collection.

A factory in Baltimore had caught fire and about thirty workers had been trapped inside. Now, normally that would have been something for the local fire service to handle, but it was an aerosol manufacturing factory – if it could go in a pressurised can, they’d put it in one – which meant that they had hundreds of thousands of gallons of solvents, propellants and other raw ingredients – most of them flammable – on the site. In addition to that, when the place had originally been built it was well away from anything important, but the city had grown around it and there were suburbs a stone’s throw away from the factory gates. Today, safety regulations would have kept something like that from being built there in the first place, but since the factory had been there first and the owners had really good lawyers, it’d been grandfathered in through the zoning laws and other regulations.

Long story short, if the place had fully gone up, the fireball would have obliterated everything in roughly a mile radius and the shockwave would have gone much further. The local services were able to keep the initial fire from spreading but they couldn’t get close enough to put it out nor could they get to the workers, so International Rescue had responded.

There’d been several tense moments and one of the 10,000lt storage tanks on the site had gone up, but it’d only been a third full and Virgil had had the Firefly pointed at it at the time, so the blast was reasonably contained and didn’t do any significant damage to the rest of the factory.

All in all, the rescue had gone well, his boys had dragged themselves back home in the early hours of the evening and collapsed into bed. The house had only just started to come alive an hour ago as one by one the boys woke up and shuffled out in search of food and caffeine.

“I’m so proud of them and I know you’d be too, Lucy,” Jeff canted a smile up to the sky. “I wish you could see the kind of men they’ve become.” He could feel his smile become wistful. “Still miss you, beautiful. I love you.”

A sigh, a turn and he was striding back inside the house. He had ten minutes of his break left then he had to get back to reading proposals from inventors and designers hoping for funding. It was tedious and some of the ideas were so far-fetched as to be ludicrous, but every now and again there was a gold nugget amongst the dross. “Another two hours of that, then that’ll be enough for today,” he told himself.

Jeff went back to his desk, passing Scott and Gordon along the way, settled himself back in his chair and opened up the newspaper to the ‘letters to the editor’ section to see what people thought was important enough to write in about.

Bleep Bleep Bleep

John’s portrait vanished before Jeff could acknowledge the call, their space monitor looking worried. “Father, radar just picked up an incoming aircraft on approach to the Island! Approaching from the south west, should be visible from the balcony any minute now.”

“Operation Cover Up!” Jeff tossed his newspaper aside, leaned over and hit the button that would hide the overt signs of their operation, then stood to issue orders as Gordon and Scott scrambled into action. “John, what is it and why didn’t we pick up the aircraft?”

“All I can tell is that it’s a helicopter of some sort. It has to have been flying nape of the earth and only now it’s popped up above the radar returns from the waves, that’s the only explanation.” John shook his head. “They must have kept this up for hours.”

Gordon was already on the balcony with binoculars. “I’ve got it! White, no markings, no obvious armaments.”

Scott was instantly at his shoulder with his own set. “I see it. Can’t make out who’s inside yet.” He lowered the field glasses and looked at Jeff. “Any chance it’s your friend Casey making another dramatic entrance?”

“Not a chance.” Jeff was grim as he joined his sons on the balcony, accepting the binoculars that Scott handed him so that he could take a look for himself. “He hates helicopters, calls them ‘hysterical palm trees’ and ‘a cloud of parts rotating around an oil slick, waiting for an excuse to explode’.” He weighed the situation up for a moment, gave the binoculars back to Scott, then looked at his sons, grim faced. “John, monitor and be ready to signal for help. Scott, Gordon, open the weapons locker, arm everyone and tell Grandma to go downstairs with Brains, Kyrano and Tin Tin.”

“F.A.B.”

“Yes, Father.”

“On it.”

Jeff kept to his post as the two hurried inside and John’s image blinked out, watching as the helicopter circled the island and looked for a place to land. Alan came up to hand him one of their pistols, the red barrel already in place, and he slipped it into his jacket pocket while his sons got into position should an ambush be required.

Having found a suitable location, the helicopter delicately flared and settled onto the grass at the far end of the pool, just behind some bushes. As the rotors spooled down, the side hatch popped open and he caught a glimpse of a black-haired man in jeans and an oddly stiff red windbreaker as he jumped out, then helped down an older man similarly dressed but in a light cream jacket and tan slacks. They were followed by a man with salt and pepper hair in a dark grey jacket and trousers, then a blond man in a blue jacket. Finally the pilot also stepped down, dressed in beige trousers and a white jacket. When she took off her helmet he could see dark skin and black hair cut in a short bob.

As they came around the bushes, Jeff instantly recognised three of the men. He had zero clue about what would make Charles come out here like this, but he was absolutely certain that this wasn’t a social call. “Better greet him I suppose, but like hell I’m gonna let him know he got me rattled,” was Jeff’s thought as he signalled to his boys to stand down and started down the stairs to meet the group halfway to the house.

“Charles, would it kill you to call ahead?” he asked when he was close enough, putting a wry note into his tone as he offered his hand.

He wasn’t surprised when Charles humoured him with a flicker of a smile as he took his hand and shook it. “To not put too fine a point on it, it may well have,” he replied. “I’m sure you remember Captains Scarlet and Blue. I would like to introduce Doctor Thomas Giardello of Spectrum Research and Melody Angel.”

“Pleasure.” Jeff exchanged handshakes, but he was itching to get to the bottom of things. “Let’s get inside and you can tell me why you felt you needed to sneak up on us.”

0o0o0

There was some mildly disorganised chaos as weapons were put back where they belonged, introductions were made, chairs were fetched, the lounge was rearranged for the impending conference, a portable monitor was moved in so John could participate, and Kyrano and Grandma immediately went to the kitchen to start stocking the tea trolley.

The visitors were doing their best to stay out of the way of the Tracy family’s paths, the captains and Melody lingering close to the piano, while Colonel White and Doctor Giardello had a quick chat on the balcony, when Tin Tin and Alan suddenly stopped what they were doing, looking straight at Melody.

“You’re Magnolia Jones!” The couple exclaimed in almost perfect sync, followed by the two of them looking at each other in surprise and asking “Wait, how do you know about her?”

“Her XKF.115 aircraft failed and crashed in the South Sea, she salvaged it, built a functioning aircraft from the wreckage and flew back to the mainland,” Tin Tin replied. “You?”

“Are you kidding me? At sixteen she was named ‘Queen of the Last Lap’ by The Motor Racing Quarterly!” Alan practically gushed.

“I remember you saying something about that, Alan,” Gordon had an absolutely wicked glint in his eye as he passed by, pushing a wheeled office chair. “Don’t you still have that issue? You were talking about wanting to get her autograph one day.”

Alan was almost as red as his Thunderbird by this point, so Melody decided to take mercy on him. “If I do recall rightly, Alan, you came out of retirement to win the last Parola Sands meet. I’d love to get a look at that car.”

“The BR2’s history I’m afraid,” Alan grimaced, then gestured to Tin Tin, “but Tin Tin here had a major hand in designing and building it.”

“You helped too,” Tin Tin pointed out.

“You mean I passed you tools and held the worklight for you.” Alan grinned at her, then turned back to Melody. “I just did the testing bit and gave feedback.”

“So, gear head to gear head and driver to driver, how’d it handle? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fishtail recovery on fine sand like that before,” Melody asked, looking between the two of them, “and what sort of gearing ratio did it have?”

Watching the deepening conversation as the technical terms started flying, Scott waved the captains over to where he was standing with Virgil near the desk. With a conspiratorial grin he indicated the group and murmured, “And in five, four, three, two, one... yep, we’ve lost them.”

“I’ll say.” Adam turned to Paul and jerked his thumb at the trio. “Flip a coin for who gets to pry Melody away from her new friends?”

Paul considered it. “Best of three.”

“Done.”

There was a momentary lull, then Scott asked, “You fellas been okay? We saw on the news that Spectrum had been reported at the Tesla Transmission Test Facility.”

“That’s actually why we’re here,” Paul told him, “we’ll brief you all properly in the meeting. What about you?”

“Well, Virgil almost got his goose cooked yesterday.” Scott teasingly poked his brother in the side but both captains saw the worry underneath the action. “But aside from that it’s been pretty...” He paused and reconsidered his next word, “... It’s been pretty uneventful.”

The four of them shared a knowing grin: the ‘Q’ word superstition was obviously known to all of them and clearly no one wanted to tempt fate right now.

“Any sign of The Hood?” Blue asked.

“Zip.” Virgil grimaced. “I’d like to think we’ve seen the last of him, but I’m not gonna assume anything about that guy.”

That was when Kyrano appeared, hands tucked in his sleeves and wise eyes taking the measure of the strangers in their midst. “If you will come with me, we are now ready for the meeting.”

Chapter 5

People found places to sit around the rearranged lounge, drinks and plates of sandwiches and cake were handed out and the meeting began with little fanfare, skipping through pleasantries and getting straight to business.

Thanks to the information that International Rescue already had about the Mysterons they didn’t have to rehash much before Colonel White was able to brief them on what had happened at the facility and why they were here: how the electrical field had bought Conrad some precious moments of freedom, his cryptic message and how he’d vanished as soon as the main generator failed.

“How do we know that this isn’t a trap?”

That was Gordon, all signs of the grinning trickster gone, sitting forward with elbows on his knees and hands loosely clasped. “You ask me, best way to draw someone in is to show them exactly what they want to see and that’s what this looks like: a nice, big, tasty piece of bait on a really nasty hook.”

Alan, placed next to him, voiced his agreement. “Yeah, from what you’ve told us about them, a trap is right up their alley.”

“I’ve been asking that question too, but we’ve seen electrical fields disrupt the Mysteron influence before,” Scarlet spoke up from his spot flanking the colonel. “On one occasion Blue and I were trying to take control of an aircraft the Mysterons were remotely piloting, we’d have had it for sure if we hadn’t passed over a substation and the electrical field made them lose control of it.”

Gordon nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced and Alan was even more sceptical.

“He has to have been talking about the Cham-Cham,” Tin Tin told the group. “That’s the only ‘Carnaby’ I can think of, how that awful man Mister Olsen was using the Cass Carnaby Five to pass on secret messages so those fighter jets could shoot down USAF missile transporters.”

“Yeah, the ones from Matthews Field air base!” Gordon interjected, snapping his fingers as he remembered. “That commander sure was a piece of work.”

“I-it makes sense t-to me – uh – Tin Tin.” Brains stood up and started pacing, one hand tucked behind his back and rubbing his chin with the other, obviously deep in thought.

“What is a ‘Cham-Cham’?” White asked curiously. He vaguely recalled something about USAF shipments from Matthews Field air base being shot down. Conrad had been investigating it despite the base commander’s reluctance to let Spectrum anywhere near his turf, but the mysterious attacks had stopped and shortly afterwards they’d picked up the strange signals from Mars, so the case had been reassigned to the local office, who, obstructed by the commander at every turn, hadn’t found out much more.

“It’s an ultrasonic-sensitive computer, Mr Olsen was using it to make little changes to the arrangements for live broadcasts of ‘Dangerous Game’ to send messages to the fighters,” Tin Tin explained. “Brains devised our own message using the same principles and our singer was able to change the song.”

“I heard about that, the mysterious Wanda Lamour who showed up at Paradise Peaks and vanished after one show,” Blue commented thoughtfully. “‘Frequency shifts, interference and changes.’ It fits.”

“Doctor,” White turned to Giardello, sitting next to him, “based on this do you have enough information to begin your research?”

“I’d like to get some hard data on the specific frequencies if I could, even better would be a copy of the codes themselves, just in case there’s a clue there too, but I’ve got a good starting point and we’ve got a Cham-Cham back at SR.” Thomas nodded thoughtfully, clearly already attacking the problem with the aid of the new information.

“Good.” White slowly looked over the people of International Rescue, his gaze lingering on Brains who was still pacing in a tight circle, then he turned his attention to his old friend. “Jeff, the assistance of International Rescue has been invaluable, and I would greatly appreciate more, but there is something that must be addressed first.” He squared his shoulders, every inch the Commander in Chief of Spectrum and a man who knew exactly where his black and white lay in an all too grey world. “International Rescue is a civilian organisation,” he began. “Your craft and your operatives only carry weapons because I am sad to say that in this world they are needed, even by a rescue organisation whose only desire is to help those in need. Spectrum, however, is a military organisation, and we are fighting a war. While what we are looking to build may not be a weapon in the traditional sense, it will most certainly be used like a weapon – to end a threat. Whilst negotiating with the Mysterons is our first choice, if negotiations fail we may need to employ it to wipe out the Mysterons completely, to commit genocide.”

A heavy silence fell as soon as Colonel White uttered that word, breaking through the theoreticals of the conversation to present the blunt, ugly reality that they were facing. Even Brains stopped pacing, giving White his full attention.

“You are all people of high moral standing,” White went on to say, “I cannot in good conscience ask you for more assistance without making you fully aware of what we will do with whatever assistance is provided beyond this point, be it ideas, designs, or otherwise.”

“I appreciate you being up front about this all, Charles,” Jeff said at last, looking around his family and getting their nods. “There’s some hard thinking to do before we can give you an answer.” He paused, drumming his fingers on his knee, then nodded to himself. “We’re gonna sleep on this. Let’s get you all settled in the Round House and we’ll talk some more after breakfast.”

“Understood,” White nodded, his expression grave. “Once again, thank you for what you have told us thus far, it gives us a place to start.”

0o0o0

The meeting broke up shortly after that, Grandma declaring that yes while they’d had snacks, lunch was now in order and that was that.

After lunch, Scarlet and Blue, declining help from the Tracy sons, fetched everyone’s bags from the helicopter, then Kyrano and Tin Tin guided the Spectrum contingent to the Round House. Once everyone had a room (and had all satisfied their respective paranoias over security) Melody declared that she was going to take a nap, Doctor Giardello shut himself in his room with the portable high-security computer he’d brought along, intending on writing down ideas and lines of investigation while it was all fresh in his mind, and White accepted Jeff’s offer of a catch up over coffee, leaving Scarlet and Blue largely up to their own devices.

They had just gotten back from a walk around the buildings and immediate area to stretch their legs – a.k.a. scoping out the lay of the land because not knowing the terrain was making them twitchy – when Scott and Virgil intercepted them by the pool as they were making their way back to the villa in search of cold drinks.

“We’re not even going to try and pretend we’re not looking for information,” Scott said as he waved them towards a well shaded table where a dewy pitcher of lemonade and four glasses waited. “We want to ask about some things.”

“That’s fair,” Blue said as he let himself be ushered to a seat opposite Virgil, who was already pouring drinks. On the flight over Colonel White had already covered what to do if this happened, and his exact words had been ‘use your best judgement, you are well aware of what’s at stake. The Tracy family can be trusted with secrets and confidences’.

Scott waited until everyone was settled with a glass in hand. “So what are the Mysterons like? Personality-wise I mean. We know they like riddles,” he made a bit of a face, obviously thinking of the mission that had led to International Rescue’s path crossing with Spectrum’s, “but how do they tick?”

“Well, they’re very literal, but they’ve got a twist on it.” Adam wet his throat with a sip of lemonade before he began in earnest. “One of their early threats was that they were going to ‘kill time’. Magenta figured it out: they were targeting General Tiempo – time.”

“How were they going to do it?” Scott asked curiously.

“The general was going to have a brain operation using some sort of electrical gadget. The Mysterons replicated his doctor and were going to have him kill General Tiempo during the operation,” Blue explained.

“When we got to the hospital we didn’t know about Doctor Magnus being a replicant, but we were suspicious,” Scarlet took up the thread. “So when the doctor insisted that the operation had to be performed as quickly as possible we moved General Tiempo and Doctor Magnus up to Cloudbase to do the op there. We let the doctor do his prep work on the general, then I subbed in for the general for the actual operation with Fawn observing so he could perform the op if necessary. Fawn wasn’t happy about it, not by a long shot, but we didn’t know how else to test if the doctor was a Mysteron or not without tipping our hand.”

“That mission was when we discovered that replicants are impervious to X-rays and that high voltage electricity is lethal to them,” Blue added.

“Wait, wait, wait, back up,” Virgil butted in, incredulous, “Scarlet, you were on the table, being operated on?”

“Yes, Fawn had to give me a hell of a lot of sedatives to keep me down long enough. It worked though, the blighter killed me thinking I was the general,” Scarlet grimaced, rubbing his forehead at the memory. “I woke up at about midnight and had six hours of the worst bloody migraine of my life while everything sorted itself out.”

“He’s always grouchy after a head injury, but nothing’s come close to that time,” Adam commented with a wry but fond smile.

Scott and Virgil shared a worried look, then Virgil carefully asked “Scarlet, Blue... are you... are you two okay? I thought we had a bad case of black humour and some really skewed metrics, but the stuff you fellas are talking about and just shrugging off like it’s no big deal...” He trailed off, unable to find the words he wanted.

That made the two Spectrum officers pause and share a look of their own. This sort of thing had been their lives for so long now it was easy to forget that their normal was very different to other people’s normal.

“Ah, sorry about that, we’re pretty desensitised by now,” Blue apologised, trying to assure them. “We’ll, ah, we’ll moderate what we talk about. We’ve got people to talk to on base,” he added, glossing over his and Scarlet’s recent problem of using words, “and our CMO has no problem about putting his foot down when he sees a problem.”

The two IR pilots didn’t look convinced, but they let the topic drop for now.

Scarlet decided to get the conversation back on track before things could get more awkward. “There’s a certain oddness about the Mysterons’ planning.” Paul put down his glass, frowning in thought as he figured out how to phrase what he wanted to say. “Some of their plots are fiendishly subtle but it’s almost as if that planning only goes up to a certain point. In any case, even if we foil their schemes all our victories are almost always Pyrrhic: despite their defeat they’ve still caused some form of chaos or destruction, caused a loss to humanity or inflicted damage to Spectrum.”

“They might not win, but they don’t lose either.” Virgil frowned, tapping on the side of his glass. “That can’t be easy for you.”

“No, it’s not,” Blue was quiet as he spoke. “It’s part of why the Colonel decided to come here. He told us on the way over that he initially tried to avoid involving International Rescue, that this isn’t your job, it’s ours, but...”

“You’re starting to get desperate,” Virgil finished the thought for him.

“We are.” Paul nodded. “It’s been just over three years now...” He paused and looked at Blue, getting his nod before he continued. “No one wants to say anything, but the general consensus is that sooner or later we’re going to run out of luck, and to be quite frank, we’ve made very little headway in this war. All we’ve been able to do is tread water, we haven’t gotten anywhere near ending it.”

There was a pause as Virgil and Scott absorbed that statement, then Scott ventured a different question, clearly one that had been bothering him for some time.

“Scarlet...” Scott asked, “do you ever worry that your retrometabolisim will ‘wear off’ or that the Mysterons will turn it off somehow?”

“I do,” was Paul’s honest answer as he picked up his glass to give himself something to fiddle with. “It’s one of the things that keeps me up some nights. But I check every morning that it’s still active.” At their curious looks he went on to explain “I deliberately cut myself when I shave. It was Blue’s idea. So far it’s always healed up well before I’ve finished getting ready for the day, so I know it’s still working.”

“Ah, there you are.”

Everyone looked over as Alan wandered up to the group. “Kyrano sent me, dinner’s in twenty minutes.”

“Thanks, Alan,” Scott told him, then at the curious looks from the two officers – it was barely quarter past five – Scott explained, “we tend to eat early because of the time difference between here, Europe and the American continent. They’re where most of our emergencies happen.”

“Yeah, and Scott gets cranky as heck if we don’t keep to his feeding schedule,” Virgil teased, twisting out of his chair and ducking the swat from Scott with practised ease. “What, you do!” he laughed.

“Sounds like Ochre if we don’t get coffee in front of him in time,” Blue observed with a small grin, very glad to break the tension.

“Agreed.” Scarlet’s expression was mischievous as he joined in. “I swear, we could sort out so many international disputes if we locked the feuding parties in a room with an uncaffeinated Ochre and refused to let them out until they came to some sort of agreement.”

“Let us know if you’re gonna do it, we can loan you Virgil when he’s been woken up too early,” Alan laughed, skipping out of the way of his elder brother’s automatic grab at him. “I’d say he’s just as bad!”

“S.I.G.” Paul grinned at the trio’s antics as he finished the lemonade and rose. “C’mon Blue, let’s go wash up and see if we can’t pry the doctor away from his computer.”

“S.I.G.”

0o0o0

By general unspoken agreement, there was no discussion of ‘work’ related topics at the dinner table. Conversations instead ranged from the newest aircraft being put out by the major manufacturers (which Brains, Tin Tin, Melody, Blue and Scott had firm opinions about), new developments in a low profile rebreather apparatus for divers (Scarlet surprised Gordon with his interest) and a scathing discussion was had about President Roberts’ recent on-air gaffe when he came off stage at a press conference about corruption in Congress and didn’t realise his lapel microphone was still on. General consensus was that he wasn’t going to be able to stand for re-election after that misstep. Many compliments were sent Kyrano’s way for the delicious repast of kari ikan, and even more when he brought out individual fruit tarts for dessert that looked almost too pretty to eat.

Things remained genial after the meal. Doctor Giardello went back to his room, citing the work he had to get back to, and Brains did the same shortly afterwards. Much to the amusement of his colleagues, Adam was finally able to talk flying with Scott, while Colonel White and Jeff continued their catch up. At Gordon’s behest, Virgil sat down at the piano to play, filling the villa with music. As the sun rolled towards the horizon, the collection of people ebbed and flowed as people went here and there for different reasons, but they always found their way back to the lounge or somewhere nearby.

It was well after sunset when Scott came looking for Scarlet again.

Not yet ready to turn in for the night, the British officer had removed himself from the low level hubbub inside the villa and was standing in a shadowed corner of the balcony, leaning on the railing and looking out at the moon-dappled sea.

“Nice night,” Scott observed as he came and leaned on the railing next to Paul, a scotch on the rocks in hand.

“It is,” was Paul’s noncommittal agreement as he tried to guess what Scott was after. His statement was a blatant conversation opener and he was obviously wanting to take things in a certain direction. He was also a little amused by how the Tracy family had obviously divided up who was to approach whom, with Scott obviously assigned to him. “American forthrightness is refreshing sometimes, but I think I might prefer a little more subtlety with whatever he’s working his way up to asking.”

“So...” Scott absently swirled the drink, making the ice cubes clink against the cut crystal, and dove straight in. “There really isn’t an easy way to ask this, so I’m just gonna be blunt: if we built Spectrum a device that’d wipe out the Mysteron race and it was your finger on the trigger, would you be able to pull it?”

Paul’s expression was technically a smile in that it moved his lips, but it was too sharp and bitter for it to be one. “Blunt indeed, he’s not playing about with this, nor will I.” “I am not the right person to ask that question of.”

“Because of what happened to you that day?”

“Because of what’s happened to me every day since and what it’s doing to the people around me,” Paul clarified, turning to lean his back and elbows against the balcony railing. “Because we’re almost certain that they picked this fight in the first place. Because of the good people that the Mysterons have killed, quite often in awful ways, and because of the good work they were doing that now is left undone. Because of the innocents caught up in the crossfire. Because of the way Conrad is suffering in their hands. Because they could snuff us out in a heartbeat but they’re drawing this out for as long as possible to terrorise humanity. Because they know we want peace, but they’re having too much fun.” Paul stared into the night for a long moment. “If negotiations fail, it will most likely be me on site with that trigger in my hand. I will absolutely pull it and go to my grave with a clear conscience.”

Scott took a moment to absorb that statement. When he next spoke, his voice was very quiet as he asked “Even if killing them might kill you too?”

“Even if it might kill me too.” Paul was just as quiet, his eyes searching out Adam and Magnolia. They were still in the villa, talking animatedly with Alan about something. It was probably flying related, going by how Adam was moving his hands. “If that’s the price to stop the War of Nerves and keep them safe, it will be worth it.”

Scott nodded his understanding then ventured another question. “You said you’re almost certain the Mysterons picked this fight. Why?”

“You know about what happened on the Mars mission?” Scarlet asked back and got a nod in return. “That’s why. The two men from the SSEC said they didn’t feel like themselves when they got near the Mysteron City, and Conrad... that wasn’t something that Conrad would do.” Paul hesitated, gathering his words. “I’d like to say that I knew Conrad as well as anyone could. The man was,” he paused and corrected himself: “is completely unflappable, quick to respond, but slow to react. Just pulling the trigger without any thought of falling back first or getting a better read of the situation, not trying the radio or giving the Mysterons a chance to not shoot was completely out of character for him. He lost his parents to the Atomic War and he’s suffered a great deal personally because of war. Starting one...” Paul shook his head. “That wasn’t him. He hates war and fighting with a passion.”

“If he hated fighting, why was he in Spectrum?” Scott asked curiously.

“He wasn’t just in Spectrum, he helped build Spectrum,” Paul explained. “He had a, well, I wouldn’t class it as pessimistic, but he had a very bluntly pragmatic view of the world. Knowing what humanity can be like he decided it would be better to be part of an organisation doing something about it, to fight for and defend peace, rather than huddle in a corner and hope the world would ignore him. ‘Better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war’ was one of his philosophies. So to come back to your original question, all the evidence points to something or someone influencing the crew of the MEV, and the only ones around were the Mysterons.”

“That makes a lot of sense. I’ve worked with the Zero-X guys. Those fellas never jump the gun,” was all Scott said aloud, mentally replaying everything that Scarlet had just told him. “It’s not about destroying them, and it’s not about revenge,” Scott realised. “It’s about protection. He wants to protect his friends and his family, so to protect them he has to stop the Mysterons, and he’ll do whatever is necessary to make that happen.”

Scott took a sip of his drink, now quite well watered down from the ice melting in the tropical night air, and looked at Scarlet. “For what it’s worth, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“I hope so too.” Scarlet turned to go back to watching the restless waves lapping at the shore. “I truly hope so too.”

Chapter 6

While Scott talked with Scarlet outside, Gordon finally managed to get Blue on his own.

In the quick brainstorming session that they’d had while the Spectrum people were settling into the Round House – sorting out who’d target whom and what questions they wanted answered – he’d volunteered to sound out Blue as he and Blue had managed to get a good rapport going while waiting for the others in Gaat’s lair. While the two of them making friends might have surprised others, it really shouldn’t have. He was a fish in a family of birds, he knew how to speak fluent Pilot.

It was Brains and Tin Tin who’d given him an opening. John had found the plans for the XKF.115, Brains had brought them up from the lab and now Brains, Tin Tin and Melody were huddled together at the dining table, the plans spread out before them as Melody talked the two engineers through how she’d cobbled together a working aircraft out of the parts while Alan and Virgil watched over peoples’ shoulders and asked the odd question while they waited for their own opening to ask her some things.

When it was pretty clear that Melody’s discussion was going to be a long one, Blue had gone over to the lounge area. Sitting himself down in one of the armchairs with a certain measure of care, he’d started rubbing his leg, just below his right knee, as something acted up on him. But, Gordon was careful to note, Blue had positioned himself to keep a weather eye on both Melody and Scarlet, who was still out on the balcony with Scott. He wasn’t at all surprised by the action, he’d noticed how protective the three of them were of each other.

“Hey, how’s the leg?” Gordon asked as he came over. The aquanaut had two coffees in hand and put one well within Blue’s reach as he sat down in the chair next to him.

“Almost mended,” Blue replied, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the coffee. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

While the two of them got settled Gordon noticed the other man’s hand creeping back to his knee and Blue rubbed around the joint with a faint wince.

“Still sore?” he asked. “I can get you something from the infirmary if you need it.”

“I might take you up on that,” Blue said as he left off massaging his knee to sip the coffee. “Doc says I’ve got a personal barometer at the moment, but he thinks it’ll clear up in a few months as long as I don’t break it again.”

“Here’s hoping.” Gordon shifted his cup from hand to hand. This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. “Blue, I’ve got a question for you, well, a couple of questions really.” He took a deep breath, hoping he’d be able to explain his train of thought well enough. “So, let’s say we build the thing for Spectrum. You and the other captains are now on Mars because you’ve got to be up close and personal for it to work, negotiations have failed and it’s time to pull the trigger. Would you do it? And before you answer that, there’s another worry we’ve got: that if we pull the plug on the Mysterons, it’ll also pull the plug on Scarlet. Would you and the others do it, or let him do it, if you all knew it’d kill him too?”

Adam looked into the depths of his coffee for a long moment. “I’ve thought about that,” he said at last. “I’m pretty sure Scarlet has too. Hell, I think we all have, we just haven’t had the guts to talk about it.” He sighed, putting down the coffee to rub at his knee again. “To save the planet? Everyone on it? Yeah, I’d pull the trigger and hope like hell it didn’t take Scarlet down. Or if it did, that we could bring him back through human means. As for letting Scarlet...” Adam shook his head, an expression that was almost a knowing smile but too wry to qualify twisting his lips. “He’d volunteer and knock the rest of us over the head to keep us from stopping him.”

“Yeah, I can see that happening.” Gordon nodded and took a sip of coffee before broaching his original concern. “What if all of this is a trap? Something to draw Spectrum’s eye or take out the biggest threat to them? If it wasn’t for Scarlet, you fellas would...”

“Most of us would be dead by now, yes.” Blue’s face bore that twisted expression again. “It could very well be a trap. They’ve tried to isolate Scarlet and take him out several times now.” Blue sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “We can’t afford to not take the chance that this is the real deal,” he said at last, “but the moment I get the slightest hint that it’s a trap, I’m knocking him over the head and leaving him tied up in a broom closet or something.”

“Better block the door with something heavy,” Gordon advised sagely, taking another gulp of lukewarm coffee. “Or he’ll be out almost as soon as he wakes up.”

“Good idea.” Blue flicked him a small smile. “I’ll get Grey and Ochre to hold it until Maintenance can weld it shut. That should hold him for a while.”

“That’ll do it.” Gordon nodded, flicking him a grin. “Okay, I think I’ve got enough info for Dad now, so time for a change of topic.” “Oh, hey, speaking of Grey, he once said something about you fellas learning about Huntsman spiders the hard way...?”

0o0o0

Melody had been listening with half an ear to Gordon and Blue’s conversation, so when Brains wandered off with the plans, now marked up with all sorts of annotations and notes, she wasn’t surprised at all when the remaining three put their game faces on.

“Melody, can we ask you something?” Alan asked her. The young man had lost the stars in his eyes and was all Thunderbird Three, standing tall with shoulders squared.

“Sure.” Melody straightened up but kept her body language open and relaxed.

“Us figuring out something to help against the Mysterons,” Virgil started, his grimly business-like expression reminding her that he wasn’t just any guy and this wasn’t just any family, “it’s not a sure thing that we’ll do it, and it’s not a sure thing that we can make something that’ll work. What’ll Spectrum do if we say no or we can’t build something?”

“To the former it’ll be a ‘thank you for your time’ and we’ll head on back to base,” Melody told them, “to the latter, well, we’ll figure something out. Doctor Giardello’s already got ideas going. It was his people who made the Mysteron detector and gun, and I know they’ve got some other projects cooking too.” She hesitated, then went on. “Until there’s another alternative, we’ll be stepping up the search for Black. Conrad said it himself – if we destroy him, the Mysterons won’t be able to act until they get a replacement for him. We want to save him, but... well... if we can’t...” Melody shook her head sadly. “He’ll be free, and the world will get some breathing room.”

“If you had the Mysteron gun pointed at Black, would you...?” Tin Tin asked, her eyes very wide.

“None of them are military,” Magnolia reminded herself. “They don’t understand misericorde.” “I would,” she told them as gently as she could. “I’ve seen little bits of what Scarlet’s gone through and is still going through because of what happened to him. Scarlet was under their control for less than a day and he doesn’t remember any of it. Black’s been under their control for years and from the looks of it, he’s been aware and conscious the entire time.” She looked around the trio, hoping they’d understand. “If it was you in his shoes, watching yourself be used to do awful things to people, wouldn’t you want someone to make it stop by whatever means necessary?”

“... Yeah... I get you.” That was Alan, looking sombre. “Thank you, Melody.”

0o0o0

Late that night, when everyone had finally bid each other good night and the villa had fallen quiet, White gathered his officers in one of the sitting rooms in the Round House and listened attentively as they filled him in on what the family (he included Brains, Kyrano and Tin Tin in that count, Jeff had clearly adopted them as kin) had asked them about whilst he, Jeff and Kyrano had caught up in Jeff’s private office.

“These are all very valid questions they have asked,” White said at last as he sat back in his chair to mull over everything. “Curiously, Jeff hasn’t asked anything like this of me.”

“Maybe because he thinks he already knows what you’d say?” Melody hazarded the guess, “so he asked you about other things to see if you’re still the person he remembers?”

“You may well be correct, Melody.” White nodded. “In any case, all we can do now is wait and see what the next meeting brings.” He looked around his officers, once again reminded of the calibre of the people he was privileged to command. “You are dismissed.”

Chapter 7

The next day Jeff reconvened his council in the lounge as soon as it was practicable, with John once again beaming in. Kyrano had taken a breakfast spread over to the Round House and politely requested that the Spectrum people stay put there until the Tracys were ready – there was no telling how long this would take – so they had a guarantee of privacy until a decision was made.

There were grim faces all around as different people recounted the information they’d picked up, then Jeff stood and took the floor.

“Look,” he said as he surveyed the group, “I know what I want to tell Charles, but the decision isn’t mine to make because I’m not the one who’s going to be building it.” He first looked at Brains and Tin Tin as he spoke, then he also looked at his sons, knowing how often they helped the engineers. “You’re the ones who’d be doing the work. Whatever you decide, I’m behind you one hundred percent, and I’ll tell Charles it was my decision.”

In the wake of Jeff’s declaration there were some nods and noises of approval, but no one voiced an opinion either way. The elephant in the room, the question of ‘yes or no’, was staring everyone down and no one felt sure enough yet to answer it.

Tin Tin was the one to break the silence.

“Mister Tracy, how much do you trust Colonel White?” was her question. “I know you do not want to influence our decision, but your opinion of him is important. We don’t know the kind of man he is and if he’ll keep his word about negotiating first, but you do.”

“That’s a hell of a good question, Tin Tin.” Jeff leaned his hip against the chair beside him, arms crossed and chin tucked as he pondered. Finally he lifted his head and looked at her. “If you had to ask me how I felt about any of my old friends finding out about International Rescue, Charles is the one I’m relieved about,” he said at last. “Man’s got an inflexible code of ethics and if you’ve trusted him with a secret, he’ll take it to his grave. He’s the kind of guy they were thinking about when they came up with ‘my word is my bond’, and from what I can tell, he hasn’t changed one bit.”

“So if he says it’s negotiation first we can trust him?” Virgil asked, wanting to be absolutely certain.

“We can.” Jeff nodded sharply.

“There’s something else we have to consider: secrets will out. If we build it, what about if...” Virgil paused and changed his mind “what about when the news gets out? The World Government’s going to have questions for Spectrum.”

“Charles won’t throw us under the bus.” Jeff was very confident in that statement. “He’ll have a cover story.”

“Yeah, but, genocide.” Virgil was clearly conflicted. “That’s the sort of thing that people are extradited for. When the news breaks about the Mysterons being wiped out, someone’s bound to argue for their side, humanity is weird like that.”

“But that’s not going to be how it’s reported, Virgil,” John stepped in. “If you listen to the news and how everything’s worded, the Mysterons are never described as an alien race, it’s always a ‘group’ or similar. Spectrum and the different governments have let everyone think they’re an isolated splinter faction of humanity. That was a smart move, can you think of the panic if humanity found out about a super powerful alien race bent on our destruction? Besides, the Colonel said it’d be negotiations first, it might not get to genocide.”

“That’s a good point,” Gordon chimed in, “and besides, we don’t even know how the gadget or macguffin or doohicky or whatever we call it is going to work yet, it might be something completely non-lethal that just, I dunno, keeps the Mysterons in time out or something.”

“All this is well and good,” Grandma chose this moment to speak up, “but is it necessary, Jeff?” She looked up at her son, lips pressed together into a thin line of worry. “Can’t Charles just talk to them? Why does it have to be weapons?”

“I asked him that when we met up in London.” Jeff shook his head. “They’ve already tried talking, Ma. The Mysterons used their good faith to set a trap and tried to blow up Cloudbase and everyone on it.”

“Oh dear,” she tsked, “oh that’s just wicked. But Charles promised to try talking again first, right?”

“He did,” Jeff reassured her, “he doesn’t like the idea of wiping them out either.”

In the meantime, Brains beckoned for Tin Tin to follow him to the far side of the lounge where they had a short conversation in low voices. Evidently they’d been on the same page as they came to an accord relatively quickly and rejoined the group.

“W-we have decided to build the device for Spectrum,” Brains quietly announced, probably the most grave-faced that any of them had ever seen him. “It is very – uh – evident, that there i-isn’t much of, -uh – a choice.”

“Thank you both,” was Jeff’s solemn response. “How long before you can start?”

“We have some ideas a-already. I-if Spectrum have all the – uh – data we need, then with Doctor Giardello’s a-assistance we can start straight away,” Brains began, “but if they haven’t, I-I’ll need to run some – uh – tests on Captain Scarlet to isolate the – uh – information that we require.”

“Live human testing has its own ethical landmines,” John warned, the scientist reminding the engineer of what lay beyond numbers and variables. “He’s got to have fully informed consent, especially if anything’s invasive or there are any risks involved.”

“And it’s gotta be necessary,” Scott was grim-faced. “I know that fella will agree to almost anything if there’s even a hint it might stop the War, even if it’ll hurt him in the process.”

“Safest bet would be to loop in Captain Blue and give him the same briefing you give Captain Scarlet,” Virgil advised. “Scarlet will listen to Blue, he’ll be the check and balance on Scarlet’s decision-making.”

“That’s sound reasoning,” Jeff nodded. “John, call the Spectrum people over. Brains, Tin Tin, get your rough ideas together and we’ll give ‘em the news. Boys, get the chairs rearranged for them.”

A round of acknowledgements answered him and Jeff put himself out of the way. But even though the decision had been made, doubt still perched on his shoulder like a crook-beaked bird and muttered a litany of ‘what if’s and ‘maybe’s in his ear. “If this isn’t the right call, I’ve just condemned us all,” Jeff couldn’t help the grim thought. “Please oh please, let me have made the right choice.”

Chapter 8

The news that International Rescue would help was greeted with obvious relief, but one that was tempered by the gravity of what was being asked for.

“How can I assist?” Doctor Giardello asked, his hands already poised to open the portable computer he’d brought with him.

“We’ll need access to your information on how the Mysterons function,” Tin Tin began. “We have an idea to build a sort of jamming station or interference generator we can send to Mars.”

“But how will we get it close enough?” Blue asked. “The last time we tried to send a satellite to Mars, the Mysterons blew up the decoy at about twenty one thousand miles away, then took out the observatory so we couldn’t get the photos from the mini-sat.”

“A-actually, w-we only have to – uh – get to within one – uh – one million kilometres,” Brains interjected. “Orbital mechanics will – uh – take care of the r-rest.”

Alan cottoned onto it first. “The La Grange points!” he exclaimed. For the non-astronauts in the room he added, “They’re five gravitational sweet spots where an object in orbit around a planet or body remains in equilibrium with it. L1 and L2 are in actual orbit of the planet, L3 to L5 are stationed in the planet’s orbit around the sun.” He turned back to Brains. “One or two satellites?”

“T-two,” Brains answered him. “At L1 and L2, one for – uh – each hemisphere. F-for greatest effect t-they will need to be activated simultaneously.”

“We’re not going to be able to have any sort of active tracking up,” was Alan’s next point, “the entire mission’s going to have to run dark.” He frowned as he attacked the problem. “Putting anything into orbit requires constant monitoring, but without tracking or transmissions, doing everything from a time delay of anywhere between five to twenty minutes... getting one satellite into position is going to be hard enough, but two, and at the same time?” He looked down at the floor, then up at Brains. “It’s going to have to be a manned mission, isn’t it?”

“I-it is, Alan.” Brains nodded solemnly. “But I have – uh – an idea.” He grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out the relative positions of the sun, Earth and Mars, then added a circle around Mars with La Grange points One and Two marked out. “T-the spacecraft will need to have a – uh – insulating shield between it a-and Mars to hide it from Mars, but the r-rear will be highly – uh – reflective. T-that way, it can be tracked by Thunderbird Five,” he explained.

“And I can make observations any time I take Thunderbird Three up!” Alan jumped in. “Get a different angle to back up John’s calculations.”

“E-exactly,” Brains nodded. He was unphased by the interruption, well used to the excitable nature of the youngest Tracy. “W-when the spaceship is in range, Thunderbird Five can send a – uh – laser signal to the spaceship to tell the c-crew it’s time to deploy the satellites.” He sketched out the rough arc of a course between Earth and Mars. “B-by keeping the shield b-between them a-and Mars, the crew s-should be safe. Then once they’re at t-the correct range,” he made a mark between L1 and L2, “they can deploy the -uh – generators and guide t-them into position.”

“What about navigation and course corrections?” Blue asked. “I know some information could be sent by laser-pulse signals, but the crew will need some way to monitor and adjust course themselves.”

“The early astronauts did stellar navigation by hand with star positions and chronometers,” Scott pointed out. “I did one of my papers on space navigation. If John pings us that we’re off course and a rough indication of how far, we can look at the star charts and it’s just math for the rest.”

Scott completely missed the look the Spectrum officers shared at his nonchalant use of ‘us’, ‘we’, and the ‘it’s just math’ comment.

A quick glance at Jeff told them that he hadn’t missed Scott’s use of those words either.

“So to summarise: we have a potential device and a way to deliver it,” White said as he took the floor, “and an idea of the requirements involved. Doctor Giardello..” He looked to the scientist, “... the rocket that’s being developed, will it be sufficient for this project?”

Thomas frowned and turned to his computer to bring up the notes he had. “... It’ll need some modifications,” he said after scrutinising the specifications, “and this is with the caveat that I’m not a rocket scientist, but I think we can integrate a dampening shield inside the tritonium alloy nose cone and it should be easy to put a reflective surface and laser receiver on an extendable arm. With the current relative positions of Earth and Mars and the speed the new rocket can reach.” He paused to think. “If the launch is within the next four months, it could potentially get to Mars within three weeks.”

“I-if I could get a look at those plans, I c-could narrow down that – uh – estimation,” Brains said, obviously itching to see what was on the screen.

“Once this meeting is over you’ll have access to all the data that you require,” White promised Brains. “But there is another question to answer as well: who will man this mission? The rocket has capacity for a maximum crew of three.”

“The logical choices are Blue and myself,” Scarlet spoke up. “Black was our space specialist, but he made sure everyone was space rated and Blue and I scored the highest out of the lot of us. However,” he grimaced, “if I go...”

“You won’t be able to respond to any threats,” Scott realised, his eyes widening.

“Yes. The other captains... they can’t take the risks that I can. It might...” It was a small gesture but a telling one when he paused and shifted a little. “It might mean that there are losses amongst Spectrum, or losses in the War.”

“But if you stay on Earth it means sending someone who isn’t as highly rated as you or bringing someone in from the outside, like World Space Patrol or the Zero-X program,” Gordon frowned as he completed the thought. “It’s an extra security risk and it’s a risk to the mission itself to either bring in someone you don’t know or someone less qualified into a danger zone.”

“The less involved Commander Zero is, the better,” White declared, obviously unpleasant memories twisting his mouth into a sour expression. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared out the window for a moment, clearly weighing up the options, then turned back. “It is the difference between winning a battle and winning a war. Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, you will both be assigned to this mission.”

“And me,” Scott declared. “You need someone space rated, already read in on the mission, comfortable with analog stellar navigation and able to manage emergencies in space. Alan and John are needed in Three and Five, and if this goes sour we’re going to need Alan and Tin Tin in Three to come after us.”

Scott was addressing the group, but he was looking at Jeff.

“We’ll discuss this later,” Jeff’s displeasure at Scott’s volunteering was obvious, but he put it away for now. “So that’s the basics covered. Brains, Tin Tin, Doctor Giardello, how long before you can have a timeline for a working prototype?”

“O-once we can look at – uh – Spectrum’s data,” Brains thought for a moment, “I – uh – will have a more definite answer by -uh – this evening.”

“Very good. Doctor, I trust your discretion.” White nodded his permission, seeing that Giardello was eager to begin.

“This way to the lab, Doctor Giardello,” Tin Tin smiled and rose, gesturing for Thomas to follow her. Brains was already on his feet, muttering under his breath about something as he led the way.

“We’ll call you over when lunch is ready,” Jeff told the Spectrum contingent as he also rose, the implied ‘please go back to the Round House’ clear. “Scott.”

“Yessir.” Scott was already on his feet and going towards Jeff’s private office, his expression carefully neutral but tension in every line of his body.

Scarlet and Blue shared a quick look, and a glance at the other Tracy sons told them that they were all on the same wavelength: the impending conversation between the Tracy patriarch and his eldest was not going to be an easy one, not by a long shot.

Blue nodded towards the doorway that the two of them were going towards, raising his eyebrows and looking at the younger Tracys. ‘Need help?’ his expression asked.

Gordon shook his head slightly, then gestured at himself, Alan, Virgil and John’s screen. ‘No, we’ve got this.’

Scarlet nodded his understanding and flicked them a thumbs up, then both he and Blue followed Colonel White and Melody out of the door so that the trio could plot their intervention without distraction.

Chapter 9

Jeff waited until the study door had clicked shut before beginning his tirade.

“What the hell were you thinking, Scott, just volunteering like that!?” Jeff knew he was just skirting the edge of actually yelling, but he didn’t really care. “We said we’d help them build the device, not rush out there and do their damn jobs for them!”

Reaching for the vast stores of resilience and control that had seen him through Bereznik and more, Scott drew himself up. Shoulders back, chin raised and eyes narrowed, he was every inch the officer he had been and in many ways still was.

“What I was thinking, sir, was that out of the six of us,” and Scott absolutely did not miss Jeff’s blink when it clicked that while Jeff didn’t consider Tin Tin a fully fledged field operative, he absolutely did, “Virgil and myself have the most compatible personalities with Scarlet and Blue. But while he’s got the engineering background for any tech issues, I’ve got more space experience and I can run the navigational calculations better than he can. John would be a decent second choice, but we need him keeping tabs on us from Five and he doesn’t have the same field experience that I do. What I was thinking was that while Alan would be a good choice, if everything goes south, I want Alan, Gordon and Tin Tin coming after us. What I was thinking was that after the mission with Spectrum, when I actually sat down with Gordon and we reviewed everything, was that we made it out of there alive and intact because of way, way too much luck. What I was thinking was that the Mysterons were gambling on us continuing with our policies around secrecy and not working with other organisations because they knew it’d leave us vulnerable to attack, and that’s scared me like few things ever have. What I was thinking is that Blue and Scarlet are a test pilot and a special ops soldier and that, yes, they’re trained in space operations, but they don’t have the trouble shooting experience and emergency experience that I’ve got. What I was thinking was ‘what if this goes wrong and the mission fails because they didn’t have the help they needed’. What I was thinking is that there’s absolutely no point in us doing our jobs if there’s no world left to save!”

The last line was thundered out as Scott reminded his father of exactly where he’d gotten his temper from.

A pause, a heavy one burdened with churning emotions that neither man could name, then Scott pulled himself to a stiff attention and spoke again.

“That is what I was thinking. What were you thinking, Father?” he asked, his voice calm and even.

It was with a little shock that Jeff realised that he was leaning back against his desk with no memory of having done so, having instinctively retreated in the face of his son’s remonstrance. It was a bigger shock when he realised that he couldn’t actually articulate an answer beyond ‘I don’t want you to’, a childish selfishness that would have made a pathetic and paltry response. “And the other thing I want to say – that I’m scared you’ll get hurt, that you won’t come back – well,” Jeff grimaced, “considering what we do...” he paused and corrected himself, “what he does, what I send him and his brothers out to do... that’d be an even stupider answer.”

Shame made Jeff look down at the patterns of the carpet, but determination and love made him lift his head and meet his son’s eyes. “I was thinking that I’m afraid I’m going to lose you – either lose you to Spectrum, or lose you to the Mysterons.” Jeff swallowed hard before he spoke again. “Or worse... that it won’t be you who comes back.”

There was a blink from Scott, then his stance softened. “I’m not joining Spectrum, Dad,” Scott answered. “Sure, I like them...” He stopped and clarified, “well, I like the folks I’ve met so far anyway, but my family, my home, is here.”

And that was when the door opened, startling them both. “And if the second thing happens... we’ll work out a contingency with Spectrum,” Gordon said as he, Alan and Virgil came in, proving that they’d been listening. “There’s no way they haven’t thought about it already.”

Jeff nodded slowly, absorbing that. “Yeah, knowing Charlie, he would have. Guy’s lived so long ‘cause he’s good at pickin’ which trees have snipers in ‘em.”

He didn’t notice when his sons exchanged looks: a broadening Kansas country farm boy accent was a warning signal of several things, weariness being the most prominent of them and rapidly approaching being ‘done’ a close second.

Virgil was drawing in a breath to suggest that now might be a good time for a coffee when there was a faint crash of shattering crockery, quickly followed by Grandma shrieking “JEFF! IT’S KYRANO!”

0o0o0

Many miles away, Belah Gaat carefully set himself down in his throne inside the grand central hall of his temple lair and willed his hands to stop shaking. Sweat was making his heavy robes cling to his skin, and his chest and neck were aching under the weight of the ostentatious pectoral ornament with its horn-shaped shoulders. “A few moments, just a few,” he promised himself, “then I shall change and sleep.”

Gaat closed his eyes and turned his head so he could rest his feverishly hot face against the cool metal plating of the throne. He had survived the sarin gas by only a hair, his saving graces specifically being the atropine in his submarine and how close he was to the temple with its stock of pralidoxime chloride. It had been an extremely near thing however, a great deal of sarin had leaked into his torn chem suit and after getting into his submarine he hadn’t been able to rise snorkel depth and purge the air until he got well clear of the island.

Opening his eyes, Gaat considered the backs of his hands, how the bones and knuckles stood out like causeways and mountains under his skin, and the sickly pale colour that still lingered even after all these months. “I am not even halfway recovered and the effort of commanding my brother to speak has cost me dearly, but I had to know what the accursed International Rescue are up to. But considering what I have just learned,” Belah smiled thinly, “I think my investment will be worth it.”

Chapter 10

There was an air of anticipation as the council reconvened after dinner. Kyrano’s absence at the day’s meal times was explained as his feeling unwell, and White’s offer to procure medical assistance was kindly declined as it was already being investigated.

As soon as the dinner table had been cleared and wiped down, Brains unfurled a large set of blueprints: designs for a satellite and diagrams for how it would sit inside a blunt-nosed spaceship with an almost ‘flying wing’ profile, but the wings were severely truncated. “I-I believe that – uh – we have a plan,” Brains announced as he reached for the salt and pepper shakers to weigh down the corners of the paper as it tried to curl back up again. “If my t-theory is correct, we can indeed – uh – jam the Mysterons’ transmissions t-to Earth.”

“Once we have confirmed what the signal range is, it will need three cascading interference generators, not two, to triangulate the jamming and ensure that there is full coverage of Mars with no transmission gaps as well as provide a backup in case one generator fails,” Tin Tin explained further, appropriating the sugar bowl and an unused coffee cup for the other two corners.

“The initial trio of generators will have to be smaller than we’d like,” Giardello took up the thread, pointing to the appropriate parts of the diagram, “and solar powered so that they’ll all fit in the cargo area of the spaceship designed for Project Sword, but they’ll keep the Mysterons from interfering while we get more powerful generators, ones with nuclear fuel cells, sent to Mars to provide another layer of protection. The generators will also be programmed to send themselves into a terminal solar orbit as soon as they experience a major fault or reach the end of their operational lifespan, that’ll remove the risk of any debris crashing to Mars and the Mysterons using it to reverse-engineer their way around the jamming. The first generators will have a lifespan of five years, the second generation will have ten. As long as we keep sending a fresh wave of generators every five to seven years, we’ll be able to keep the Mysterons bottled up for as long as necessary.”

There was a round of nods from those seated at the table. “You appear to have all angles covered, excellent,” White said. “How long until construction and testing can begin?”

“We have to first – uh – isolate the – uh – frequencies t-the Mysterons transmit on. We k-know that there is a-a specific frequency band they use, thanks to – uh – Spectrum’s earlier testing, the pulsator and the – uh – effects on C-Captain Scarlet when he is n-near a Mysteron agent,” Brains replied. “Once we have that data, t-then w-we will know what b-bands of -uh – frequencies to jam.”

“To do so, we are attempting to reproduce the signal their agents operate on,” Giardello completed the thought. To the Spectrum officers he explained “Figuring out the Mysterons’ operating frequencies has been a long term project at SR, but it stalled. Tin Tin took one look at our data and made a brilliant breakthrough.”

Tin Tin blushed at the praise. “Oh it was nothing, the scientists at Spectrum Research had already done most of the work,” she demurred.

“Hardly ‘nothing’, you solved a problem that has been stumping some of the finest minds in the world,” White told her.

She blushed further and this time didn’t try to divert the praise.

“N-now t-that we think we have the – uh – frequency, we need to – uh – confirm it,” Brains took over again, looking down the table at Scarlet.

“You want to see what I react to.” Scarlet nodded his understanding. “Very well.”

He was about to say more when Grandma interjected with a very firm, “Tomorrow. You can run your tests tomorrow, Brains. It’s far too late and you’ve barely eaten all day! And the same goes for you Tin Tin, and you too, Doctor Giardello.”

“But...!” Brains tried to protest.

“She’s right, Brains,” Jeff spoke up. “You three have all done a heck of a lot of work today. Sleep on it, see if anything else crops up overnight and you can make a fresh start first thing tomorrow.” At a look from Grandma he corrected himself. “First thing after breakfast tomorrow.”

“I’ll bring you to the lab after breakfast,” Tin Tin promised, speaking to both Scarlet and Blue – something that White and Melody both noticed and approved of.

“Then it’s settled,” Grandma stood up. “Right, bed, all of you!”

There was a general murmur of conversation as chairs were pushed back, coffee and tea cups were collected and people started to disperse. Adam hung back, then when Tin Tin headed to the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes, he picked up a tea set and followed her. He would have asked Brains, but the engineer had already vanished with the rolled up plans.

“Miss Kyrano? Can I borrow you for a minute?” Adam asked as he set his tray down with the rest of the dishes.

“Of course, Captain Blue.” She turned away from the bench and gave him her full attention.

“Look, about the testing. Scarlet doesn’t exactly have the highest regard for his own safety at the best of times, especially if he reasons that the benefits to others outweigh the cost to him.” Adam grimaced faintly, the memories of some of Paul’s more idiotic stunts coming back to the fore of his mind, and decided to be blunt. “How good is your infirmary? I know how bad he gets around an active Mysteron presence and I’m worried, both about when the signal is tested and when you and the others try jamming it.”

Touched by his obvious concern, Tin Tin nodded her understanding and gave him a reassuring smile. “Because we’re so isolated we have a very good infirmary and Brains, the boys and I all have extensive medical training. We even have one of the auto-nurses that your Doctor Fawn designed, we’ll be using it to monitor Captain Scarlet during the experiments.”

“That’s good to know, thank you, Miss Kyrano.” Blue nodded to her, much relieved by the news. “Good night, Miss Kyrano.”

0o0o0

As promised, Tin Tin arrived just as they finished tidying up from the breakfast spread delivered to the Round House, collecting Scarlet and Blue and bringing them through the villa and into one of the labs, a room lined with complex-looking equipment. Brains and Giardello were already there, a collection of half-drunk coffees on a table showing that despite Grandma Tracy’s orders they’d gotten an early start. Tin Tin immediately joined her colleagues, working the buttons on one of the computer banks with practised ease.

“Well that’s familiar.” Paul nodded to the auto-nurse set up in the middle of the room. “I’m guessing that’s for me?”

“It is,” Doctor Giardello confirmed as he walked around them to finish setting up the nurse. “With so many unknowns, we want to monitor you while we’re testing. Since you’re ‘off’ the Mysteron network I doubt that interfering with it will affect you at all, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“S.I.G.” Scarlet nodded and hoisted himself up onto the attached bed, well used to the routine of being attached to monitoring equipment.

“There’s a chair over there for you, Captain Blue. This auto-nurse is quite sensitive and we can’t chance any ‘noise’ in the data.” Giardello pointed to a chair on the far side of the room and came around to where Scarlet was, picking up a handful of leads as he went. “Shirt off please, Captain.”

“I feel like a ruddy power board,” Scarlet grumbled as Giardello finished placing the last of the auto-nurse’s monitoring equipment on his chest, then added a set of neural sensors to his temples.

“Think about all those tests that Fawn won’t have to run now that he’ll have the data from this to play with,” Giardello pointed out with a smile. From his frequent correspondence with the CMO, he was very conversant with Scarlet’s complaints about Fawn’s curiosity about the ins and outs of what kept him ticking. “This should keep him busy for months.”

“That’s a good point.” Scarlet perked up noticeably at that.

“You should lie down,” Blue told him from his post at the chair. “Remember how you got the last time we were near something big?”

“S.I.G.” Scarlet swung his legs up onto the bed and made himself as comfortable as he could, and Giardello retreated to where a remote terminal for the ‘nurse had been set up.

That was when Brains wheeled a blocky looking device with a saucer-sized dish on the front into position, the dish aimed at the prone Scarlet. “A-are we ready?” he asked, and upon getting their affirmatives he settled his glasses more firmly into place. “O-okay, tell me when you – uh – start to feel an effect, C-Captain, and tell me i-if you need to -uh – stop.” Brains powered up the machine and slowly started working through the frequencies they suspected the Mysterons employed.

“Nothing, nothing, noth-ugh.” Scarlet made a face and pressed the back of one hand to his mouth, the other arm curling over his stomach. “Yes, that’s it... ugh...”

“Scarlet?” Blue called out.

“I’m... I’m okay... just regretting the poached eggs.” Scarlet paled and swallowed hard. “Keep going.”

“F.A.B.” Brains gave him a concerned glance, then went back to his machine.

“... Yes.. Yes...” Scarlet had his eyes closed now, sweat beading his brow and keeping his breathing under tight control. “... Still going... Yes... Yes... Tailing off now... Stopped.” He kept his eyes closed against the lights of the lab. “I’m... I’m just going to stay here for a bit, if that’s all right.”

“That’s perfectly fine, Captain, just get up when you’re ready,” Giardello reassured him, giving Blue the nod that it was safe to approach.

“Hey buddy, you doing okay?” Adam asked in a low voice as soon as he got close enough.

Off to the side he could hear Excited Scientist noises as the trio started combing through the raw data they’d just collected, but he tuned it out for now.

“... Ask me in a bit.” Paul draped one arm over his eyes to shield them before cracking one open just enough to peep out at him. “I thought being near a Mysteron was bad, but that was worse. I hope they got enough, I’m not looking forward to doing that again.”

“What did it feel like?” Blue asked curiously.

“A Mysteron presence is like an instant hangover. That felt like a hangover and vertigo all at once.”

“Nasty.”

“Quite.”

The single word was delivered with such quintessential, dry British-ness that Adam couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

Once Scarlet was at the point where he could sit up again, the two men settled back to observe the experts at work, bustling around the lab and throwing around words that might have been English, but were all Greek to the two of them. Scarlet was fairly nonplussed about it, he’d been through this enough times to have picked up some of the Medical Science dialect and he could track the gist of the conversation, but his focus was on reading their tones and body language, not their words. Blue, however, was restless. He was well used to the watch at Scarlet’s bedside, a book in hand or listening to something on one earpiece, and if he was waiting for Scarlet to escape Fawn’s latest round of testing he was similarly occupied as he waited outside Medical. Being in the room and listening to words that he theoretically should have understood but didn’t was uniquely frustrating.

At last Tin Tin came over while Giardello and Brains started setting up something else. “Captains, we’ve got what we need from the initial tests,” she began, acknowledging Scarlet’s relieved ‘oh thank heavens for that’ with a little nod. “We’d now like to test the cascade interference generator.”

“How will that work?” Blue asked, watching as Giardello started wheeling over a new doohickey. It was similar to the first one, but instead of a dish it had dozens of paperback-sized sheets of black-painted metal on the front, not unlike the fins for a heat sink. It was placed perpendicular to the frequency machine, the fins pointing towards the area of effect for the dish.

“Just like the first test, we’ll run through the frequencies and see if they still affect you, Captain Scarlet. If one does, tell us and we’ll adjust on the fly.” She gave him a stern look. “Tell us as soon as you need a break.”

“Understood.”

Scarlet laid himself back down while Blue retreated to the chair and settled in to watch again. He kept his concerns to himself for now, but the presence of what was clearly a crash cart on the far side of the room was very reassuring that that particular fear was being taken seriously.

This time, Tin Tin worked the frequency machine, Brains had the interference generator and Giardello went back to the remote terminal.

Once everyone was ready, Tin Tin powered up her machine. “First frequency.”

Scarlet winced and paled, then relaxed within seconds of Brains’ announcement of “Countermeasure a-active.”

That set the pattern for the next half hour as each individual frequency was tested and Brains found the signal that would disrupt it. Some took a little longer to find than others, but eventually the entire list was crossed off.

Blue was instantly by Scarlet’s side as soon as he got the all clear. Scarlet was not looking well at all, but he waved them off with a “Jus’ leave me ‘lone for a bit...”, his arm back over his eyes to block out the light.

Eventually Scarlet felt settled enough to crack an eye open again and peer out from under his arm at the worried faces clustered around him. “Is it going to work?” he asked in a voice that still wobbled slightly. “The... thingie,” he waved his free hand at the interference generator, “is it going to work?”

“I think it will,” Giardello told him. “All indications are positive.”

“... Good.” The arm returned to its place over his eyes. “Worth it then.”

Chapter 11

Helped along by a doze in a sunny spot beside the pool, Scarlet recovered from the rigours of the testing by late morning. After lunchtime the scientists had confirmed that they had what they needed, and by the afternoon the Spectrum contingent had packed their belongings and loaded up the helicopter for the first leg of their trip home. They would be making for Manila this time, and Symphony was waiting for them with an SPJ.

“We’ll be in touch,” Jeff promised as he shook Charles’ hand. “Some day soon you and me need to have a catch up without the end of the world hanging over us.”

“I would like that,” Charles replied with a faint smile. “Until then, Jeff.”

“‘Till then.” Jeff nodded, walking back and out of the way as Blue escorted White up to the helicopter and the rotors started turning.

The slats of metal became a black blur, then the sound of the engine changed as Melody changed the rotor angle just enough so that they bit into the air. Aerodynamics won the argument with one of the four fundamental forces, lift overcame inertia and the helicopter took off. It circled the island once in farewell, then struck off towards the north east.

Jeff stood and watched until it vanished into the endless blue, then he turned and strode to where his sons were waiting for him. “Boys, we’ve got work to do. Alan, Gordon, take Thunderbird Three up and get John down here. Alan, I know he’s only halfway through his rotation but this is going to need him and he can make up the time he owes you later. Scott, Virgil, get onto configuring a simulator for the ‘Sword’ rocket, and tell Grandma and Kyrano to feed Brains and Tin Tin, they’re getting stuck in and they’re going to forget to eat again.”

He only paid half a mind to his sons’ acknowledgements before they scattered to carry out their tasks, heading inside the house and mentally drafting up his own list of jobs that needed doing and questions that needed to be asked. This was going to be International Rescue’s biggest mission and he’d be cold and in his grave before he’d let this go off half-cocked.

0o0o0

The usual undercurrent of tension on Cloudbase ratcheted up by several orders of magnitude as the physical parts of the mission slowly came together. ‘The difficulty of keeping a secret is exponentially proportional to the number of people who know it’ as the old formula went, and Colonel White kept every project manager, team leader and department head on their toes with keeping the project well wrapped up behind code names, decoys, red herrings and other cyphers.

The added layer of complication from absolutely no electronic transmissions about the project, all work being carried out on completely isolated computers and all reports, questions, queries and replies being made face to face or by hardcopy only added to the stress, but Colonel White was absolutely adamant on all of it and would not be swayed by anyone, no matter how thought out and well reasoned their arguments were.

As a former spy master, White knew very well how happenstance, coincidence and the wrong person being observant, noticing patterns or changes, and connecting the dots could destroy an iron-clad veil of secrecy like it was made of wet tissue paper. The lesson of the Manhattan Project being discovered by a magazine editor noticing several physicists changing their addresses was one he took to heart. Their enemy had access to so much more information than an editor did, and the stakes were oh so much higher; and that was without taking into account all of the other foes that they had in the world, all of whom would take an interest in a project like this.

However, after two and a half months of watching the CIC throw his all into the project, the CMO decided that enough was enough.

Colonel White was combing through one of the endless stacks of paperwork that crossed his desk when the unexpected sound of the door opening and footsteps made him look up.

Fawn marched in and stood before his desk with arms crossed and a glower creasing his features. An extremely uncomfortable Captain Blue was just behind the doctor’s right shoulder, ‘I’m only here because he ordered me to come’ all but written over his head in neon lights.

“What can I do for you, Doctor Fawn?” White asked, his irritation at the interruption bleeding through.

“What yew can do is take yourself off duty for forty eight hours.”

The harsher ‘yew’ instead of ‘you’ gave White pause. Fawn starting with an Australian accent was not a good sign, but, “No, Doctor Fawn. There is too much that requires my attention.”

“Either take yourself off duty or I will, Colonel.” His accent continuing to thicken, Fawn unfolded his arms so he could lean on the edge of the desk and glare at him better. “You’re not eating properly, you’re definitely not sleeping properly and your stress markers are all way too high. Willing or unwilling, Blue’s taking over your shift and you’re going off duty.”

White toyed with his pen as he decided if he could risk calling Fawn’s bluff. The CMO could easily declare him medically unfit and doing so would trigger off a whole string of processes – including a full medical exam that would no doubt pick up the fact that he’d had to tighten his belt another notch this morning and that he’d overridden the Room of Sleep safety protocols twice in the past fortnight, using his access as the CIC to wipe the logs of his earlier visits.

“And if that happens I have no doubt that Fawn will have me off duty for at least a week,” was his grim conclusion. “Better to give him his forty eight rather than waste seven days. Not to mention Edward wrangles Scarlet at his most irascible, I’m not sure I can intimidate him anymore and I’m not sure I have the energy to try.” “... Very well, Doctor Fawn,” he grudgingly acquiesced, scooping up his files into a mostly tidy pile.

“Good. Glad someone around here has some sense,” Fawn said as he straightened up and turned around. “Green, lock Colonel White out of everything except the entertainment library until I tell you otherwise. Oh, and lock down his office door while you’re at it too.”

That neatly nixed Charles’ idea of continuing to work in his office or his quarters, and a glance at Green confirmed that his aide was currently more afraid of crossing the CMO than he was amenable to bending orders for his CIC. “Forty eight hours and not a minute longer, Doctor Fawn.”

Gracious in victory, Fawn pointed at the door. “Go sleep. You’ll feel better for it.”

0o0o0

Three months in and the modifications on the ‘Sword’ rocket had finally been completed, crews working around the clock to get them done. Now it was the testing phase to ensure it was space-worthy.

At the same time the crew were going through their own testing phase, one with its own difficulties.

“Dammit!” Scarlet swore as the projected viewports whited out. “Blasted ‘flying wing’ design! More like a flying brick!” he continued, venting his ire as the equipment of the simulator wound down. Their latest session had ended with what Conrad had called a ‘lithobraking manoeuvre’ – stopping by hitting the ground, not landing – when something went wrong with their re-entry procedure.

“Gotta remember that re-entry is the hardest part.” Blue was only marginally better at controlling his frustration as he glowered at the control panel in front of them.

“Are you reminding me or yourself?” Scarlet asked, running one hand through his hair and semi-slumping back into his seat with a sigh. Between the five point harnesses and the cupped shape of the chair he couldn’t really slump like he wanted to, but it was better than maintaining the effort to keep up a decorous posture.

“Bit of both,” Blue admitted. He looked to the empty third seat. “This is so much harder without Thunderbird One.”

“Agreed.” Paul scowled at the chair, void of the person who’d be filling it when launch finally arrived. “I know we’ll get a couple of days together at New Mexico, but it would be so much easier to train with him, not this,” he waved a hand at the situation in general, “this parallel training.”

“Yeah.” Blue rubbed at his eyes to fend off his weariness. “Okay, let’s check the logs, see what went wrong and try again.”

“S.I.G.”

0o0o0

While everyone would have vastly preferred to have kept the World Government’s involvement to the absolute minimum – they hand over the required money, manpower, material and access to facilities needed, and in return ask no questions – because Spectrum was part of the WG and they needed things from the World Government it meant reading in certain persons to explain why Spectrum needed these things and why it had to be kept extremely quiet so that those persons could do their job and grease the wheels of bureaucracy to make things happen for them.

Everyone swore that bringing in the politicians only served to whiten the Old Man’s hair even more.

By now the mission was almost ready. In a very wise decision, Colonel White had declared that Blue was the one who would negotiate with the Mysterons. When certain politicians, such as the World President, got wind of this, they naturally baulked. Talking to antagonistic parties and bringing them onside was a career politician’s job after all, and they thought they’d be much better at it, but when White pointed out how there would be a lengthy delay due to physics and the positions of Earth and Mars and how that delay could cost the entire mission, they reluctantly conceded the point.

It didn’t stop them from wanting to meddle though.

With only three weeks to go before the mission, Adam dragged himself into the Lounge, took off his ‘cap, dumped it on the coffee table, then dropped himself into the nearest chair with a groan, sprawling with a great lack of decorum. “If I get any more ‘negotiation advice’ from a politician I’m going to jump out the airlock,” he told the room at large.

“Please don’t, we’re over London right now and you’ll make a really big mess in someone’s yard,” Rick said as he got up and went to the coffee pots, selecting Adam’s ‘blue sky and cartoon jets’ mug from the collection stationed there.

“Yeah, and where are we gonna to find someone crazy enough to be Scarlet’s new partner in crime?” Pat added his two cents, glancing up from his newspaper.

“You’d probably fit the bill, Ochre,” That was Brad’s contribution, made from where he’d been watching the world go by from one of the portholes.

“Who? Me? Not a chance.” Rick shook his head. “I’ll jump in in a pinch, but no way am I nuts enough to make it a regular thing.” He came over and placed the cup well within Adam’s reach, getting a weary thumbs up of thanks.

Adam could only smile as he listened to the conversation become a semi-serious debate on who exactly could be a replacement for him, with suggestions ranging from Green (definitely an option with his go-getter attitude but only once he had more field experience, otherwise he’d struggle with the times when he’d need to make Scarlet back down on something) to Rhapsody (if the Old Man could find a replacement Angel, that is) to a couple of candidates from the terrestrial bases.

It was a perfect distraction, exactly as he knew they had intended: in addition to everything else, tomorrow he was going home to say goodbye.

Chapter 12

It was mid morning in the Svenson household. The trees in the park across the road were putting on their usual autumnal display and it was quite nice right now so John Svenson had appropriated a sitting room just off the lounge so he could enjoy the view while he worked on some reports.

His work flow was disturbed at just after ten when the doorbell rang. Mildly vexed by the interruption, John looked up from his work, but when Sarah called out ‘I’ll get it’ he left her to it, pushing it to the back of his mind. However his ears pricked up at the sound of his wife’s delighted “Adam! I didn’t expect you!”

“Hello, Mom.”

“Hm. He sounds subdued.” John turned to the next page of his report. “I’ll let Sarah deal with it before I come out to say hello, I can never get him out of a mood.”

There was the sound of the door shutting and footsteps muffled by carpets, then he heard them take seats in the lounge.

“What brings you here, dear?” Sarah asked. “Oh! I’ll get coffee! We have a marvellous new machine and your father brought back some amazing beans from his last trip!”

“No, thank you Mom, it’s just a flying visit.” A sigh. “I’m going to miss the anniversary party, I’m sorry.”

“Oh! But I thought you had leave!”

As far as John was concerned, Sarah was quite right to sound dismayed, but that was the bare minimum. Realistically, she should have been annoyed. Adam had missed almost every single major family event last year and half of this year’s, citing different emergencies or that he couldn’t get leave for whatever reason.

“I did have leave, but there’s something on and I’m going to be... away.” A rustle of paper bags interrupted things. “I’ve brought your anniversary presents and the upcoming birthday and Christmas presents, and letters for everyone.”

“What’s this?” John put down his report to better focus on the conversation. Adam was very organised when it came to presents and always sent or brought his gifts, but to have all the gifts arranged and ready to give this far in advance was unusual. And he was giving them all now...

“But... Christmas is three months away...”

John tapped his chin thoughtfully, Sarah was thinking along the same lines he was. “What the hell is going on...?”

“I know, Mom. I don’t know when I’m going to be back.”

“... Adam? What is it, dear? What’s happening?”

Sarah’s worry was very clear. John got up and went to the door to investigate further. Peering out, he could see Adam was sitting in a comfortable armchair, his back to the sitting room, and Sarah was perched on a couch, facing him, her tightly clasped hands in her lap.

“I can’t tell you. But it’s big, and there’s a lot that can go wrong,” Adam was saying.

“Can’t someone else go?” Sarah asked with that worried catch in her voice that John so hated to hear.

“No, Mom.” Without even turning, Adam then asked “Can we talk, Dad?”

“How did you know I was here?” John hid his surprise, striding out to join his wife on the couch.

“I noticed you,” was his eldest’s answer. “Like I’ve said before, there’s very good reasons why I’m next to impossible to sneak up on.”

“Yes, the Bereznik issues,” John recalled. “That was years ago.”

Recognising the bait, Adam didn’t rise to it. His persistent hypervigilance had long been used as a point of argument with how unnecessary his family found it and how Adam maintained that it was very necessary. “Yes it was,” was all he chose to say, before getting the conversation back to the matter at hand. “As I was saying, I’m just making a quick visit. I know everyone else is at work or college, I’ll call them before I go, but I wanted to say goodbye to you two in person.”

“Well that’s at least something,” John sniffed, ignoring Sarah’s muttered ‘John!’

Again Adam ignored the barb. “It’s a big mission, and I don’t know if or when I’ll be back, so I also wanted to give you this.” Reaching into an interior pocket of his coat, he pulled out a long white envelope. “Letters for everyone. You’ll get a call if it’s necessary to open it. If it’s not, please burn it without reading them.” He handed it to Sarah, who took it with fingers that trembled.

The simple act made the enormity of whatever he was up to settle on John and Sarah like a leaden cloud. Yes, there had been serious conversations before, but nothing like this!

“... Adam...?” Sarah looked at her first born, her eyes wide and wet with gathering tears.

“Yes, Mom, I have to go,” Adam answered her unasked question, leaning forward and resting a gentle hand on her arm to reassure her.

“No you don’t!” John shot to his feet and thundered the words, gesturing broadly in his agitation. “You’re my son! You’ve got much better things to do than gallivanting about and risking your neck on hero nonsense! I’m sure someone else can do it!”

Though he took his hand from Sarah’s arm, Adam remained seated and stayed calm. “You’re wrong, Dad. There’s reasons, good ones, why it has to be me.”

“But of course you can’t tell us, can you?” John sneered. “All this secrecy, cloak and dagger dramatics, and apparently everything is important and dire and critical, and you can’t tell your own parents what you get up to!”

“No, I can’t, because it’ll put you in danger and I love you too much to risk your lives just so you can have talking points at the country club.” Putting a certain deliberateness into the action, Adam stood up... and John was suddenly reminded of exactly how tall and muscular his son was, an in-the-flesh definition of ‘fighting fit’. “But,” he went on to say, “that doesn’t really matter because whatever I do, even if I tell you all about where I’ve been and what I’ve been involved in, it’ll never be enough for you, unless I’m doing exactly what you want: wearing a suit, sitting behind a big desk and spending my days making money for the family business.”

“Because that’s where you belong!” John snapped back, trying to regain control of a conversation he belatedly realised he never had control of in the first place. “You’re wasting your skills and talents out there! You belong here, with the family, working with us!”

“In a way I am,” was Adam’s rebuttal, delivered coolly and dispassionately. “The ‘hero nonsense’ I do keeps your precious stock market from quickly becoming completely irrelevant.” He ignored John’s impotent spluttering and bent down to give his stunned mother a brief hug. “I love you both. Goodbye.”

Turning on his heel, Adam let himself out, walked briskly down the steps and got straight into the passenger seat of the nondescript black sedan waiting for him at the curb.

As they’d planned, as soon as he saw the front door open, Paul switched off the music he’d been listening to and turned the engine on. He waited just long enough for Adam to close the door and buckle himself in before pulling away before anyone could think to run down from the house.

After giving Adam several minutes to start to process everything, Paul ventured: “A few rounds in the gym later?” as he guided the car through the maze of mansions with their tall fences, fancy gates and manicured grounds.

“Yes,” was Adam’s clipped answer as he stared out the window at the blaze of colour, but seeing nothing. “... Thank you, Paul.”

“Any time, and I do mean that, Adam.”

“Thanks.”

Paul split his attention between the road and his friend. Adam’s relationship with his father had been fraught for years now and Paul knew how much it meant to him to at least have a cordial parting, but it was very obvious that things had not gone well, not in the slightest.

“I’ll give Karen the heads up that he needs some TLC once he’s gotten his emotions out on a punch pad. A coffee and some neenish tarts from the commissary afterwards should round things out nicely,” Paul decided as he pointed the car in the direction of the motorway. After all that Adam had done for him, helping Adam pull himself back together was the least he could do.

As he considered everything, Paul couldn’t help but feel rather guilty about how much easier his goodbyes had been. He’d had tea with his parents yesterday, and as soon as they’d realised that Adam was with him, they’d insisted that he come in for a cuppa. “Of course he’ll be the first to tell me that I’m being silly for feeling guilty about the differences between our families,” Paul realised, “but he is so very logical like that.”

0o0o0

Families and their logic were also on Scott’s mind as he shook out his duffle bag and put it on the floor, ready for the stacks of clothing and toiletries laid out on his bed. It’d taken a heck of a lot of convincing to get the bulk of the Tracy clan to stay home and let just three of them go to New Mexico tomorrow: himself (of course), Brains and Tin Tin. He’d have been happier going alone to keep their profile as low as possible, but their engineers needed to go over the rocket and the satellites (and it’d soothe everyone’s nerves, including his own, if it got the tick of approval from experts they knew and trusted). He’d fly them over in Tracy 2, and Tin Tin would fly herself and Brains back.

When the debate had been on, his main point had boiled down to ‘the more of us out and about, the higher the odds of us being noticed.’ Way too many people had the tabloid tip lines on speed dial, hoping to make a quick buck by selling info on the movements of famous people, and they really, really did not want to be noticed right now.

His second point had been ‘what if something happens at launch?’. That argument had been mostly targeted at Dad, the main instigator of the ‘go as a group/strength in numbers’ idea. It was one that Scott knew was born from Jeff’s personal collection of fears and worries. The Tracy patriarch knew the dangers of space like few others did, and while he’d made great strides, he still hesitated to trust his sons’ safety to other people and other organisations’ equipment. “Which isn’t completely unreasonable, considering what happened to me and Gordon,” Scott reflected as he re-folded a pair of socks before packing them.

So to that end, right now, John and Virgil were prepping Three to swap their spacemen around so that when the launch came they’d have Alan ready for Three and John in Five tracking and monitoring things. On the day itself, Virgil and Gordon were going to be in Two with Pod 4 loaded and ‘just so happen’ to be around the area.

“‘Pray for sunshine, but keep your powder dry’ really is one of many philosophies that International Rescue live by,” was his thought as he reviewed their many plans and preparations, absently rolling up a tee-shirt as he did so. “Right next to ‘if it’s crazy but it works, it’s not that crazy’, which kinda sums up this mission.”

A knock on the door interrupted his musings.

“Come in!” Scott called, reaching out to grab his favourite hoodie from college. By now it was a bedraggled thing in faded black, thin at the elbows, frayed at the cuffs, the letters mostly a memory and the string long lost, but he wanted it for the comfort more than any warmth it would provide. “Speaking of tabloids, they’d have a field day if they saw me in any of this,” he thought to himself as he folded the hoodie. He was well aware that he’d become something of a clothes horse after the Air Force. It wasn’t a bad thing, he enjoyed wearing a well cut outfit, but on the mission they’d be wearing jumpsuits for the most part so he was packing a lot of plain tee shirts, running shorts and other things to wear under the jumpsuits. It made for quite a difference compared to the last time he packed a bag, and he was pretty sure he’d have plenty of clothes and still come under the limit for personal belongings.

“How’s the packing going?” Jeff asked as he came in and cast his eye over what Scott hadn’t packed yet.

“Almost there. I’ll weigh it next and see if I need to take anything out.” Scott tucked his hoodie in the bag and turned to give his father his full attention.

“Scott,” Jeff took something from his jacket pocket. “There’s something I’d like you to take with you.” He held out a silver medallion on a braided cord. “Your mother gave this to me before my first flight into space,” Jeff explained.

Scott recognised it immediately. The St Joseph of Cupertino medallion – the patron saint of astronauts – had lived around his father’s neck until he finally left his space days behind. After the mountain happened it had gone into a small box on Jeff’s night table – the memories associated with it being too painful in the immediate aftermath – but later on he’d occasionally spied his father holding it while staring up at the moon.

“Dad... are you sure?” Scott asked, looking between the embossed oval and his father.

“I’m sure, son.”

“Thank you.” A lump in his throat, Scott took the medallion and immediately fastened it around his neck. “I’ll bring it back, I promise.”

“I know you will, son.” Jeff clearly had a lump in his throat too as he stepped forwards and enfolded his eldest in a tight hug, Scott wrapping his arms around him just as tightly. “I’m so proud of you, Scott, I’m so very proud,” Jeff murmured thickly. “And your mother would be just as proud, I know it. I love you, Scott.”

Scott tightened his grip. Though they regularly ‘told’ each other ‘I love you’, it was normally wasn’t with those exact words: want a coffee?/ I made apple pie/here’s that book you were after/go sit down, I’ll take care of it/go to bed and so on. The actual words of ‘I love you’ were sacred things saved for goodbyes and farewells so that they all knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if this was the last time they’d get to talk, they’d said this before parting.

“Thank you Dad, I love you too.”

Chapter 13

It was a grey dawn when Tracy 2 landed at the Mercury Space Center in New Mexico – named after the Mercury 13, not the Mercury 7. Scott taxied into the hangar and once he and Tin Tin had completed post-flight and shut down the aircraft, a glance out the windscreen showed three familiar figures waiting for them.

Lowering the air-stairs and shouldering his duffle, Scott led the way over to Scarlet, Blue and Doctor Giardello, the former two in charcoal grey jumpsuits with their code names embroidered on the chest, the latter in dark trousers and a black sports coat.

“Good to see you fellas again,” Scott said as there were handshakes all around.

“Likewise.” Blue smiled. “We got here yesterday. Do you want to settle in first or go to the rocket?”

“T-the rocket, please,” Brains requested. “W-we have – uh – a lot of work to do.”

“Understood, I’ll take your bags over to the accommodation unit and meet you at the assembly area,” Scarlet offered.

The offer was gratefully accepted and Scarlet walked off with their bags, loading them into one of the two golf carts that they’d brought over with luggage in mind. Giardello immediately started talking to Brains about a detail regarding the satellites, but Tin Tin’s attention was on Blue as he led them towards the second golf cart.

“Captain Blue, you’re limping, are you all right?” Tin Tin asked, worried.

“We had a mission a couple of days ago and I landed badly, that’s all,” Blue was quick to allay her concerns. “It’s just muscle strains, Doc’s cleared me for space flight.”

“Still, you mustn’t push yourself too hard,” Tin Tin insisted. “And don’t you dare try to tell me you’ve had worse and that ‘it’s fine’, I have heard that more than enough times from the boys to know what ‘it’s fine’ actually means!”

“Looks like some things really are universal, right up to and including us ‘big damn hero’ types having a no nonsense medic type to tell us when to sit down, shut up and take our meds like a good boy or girl,” Blue thought to himself, quite amused. “I promise, I won’t push myself,” he said out loud.

“Good.”

The trip across the sprawling facility was uneventful, Blue pointing out the crawler that would take the assembled rocket to the launch pad, mission control, the accommodation block and other parts of the complex. Even at this early hour it was a hive of activity, people and vehicles going hither and yon on their tasks. Finally they reached the vast rocket assembly building where the final checks were taking place before the spacecraft was mounted to the massive trio of boosters that would send it aloft.

“There wasn’t any way we could hide that a launch was taking place,” Blue said as he parked up next to the entrance. “So we’re hiding it behind the planned test launch of the new Argos rocket and spacecraft system. It’s the third test flight and unmanned, so the ‘neighbours’ shouldn’t be interested.” Leading the way to the well guarded pedestrian entrance, he handed out key cards to Brains and Tin Tin.

“A w-wise precaution,” Brains approved.

After passing through the multitude of security checks, they were into the assembly hall where the ‘Project Sword’ spacecraft rested in a specially constructed cradle to spare her undercarriage from carrying all the weight. The building was starkly industrial, and the battalion of arc lights overhead would have been blinding if not for the matte finish to the off-white walls and floor to keep the light from bouncing around.

Scott cast a critical eye over the completed ship. There were a few differences to how it looked ‘in the flesh’, as it were, as opposed to the initial plans put together at the island, but thanks to the updates they’d gotten, he knew what to expect. Apart from the black tiled underbelly, the body was finished in a dark red because the tritonium alloy wouldn’t take any other paint. Instead of being inside the ship’s skin, the carbon black shielding that would hide them from the Mysterons sat snugly over the nose and leading edges of the stubby ‘wings’ – actually extensions of the body of the ship, rather than true wings. The shield covered most of the forward viewports, which was fine; they didn’t need to see where they were going on the first leg of the trip, there were two portholes at port and starboard for when he needed to use stellar navigation, and it’d be jettisoned for re-entry. “All in all, I think she’ll do the job,” Scott concluded as he turned to Blue. “Does she have a name?”

“Affirmative.” Blue nodded. “It’s under the shielding, but her name is ‘Spes’ – hope.”

“How very appropriate,” Tin Tin smiled.

That was when a veritable mob of technicians and engineers descended on them, sweeping up the three scientists and leaving Blue and Scott behind.

“... Well that’s a first,” Scott was the first to speak, amused but not offended. Normally as the field commander of International Rescue and the one in charge of coordinating, communicating and conducting the movements of people, personnel and the paraphernalia of rescue operations, he was the one that folks usually gravitated to. To not be in charge of things on the ground was something of a breath of fresh air.

“I hear you,” Blue agreed with some amusement, also unused to but unbothered by not being the one in charge.

“Well,” Scarlet appeared from behind them, “I see that our experts are already at work. Shall we take a tour of the ship and familiarise ourselves with her whilst we wait for their final stamp of approval?”

“Sounds good to me,” Scott said, gesturing towards the ship. “Lead the way.”

They started in the cargo section of the Spes. The cascading interference generator satellites hadn’t been mounted yet, but the simple ‘launching arms’ were ready and waiting for them. They avoided the engine compartment for now – it was full of engineers – and instead went to the crew quarters. It was on their way there, in a quiet section of passageway without anyone else around, that Scarlet and Blue stopped and quietly ventured something that obviously had been on their minds for a while.

“Scott, we wanted to tell you something,” Blue began, “we’re going to be locked into this tin can together for at least six weeks and we know you already know our names. If you want to use them in private, go ahead.”

Touched and honoured by the trust being extended to him (and not a little amused by the comparison of this conversation about names to the first one). “I’d like that, thank you.” He would have said more, but a technician squeezed past them with an armful of dehydrated meal packs and Scarlet made a ‘we’ll continue this later’ gesture as he led them further into the ship.

“I gotta ask: how big are the bunks?” Scott asked as they approached the small crew quarters.

“Eighty inches long, thirty wide and twenty five overhead,” Adam supplied. He knew exactly why Scott was asking, having crammed himself into many a too-small bed or bunk over his lifetime. “We made sure they’d be a decent size.”

“Thank heavens for that!” Scott said as Paul tapped the button to open the door into the crew quarters and stepped inside, the other two close behind and Adam shutting the door after them.

It was a fairly utilitarian space, but clearly thought had gone into making it as comfortable as it could be. The bunks were set into three of the walls, wrapping around the inside of the room from the left of the entrance. Privacy curtains would block out the light and give some illusion of distance, and the muffled quality of their footsteps and lack of noise from outside was evidence of some fairly heavy-duty noise insulation. Drawers and lockers underneath and above the bunks were for bedding and belongings, and the fourth wall had a door that led to the bathroom. The walls had been painted a neutral cream colour and the lighting was softer and warmer than in the rest of the ship.

“It’s better than I expected,” Scott approved as he poked around the space. A random thought struck him and he turned to Paul and Adam. “How tall are you two anyway?” Scott asked curiously.

“Six three,” Adam answered. “You?”

“Six one. What about you, Paul?”

“Six one.” Paul looked between Scott and Adam, a mischievous glint in his eye. “You do know what this means, right?” Paul jerked his thumb at Adam. “He’s the tall one.”

Scott lit up, his gleeful delight fuelled by a lifetime of almost always being the tallest of whatever group he was in. “You’re right! So he’s on ‘getting things down from high shelves’ duty!”

“Precisely. Anything that needs that couple of inches’ extra reach is his job. I’m very glad that’s sorted.” Paul grinned at Scott, then at his partner.

“... I’m going to regret being stuck in here with you two, aren’t I?” Easily falling into the banter, Adam heaved a much put upon sigh. “This was such a mistake.”

“Oh yes you are.” Paul nodded, absolutely straight faced. “Terrible mistake. Absolutely shocking. Quite a lapse on your part.”

“Damn, and it’s too late to run too.” Adam grinned back at them both. “Since we’re all here, we probably should sort out who gets what bunk.”

“Flip a coin for first pick?” Paul asked, already digging in his pocket for one.

“Best of three.”

“Agreed.”

Six flips of the coin later, Scott was moving the pillow to the other end of the bunk on the immediate left, Paul was testing out the mattress on the middle bunk and Adam was reorganising the bedding for the last bunk. Once he’d finished making up his bed to his preference, Scott turned back to the others with a new question. “So while we’re here, which one of the two of you snores and does throwing a boot work?” Scott asked. “I’ve slept in dorms before,” he added by way of explanation.

“We both do under specific circumstances.” Paul got out of his bunk and jerked his thumb at Adam. “Him if he sleeps on his front, me if I sleep on my back.”

“Or if you’ve had a head injury,” Adam chimed in.

“Or if I’ve had a head injury,” Paul dutifully agreed. “And yes, throwing a boot or kicking the bunk works. Yourself?”

“Sometimes, but there isn’t really a pattern to it. Throw a boot or thump my leg, either works,” Scott replied, mentally logging the directive to wake from distance or hit the bunk, not the snorer. He completely understood it, for at least a year after Bereznik he reacted... badly... if someone touched him while he was asleep. Even now, years later, if he was in a bad patch he would lash out if someone tried to shake him awake.

“Noted,” Paul said as he took the pillow off his bunk. “I’m going to swap it, too thin,” he said to Adam in response to the other’s curious look, then looked back to Scott. “Well, now that’s all sorted shall we proceed with the tour?”

“F.A.B.” Scott nodded.

They dodged technicians in white overalls, passed Brains and Tin Tin delving into a system with diagnostic tools in hand, and explored the ship from side to side and back to front, at last settling into the cockpit where they took what would be their seats for the launch – Scott at the helm, Blue as co-pilot and Scarlet on systems.

“Let’s do a dry run of the pre-launch checks,” Thunderbird One decided, finding the necessary clipboards with their checklists already in the side pockets of the chairs.

Scarlet and Blue answered with twin ‘S.I.G’s and found their clipboards too.

This was when the hours of practice they’d separately put in showed here both positively and negatively as they automatically fell into the patterns that they’d developed. It took several tries before the three men managed to amalgamate their ways of working into something of a cohesive whole.

“I’m not happy about that,” Scott frowned as they finished the last set, turning his seat around so he could look at Scarlet and Blue better. “We didn’t flow as easily as we should have.”

Blue nodded his agreement. “I hear you. Neither of us liked the parallel training, but we didn’t have much of a choice.”

“We’ve still got today and tomorrow to use the sims. Lunch first, then we’ll get onto the sims,” Scarlet said.

“And space suits too,” Scott added. “I’ve brought one of ours – it’s still back in the jet – because there’s no way I’d be able to get enough time in one of your suits to be confident with it. All the connections are universal, Brains made sure it’d be compatible with the ship’s systems and tethers. I want to run you through mine and to run through yours in case of any emergencies.”

“That’s a good point.” Blue thought for a moment as he mentally reshuffled their rough schedule. “We’ll do that after lunch, then the sims.”

“F.A.B.” Scott glanced between the two of them. “Anything else we need to sort out?”

“Actually, there is one other thing we have to get sorted out first. It’s absolutely crucial,” Paul flicked a quick look at Adam, then turned back to Scott, quite serious.

Adam – who had instantly twigged that Paul was setting up to break the tension with a tease – hid his smile and played along by nodding sagely. Out of all of them, Brad was the only other person who could hold a completely serious mein when pulling someone’s leg like this.

“What? What is it?” Scott almost dropped his clipboard, looking between Paul and Adam with wide and worried eyes at the news that they’d missed something important.

“Morning person or night owl?” Paul asked with a completely straight face, his tone making it seem like the fate of the world rested on Scott’s answer.

Scott laughed, the tension in the cockpit vanishing. “Morning person, dawn’s my favourite time of day. You two?”

“I’m pleased to report we’re the same.” Paul grinned at him. “Very good news that, I’d have hated to be stuck sharing a tin can with one of those infernal night owls who inevitably wakes up in a right mood.”

“Agreed! So who’s yours?” Scott asked with a knowing grin. “Virgil and John are the family night owls, but Virgil’s the one who takes the longest to boot up in the morning.”

“Ochre’s the worst offender. Short of an emergency, the man’s barely human until he’s had three coffees and the sun is high.” Paul grinned at them both and put his checklist back where it belonged. “Now that that’s settled, let’s get ready to get this thing off the ground.”

0o0o0

The sun had long set by the time they wrapped up in the simulator for the day. At Scarlet’s specific request they’d gone through re-entry sims first, his reasoning being that if they could take care of the hardest thing first, the rest would be much easier. Conversation over dinner, taken in a sitting room in the section of the accommodation block set aside for them, had very deliberately been about anything but the mission, then they’d sought their beds. Tomorrow would be another early start for everyone, so rest was very much a priority.

“I’m still wishing we had at least a month of training together before the mission,” Adam said as he and Paul went to his room so Paul could help him with the stretches and other exercises the physio had prescribed for his leg and back.

“Agreed.” Paul made a face as he moved a straight-backed wooden chair into position. “We’re lucky that the three of us click so well. We’d be in serious trouble otherwise.”

“Yeah.” Adam sat on the chair backwards so Paul could start massaging out the knots he’d picked up from the cupped chairs of the simulator before starting the exercises. Very blatantly changing the topic, he canted a cheeky grin at Paul. “So I saw that you stole one of Dianne’s blankets again. Taking it with you on the mission?”

“I did not steal it,” Paul sniffed. “She and I traded blankets. Big difference. And yes, I am.” He paused long enough to tackle a particularly stubborn spot that needed both thumbs and a grunt out of Adam before it unkinked, then pointed to a bulging brown manila envelope on Adam’s beside table. Rather tellingly it was sealed with a red lipstick print and he could smell the traces of perfume from here. “So what’s that then, hm?”

“Letters and notes.” Adam smiled softly, clearly remembering the moment of the exchange the night before they flew out.

It was quite evident that the Old Man knew about him and Karen and Paul and Dianne. The night before their flight, the four of them somehow and without an explanation had had their schedules changed so that they all had the full night off, a gift beyond price with what they were about to face.

“I’ve given her some letters too,” Adam went on, “one for each day we’re supposed to be away... and a few extras. Just in case.”

Paul nodded. He and Dianne had exchanged envelopes too, stuffed with letters to read and one that was for just in case.

“Wise,” was all he said to that, then changed the subject again. “Right, I think that’s that, let’s get those stretches started.”

Chapter 14

Two days later, Colonel White was standing in the Observation Tube, hands clasped behind his back and watching the sinking sun paint the clouds red and tint the desert with all shades of yellow and gold.

Charles scowled at his faint reflection in the curved perspex. “I hate this.” Normally he would have all the data at his fingertips, experts ready to be called in to advise him on what every word and number meant, translating technical terms into meaningful information for an old sea dog and former spy. That he couldn’t do so, that he didn’t dare to, left him with an uncertainty that gnawed at him in a way that he hadn’t experienced in years, not since the very start of this war.

Years of discipline were what kept him from turning and ordering Green to contact the space centre so far below, demanding an immediate update to soothe his worries and fears about his men (and he included Thunderbird One in that count) and the mission. This morning had seen a missive from Doctor Giardello delivered by helicopter. The news that the rocket and all systems had passed their final checks had helped allay his concerns, but now, with the launch merely hours away, they had returned full force.

Green had a well disguised tap into the control room of course, listening in as the crawler moved its precious burden to the launch pad, but they couldn’t risk anything else that might reveal Spectrum’s interest in what was supposed to be the Argos 3 launch.

White turned his thoughts away from the mission and back to his men. It had been a particular cruelty that he couldn’t let any of his tightly knit cadre of officers make any final calls to each other. Giardello would be entrusted with any final notes, but in the name of the mission they had to sacrifice their last minute chance to hear someone’s voice or see someone’s face.

As someone who knew very well the pain of words forever left unsaid and farewells that suddenly became forever, he briefly hated himself for denying his people the opportunity to have one last conversation and one last goodbye.

“Speaking of conversations...” White grimaced, checked his watch and strode back to his desk. He really didn’t want to do this right now, but John Svenson had made a sufficient pest of himself that it had to be done before he got hold of the wrong person and learned things that needed to be kept quiet until the Spes and her crew reached Mars.

Evidently, at some point in the last few days the Svenson patriarch had read all of the letters that Blue had delivered – including the ones for in the event of his death. He had then had a revelation of exactly how dangerous his eldest’s job was and that when Adam had said ‘goodbye’ it was with the full understanding that it could very well be his last. Upon realising this and how shameful his conduct had been, John Svenson had promptly panicked. “Well,” Charles reflected to himself, “as an outside observer, that is the only word for it really.”

John had first tried the emergency number given to an agent’s immediate family members in case of a sudden crisis. When the contact centre staff had been obliged to stonewall him, in addition to regularly harassing the call centre, John had started reaching out to all of his well connected friends, slowly working his way higher and higher up the political food chain towards the people who knew people who knew things.

“Lieutenant, put me thought,” White ordered as he made himself comfortable behind the desk. The connection would be voice only, as per protocol, but he would give himself the option of making it a voice and visual connection if he needed to make a point. “And make sure that the Promenade Deck is facing the space centre.” The launch would be soon and his people would be gathering to watch their comrades sally forth into the black. If he could help by ensuring they had the best view possible, then he would.

0o0o0

In his Boston office, John Svenson knocked back the last of his whiskey and cursed himself for being so blind, the alcohol allowing him to shout down his ego and at last be honest with himself.

No matter how he spun it, what twists he put on it, this really was all his fault.

He was a meticulous planner, a strategic and cunning businessman, but when he’d tried to apply that to his headstrong eldest son... “Well, we all know how that turned out,” John muttered to himself, rolling the glass between his palms as he contemplated the path that had led to this. He’d had a glorious vision of privilege and influence all mapped out for Adam, a way for his son to stand on his proverbial shoulders and aspire to even greater heights, and for Adam to declare that that wasn’t good enough for him, well, that’d been a bitter pill for him to swallow.

So he hadn’t. He’d vomited it back up and spat it out at Adam, all full of bitterness and bile as he belittled his son, so intelligent and smart with the degrees to prove it, who’d nevertheless done something so baffling and confusing by choosing to carve out his own path away from the family firm and rejecting the life that John could provide for him.

Considering how you treated him, small wonder Adam started bringing that friend of his with him whenever he visited, a snide little voice murmured in the back of John’s head. John frowned, recalling that soft-footed British man who had the quite frankly unnerving ability to seemingly vanish and reappear at will. That man with his unblinking stare had served to put a curb on the worst of his off-hand remarks, and it hadn’t escaped his notice that recently Adam had only come to the events where he could bring either his British friend or his girlfriend Karen. She was someone else who unnerved him. Karen could put on a good bubbly blonde act, but John could sense the steel in her.

“And now...” John glanced at the desk and the stack of letters written in Adam’s precise hand. The white, unlined paper was covered with words describing shared memories, treasured moments and so much love despite the harrowing that John had put him through every time he came home. “...I don’t know if I can make this right.”

Bbbrrriiinngg Bbbrrriiinngg Bbbrrriiinngg

“What...?” Putting down the empty glass and taking a moment to make himself mostly presentable, John sat at his desk to answer the unexpected vidphone call. “John Svenson, who is this?”

The screen remained blank, but an older man’s voice rolled out of the speakers. “This is Colonel White. Whilst I am not in the habit of rewarding bad behaviour,” he began, “you have made quite an impression on the contact centre staff.” That it was not a good impression was incredibly clear.

John Svenson recognised the rebuke and accepted it. He’d eat as much crow as it took to get one last chance. “Please give them my apologies,” he started, mostly sincere, “but I need to talk to my son.”

“I’m afraid that is impossible.” Though unseen, White nevertheless projected the impression of a mountain, stern, forbidding and utterly immoveable. “He is under a communications blackout that will only be lifted when it is safe to do so. It would be extremely wise for you to stop enquiring about his current location and mission.”

“And if I don’t?” John snapped back, unwilling to back down without a fight. This man was between him and his son, and ‘no’ was not an answer he was accustomed to getting.

“Then I will be obliged to take steps, not just for his safety, but for everyone else’s safety as well. Including that of yourself and your family. The danger is very real and very present, Mr Svenson, and I cannot overstate it.”

The finality of the statement was like a steel trap slamming shut and John rocked back in his chair, feeling dazed by the reality of the situation slapping him in the face. It really, truly was that serious, and Adam had really, truly done what he’d done to keep him safe.

He told you that himself, that snide little voice muttered again, and remember what you said to him?

Quite unaware of his revelation, or fully aware of it and deliberately ignoring it, Colonel White went on to say: “I hope I have made myself quite clear, Mr Svenson. You will be contacted if there are any updates. Goodbye.”

The ‘phone shut down and John slumped in his plush leather executive chair behind his big mahogany desk, and looked around his opulent office without seeing any of it. He had everything that he had ever dreamed of as a young man, but he’d trade it all in a heartbeat for five minutes to tell his son five words: I’m sorry, I love you.

It was with dawning fear that John Svenson realised he might never get the chance to say those words.

0o0o0

In New Mexico, night finished drawing its velvet cloak across the dome of the sky just as the rocket was finally lifted into position.

The fuel hoses pulsed as they filled the vast tanks. Seats were filled in mission control and viewing platforms both on the ground and above it, the crew put on their bulky space suits, took the elevator up the gantry and climbed into what would be their home for the next six weeks. At the same time the crews of both the space centre’s rescue craft and the lurking Thunderbirds, unseen under the protection of their MIDAS systems, prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.

Checklists were completed, harnesses locked and tightened and hoses detached, the tanks now filled. Finally the countdown began. Numbers were intently watched, readings and data scrutinised, commands were entered and the ‘go’ command given. At the launch platform, white gas was mingled with fountains of sparks and Spes, the goddess of hope, found her wings.

When the rocket lifted up with a roar that was more than sound, Thunderbird Two was a green fleck spied out of the corner of the eye, gone before they could blink. Moments later, when they shed the twin solid rocket boosters, Cloudbase was a smear on the radar, her white hull camouflaging her against the clouds. When Spes detached from the emptied main booster and finally broke through the thin skin of the atmosphere, Thunderbird Five was a similar fleck on the scopes, there for only as long as it took for Scarlet to confirm that their path ahead was clear before all external transmissions were turned off and they went dark.

The sliver of space that they could see past the edge of the shielding lazily spun and twisted as Scott deftly brought Spes’ nose around and aimed it at where Mars would be in three weeks.“Trajectory calculated, ready for vector burn,” Scott reached out to prime the fuel pumps that would feed the massive engine at the stern. “Thirty second burn in five, four, three, two, one.”

Spes rumbled around them and happily obeyed, lancing out into the black like an arrow and leaving the blue marble of Earth behind, and with it their families, their friends, their loved ones... and one father who was finally realising that he had at last gone too far and crossed a line that his influence, riches and connections could not erase.

Chapter 15

The waiting was usually the hardest part.

Occasionally the aftermath was worse than the waiting, but enduring the slow ticking over of each day fading into the next was never easy, especially without an endpoint to fix one’s eyes upon.

Keeping busy was an easy and natural solution, and that was Mary Metcalfe’s intention as she sat down at the breakfast table in her kitchen with her knitting bag in hand, half an eye on the cat as she started setting out yarn, pattern and crochet hook. Whisper, a gangly tabby who always interpreted anything involving yarn as playtime, was currently snoozing in a patch of sunlight, but that could and would change in a heartbeat. “If I can get an uninterrupted hour, I think I might be able to finish this today,” Mary thought to herself as she examined the half-finished ‘preemie octopus’ toy she was working on to donate to the local NICU unit.

Looping the coral pink yarn over her finger, the octopus and hook in her other hand, Mary picked up from where she’d left off yesterday, intending to distract herself.

Waiting and its attendant uncertainty and fear was nothing new to her, nor were communication black outs and ‘just in case’ letters safely stored away with a prayer that they’d never be needed – she was a military wife and mother after all. Over the years, she’d counselled more than one spouse or parent who’d tearfully waved their loved one goodbye and then later found themselves at the end of their rope with the awfulness of the waiting, a proverbial black hole that sucked them down and kept them there.

The mistake was usually thinking that this kind of waiting was passive – like sitting in a reception room and waiting for an appointment – when actually it was active. ‘Keep calm and carry on’ was one of Mary’s go-to truisms for this.

“It will all be over eventually,” Mary reminded herself, as she still had to do even after all these years. ‘Keep things ticking over until they get back’, was how she often explained things. ‘There’s no point fretting about all the ‘what if’s, there’s millions of things that could happen and all that worrying will do is drain you dry. Keep things ticking over until they get home, that’s all you need to worry about. Just put one foot in front of the other, lean on the people around you, and take things one at a time – one week at a time, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. That’s all anyone can do, but the important thing is that you do.’

Mary finished the tentacle she was working on, examined it with care, then tied it off and moved on to the next one, shoving her worries out of her mind as she worked.

0o0o0

Keeping busy amidst the waiting was also the go-to of everyone on Cloudbase.

There’d been a chart of Mars’ orbit (along with all the other planets) posted on the base intranet since the formation of the astronomy and astrophotography clubs, but the Red Planet’s chart got a lot more attention now. By mutual agreement, the clubs left their telescopes set up on the Promenade with instructions on how to adjust them (that is if one of the club members wasn’t already there and making the adjustments), and after sunset there was a steady trickle of people coming in to either take a look through the telescopes or just stare at that distant crimson fleck.

Tonight Colonel White lurked towards the back of the room, behind the shelter of a climbing jasmine vine that perfumed the heavily filtered and sterilised atmosphere of Cloudbase. He’d come forward later, when the crowd had ebbed somewhat, but for now he simply watched his people, and specifically Ochre, Magenta and Grey, clustered off to the side. They were sitting close together, so close their shoulders brushed, and even from here he could see the worry that put lines in their faces and tension in their backs and necks.

It was a familiar worry, one that they endured like the weight of a heavy ballistic vest, something that they had to put on because of the nature of the job. He’d seen the same whilst Blue, Green and Scarlet were on their two lunar missions. His officers were close knit, he’d gathered them together in the hopes that they’d become so, and without fail every time one of them had an emergency in the field and needed backup, the others would immediately scramble and be halfway to the hangars before he’d finished giving the order.

White allowed himself a flicker of a smile at an old memory of once seeing Scarlet, Brown and Magenta rush past him, all three men in varying levels of dress and throwing on the rest of their uniforms as they went, dispatched by Black to an emergency alert from Ochre and Grey. Yes, it had been a serious matter, but seeing a grown man in neon green socks decorated with pineapples hopping on one foot as he tugged a boot on and zipped it up had been a much needed moment of levity amid the seriousness.

The smile faded as White returned to contemplating the situation at hand.

The brutal fact of the matter was that if something happened out there, they quite simply would not be able to respond in time. All that they could do was hope they could pick up what was left... if there was anything left to pick up, that is.

White frowned as darker thoughts crossed his mind. If one of the worst outcomes came to pass... if their darkest fears came true... he knew what his officers had quietly discussed amongst themselves before coming to him, a conversation that Scarlet and Blue had deliberately started and just as deliberately separated themselves from so that they would not know all of the details. If the Mysterons managed to regain control of Scarlet by virtue of proximity or if they killed Blue or Thunderbird One, there were three of the new electron pistols on board the Spes – they each knew the location of one of them. If the Spes itself was destroyed and recreated, they had suitably equipped satellites already in orbit to check the crew and the other necessary equipment to finish the job.

White turned his attention back to his men, now joined by Symphony and Rhapsody – the two Angels clearly seeking the company of those who would understand their worries and fears the best – and silently sent a prayer winging heavenward that their contingencies and countermeasures would remain unneeded and unnecessary.

0o0o0

Aboard the Spes, the three-man crew did not have the time to dwell on their worries. There’d been a few teething problems at first, which they’d all expected, then they’d fallen into the necessary routines for surviving in space: system checks, equipment checks, the necessary exercise on the treadmill and stationary bike to keep three highly active and energetic men from climbing the walls, and all the little chores that kept their very small environment hygienic and tidy – one of which being meal prep and clean up.

That first dinner time, it was to Adam and Paul’s surprise that Scott took over the galley and turned their dehydrated meal packs into something that was tasty despite the rehydrated nature of the food and the ‘aeroplane effect’ on their ability to taste or smell anything. Scott had explained about the tutelage he’d gotten from Kyrano and that had been that, the two captains gladly taking on the duty of cleaning up afterwards in exchange for food that was actually good.

The other thing that ate up their spare time and removed opportunities for worry to set in was analogue course checking. That a star-charted check to backup the computer-plotted course was needed had been obvious from the outset, but both captains insisted that Scott teach them how to do it too – they both had enough mathematical knowledge under their belts to put the data into the formulas and run the calculations – and Scott was glad to teach them.

All three of them had thought it poetic that one of the most advanced ships of its time, crafted by the best minds available and wrought out of the most revolutionary alloys and technology, was sailing her course through the black, safeguarded by skills rooted in ancient knowledge and refined over generations of valiant and curious sailors who saw a horizon and wanted to know what lay on the other side.

That their mission was to safeguard the next generation so that there would always be someone to keep looking up to that horizon and dream of what lay beyond it, served to spur them on.

Chapter 16

With what they had coming and all the uncertainty around it, no one questioned it when, ten days out from Mars, Scarlet moved the medical kit out of the crew quarters and secured to the cockpit bulkhead behind the seats. Drills with the kit were added to their routine, making sure that all three of them were completely comfortable with what was in it and where in the kit it was located... and all three of them had the uncomfortable reminder that if they did get into trouble, help was nowhere close.

Their increasing proximity to Mars was a talking point kept only for their on-duty hours. Because of the thick shielding extending out to cover the entire forward profile of the ship, the crew of the Spes couldn’t see the Red Planet filling up the limited area of the viewport, but it loomed large in other ways – on their mapping, their drills with the satellite equipment and most noticeably in Mars’ invisible pull of gravity on the Spes.

The last point became the most crucial one when they finally neared the La Grange orbit.

Scott sweated and swore his way through the flight path calculations and the orbital injection vectors that would keep that shield between the crew compartment and Mars while they inserted the three generators at the La Grange points. While Scott guided the Spes, Blue and Scarlet were tasked with activating and jettisoning the satellites, a comparatively simple job as they would be released from the cargo bay already properly oriented, but the timing was crucial.

The tension in the cockpit remained steady as each satellite detached from its mount, unfurled its solar panels and settled into its orbit, and it only marginally dipped when Scarlet got a good signal from all three of them.

“All systems operational,” Scarlet ran his hands over the controls for the satellites, “ready when you are, Blue.”

“Okay, give it fifty percent,” Blue ordered, “that should get their attention.”

“Fifty percent, S.I.G.” Scarlet twisted the dials and watched the screen carefully. “... Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty percent. Transmissions are holding steady.” He flicked his eyes over to the status screen. “The field is up... and we have full coverage. They’ve got to have noticed something by now.”

Adam took a breath and laid his notes out across his lap. He’d been fretting over what to say for weeks, laying out arguments and logical lines of thought, but on the advice of Doctor Orchid, given before they left, he’d eventually settled on simplicity and sincerity over substance. ‘You cannot reason an unreasonable person into reasonableness’, she had told him, and that simple line had stuck.

Reaching out, he powered up the communicator, built along the same principles as the device that Doctor Kurnitz had designed but adapted to work without a pulsator to power it. He swallowed hard – this was the crucial moment – took a deep breath and began to speak, projecting what he hoped was an air of calm confidence. “Mysteron City, this is Captain Blue of Spectrum. As you have no doubt noticed, we now have a way to block your ability to operate beyond Mars. We want to negotiate a truce between our worlds, an end to the War of Nerves and a way forward so that our civilisations can peacefully coexist, grow and flourish.”

Seconds later the speaker cracked. NEVER, the word boomed out in the familiar deep voice, THE MYSTERONS WILL NEVER SURRENDER TO HUMANITY.

“What we want is a truce, not surrender,” Blue tried, “for humanity and the Mysterons to find common ground, an equal footing.”

HUMANITY ARE BENEATH THE MYSTERONS. The words practically dripped with scorn. YOU ARE SUBJECT TO YOUR BASE IMPULSES AND RULED BY THE WEAKNESSES OF YOUR BIOLOGICAL NATURES. YOU ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO US. WE SHALL NEVER STOOP TO ATTAIN ‘EQUAL FOOTING’ WITH HUMANITY.

The three men shared a long look as the voice faded away.

“They’re not going to listen, Adam.” Paul’s expression was grim. “We can’t negotiate with them. Not when this is how they view us.”

“I agree,” Scott spoke up. “They aren’t going to change their minds until we’ve somehow proved that we’re equal to them, and I get the feeling that’s gonna be an ever-shifting goal post.”

“Then it’s time we lock them up,” Blue decided. He reached for the transmission switch again. “Mysterons of Mars, I am sorry to hear that you think so little of us. I hope that someday in the future, your opinion will change, but until that day comes, goodbye.” He cut the signal. “Scarlet, full power.”

“S.I.G.” Scarlet reached for the controls, then suddenly blanched and grit his teeth, swallowing back against the bile. “They’re trying something!” he warned as he spun the dials up until they hit their stops. “Full power!” he reported. There was a moment of palpable terror in the cockpit as they waited to see if the Mysterons would manage to break through, then Scarlet visibly relaxed “It’s working! Their presence is fading and the field is holding.”

“Scott, back us up, just in case they slip free,” Blue ordered. “Scarlet, monitor that field.”

“F.A.B.” Scott danced his hands over the controls and the ship shuddered in response, the thrusters firing and pushing until Mars lost its grip on them. “One point one million miles... one point two... one point three.”

“Hold us at one point four,” Blue ordered. “Scarlet, how’s the field?”

“Still holding,” Scarlet confirmed after another check of his board. “And no sense of the Mysterons.”

“S.I.G. Time to report in.” Adam reached out and powered up the conventional radio. When the system showed fully green, he touched the switch for the microphone in front of him. “Spes to Cloudbase, mission complete. We were unable to negotiate with the Mysterons so we have activated the satellites and locked them in. The field is stable and we have not had any further communication from the Mysterons. Over.”

It seemed almost unreal to be saying those words, to suggest that maybe, possibly, the Mysterons were now contained and the war was over. As they waited out the fifteen minute, thirty two second transmission delay for the reply from Cloudbase, the three men were all looking at each other, then at the status indicators of the generators just to be absolutely sure that this really was happening. No one said anything further though, unwilling to risk voicing the words ‘it’s over’ just in case Fate decided that a surprise spin of the wheel was in order.

Finally the radio beeped the warning of an incoming transmission, followed by “Cloudbase to Spes,” Green’s voice rang out of the speakers. “That’s very good news. Over.”

Adam was drawing in a breath to reply when Scarlet’s arm shot past him and he grabbed the microphone. “Scarlet to Cloudbase, what happened? Over,” he demanded in a voice that was tight with tension, his accent cut and his words curt in that way that only happened when fear was bubbling under his professional mask.

“Paul?” Adam demanded as soon as Scarlet released the transmission switch. “What...?”

“Didn’t you hear it?” Scarlet asked back, locking eyes with him. “In Green’s voice, didn’t you hear it? Something’s happened, something bad.”

“He’s right, something was off.” Scott was frowning, clearly mentally replaying the brief exchange. “I don’t like it.”

“... S.I.G.” Blue acknowledged, then fell silent.

This time as they waited they looked between each other and the clock counting out the delay between sending and receiving.

Twenty minutes and forty three seconds ticked over before the radio beeped again.

“Scarlet, Blue, it’s Grey.” Not even the vastness of space could hide the grief that weighed down the older captain’s voice. “I’m sorry to report that we lost Colonel White four days ago. Over.”

This time Adam was the one who touched the transmission switch. “Grey, how? What happened? Over.”

The intervening fifteen minutes and thirty two seconds felt like an eternity.

“Full report to follow when you’re in position for laser-pulse transmission, but it was on a mission. A big one. All of us plus Green, the Angels, and the backup captains from London. The colonel had to come along too to sort out the diplomatic end.” The deep sigh was edged with the crackle of static. “There was a concealed shooter. Ochre saw the light off the scope, and when he tackled the colonel he got shot in the leg, fifty cal. When White went to help Ochre... the shooter... he retargeted and got Colonel White before the backup captains got their asses in gear. Over.”

Blue and Scarlet shared a long look. Their vests were made for small arms fire, it didn’t have a chance against a fifty calibre bullet. Those things were made to go through armoured vehicles. And Ochre had taken one to the leg... If he survived, there was no way he was going to keep that leg, and the ‘if’ was a big one. Femoral arteries bled like hoses.

“Grey, how’s Ochre? Over.” Scarlet asked.

“It was touch and go, but Fawn says he’ll live. Over.” That Grey didn’t say any more than that spoke volumes.

“S.I.G.” Blue acknowledged, letting go of the switch long enough to swallow hard and force himself back into some semblance of composure. They still had the last third of the mission to get through: getting back home. He had to put his focus on that. But first... “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Tell Ochre... Tell him... Tell him he did everything that he could. Over.”

“I will. Come on home, Spes. Over.”

“S.I.G, returning home. Over and out.”

Wham!

Both men jumped when Scarlet swore and punched a bulkhead, leaving a red smear on the grey painted metal. “It’s not fair!” he snarled. “All this work, everything he’s done, everything he’s put into it, and some fucking wanker takes him out only days before the end of the War!”

“I hear you.” Blue’s expression was dangerous as he got up and fetched a wet wipe, giving it to Scarlet so he could clean up. “Grey didn’t say anything about a Mysteron threat. It had to have been someone else and I want to know who.”

“Me too.” There was something very dark behind Scarlet’s eyes as he wiped the blood off the bulkhead, but it fled when he rubbed the wipe over his knuckles, winced and hissed with pain. “Ow!”

“Scarlet?” Scott uncurled himself from his seat.

“...I’m... I’m not healed yet...” Surprised, Paul lifted the wipe long enough to confirm it, then put it back and gave his fingers an experimental flex. “Doesn’t feel broken. Bruised yes, but not broken, and it’s still bleeding.”

“Let me see.” Adam had opened the first aid kit in the interim.

“Okay.” Paul took the stained wipe away and held his hand out for inspection.

Sure enough, torn skin over the first two knuckles oozed blood, and the area was reddened in the prelude to bruising.

“Does... does that mean the retrometabolisim isn’t working anymore?” Scott asked, watching as Adam busied himself with dabbing some antiseptic over the graze, followed by a broad plaster. It was probably a bit overboard, but he didn’t blame Adam in the slightest for mother-henning in the face of something like this.

“I... I think so...” Paul gave his fingers an experimental wiggle to make sure the plaster would stay put. “Fawn will want to investigate to be sure. Brains and Giardello theorised that something like this might happen but...”

“But now it actually has and you’re not entirely sure what to feel about it?” Scott guessed, reaching out to press a sequence of buttons on the console. As the eldest child in a family of wildly differing and large-in-their-own-way personalities, he’d developed a fairly good sense of empathy as a survival mechanism.

“... Yes.”

Scott looked at the two of them and made a decision. “Right, you’re both off duty.” International Rescue’s field commander pointed in the direction of the matchbox sized galley. “Eat something sweet, have a drink and go lie down. One of you can relieve me in six hours and you can have the report then.”

“But...” Adam tried to protest.

“I’ve got the computer running the calcs for our home trip and sending them to John for an error check, inputting them and getting the thrusters fired is five button presses. I can handle it. You two just got a proverbial gut-punch and you need time to start debriefing with each other.” Scott looked at them evenly and delivered his ultimatum. “I’ll make it official with a declaration of emotional compromise if I have to.”

For a moment, Paul looked as if he was bracing himself to fight Scott on this – there was still work to be done and he wasn’t about to shirk his duties – then his shoulders slumped and he shook his head slightly. “You don’t fight fair,” was his statement of surrender, delivered with a faint, wry smile.

“Hell no.” Scott offered a smile back. “You’ve met my brothers, and this is them after the teenage years. There’s no way I’d have survived them if I fought fair.”

“Understood.” Paul offered him a flicker of a smile, then turned to Adam. “Come on, we’ve got our orders.”

“S.I.G.”

0o0o0

Half an hour later, having eaten, drunk and taken themselves back to the sleeping quarters, both men sat on the floor before their bunks, suddenly weary now that they had a chance to let the difficult and complicated reality of everything that had happened start to sink in. Neither of them spoke at first, deep into their own thoughts as they started to work their way through everything they’d been told and what it meant.

Paul had his head in his hands as he stared at the grey deck plates under his feet, and he didn’t look up as he drew in a breath to speak. “... It wouldn’t have happened if we were there. The backup captains are good, but they’re not Cloudbase-good. If it’d been all five of us, it wouldn’t have happened.” His words were very quiet, threaded with an uncertainty that only reared its head when the proverbial black dog was starting to get up.

“You can’t know that for sure,” Adam wisely countered, instantly grasping where Paul’s thoughts were leading and trying to head off that train of thought. “Sure, it’d have been different, but you can’t know for certain that it wouldn’t have happened anyway.”

“Rick would still have both legs if I’d been there.”

That momentarily threw Adam. Paul was right on that point – if he had been there he’d have been assigned as the colonel’s bodyguard. However... “If the mission had needed you elsewhere, it still would have been Ochre with Colonel White – he’s the one with the close protection training from the World Police Diplomatic Protection Squad.”

“But...”

“But nothing. Stop blaming yourself for things that are out of your hands.” Adam reached over and poked his knee, making Paul look up. “You know as well as I do that the others would have kicked up a fuss about him coming. Colonel White did his risk assessment, he weighed it up against the requirements of the mission and he decided that it was worth it. And before that he was the one who sent us on this mission in the first place, knowing that something like this could happen. No one knows the future, Paul, no one. He made the best choice he could with the situation and information he had at the time.” Adam shifted, then offered up another facet for consideration. “Here’s a thought for you: what if someone else was on this mission and they stuffed it up? We’d be in an even worse position if the Mysterons got their hands on those satellites and figured out how to block them.”

“... That’s a good point, actually.” Paul shifted to rest his head on one hand, weary. “It will take this...” He tapped his forehead with his free hand. “Some time to convince this...” He tapped over his heart. “... That it’s not my fault for not anticipating something like this, but you’ve made some excellent points.”

“Thank you. I know it’s hard, just make sure you keep using your words, okay? You’ve got a few things to work through, and some shifts in your thinking to make now that the retrometabolisim is gone.”

“I do...” Paul looked away for a moment, then back to Adam. “I might regret this, but every time I start borrowing guilt about all this, poke me or something, okay? Don’t let me get lost in my head.”

“I promise as long as you’ll do the same for me.” Adam pointed to the bunk. “Get some sleep, Paul, or at the very least get some rest. You’ve got the next watch and we don’t know if you still run on four hours of sleep or not.”

“Only if you get some sleep too,” Paul responded. “You’re on after me.”

“I will, I promise.” He offered a small, wry smile as he stood up. “Call it the control-freak pilot in me, but I want to help Scott with getting the ship lined up for the trip home first.”

“Understood.” Paul shucked off his boots and tucked them under his berth. “And Adam? Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Neither of them noticed Scott quietly listening near the doorway and just as quietly slipping away.

0o0o0

Firing the manoeuvring thrusters and pointing the ship’s nose at where home would be in three week’s time was textbook, and a ping from Thunderbird Five confirmed they were both in position for the burn and also properly aligned for the laser-pulse comms that would give them almost instantaneous communications and allow for large packets of data to be sent. As soon as the course was laid in and the main engine had fired for the thirty second burst to propel them across the void between Mars and Earth, Adam let Scott shoo him out of the cockpit and off to bed.

But feeling the gnaw of hunger, Adam instead took himself to the galley first, needing something hot and savoury to fill the hole. He settled on some tomato soup and once it was drunk and the galley was tidy, he paced the length of the ship, needing to check on everything before turning in. He was on his way back to the sleeping quarters, having taken the long way past the cockpit, when he heard Scott talking.

“Thunderbird One to Thunderbird Five, any luck on those new calculations?”

Curious about what the ‘new calculations’ could be, Adam lingered by the open airlock to listen.

“Thunderbird Five to Thunderbird One, negative.” Thunderbird Five’s dismay was clear. “With your flight path and fuel capacity, any deviation from your set course and speed will significantly complicate your deceleration procedure. Your margins are too tight to risk it, you’ll need your reserves in case of anything unexpected.”

“Damn it!” Scott swore to himself, then touched the transmission switch again. “Copy that, Five. What about Three? If we link the two ships up, Three can boost us and help us decelerate.”

“Negative, Scott. Three’s on a mission to a research platform orbiting an asteroid that got into trouble. By the time he’s back, you’ll be most of the way home already and his reserves will be too low to chance it.”

Scott grimaced at that and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “John, isn’t there anything we can do to hurry things up? We need to get these fellas back home.”

“Negative.” A static-laced sigh filtered across the link. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Scott, but unless we call in a favour from World Space Patrol, we can’t get you guys home any faster. I’m sorry.”

“F.A.B, Five. I know there’s bad blood, so let’s keep that one in reserve for if it gets bad enough to need it.” Scott rubbed his forehead this time, then changed tack. “John, is everyone okay?”

“By and large, we’re okay. Brains and Tin Tin are already talking to Doctor Giardello and Doctor Fawn about building a prosthetic leg for Ochre once everything’s healed up.”

John was clearly dodging the question in Adam’s opinion, and Scott had to be thinking the same because he uttered a firm “Details, John.”

“Dad’s... Dad’s taken it harder than we thought,” was the eventual admission. “He’s really been regretting not reaching out and talking to Colonel White sooner. Penny’s been pretty upset – as Parker puts it ‘Milady h’approved of th’ colonel’ – and the rest of us have been in contact with the captains and Angels where we can.” Another pause. “The funeral’s next week. Dad and everyone earthside are going, and so’s Sam Shore.”

“Ah hell. Blue and Scarlet are going to miss the funeral.” Scott’s mouth twisted in a bitter expression. John had to have known that already, but Scott had to say it, to recognise the cost to two men who had become his friends.

“Affirmative,” was the reluctant agreement. “How are they doing?”

“Coping, but there’s a hell of a lot of guilt up here, John. I heard them talking a little while ago, they’re pretty sure that this wouldn’t have happened if they’d been there instead of here.” Scott paused to rub his brow again. “They’re holding together for now, the mission’s keeping them focused, but my bet is they’re going to crash as soon as it’s safe for them to do so.”

“Noted, I’ll pass that on to Doctor Fawn so he can prep for it.”

“Thanks John.” Scott unconsciously straightened in his seat, becoming Thunderbird One again. “Five, any idea who was behind it all? I read the report and it doesn’t add up. The action was all around the conference centre and Bereznik was clearly behind that part, but they’ve got a proper army with actual snipers who wouldn’t make the mistakes that this guy made. Why would they send a shooter given a sniper rifle?”

“Spectrum Intelligence thinks it’s a third party who saw an opportunity,” was Thunderbird Five’s grim response. “They don’t have a name yet, so Captain Magenta, Rhapsody Angel and Symphony Angel teamed up with Lady Penelope and Parker to shake the trees themselves.”

“What have they found?”

“They think it’s The Hood.”

Scott was silent for a moment as he processed that, then he touched the switch. “That guy had better dig himself a hell of a deep hole and pull it shut after him. Send me what you’ve got, Five, I’ll give it to the captains when they wake up.”

“F.A.B. It’s on the way now.”

Adam left before Scott could spot him, going to the bunks. “As soon as we get home, I’m going to have to keep Scarlet on a very tight leash,” he grimly concluded. “There’s no way in hell he’s going to let The Hood get away from him, not this time.”

Chapter 17

“It’s like I keep telling you: bribery. It works every single time.” Paul grinned as he spoke, even though Rick couldn’t see him, he’d still be able to hear it.

“Yeah? With what?” Rick snorted with good humour. “My good looks and natural charm don’t get me far with this bunch, they’re practically immune to us all by now.”

“I’ll email you a shopping list after the call, then you can bat your eyelashes at Melody and ask her nicely to go get them for you. Play your cards right and you’ll have the nurses looking the other way while you go get some sunshine on the Promenade.”

“Yeah?” Paul could hear the sceptical eyebrow. “The way I heard it, the last time you tried that, it didn’t work and you had to do an escape attempt.”

“Well, they expect it from me by now, they won’t expect it from you. And, point of order, it wasn’t an attempt, it was entirely successful.”

“Right. Until Fawn put the bounty out on you.”

“Ah yes, right up until the bounty. Hence ‘Plan B for Bribery’.”

“I’ll try it and report back.” A sigh. “And time to go, Doc needs to look at things.”

“Understood, tell Fawn we said hello.” Paul sobered with the reminder of why Fawn needed to see Rick.

“S.I.G. Ochre out.”

Paul waited until he was absolutely certain that the channel was closed and the connection was cut before dropping the jovial air, blowing out a long sigh of his own and rubbing his hands over his face. ‘Bloody hell’ was muttered as he sagged into the cockpit chair that he’d finally gotten used to. Long distance comfort was never easy. That they were able to talk to each other now was something of a double edged sword – on the one hand they knew what was going on now, but on the other hand they now knew what was going on and could do precious little about it. The distance between them made helping hard, and how little he could do for Rick was getting more than a little frustrating.

That he couldn’t do the one thing that the very primal part of him very much wanted to do – avenge Rick and Colonel White by taking out The Hood – was extremely frustrating. He had ideas and plans, but being off-world limited his ability to get very far with those plans.

“How’s Ochre?” Adam asked as he came in to take his shift, a lidded drinking bulb in each hand. One was given to Paul and he retained the other, perching on the edge of his chair to take a sip.

“Coping, but the walls are starting to close in on him and I don’t think he’s up to getting himself out for a bit.” Paul just held his drink for now. He couldn’t feel much warmth through the insulated walls, but just holding it helped to soothe his own spirits after putting so much effort and energy into bolstering Rick’s. “On the next call, I’ll suggest to Grey that Magenta and a couple of the Angels run an op to whisk him out for an hour or two.” A careful sip of the coffee showed it was almost at a drinkable temperature, then, knowing some of the news that Adam had received from home, he canted a knowing look at Adam. “How about you?”

Adam made a detailed study of his boot toes before answering, passing his coffee from hand to hand but making no move to drink it. “... Grey said that he’s spoken to my father. He thinks that he’s being genuine and Grey’s willing to set up comms between him and the Spes if I want it.”

“But?” Paul prompted, taking another sip of coffee.

“But I can’t deal with him or all of that right now,” Adam finished, his mouth twisting in an expression that Paul couldn’t put a name to.

Paul nodded slowly as he mulled over what to say. One trait that they both shared was the unwillingness to let loose ends remain so and for half-finished tasks to remain undone, and the task of dealing with the elder Svenson was a big one. However... “That is wise. You’ve got several things vying for your attention, most notably being ‘get everyone in this tin can home’, and dealing with him and all of that will take time and energy that you can’t really spare right now. He can wait until you’ve got both feet back on terra firma and a few less things on your plate.” Paul studied his friend for a moment, then reached over and poked Adam’s knee. “Less of the guilt, if you please. You’ve patiently waited years for him to start to understand you and he’s hurt you many times over. He can wait for however long it takes for you to be ready to talk to him again.”

He was well pleased when Adam accepted what he said with a nod. Personally, it had taken many long talks with Juniper and others over the years to properly grasp the position that Adam was in – and in particular understand the child’s eternal longing for the parent’s approval – and he was very glad that he hadn’t said a few of the things that had crossed his mind when Adam had first disclosed the nature of his relationship with his father.

“Now,” Paul finished his coffee and put the jovial air back on, “I believe that you have an appointment shortly with a certain someone who’ll be very disappointed if you’re late.” He tapped a sequence on the buttons in front of him. “You have the controls.”

“I have the controls,” Blue dutifully repeated.

“You have the controls,” Scarlet completed the pilot-to-pilot handover protocol, then stood. “I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready.”

“S.I.G.” Blue said, already checking through the ship systems logs and positioning the microphone just so for his call with Symphony.

0o0o0

Scott hummed the melody to one of Virgil’s compositions as he hunted through the galley, quite sure he’d seen another container of soy sauce somewhere around here. Three packets of dehydrated ‘teriyaki beef and noodles’ were lined up on the prep surface, but he knew from experience that the flavour was seriously lacking. A little soy, some chilli oil and garlic granules and it’d make for a much tastier meal. “Aha, gotcha.” His prize in hand, Scott got up from his crouch, shut the cabinet, and added a generous dollop to the three cups he’d also lined up on the prep area in lieu of mixing bowls. He stirred up each one, added water, then started filling an oversized water syringe with the contents of the first cup.

“Kitchen hand reporting for duty,” Paul said as he entered the small space. “How can I help?”

“Set the table for me, wouldja?” Scott asked as he fitted the syringe tip into the injection port/steam vent on the first food pack and squirted the mixture into the packet. A quick squish to push the water and flavours through the meat, vegetables and noodles, then he was preparing the second one.

“Set up the table, copy.” Paul went to the table and chairs folded and strapped against the wall and started to get them down.

They worked in companionable silence, then Scott put down the now empty syringe to venture a question that had been nagging at him for over a week now.

“Paul, can I ask you something? It’s a tricky question, but this is me with my disaster relief hat on.”

Paul stopped and put down the cutlery he was holding, giving Scott his full attention. “You may,” he said, understandably wary with an opening like that.

“Is someone looking after the other captains, the ground-based ones?” Scott asked, picking his words carefully.

“Someone will be,” Scarlet told him, his tone slightly dismissive, as if he were not particularly interested in getting into the details.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. Major Olive at Spectrum London will take care of things and I am quite content to trust her to it.”

On the one hand, Scott knew he should stop there, but on the other hand this had been nagging at him, neither of them had mentioned anything about it and it hadn’t been brought up in any of the subsequent reports that Spectrum had sent. He had to be absolutely certain to silence that little voice in the back of his head. “Shouldn’t someone follow up?”

“Scott...” Scarlet’s voice was clipped and curt. “I know I am being somewhat cold, even callous about it all, but they got my commander killed and cost my friend his right leg, his career and very nearly his life. Yes, a better person would have some compassion towards them and as a senior member of the organisation, they would ensure that processes were being followed, but I am not that person. Someone else can and will deal with them and I am not taking any further interest in the matter.”

Scott held his gaze, then nodded sharply once. “F.A.B.” In a very blatant topic change, he gestured towards the fridge where they kept the defrosted supplies. “So, apple juice or orange?”

“Orange, please,” Paul replied, relaxed and calm, and Scott knew that they were still okay.

0o0o0

Days later, the blue-green of Earth was all that showed around the edges of the shielding that had protected them. Strapped back into their suits and their seats, when the shielding was at last jettisoned and sent streaking towards the atmosphere to burn up, the three man crew all took a moment to drink in the sight.

They’d done it.

They were home.

Now it was time for the final sprint to the finish line.

Because the Spes was closer in shape to the Space Shuttle than the sleek rockets that could lance through the layers of the atmosphere like a needle through cloth, they had to follow the old ways one last time.

The initial approach that slipped them into orbit had them positioned tail first. A wait for their path to align with their starting line, then the main engine fired one last time to slow them for the controlled fall back to Earth, putting themselves back into the grasp of gravity. A gentle puff from the manoeuvring thrusters both flipped them end over end and put them into the proper angle to safely fall through the thickening layers of the atmosphere, their descent announced by an orange glow of plasma that boiled up around them. Sweeping ‘S’ turns let them use physics to shed velocity and further slow their approach, the Spes rumbling and shaking about them as she held her nose high and let her belly take the brunt of the punishment.

At the helm, Thunderbird One was almost silent, his only words the acknowledgments to Blue reading out the numbers and providing the check and balance on Scott’s guiding hand on the Spes. Scarlet was the second set of eyes to Blue, but saying nothing so that he wouldn’t distract either of them. However he was poised and ready to step in if he spied something the other two did not.

The coastline briefly flashed into view as the nose dropped for landing position, then moments later they were lining up on the super-long runway at the space centre, a brilliant strip of white lights against the dark of the New Mexico desert.

The bump of the rear wheels touching down was followed by the jerk of the drag ‘chute and the second bump of the nose wheels making contact.

Finally they came to a stop, the three men automatically pulling the checklists from the right side pockets of their chairs and starting the shut down procedures to settle the Spes down to rest after her marathon flight.

Glancing up from his list, Scott took a moment to glance over at the two men who’d rapidly become people he’d confidently call friends. While he absolutely would be keeping in contact with them, soon his part in this mission would theoretically be finished. He would get a chance to stop, to rest and recover.

They would not.

Phase one was over. Phase two was about to begin.

Chapter 18

It was very appropriate that Melody was the one who brought Scarlet and Blue back from New Mexico and Grey, as acting commander, had met them at the hangar.

‘Bittersweet’ was the only apt way to describe their return to Cloudbase – joyful at their success, but sorrowful at the price their victory had been bought with.

It was the middle of the night when they landed so the halls were practically empty as Grey escorted them through to Medical. They were still in their jumpsuits, having left their uniforms on base, and they were both itching to get out of them and either get back into their uniforms or into civvies now that they were ‘home’.

“... After your checkups,” Grey was saying, “you’re both on stand down for forty-eight hours. That’ll give us enough time to finish going through the logs, then it’ll be a full debrief so we can bash together a proper report for the World Government. Scarlet, Fawn has said he wants to run some tests.” He paused for the expected resigned groan from the British officer. “But he understands there’s a lot going on. He’s got half a dozen initial ones he wants to run during your check up and he’ll run the rest later on.”

“Well, that’s something,” was the response from Scarlet to that.

“Speaking of something...” Grey paused as they reached the antechamber that fed into Medical proper, turning to face Scarlet and Blue.

Adam and Paul shared a quick look. That something else was up had been obvious to them both from the moment Melody had met them at the airfield, and it looked like now they were going to find out what it was.

Brad drew in a deep breath. “Conrad’s back. He’s in bad shape, but he’s back and it’s him.”

“What?”

“How? Why didn’t you tell us?”

Brad held up his hands to fend off their questions. “He called Cloudbase about an hour after you reported in from Mars and we picked him up from a run down boarding house in Holyhead. It’s where they ‘stored’ him between missions. We didn’t tell you because he said not to.” Brad’s countenance turned grim. “Like I said, he’s in bad shape. The last thing he wanted was for you two to get your hopes up and then have his body crash and burn on him before you got home – and yes I told him that you’d still want a chance to talk to him, but he said no and that’s his call to make.” A glance at the doors into Medical, and Brad turned back to tell them one more thing. “He did ask me to tell you this though: your timing was spot on. The Mysterons were planning on doing something at the colonel’s funeral. We got damn lucky.”

“We did indeed,” Scarlet murmured. “Can we see him?”

“I’ll ask, but no promises,” was Grey’s compromise as he ushered them into Medical and handed them over to Fawn and his team.

Their check ups were run with the usual efficiency that they had come to expect, two hours later returning the diagnosis that as was expected they’d lost some muscle mass and a negligible amount of bone density, and that Scarlet’s retrometabolisim was indeed still gone. Other than that, they were both fit and healthy and they were released with the usual instructions to come back tomorrow for their follow-up, get plenty of sleep, drink lots of water, gentle exercise only and no flying for thirty-six hours or until they passed the post-space eye exam, whichever came first.

Conrad didn’t want to see them just yet, and Ochre was asleep, so there wasn’t a chance to talk to him yet either. As they were finishing up the last of the paperwork, James quietly advised them that it was shift change for the Angels in about twenty minutes and Rhapsody and Symphony had pulled doubles so they’d be off for a full twelve hours. It was all absolutely a coincidence, he advised them with a small wink, not at all connected to anything.

Adam and Paul had nodded their solemn understanding that it indeed was all coincidental, then gone to their cabins to change and freshen up before going to see their beloveds.

Adam went straight to the Amber Room, knowing that Karen liked to wind down with some time looking out the windows, while Paul went to Dianne’s cabin, the borrowed blanket in his arms. A tap of the door chime, a brief pause, then Dianne was at the door and pulling him inside a heartbeat later, the blanket dropped onto the floor as she filled his arms instead.

“Dianne...” Paul murmured her name like a prayer, enfolding her in his embrace. “I missed you so much...”

“I missed you too...” Dianne had his Arsenal jersey clutched in her fists and her head buried in his chest. “Paul... Paul, it was awful. I couldn’t do anything.”

“What was your position?” Paul asked gently. He didn’t need to ask what ‘it’ was. He also already knew where she was when it had happened – he’d read over the initial report and the subsequent report, and as a senior officer, he’d also gotten the first draft of the final report that would go before the inquest that was tentatively scheduled for six months from now – but the question was to get her talking.

“Overwatch with Destiny and Harmony,” she told him. “Melody and Symphony were in the helis.” She somehow pressed herself closer. “Love... Magnolia flew the medevac, she’s taking it so hard...”

Paul bit his tongue as he considered what to say. His initial reaction was to let his inner tactician at it or trot out his automatic response of ‘problem, solve it’, but he’d learned that that wasn’t the most helpful thing to do right now. “Dianne and the others would have been taking the whole thing down to the bare bones for almost a month now, they’ll have talked this out amongst themselves and analysed it again and again and again. The last thing she needs is me doing the same.” He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “How about I make us a cuppa and we can talk?” he asked. “By which she’ll talk and I’ll listen,” Paul firmly reminded himself.

“I’d like that,” Dianne nodded, but she didn’t let go of him just yet. She was quite content to be held by him for a little longer and he was quite content to hold her for however long she needed to be held.

0o0o0

On the Promenade, Adam was standing with Karen, her back against his chest, his arms around her and her head tucked under his chin. She had one hand resting lightly on his arm, the other tightly clenched around a tissue. They’d relocated here for the privacy this conversation needed – Melody was on standby with Harmony.

“It was so hard,” Karen was saying, her voice soft. “There was just so much chaos on the comms, but there were Bereznik fighters lurking right on the edge of their airspace, we had to focus on that.”

“You did exactly the right thing,” Adam reassured her. “I’d have done the same.”

Karen made a non-committal noise. “What’s going to happen now?” she asked. “With Spectrum I mean?”

“Well, until the World Government appoints a new CIC, it’ll be one of us in the big chair,” Adam began. “Grey has it right now, but either Scarlet or I will take it once we’re off stand down. That’s the protocol.”

“Will you stay if someone from outside gets put in charge?”

“I... I don’t know, I haven’t had a chance to think about that,” was his honest answer. “Spectrum was the colonel’s baby. Having someone new in charge will automatically be different... It could be good, but...”

“It could be very bad?”

“Yes. If that happens, whoever it is will have to earn our trust and our respect.” Adam gave her a little squeeze. “I’m not going to make any calls just yet, I don’t want to borrow trouble, but I have no problem walking away if I can’t trust them.”

“I thought you’d say that, and I agree.” Karen gave his arm a little squeeze back. “Us girls have been talking about it. If we don’t like whoever is in charge, we’re gone. It can’t just be anyone in the big chair. The colonel picked us because he saw the potential that our previous commanders missed. We don’t want to be stuck in that position again.”

“Glad to hear it.” Adam would have said more, but he interrupted himself with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Oh! You’ve been up for hours!” Karen pulled herself free and took his hand. “Come with me, you need to get some sleep!”

Adam submitted to her fussing with a smile, letting her tug him along. “S.I.G.”

0o0o0

“So, still running on four hours of sleep?”

“So far, yes.”

Fawn made a note and frowned in that familiar way as he added the datapoint to his ruminations, idly drumming his fingers on his desk as he thought. Scarlet, well used to this, made himself comfortable in the visitor’s chair and waited. He was still in civvies – a wine red tee-shirt, jeans and comfortable sneakers – since he wasn’t on duty yet.

Last night, he’d talked with Dianne until they were both barely able to stay awake and spent what remained of it curled up in each other’s arms. Morning had been breakfast together in her cabin, then he’d reluctantly left her to go to his follow up appointment with Fawn. There’d been the usual checks of his vitals and vital functions, more vials of blood drawn, and a check with the X-ray machine that returned his usual black and white ‘photo’ instead of a section of skeleton.

“Your arm?” Fawn asked at last.

Scarlet obliged him, showing his left inner elbow where he still had the bruise and needle hole from yesterday and the fresh marks from today.

“Hm.” Fawn jotted that down too, then put down his pen and notepad. “Look, I’m going to be blunt. I’m still figuring out what to look for and what metrics I should be measuring against and that’s going to take time and more tests. For now, we’ll investigate under the usual rules – tell me when you’ve had enough, etc – but this is a big change and as your doctor, I’m nervous as heck about big changes that I can’t quantify. There’s nothing keeping you off duty right now, but...” He gave Scarlet a hard, knowing look, “... I’m trusting you to self-report if there’s any other changes, no matter how small.”

“Understood, Doctor,” Scarlet nodded. “May I go?”

“Not yet.” Fawn shoved over a printed schedule and a pen. “You’ve just gone through a heck of a lot of stuff and you haven’t really had a chance to stand down and process everything yet. I want at least four appointments booked with either Orchid or Juniper before you leave. And I need you to hear me on this: you need to reset your modus operandi. I accept that I can’t tell you that you can’t do your meat-shield routine any more, it’s too deeply ingrained in you to protect others, but I need you to understand that it’s going to be a hell of a lot more expensive for you now and you’ve got to remember that I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

Scarlet paused in the act of filling out the schedule, meeting Fawn’s eyes and seeing the concern and the fear for him that lurked there. He’d always been aware that Fawn was fond of him and the others, but seeing it, especially in the light of what happened to Ochre... “I’ll try, Doctor. That’s all I can promise: that I’ll try.”

“Good, because that’s all I’m asking for.” He held his hand out for the completed schedule. “Ochre should be awake by now, and no, you can’t see Conrad yet, he still doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Understood,” Paul said as he handed the paper over. “Can I write a note for him?”

“Of course.” Fawn flipped his notepad to a clean page and handed it over.

The note was simple – ‘Ready to talk when you are – Scarlet’ – scribbled down, the page torn out and folded twice, then Scarlet handed everything back.

“May I go now?” Scarlet asked, glancing in the general direction of what was usually ‘his’ room but was now occupied by Ochre.

“Yes, go, have a good chat with Ochre, he missed you two,” Fawn told him. “I’ll contact you if anything urgent crops up.”

“S.I.G.”

0o0o0

Two knocks got a distracted ‘come in’ from Rick and Paul opened the door to find his friend squinting at a frame of model aircraft parts, a box and other paraphernalia spread across the bed and the movable table beside him. Rick had been given scrubs to wear, the auto-nurse clamped to his bed only had a couple of sensors on him, and the IV stand was empty – all good signs.

Rick looked up. “Scarlet!” He quickly shoved the bits and pieces out of the way. “They said you two were back!”

“And glad to be back,” Paul smiled as he shut the door and dragged over the visitor’s chair. He couldn’t help the involuntary glance at the flat blankets where most of Rick’ right leg should have been, and hoped it was quick enough that Rick hadn’t noticed. “I have to say, this is rather weird for me: being a visitor in this room and not the resident,” he attempted to jest as he sat down.

“Yeah, talk about the shoe being on the other foot,” Rick joked back with a slightly strained smile.

The silence as they both tried to figure out what to say next was very awkward.

“So...” Rick twisted the waffle-weave blanket in his hands at the same time a grimace twisted his mouth. “I’m really regretting those ‘Captain Hopalong’ cracks.”

Privately, Paul was almost glad that Rick had brought it up because he’d absolutely had thoughts along those lines, but even he wasn’t oblivious enough to say that, not even as a joke. “It’s just a coincidence,” was what he chose to say. “There’s no way that you would have known that this was going to happen.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Rick grimaced again, then changed the subject. “So I hear you’re down your retromet. How’re you coping with that?”

“Well, for one thing I need to remember to stop cutting myself shaving,” was the wry answer. “I’ve done it for so long it’s automatic.”

“Yeah, don’t do that anymore. It’s messy.”

“Mm, I’d forgotten how messy it could get.” Paul looked down at his hands for a long moment, then looked up at Rick. “... I suppose my answer should be something along the lines of ‘I don’t have any regrets about giving it up’ or something about ‘it’s worth it for ending the War’... but I don’t know if I’ll still be able to say that the next time I get shot.” He paused, giving himself permission to consider thoughts that he hadn’t had the time nor the safety to give due consideration to. “...It was a curse,” he said at last, “but it let me do more good than I could have otherwise.”

“Yeah...” Rick looked down the bed, slowly cracking his knuckles one by one. “... It’s complicated and I don’t really have anything useful to say, but I’m here when you need to talk.”

“Same here, Rick,” Paul told him. “Whatever you need, I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen.”

“Thanks,” Rick offered him a genuine smile, then glanced at the door and the smile broadened into a cheeky grin. “So... can I cash that in now for an escape attempt to the Amber Room? I tried but I didn’t get that far.”

Paul grinned back as he stood. “S.I.G. Give me a moment to check if the route is clear. There’s a blue button on the left hand side of the ‘nurse, hold that for three seconds, then press the on/off and print buttons at the same time. It’ll trick it into replaying the last two minutes of recordings on the hub at the nurse’s station and buy us enough time to escape.”

In the middle of reaching for the blue button, Rick stopped and gave Paul a curious look. “How on earth did you figure that out?”

“I was bored one night and read the manual,” Paul said, his hand on the door handle. “I’ll be right back.”

A quiet word with Kirimiko confirmed that it was safe for Ochre to have a little excursion and she promised to ‘mysteriously’ be in the linens cupboard for the next ten minutes. “And that is one little secret that’s going to stay that way,” Paul thought to himself as he went back to Ochre’s room. He and the nurses were the only people who needed to know that roughly half of his escapes were mental health breaks for a twitchy Special Ops feeling the walls closing in and needing a change of scenery.

He had absolutely no doubts that Fawn and Burgundy had their suspicions about the ease of his escapes when he really shouldn’t have been mobile enough to up and leave that stealthily – they were both very intelligent people – but the guessing game of ‘do they know’ was half the fun as far as he was concerned.

Rick had gotten himself into his wheelchair by the time he slipped back into the room, a thick blue blanket draped over his lap.

“The coast is clear,” Paul grinned as he took the handles of the ‘chair. “Time to go.”

Chapter 19

At the same time Rick and Paul were staging their great escape, in the privacy of her quarters, Magnolia Jones poured herself a soda and wished it was something more potent. “But it’s better it’s not,” she murmured to herself as she put the empty bottle aside to be recycled later. “Mama always said drinking alone with your problems never helps.”

It’d been almost a month now, but the memories of that day were still bright and clear. She was eternally grateful that Dianne had shoved her in front of Doctor Orchid as soon as she admitted that it’d been haunting her sleeping thoughts too. “Dianne’s said before how much she hates doing medevac for Scarlet and that she has an appointment set up as soon as possible after going to fetch him... I understand why now...” Magnolia picked up her glass but didn’t sip from it yet, the bitter, painful memories creeping back in again.

When Magenta had run up with Ochre over his shoulders and Rick’s blood all over his uniform, she’d desperately wanted to hold his hand, to hold him, to comfort him and reassure him. Instead she’d had to pull down the stretcher and help strap him into it while the medics got to work.

The drugs had only taken the edge off Rick’s pain, the semi-consciousness from the blood loss had done more for him.

Leaving him in the back to get into that cockpit had torn her heart in ways she hadn’t known it could be torn. That she was doing something useful by getting him out of danger and to the best help available had been the only bright spot on that dark day, and she’d been clinging to that with both hands and every ounce of strength she could muster.

The sessions with Orchid had helped so much, but something had cropped up that she didn’t like one bit, a cruel consideration that her mind had presented her with the other day. It had horrified her that she could even come up with it in the first place. She knew she had to bring it up with Orchid, but she just didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it. Bringing other people her problems just wasn’t her forte.

Needing to sit, Magnolia crossed to her small couch. She put the untouched drink on the floor, curled herself up and dragged over the quilt her grandma had made for her sixteenth birthday. Wrapping the much loved item around herself, she blanketed herself in the love and care the quilt represented. She very much needed that comfort. “Miss you, Grandma,” Magnolia brushed her fingertips against the tattered applique daisy that had been Grandma Daisy’s signature on all the many quilts she’d made over the years and blinked back tears. Grandma would have known what to do. She always knew what to do or say to soothe the hurts, bring some clarity or shine a light in the dark. And some guidance and clarity was exactly what she needed right now.

Theoretically cosy but still feeling inexplicably chilled, Magnolia put some of the things she’d already learned from Orchid to work and deliberately walked back through her thoughts and reasonings to get to the root of what was upsetting her so.

She’d always been fiercely independent and headstrong, not letting anything hold her back. It just was how she was, and it’d intimidated the other girls at the finishing school and been the final nail in the coffin that got her off the path her parents tried to guide her into. There was absolutely no way she could ever play second fiddle to a man, being a good wife and mother who’d say all the right things and nod and smile and be the gracious hostess. No way, no how. She expected and demanded equality in all things and if any man wanted her, he’d have to find a way to keep up.

Having been disappointed by so many men who first made nice then tried to tear her down to their level, she’d let the idea of romance fall by the wayside as she forged her own way ahead. She’d go it alone, like she had in so many other things, and that would be that.

And then she’d been recruited into the Angels and she’d rejoiced in finding herself in the company of similarly determined and driven women. They’d quickly become sisters in all but blood, and eventually they had been introduced to a collection of very good looking men who had absolutely no trouble keeping up with any of them and weren’t in the slightest bit intimidated by the company of formidable women. Fast friendships had quickly formed between the two groups, founded on mutual respect, and she was very happy with that.

She hadn’t intended on falling for Rick.

He hadn’t intended on falling for her.

Looking back on it, they hadn’t so much as fallen in love with each other as they had been snuck up on by Cupid and clubbed over the head until they finally stopped long enough that they could see each other.

What they had was... well, it was something. Iron sharpens iron, as the old saying went, and they did that for each other. He was amazed to find someone else who shared his experience of not quite fitting in, someone wired differently to the standard, she was delighted to find someone who wanted to chase after her as she soared. They were both over the moon to find someone else who could talk fluent plane-nerd and absolutely wouldn’t get bored with it.

Then that day had happened, the reality of the severity of Rick’s injury had set in, and when she was visiting him in Medical after the first operation, while he was still almost as pale as the sheets of the bed and half out of his head on meds, a nasty, wicked little voice in the back of her head had muttered he can’t keep up with you now. He’ll hold you back and you’re going to resent him for it.

Sickened by the idea that she could even consider that, she’d desperately shoved that voice into the proverbial broom closet and blocked the door, but that little voice had been getting oh so much louder and she just didn’t know what to do.

“No, no, that’s not right,” Magnolia shook her head. “I don’t know what to do yet, that’s all, and that’s no reason to sit and feel sorry for myself. Okay, I’ve had my mope, now it’s time to get my boots on.” Magnolia squared her shoulders and reached for that determination that got her through being a castaway. “I want to know what Grandma Daisy would say, so, what question would she ask me right now?”

Closing her eyes, Magnolia pictured her grandmother – a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a lifetime’s laugh lines creasing her face and short, silvery hair that she kept close cut because that made it so much easier to dye it bright colours – and walked herself through what Grandma Daisy would do. Whenever she went to her grandmother for advice, she’d welcome her in with a drink, settle herself down in her favourite rattan chair and pick up the nearest of her ever fluctuating entourage of cats to pet and fuss over as she considered the problem and what question she wanted to pose to open up the problem and get at its roots. That’s what she pictured right now – Grandma Daisy in her favourite blouse and skirt, a calico cat on her lap as she asked, ‘Do you love him, Maggie-girl? And does he love you?’

“I love him,” Magnolia breathed the words out. “I love him and I wanted to marry him before the shooting – to make him that promise of ‘in sickness and in health’ – so why should that change now? And I know he loves me...” She smiled at the memory. “First thing that nut-job said to me when he woke up after the op was ‘you’re really pretty, but I gotta girlfriend and I love her and she’ll kick your ass’.”

‘And there’s your answer, Maggie-girl!’

Magnolia could see the warm smile that would have curved Grandma Daisy’s lips.

‘So many people think love’s only a feeling, an adjective to describe your emotions. Love’s a verb, Maggie-girl, it’s about doing, it’s active, and it’s a living thing, something you’ve got to nourish and care for. Choose him and choose to love him. Decide that you’re going to choose him every day, and as long as he’s choosing you back, you two will stand strong. Now, finish your soda before it goes flat, go find your man and tell him you love him and you’re choosing him – and use your words if you need to.’ There would have been a knowing look next. ‘He’s going to be questioning things too, he knows how much you value your freedom and he’ll be having his own nasty little voice muttering at him, telling him to cut you loose so he doesn’t hold you down and hold you back. Don’t let that nasty little voice win, okay?’

“Okay, Grandma.” Magnolia smiled, toasted her grandmother’s memory and drank the soda in one go before uncurling herself from the couch, determined to go find Rick.

0o0o0

“This is much more like it,” Paul thought to himself as he strolled along beside Rick. He’d pushed the wheelchair only for as long as was necessary for the getaway, since right now he was able to get more speed by pushing the ‘chair than Rick could get by wheeling himself, and then he’d let go and switched to walking beside Rick so they could banter. It’d taken long enough but he’d finally taught Rick how to banter properly and they were both grinning and laughing as they made their way to the Amber Room. Considering the weight of their earlier conversation and everything else that was going on, hearing Rick laugh was a very good thing.

They were almost at the Amber Room when one of the cabin doors slid open and Melody stepped out.

“Oh! Scarlet, Ochre! What are you doing out?”

“I’m escaping, he’s helping.” Rick jerked his thumb at Scarlet, but all his attention was on Melody.

Paul looked between the two of them and instantly grasped that his continued presence was superfluous. “Ochre, I think I can trust you to Melody’s capable supervision.” His ‘official’ tone was spoiled by the teasing grin at them both. “You should have another thirty minutes before someone notices you’re gone. Just make sure you’re back before Fawn puts out a bounty. He’ll give you one warning on the comms before he lets loose the proverbial hounds.”

“S.I.G.” Ochre nodded his understanding. “And Scarlet? Thanks.”

“Any time,” Scarlet nodded to them both and continued on down to the Amber Room in the hopes of finding his own Angel.

“Come on in.” Magnolia stood aside to give him enough room for the wheelchair.

“Thanks.” Rick flicked her a brief smile, then wheeled himself in and parked himself perpendicular to the couch.

“You want a drink?” Melody automatically asked, closing the door and going to the kitchenette.

“No thanks, I’m okay,” Rick said as he put the brakes on the wheelchair, leaned down to flip up the one footrest currently in use, and moved the blanket out of the way. The empty section of the trouser leg was already pinned up so it wouldn’t flap about and tangle in things.

Belatedly realising what Rick was up to, Magnolia awkwardly hovered. “Can I help?” she asked, half reaching out to help but not quite sure how to and hating it.

Rick glanced up at her and she could see the ‘no, I’m fine’ that was forming, then he glanced at his missing leg and the reminder that he wasn’t actually fine, and she could see the brief battle with his pride. He’d fought his way through the world, she reminded herself, climbing the ranks through dogged determination and a refusal to let his dyslexia hold him back. Relying on others wasn’t exactly in his operating manual, but circumstances were forcing him to rewrite that manual.

“I think I’ve got this, but catch me if I fall?” was what he asked.

“Always will, handsome.” Magnolia smiled, and was heartened when he smiled his thanks before turning his attention to the process of getting out of the wheelchair and onto the couch.

A grunt of effort, then he was standing, using the armrests of the chair to balance himself. He carefully transferred his grip to the arm of the couch, a shuffling hop got him into position, and he was lowering himself down, Magnolia keeping in close attendance in case he overbalanced himself. He managed to sit down without incident and immediately reached over to drag the blanket across and rearrange it over his lap. When he was settled, Magnolia sat down next to him and he almost immediately leaned against her side with a long sigh of relief, seemingly deflating as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned his head against hers.

“I think this is the first time we’ve actually been alone alone together in weeks,” he murmured. “No one coming in to give me meds or check the dressings, and no auto-nurse to tattle every time you get my heart racing.” He lifted his head just long enough to give her a cheeky grin and they both giggled over the memory – on one of her early visits she’d kissed him and his heart rate had spiked high enough to send an alert to the nurse’s hub and get a worried knock on the door a moment later.

“I do believe you’re right,” Magnolia curled one arm around him and laced the fingers of her free hand with his. “I’ve missed it, and I’ve missed you.”

“Aw, really? You missed me?”

“Yes really, I did in fact somehow miss you.” She almost, almost finished the sentence with the old crack of ‘with every shot so far’ but stopped herself just in time.

“Good, means I’ve made myself memorable.” Rick snuggled closer.

“You’re extremely memorable, Mister Richard Fraser.”

“Oof, a ‘mister’ and my full first name, what did I do?” The grin was very audible.

“You want the list in alphabetical or chronological order?”

That got a chuckle that faded into a comfortable silence as they simply sat together for a time, savouring the chance to just be in each other’s arms and be close. Recent events had made moments like this just that much more precious.

Just as Magnolia was figuring out how to draw them out of this moment and start putting her grandma’s wisdom into action, Rick took the deep breath that she knew was him getting himself into ‘work mode’. He straightened up so he could see her face, but still held her hand.

“‘Lia, can we talk?” he quietly asked.

“Always,” Magnolia kept the smile on her face despite her spike of fear, the terror of ‘have I left this too late?’ running through her mind.

To her eternal relief, his next words made that fear evaporate.

Rick let go of her hand so he could cup her face, touching her like she was a precious treasure, and he kissed her very gently and tenderly. “Magnolia, we’re going to have to go in depth with the details later, but I wanted to get this out in the open first: I don’t know what the future’s going to look like, but between the two of us, I know we’re gonna make it work.” He cracked a grin. “It’s you and me, whatever’s ahead doesn’t stand a chance.”

Magnolia smiled and kissed him back with the same love and tenderness. “It absolutely does not.” Her smile turned mischievous. “So, how long before someone’s gonna come looking for you?”

“They probably already are, but if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I think we’ll have plenty of time.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her, which as always made her giggle at how ridiculous it was.

“Then we’d better get started,” Magnolia replied, a very different kind of smile curving her lips.

0o0o0

The day was fading into the purpling blues of night as Paul finished his last set with the free weights, racked them and dried the sweat off his face and neck. He’d spent a good hour catching up with Destiny and Harmony, had lunch with Dianne, snooped just enough to confirm that Melody had delivered Ochre back to Medical shortly after lunch, checked in with Adam, had dinner, and then had gone to the officer’s gym. He had muscle mass to recover and his definition of ‘normal’ had changed once again. The way he saw it, a good hour running through his normal weights routine would be the best place to start regaining that muscle and discovering what his new recovery times were.

Cool-down stretches completed, he was finishing off a bottle of water when the intercom beeped for attention. “Captain Scarlet?” Green’s voice rang out. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we have a visitor and Captain Grey has called an urgent meeting in the conference room.”

Very curious about this new development, Scarlet pressed the reply button. “S.I.G. I’ll be there shortly. Who is it?”

“Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward.”

Chapter 20

Cleaned up and in his uniform, Scarlet arrived at the conference room at the same time Magenta did, and upon entering, they found themselves the last to arrive.

“Lady Penelope, Parker, a pleasure to see you again,” Grey was saying as he pulled out a chair for Lady Penelope.

Despite the late hour, Lady Penelope was looking as fresh as a daisy in a pale lavender pants suit with a fussy silk cravat in several hues of pink at her throat. She took the offered seat with a gracious smile. “Thank you again for seeing me at such short notice, Captain Grey,” she replied as she made herself comfortable.

Scarlet, afire with curiosity about what brought her here, was taking his own seat when the door swished open again and Conrad slowly made his way in, leaning heavily on a walker with Fawn hovering in close attendance.

“Conrad!” was exclaimed in several voices, chairs scuffing back as people stood.

“He looks like a stiff breeze would blow him away,” was Paul’s shocked realisation, “and this is after a month in Medical... no wonder he thought he’d kick the bucket before we got home.”

“Hello everyone,” Conrad spoke softly, pausing to survey the room and study each face. “It’s so good to see you all again.” A small curve to his lips and a crinkle at the corners of his eyes was all the expression that he showed, but to those who knew him like the captains did, it was a broad, beaming smile of joy.

“H’allow me, sir,” Parker slipped in before anyone could make a move, pulling out the chair next to Grey’s and assisting Conrad to sit, before deftly moving the walker out of the way.

“I know you’re all excited,” Fawn was hard-eyed as he looked around the group, “but this is only a short visit because he needs to be here. We’ll be setting up visiting hours in the next couple of days. Is that clear?”

Though they all itched to talk to Conrad again, a round of affirmatives was his answer.

Absolutely no one crossed Fawn or anyone else from Medical when they took that particular tone. As Scarlet once put it, you don’t irritate the people who know how you’re put together, they know exactly how to take you apart. Anyone with the Staff of Asclepius on their file was fiercely protective of their patients. It was one of Fawn’s key selection criteria, and they were especially careful whenever it came to those with good intentions: they were very aware of how badly those intentions could turn out.

Happy that the ground rules had been established and would be followed to the letter, Fawn nodded his acknowledgement and stepped back to let the officers have their meeting.

When everyone was settled in their seats, Grey turned to their guests. “Lady Penelope, you said that you had news?”

“I do indeed, Captain Grey.” From her pale pink purse she withdrew a folded ordinance map. “As you know, I have been tracking The Hood and doing what small things I can to disrupt his operations.”

“Hardly small at all, Lady Penelope,” Ochre responded. “I’ve seen the reports from the others and the World Police, you’ve done more in the last three weeks than they’ve done in years.”

“Why, thank you, Captain Ochre,” was her gracious response, a hint of a smile as she accepted his praise. “I have come to Cloudbase because I had a significant breakthrough, one that I have verified as best as I can without tipping my hand to our opponent.” She was opening the map as she spoke, then refolded it to only show a particular section of jungle that had been marked with firm strokes of a black grease pencil. “I have located The Hood’s base of operations and learned how he has kept it concealed for so long. He had taken over a temple in a remote area of Malaysia. If he thinks he is being searched for or the military are running exercises in the area, the entire building is on a vast hydraulic platform that sinks into the ground and a sort of camouflaged lid covers it. ”

“Something like that must have cost him a fortune!” Grey exclaimed. “How did he manage it, and how did you find out about it, Lady Penelope?”

“From what I could discover he designed the bulk of it himself and used construction robots to perform the labour,” she began, passing the map over to him. “Only a small fraction of it was designed by outside engineers that he contracted in a piecemeal fashion so that no one person knew the purpose of what he or she was building.” A pause to let her audience absorb that, then she continued: “Parker and I also discovered that all of those engineers perished shortly after the work was completed: car accidents, a scaffolding collapse at a building site, a burglary gone wrong and so on.” Another pause, this time to allow herself the smallest of smug smiles. “However, his clean up was not as thorough as he thought it was and thanks to the assistance of Captain Magenta, Symphony Angel and Rhapsody Angel, Parker and I were able to narrow the field down to something much more manageable and uncovered the few small items that The Hood missed – some drawings that one of the engineers had re-created from a design that The Hood had shown him, shipping manifests in a back office, and...” Her smile returned, “... One very angry former salesman of construction robots who used to have a lucrative side business in selling parts and performing maintenance under the table. The Hood attempted to pay his final bill with an explosive, but fortunately for us, the salesman knows the truth of the saying ‘honour amongst thieves’. He slipped a GPS tracker into one of the robots during a repair job, and when he realised that this particular customer had other ideas about payment, he staged his own demise and has been lying low ever since, waiting for an opportunity for revenge.”

“That was incredible work Lady Penelope, and more vital than you know,” Conrad spoke up before anyone else could, only to grimace and shade his eyes with his hand. “Migraine coming on,” he said shortly, waving off Fawn’s automatic move to help. “But you need to hear this. When they were doing their research on The Hood, the Mysterons realised that his powers are linked to that temple that he’s made into his base of operations. If it is destroyed, his power goes with it. They were planning on doing just that, but they couldn’t find it.”

“I’ll be more than happy to finish the job for them,” Scarlet grimly declared.

“We will finish the job for them,” Blue firmly corrected him. “You’re not going alone, it’ll be suicide and you know it.”

“And before you worry about him mesmerising us,” Magenta jumped in, “a couple of flash bangs and a bag over his head will take care of that. Once we’ve got him on the way to his cell at deWitts and his three hots and a cot for the rest of his life, we can let Spectrum Intelligence do their thing while we figure out where to put the C4.”

“That settles it,” Ochre declared, then started rattling out orders. “Once we’ve got all the info we need, Grey, you’re going to take those three, whip a plan together, and go get the bastard. I’ll hold the fort until you get back. It’s desk duty,” he continued before anyone could protest. “All that’s wrong with me is I’m down a leg, I’m cleared for desk duty and that’s what the big chair is.”

“He’s right.” Fawn didn’t look entirely pleased to be agreeing with him, but he added: “The command desk is desk duty and he has been cleared for that.”

Scarlet was about to protest that they didn’t need to come, that they didn’t need to risk themselves, but one look from Blue made him remember his promise. “Very well,” he acquiesced. He pulled over a sheet of paper and a pen, then turned to their guests. “Lady Penelope, Parker,” he began, “what information do you have on The Hood and his temple?”

0o0o0

As the night settled on the thick jungle surrounding his temple, Gaat shut down his computer, leaned back in his chair and let memories and possibilities flow through his mind like a river.

“Not quite the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but close enough,” Gaat murmured to himself, steepling his fingers before his face and smirking at the irony of what he’d orchestrated.

Spectrum had valiantly tried to keep their ship and her mission quiet, but he’d still heard the whispers and connected the dots. Under normal circumstances he would have gleefully sold the information on to the highest bidder, but not this time. He couldn’t directly hurt the Mysterons – he’d tried, issuing several hits on their puppet since he wasn’t strong enough to go hunting himself – but all had come to naught. So instead, he decided to let his other enemies do the work for him and he’d stymied the intentions of those who would have interfered with the mission.

Once the rocket was safely away, he’d then turned his attention to Spectrum and International Rescue. It had been such a difficult choice to pick which he’d focus on next. Both organisations were weakened by the absence of the three men on the mission, but Spectrum was down two to International Rescue’s one, so he’d settled on meting out his revenge on Spectrum first. Once he had recovered from the effort of taking out Colonel White and secure in the knowledge that Spectrum was crippled and distracted, he could then pluck International Rescue at his leisure.

Belah smiled as he replayed that particular moment of triumph in his mind’s eye. His first shot hadn’t gone according to plan, but it had beautifully set up the second and he could remember every second of it: the weight of the camouflaged thermal blanket on his head and neck, how the crosshairs aligned on the white tunic, how the trigger had moved so smoothly under his finger, the whack of the recoil driving the stock back into his shoulder despite the recoil pad, suppressor and muzzle brake, the burst of pink mist and how what was left of that stained white tunic had dropped from view.

He’d wanted to linger, to watch the blossoming chaos in his wake, but the strain of flattering and manipulating General Andrei into threatening the German government’s nuclear disarmament negotiations in Sebnitz had taken more out of him than he would have liked. The man had needed near 24/7 babysitting to keep him on track, and that was with his powers to help nudge the weak-minded fool along. He’d barely been able to get out of bed on the morning of the attack, and once he’d returned to his temple, he’d slept for almost an entire day and been barely functional for the rest of the week.

Looking down at his desk, his eyes lit upon the many files, dossiers and photos strewn across it and he ground his teeth when he spied a print of Lady Penelope, disguised as a brunette in jeans, cowboy boots and a plaid shirt. Two other women were with her, dressed similarly, and annoyingly, they were completely unknown to him. He would have preferred to have attacked International Rescue sooner, but the infernal woman, her butler and her allies were dogging his steps and threatening his operations. He didn’t dare act just yet, not until he had arranged something suitably attention-grabbing to draw their eyes until he could slip onto Tracy Island and take his revenge in person.

He turned his thoughts to that day, needing something to distract himself from the current problem of Lady Penelope.

“Should I kill Jeff Tracy first and make his children watch?” Gaat mused as he pushed away from the desk and carefully stood up. “Or should I start with the children? Ah, yes, I must remember that one of them is always off the island on Thunderbird Five. Hm, the space station will have to be isolated and dealt with separately. I want that intact, so firing on it will be out of the question. I’m sure that Jeff Tracy, being the control freak that he is, will have some form of ground based control unit that I can use to access Thunderbird Five’s systems. But whatever I decide to do, I must ensure they know of my half-brother’s unwitting betrayal first. Kyrano will live just long enough to fully appreciate how much aid he has given me, and at the height of his despair, I will cut his throat.” The thought of Kyrano brought the rest of the household to the forefront of his mind. “The grandmother is too delicate to be useful, she’ll be disposed of, but I will keep Tin Tin, she will be my leverage to keep Hackenbacker in line.” He strode to the window to look out upon the world. “Once I have Tracy Island and all its treasures, I can then turn my attention to Lady Penelope and her butler. Bereft of their allies, they will have no chance against me.”

Belah allowed himself a slow, shark-like smile as he idly considered what he’d do to the last of his foes... completely ignorant of the four men in jungle camo fatigues, boonie hats and grease paint currently hunkered down in the tree line in the clearing surrounding the temple, quietly studying their objective.

Chapter 21

Crouched in the lee of a palm tree, Scarlet ignored the biting insect currently stabbing at his neck and swept his monocular over the building before them. Sitting on a bend of a nameless river, the temple was a forbidding edifice in light coloured stone. Placed on a solid base that let it rear up above the floodwaters that storms would bring, it brooded down at the surrounding clearing and the thin fringe of trees between the grass and the true jungle. A broad set of steep stairs led to the grand entrance that was on the next level, and it and the one above were pierced here and there by ornate window frames. Three tower-like structures with dome shaped cupolas on pillared supports surmounted the flat roof, and carvings festooned much of the building.

“Face at a window, second level of the temple, third right from the big door,” Scarlet reported in a murmur. “It’s him.” That was a relief. While they did have plans for if Gaat wasn’t in residence, everyone wanted to get this over with sooner rather than later.

“Try for a shot?” Magenta asked, also training a monocular on the spot.

“... Negative, he’s just ducked back inside and closed the shutters.” Scarlet continued to scan the temple. “I’m seeing satellite uplink dishes on the east corner of the roof and a radar dish. What do you see?”

“Heat plumes over by the west corner,” Blue reported, sweeping over the area with a thermal imaging camera. “It could be exhaust vents? And there’s a weird patch of warmer water in the river.”

“Let me see,” Grey reached for the camera to have a look himself.

“Ditto on the satellite and radar dishes, there’s electronic tripwires on the window shutters and... yep, cameras.” Magenta trained his monocular on one of the ornamented corners of the building. “He’s got the area around the temple covered.”

“Well, a good thing we brought you then,” Scarlet remarked with a tight grin, lowering his monocular to sweep the area with the ‘Mark One Eyeball’. That was one thing he’d learned right from the get-go: you could have all the best tech in the world, but never forget how to use the basics. “All right, gentlemen, what are our options?” he asked briskly.

“Looks like there’s some sort of underwater access in the river, that warm spot doesn’t belong there,” Grey declared. “The current doesn’t look too bad.” He nodded to the pile of equipment they’d brought with them. “We’ve got aquascooters and SCUBA gear, we can swim it.”

Magenta had his rugged portable computer out. “I’ve already got the perimeter tripwire and sensors fooled.” He indicated the camera above their heads that he’d spliced into as soon as they’d spotted it. “And I can mess around with the satellite uplink, but it looks like the rest is all hard-wired and on a different system, there’s nothing I can remote into. As soon as I’ve got a hardwire link I can get in, but it’ll take time.”

“I don’t like the look of that clearing.” Blue was giving the lush, waist-high grass a suspicious look. “Anything could be hidden in there – mines, pits, man-traps.”

Scarlet weighed up the options carefully. Traps could be detected and avoided given the appropriate care, but there was... he checked with the rangefinder on his monocular... just over twenty three metres of open ground between them and the base of the temple. Crossing the grass would eat up a lot of time and if Gaat had thermal scopes, they’d shine like beacons. However, between the noise of the jungle and the river, the insects, birds and bats, and the ability of the jungle flora and fauna to use anything as a toe hold, nest or other kind of vantage point, there wouldn’t be many other external sensors like noise or motion detectors or laser tripwires, the locale would render them useless. The trapezoid main entrance beckoned, but that was such an obvious entry point it had to be boobytrapped. While he liked the idea of a stealthy underwater entrance there were more unknowns about swimming: traps and sonar sensors, plus the risk of crocodiles and the possibility of giving themselves away by squelching about in wet boots and dripping water everywhere.

“The water’s too big a risk,” he decided. “If we had hoverbikes, we could coast across the grass easily enough and find our way in through a window, but we don’t have any.” Scarlet looked up next, considering the tree above them. It was a palm and dismissed as too spindly, but the next one over, a mango tree, was a decent candidate. “That looks fairly strong, and it might be tall enough...” Another check with the rangefinder, some quick trigonometry and he nodded to himself. “We’ll use the zip line,” he decided. “Give it a couple of hours for true night to fall, then I’ll climb up that tree, set the line and we’ll nip across and get in via the roof. I’m sure Gaat’s got some sort of safe path out, and failing a land exit, we can help ourselves to one of his vehicles or call for a heli from Kuala Lumpur.”

There was a round of agreements, then they rearranged their supplies and packed what they’d need into small backpacks before they settled in to wait out the dusk. All around them, the jungle slowly woke up with the sounds of insects, frogs and all the other animals that used the night to hide themselves – something that would provide more cover for their activities.

When the sky was pitch black and the only lights around were those of the stars, Scarlet scaled the tree, a long tube with a telescopic sight slung over his back. Finding a good spot that was both high enough off the ground and had a sturdy branch to stand on, he pulled a slim ratcheting winder, a deceptively thin cable and a section of synthetic felt from one end of the tube. The felt went around the tree trunk first. Next was the cable, which was wrapped around the tree and hooked onto the ratchet winder. He carefully turned, braced his back against the tree, lifted the tube and aimed it at the nearest of the three tower-shaped cupolas that projected up from the flat roof. He double checked his target through the sight, then squeezed the trigger. The grappling hook flew out with an almost comical hollow ‘whoomph’ sound, trailing more of the thin cable behind it. The hook found its target and the points dug into the stone. A solid tug on the cable proved it was secure and Scarlet ratcheted the cable tight. He then let the tube slide down the zip line. Made of thin composite, it’d crumple when the first trolley hit it and act as the stop block.

“Anything?” he softly called down to the others, who’d been watching for any signs of alarm from the temple.

“Nothing,” Magenta replied, picking up his and Scarlet’s backpacks and starting to scale the tree. One trip delivered the backpacks, a second was to fetch his and Scarlet’s rifles and the trolleys, straps and harnesses that they’d clip themselves into to slide down the zipline.

“Me first. Then you, so you can defeat the alarms, then Grey and Blue,” Scarlet decided, already shouldering his backpack and strapping himself into the harness.

“S.I.G.” Magenta nodded, standing on a branch just below Scarlet to stay out of the way. “Hey, just remember, you don’t get back up so quick now,” he said as he passed Scarlet his rifle, a worried note in his voice.

“Don’t worry,” Scarlet grimly assured him. “I’m not going to chance missing any of this.”

“Gotcha.”

Scarlet whipped down the line in seconds, landing lightly on the roof. He had himself out of the harness an instant later, swinging his rifle into his hands as he checked the immediate area and made sure their foothold was secure before waving Magenta down. Grey and Blue joined them shortly afterwards, and the four of them slipped across the roof, rifles to their shoulders as they started their hunt.

0o0o0

“Hm. I need to get more coffee.”

Crouched to examine the storage bins on the bottom shelf of his pantry, Gaat frowned at his depleted supply of beans, closed the lid of the storage bin, and shuffled over to examine the next container. “Sugar too... and rice. I should have a month’s worth left.” He got up from his crouch with a grunt of effort, brushed off his light cotton shirt and loose trousers, and looked around the pantry, glad that he always brought in food in bulk and doubly glad he’d had the foresight to restock before the mission with Captain Black. He’d only recently been able to comfortably manage his forays for fresh fruits and vegetables, hauling around sacks of dry goods and pallets of tins would have been impossible.

“Now, what shall I have tomorrow...” He pondered the rows of tins and packets on the shelves above the bulk storage bins, and settled on tinned jackfruit. He was about to pull down the ingredients for a savoury sauce to marinade it in when a slight breeze heavy with the smells of the jungle made him pause. “Where could that be from? I sealed the temple... Ah ...I must have a visitor.”

Smiling thinly, Gaat rallied himself, slipping out into the small kitchen and to the cupboard of weapons he kept beside the hob. A 9mm Glock and holster and a Bowie knife in a sheath went onto a belt that he slung around his waist, a second knife went under his shirt, attached to the back of his collar with a special clip, a small, high powered torch (for overloading night vision goggles) fitted snugly into his palm and a snub-nosed Uzi was perfect for the close confines of his lair. “Now, let us make the hunter the hunted.” Gaat smirked, finding the electrical board next to his weapons locker and turning off all the lights.

He knew this temple inside out, his enemy would soon be hopelessly lost.

0o0o0

After dropping through an air vent in the roof, the four men had found their way into some sort of central chamber, richly decorated with carvings and statues and lit by fire bowls. Ornamented pillars held up the ceiling and there was a broad carpet running down the middle of the space. A decorated throne was in the centre of the room, thickly plated with gold. Between the lack of windows, the four fire bowls, and that it only had two doors – the side door they’d found their way in through and the main entrance – it should have been swelteringly hot, but instead the air was clammy and cool.

“Heebie jeebies?” Grey quietly asked as he glanced up at the carved faces grimacing down at them. The answers came in quick succession as they spread out to search the room.

“Uh huh.”

“Yes.”

“A-firm.”

Magenta was the one to peer behind the beaded curtain at the far end of the room, curious about the figure he could spy in some sort of gilded pagoda. “Anyone know who this is? He’s familiar but I don’t recognise him,” he asked, using his rifle barrel to move the ropes of beads out of the way to show the others.

“It’s Kyrano,” Blue confirmed after a quick glance. “Tin Tin’s father and Jeff’s PA.”

“Huh. Why would The Hood have a statue of him?” Magenta wondered out loud. The beads made barely any noise as he carefully let the ropes go back into position.

“I don’t think we’ll like the answer,” was Scarlet’s response. He squinted at their surroundings, looking between the floor and the roof. “This seems like a central location, and those pillars look load-bearing. Grey, do we have enough explosives to bring them down?”

Grey started to answer when all of the lights abruptly died, leaving only the dancing flames to light the room.

“He knows we’re here.” That was Scarlet, bleakly businesslike.

“What’s the plan?” Blue’s voice came out of the shifting shadows.

“We go out into the corridor and sit tight,” Scarlet instructed. “A few minutes to let our eyes adjust, then we go hunting. He would know this place inside out and he’ll be counting on us blundering about in the dark and giving ourselves away.”

“How do you know that?” Magenta asked, picking his way across the flagstones towards Scarlet’s position next to the door.

“Because it’s what I would do.”

0o0o0

“Come out, come out, wherever you are...” Gaat mentally urged, slinking through the halls like a jungle cat. Every sense was tuned to his environment, every nerve taut as he placed one foot before the other without even a whisper of sound to betray him. Tracking the moving air back to its source had shown him how they’d gotten in, that they’d managed to get to it in the first place warned him that they were skilled.

“Wait... this must be Spectrum hunting me!” he belatedly realised, cursing the lingering sluggishness that slowed his mind. A chill ran down his spine as he remembered the way that Captain Blue had resisted him whilst injured and weakened – a feat so rare that he could count the occurrences on one hand – and that chill redoubled when he recalled the other occurrence of it: Captain Scarlet. He’d only escaped that man by the skin of his teeth.

“Perhaps fleeing is the wiser option?” Gaat entertained the thought for a moment, then shook his head to dismiss it. This was his lair and his temple. If he fled, they’d be able to browse through his secrets and his treasures at their leisure. “But if I kill them, I’ll weaken Spectrum even more and further enhance my reputation.” He smirked to himself at the thought of the new boasts he could make, his claims backed up by whatever trophies he would claim and put on display. “Capturing one and breaking his mind will also work in my favour, but only if the fates give me the opportunity to do so. Spectrum officers are almost more trouble than they’re worth.”

His plan set, Belah Gaat continued deeper into his temple.

0o0o0

The four captains were like living fragments of the night as they slinked down a hall of pillars, dimly lit by the occasional oil dish lamp burning citronella and other things to keep the biting insects at bay. Like the rest of the place, it was decorated and ornamented (though nowhere near the level of the ‘shrine room’ they’d found) and where there was light the many projections and carvings gave them an element of camouflage, the shapes of their shadows seamlessly blending in with the many shapes of the shadows around them.

Halfway down the hall, they all froze as one when Blue suddenly held up his hand. “He’s been through here,” he murmured. “Recently too.”

“How do you know?” Grey asked back.

Blue tapped his nose. “Guy likes his incense and I just caught a whiff of it.”

“Lead the way,” Scarlet ordered, stepping aside so Blue could take the point position.

The place was like a maze, hallways feeding into passageways that then either fed into ball-room sized chambers or branched off into side rooms. Sensibly marking their way with chalk, the captains tracked the invisible trail left behind in the still air of the temple, the breeze of their passage making the flames of the dish lamps dance and their shadows writhe like living things.

They finally caught up to him in another pillared hall. This one was narrower than the rest and at a guess, it was some sort of greeting area. It had an aisle down the middle of smooth stone, so polished it was like walking on water, and the stout drum pillars were carved like palm trees. Between each one was an obelisk-like copper plinth bearing a broad dish of the same, each one heaped with a tall mound of spent incense that still faintly perfumed the air. The only light came from the next room at the far end of the hall – the familiar orange-yellow glow of more oil lamps outlining the doorway.

As for Gaat, he was a slightly paler shadow than the rest, slowly stalking the length of the hall with the squat shape of some sort of machine pistol in his fist.

The captains flanked the thick stone doorway, using it as cover as they quickly stuffed in earplugs, then Blue and Grey, as the closest to the doorframe, slung their rifles and took flashbangs from the thigh pockets of their fatigues.

A countdown on fingers, then pins were pulled, the metal canisters were hurled down the hall to clatter against stone, and the captains pulled themselves back and into cover, eyes screwed shut and hands clamped over ears in anticipation of what would happen next.

“Eh...?”

Man-made lighting and thunder split the air, followed almost instantaneously by the cacophony of the machine pistol, the noise of the gun bouncing off the hard stone walls like they were inside an enormous drum as Gaat wildly fired in every direction, disoriented by the noise and light of the flashbangs. The gun quickly clicked dry but Gaat kept howling and waving it around until he noticed it wasn’t jumping in his hand any more. “Curse you, Spectrum, curse you!” he screamed and threw the empty gun away in his rage. It smacked into one of the plinths and, already precariously balanced, the incense bowl first wobbled, then crashed onto the stone floor, sending a cloud of white ash as fine as talcum powder into the air and making it hazy.

“Give it up, Hood!” Grey boomed, knowing that Gaat’s ears would still be ringing after all of that. “Put down your weapons, put your hands behind your head and surrender!”

A long pause, then Gaat cursed (at least they thought he did, none of them knew what language it was but it didn’t sound nice) and loudly announced “Very well, Spectrum, you win. I surrender.” The gun belt buckle clicked as he undid it. They watched as he put it on the floor, then straightened and shoved it across the floor with his foot, kicking up more of the incense ash. No one moved until he at last placed his hands behind his head.

Grey and Blue, rifles to their shoulders, slowly advanced through the murky air, while the other two held station in their cover at the door. “Okay, Hood, no sudden moves,” Blue warned, keeping Grey covered as he lowered his rifle to get the zip ties out to cuff him.

“Of course, Spectrum,” Gaat sneered. As Grey came close with the thick zip tie in hand, Gaat’s expression twisted into a smirk while his body twisted like a snake, lashing out with impossible speed. His right hand whipped towards the side of Grey’s neck in a powerful knife hand strike and Grey dropped like a rock, momentarily stunned. Before Grey had even finished falling, Gaat was already darting towards Blue, a slim knife suddenly appearing in his fist. One yank on the gun barrel pulled Blue off balance, a twist and the gun was out of his hands and sent spinning into the darkness, then Gaat was behind him with one arm wrapped around Blue’s chest and the other holding the knife at his throat, Blue’s body between him and the two remaining captains.

“Well now, I believe this calls for a renegotiation,” Gaat purred the words, grinning like the Cheshire Cat from behind his prisoner as he moved backwards away from Grey, pulling Blue with him.

“I believe you’re right,” Magenta began, very agreeable as he placed his rifle on the ground. “So, what’s this going to look like?”

“It will end with this man’s blood on the floor if you do not listen carefully to me, Spectrum,” The Hood spat back, emphasising his words by applying just enough pressure to draw a thin trickle of blood from Blue’s neck.

“Oh, believe me, I am taking you extremely seriously,” Magenta nodded.

Knowing that human attention is drawn by movement and noise, Scarlet held himself still and silent until he was relatively sure that Gaat was distracted by Magenta coming out from cover, his hands raised to show he was unarmed and by Grey slowly sitting up with a groan, dazed and rubbing at his neck. Moving smoothly and slowly, trusting in the dark and the lingering cloud of ash to hide him, he slipped around the edge of the doorway and flitted down the far wall, using the pillars as cover until he was behind Gaat.

Scarlet weighed up the situation carefully and considered his options. It didn’t look like Gaat was wearing any body armour underneath his thin cotton shirt and loose trousers. While he didn’t dare shoot him, one good strike to a kidney would kill him within seconds, well before he could hurt Blue.

However, a very unpleasant part of himself, one that he strived to not listen to, wanted revenge. It wanted Gaat to suffer, for him to be stripped of his power, influence and mystique, to be put on display for the eyes of the world and be shown as the weakling and coward he really was, for him to be mocked and derided, then left to languish for years in some forgotten cell until death finally came to claim him. You know other ways to disable someone. It would be worth it, that little voice muttered. It will be worth the risk to take Gaat alive. You know they’ll all agree with you and it’ll feel oh so good to look into Gaat’s eyes and see that moment when he realises you’ve won and he’s just lost everything.

“Yes, it will feel very good, but it’s not worth Blue’s life,” Paul firmly told that nasty little voice before proverbially slamming the door shut on it, slinging his rifle over his back and drawing his double-edged boot knife – a narrow steel dagger as long as his palm that would slip between ribs like a stick into water.

As Scarlet wrapped up his internal debate and waited for Gaat to get into range, Magenta kept up his patter to keep Gaat’s attention on him.

“I do not think you appreciate your position, Captain,” Gaat was saying. “I have your friend, and I have no qualms about returning him to you in pieces should you attempt to cross me.”

“Okay, understood. So what do you want?” Magenta asked, following the classic negotiator’s tactics of making the other party feel like they were in control.

“Safe passage,” Gaat demanded. “Safe passage and for the three of you to leave my temple!”

“Okay, we can do that,” Magenta smoothly lied, and that was when Scarlet struck.

A lunge and he was in position before Gaat knew he was even there. His right hand came up to dig into the thick trapezius muscle to keep Gaat in place, while his left rammed the dagger home.

Eyes wide, the criminal mastermind arched in agony, his gasp to scream cut off and turning into a gurgle as the instinctive twist away from the pain yanked the blade into his left lung. His knife clattered against the stone floor and he almost pulled Blue down with him as he crumpled and fell like a dropped rag. Blue was able to twist himself free at almost the same time that Scarlet stepped back, the two men watching with grim expressions as The Hood breathed his last.

A nudge from a booted foot first, then a press of fingers to the skin of the throat to be sure, and Scarlet regarded their fallen foe with an inscrutable look. “... Well, it’s over then,” he said as Magenta helped Grey up and they both came over to see for themselves. “Blue, Grey,” Scarlet gave his friends a hard look to cover the stark terror he was refusing to entertain right now, “you two and I are going to spend a lot of time on the sparring mat next week.”

Wisely, all they did was nod their agreement.

“Let’s get this called in, get these two checked out and turn the lights back on,” Magenta suggested. “I don’t know about you two, but all this,” he made a face and waved a hand at the ash-laden air around them, “is making my eyes water.”

“S.I.G.” Scarlet nodded, “let’s see if we can’t find somewhere more pleasant to be.”

0o0o0

Half an hour later, they’d found their way into Gaat’s kitchen, discovered the electrical panel and turned the lights back on. Magenta and Blue (who was quick to reassure everyone that he’d hurt himself worse shaving and he was fine, it wasn’t anything to worry about) were investigating the contents of an office space they’d found in the next room. Grey (who also insisted he was fine after a short sit down) made the call back to base while Scarlet prowled the immediate area in case of any other surprises.

It wasn’t long after that Grey found Scarlet in the office, keeping a weather eye on the other two. He was ostensibly relaxed, leaning on a wall with his hands resting on his slung rifle, but by no means less alert.

“Green just got back to me with an update,” Grey reported, “Spectrum Kuala Lumpur will have a team here in the next thirty to secure the site, and Spectrum Intelligence are scrambling to get here before the World Police and a whole alphabet soup of other agencies catch wind of this, they really want this guy’s records. Once we’ve handed over we can take one of Kuala Lumpur’s helicopters, go straight back to their HQ and get an SPJ from there back to Cloudbase.”

“We’re still coming back to blow this place up afterwards, right?” Scarlet asked.

“Sky high,” Grey affirmed. “No way is anyone else going to use this place to do that mind control gimmick of his.”

Paul and Adam shared a quick look. Adam nodded to Paul, then turned to the others. “We’re leaving once the next team is here, but we’re not going back to Cloudbase just yet,” his reply was steeped with a certain solemnity. “There’s something else we need to do first.”

0o0o0

Now under the care of one of the colonel’s cousins, the Gray ancestral home was well north of London. A small Tudor-style manor house surrounded by extensive farms at the end of a lane in Wareside, it was old enough that it had its own church and graveyard tucked into a quiet corner of the grounds.

The chapel was an ancient building, a simple stone and slate-roofed structure with a long nave, a bell tower and the grey ragstone walls were pierced with arrow-slit windows. Beside it, the attendant graveyard was bounded by a dense hedge on three sides and a tall wrought iron fence and gate on the fourth, the uprights laced with winter-dormant rambling roses. The groundsman was the one to let them as the vicar was away, and, recognising Grey and Magenta, he pointed them to a stand of yew trees on the far side.

Inside, it was very still. The hedge kept it well sheltered and muffled most of the outside sounds, the silence broken only by the odd trill of birdsong and the rustle of the wind in the trees. No one said anything as Grey led the way and Magenta took up the tail, guiding their friends through the rows of crosses and statues to the long strip of recently disturbed earth.

There wasn’t a headstone yet, just a plaque in the ground with the name ‘Admiral Charles Gray’ cut into the thin metal. It was somewhat jarring really, seeing ‘Admiral Gray’ instead of the name and title they’d all known him by, but they knew why it was this way.

Placing themselves just outside of arm’s reach – close enough to protect them but far enough away to give an illusion of privacy – Magenta and Grey stood watch as Scarlet and Blue knelt down on the grass beside their commander’s grave and finally allowed themselves to grieve.

Epilogue

Three days later...

The barest pressure, applied between breaths, and the dot of Flat Red on the end of his brush became a tiny maple leaf for a CP-140 Aurora, all dressed up in the livery of the Royal Canadian Air Force, circa 2030.

“There.” In his room on Cloudbase, Rick put his brush into the water jar and sat back to examine his handiwork, absently picking up a clean brush to fiddle with while he plotted out what to do next. On the one hand it was almost done, on the other hand he’d seen some really interesting ideas where someone had painted up a plane to make it look like it’d gone through a dogfight, been hit by lightning or taken other damage, and made it into a diorama. It was getting tempting to give it a try. “Orchid would probably have some insights into why I want to try it now,” he mused. “Maybe I should ask her if it’s my brain figuring out ways to help me cope with my own ‘battle damage’.”

The doorbell rang and he called out an absent ‘Come in!’ as he pushed his wheelchair back from his desk and turned it around with less grace than he’d have liked.

The door opened, Brad let himself in, and Rick was heartened by it. Brad had become a very regular visitor these past few weeks. The others were trying their best and he certainly enjoyed their company, but they didn’t quite have the same understanding of coming to grips with a life-changing, career-ending injury like Brad did.

“C’mon and take a seat,” Rick waved him towards the couch and wheeled himself over.

“Thanks.” Brad sank onto the soft couch with a sigh. “I get why the Old Man got so irritated with politicians. President Roberts wants a press conference with the crew and lead designers of the Spes. Green’s been helping me figure out wording a response that doesn’t start with ‘you’re an idiot’.”

“Wow. What part of ‘top secret’ does he not get?” Rick shook his head. “Guy’s really banking on an ‘I ended the war with the Mysterons’ tag-line for his re-election, isn’t he?” He paused, then grinned. “You could say yes and send everyone there wearing enough photo jammers to short out the cameras. Or have Scarlet and Blue just straight up confiscate the footage afterwards under one of the intelligence acts.”

Brad chuckled. “Don’t tempt me.” He half smiled, then sobered, sitting straighter with his elbows on his knees. “Rick, you good for a serious conversation?”

“Yeah, fire away.” Rick nodded, belatedly realising that he still had the paintbrush in hand as he started toying with it. It was comforting to have something to fidget with, he had an inkling of what this conversation was going to be about.

“So I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Brad began. “Me, Magenta, Conrad, Scarlet and Blue have been talking off and on about what to do with the chain of command and who’s going to take the big chair. The World President says he’ll confirm whoever we put forward, but if we don’t give him a name, he’s gonna have to pick someone, Spectrum’s too good to disband. Conrad doesn’t want it, he’s going to retire as soon as Fawn says it’s safe for him to not be in a hospital setting. Pat doesn’t want it and truth be told I’ll be better as a 2IC, not the big boss. Technically, according to the protocol it should go to Paul and he’s happy to do it short term but ‘it would be a terrible idea’ if it was permanent. Adam’s next and he’s happy to take it, but what we all want to know first is this: Rick, do you want the big chair?” Brad asked. “You were going to be Chief of Police before you were recruited, you’ll be a natural at it, you’ll get to stay on Cloudbase and we’ll all be here to support you.”

His suspicions confirmed, Rick stared off into the distance, rolling the paint brush between his palms as he strung together his reply. “... No, not right now. Maybe later, but not now, I’m still too close. I really appreciate you guys wanting to keep me here, I really do, but it’ll be a bad idea.”

“What do you mean?” Brad tilted his head, puzzled.

“I’ve been doing some research.” Rick put the brush down on his lap. “Between the regs and the rehab, I have to go groundside anyway. Even with all of Fawn’s fancy equipment, if I don’t get any infections or complications, it’s still going to take at least three more months for the stump to heal up enough for fitting a prosthetic, and then I have to relearn how to walk, drive, fly and everything else again. And don’t start on how high tech new limbs can be, they’re still not going to be as good as the real thing, especially not for an above the knee amputation. Even if the regs get changed or I get promoted tomorrow and Fawn recruits everyone he needs for me to do all the rehab and everything up here so I can be in the big chair, it’s going to be a really bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Because this is us. Something’s going to go down, something bad, and because it’s going to be you guys in danger, my first instinct is going to be to do something really stupid by going down to help.” Rick gave him a knowing look. “You know I will. We all got recruited because we’ve all got seriously atrophied senses of self-preservation and between how we were shoved together and what we’ve been through together, we’ve pack-bonded like hell.” He shook his head. “Odds are I’ll either get myself killed, someone else killed, or both. I’m not gonna let that happen. Right now the best place for me will be Koala or one of the headquarters. Eight years of that, then I can come back to Cloudbase.”

“Because by then we’ll all have been pulled from the front lines,” Brad realised, eyes wide. “We’ll have aged out and retired or taken up heading a base or something.”

“And it’ll be a fresh crop of captains, ones that I’ll care about, don’t get me wrong, but I won’t be as attached to them as I am with you guys.”

“... I hate it, but you’re right.” Brad shook his head. “It’s a damn hard thing though.”

“Yeah, it is. I don’t like it either, and it doesn’t feel ‘right’ at all, not by a long shot, but it’s the correct choice to make.” Rick scrubbed a hand over his face. “Even though I know it’s not possible, there’s still a little bit of me saying ‘you can still be out there, you can make it happen, you just gotta fight for your place on the team’, but I wouldn’t be on Cloudbase if I didn’t have a little voice like that.” He fell silent, fiddling with his paintbrush again, then looked back to Brad. “I already know one change I’m going to make when I take the big chair.”

“What?”

“It’s not going to be a top flight team and a ‘B’-team. We didn’t know each other, we couldn’t anticipate each other and we didn’t have time to fix that. When I’m in charge, it’s going to be a team of ten, splitting duties on base and on the ground. They’re going to rotate, they’re going to train together and they’re going to function as one unit.” Rick’s mouth twisted in a bitter expression. “It’ll have its own problems, but what we have right now was a mistake. One that me and the Old Man have paid for.”

“You’re right about that.” Brad looked away, remembering the sound of the shot, the awful screaming and the panic on the comms, then before he could move the sound of the second shot and that dreadful moment of silence that told him that something even worse had just happened.

A touch on his knee, and Brad turned back to see Rick looking at him, concern and worry writ large on his face. “Hey, it’s not your fault, it’s just how the chips fell. And I’m going to keep telling you that until you believe me, clear?”

Brad managed a faint smile despite himself and the grief that he was still wading through. “S.I.G.”

Rick gave him a quick smile back, then frowned a little. “Where are the others anyway? I’d’ve thought they’d want to be in on a conversation like this.”

“Conrad’s having another migraine, Magenta’s on duty, and Blue and Scarlet are groundside,” Grey answered. “They wanted to wait until we could get everyone around the table, but Conrad pointed out that this is a question that we needed to get answered sooner rather than later.”

“He’s right,” Rick nodded, then curiously asked, “What are those two doing groundside? Did the World Government need them?”

“No,” Brad shook his head, “Adam’s finally going to have a proper conversation with his dad.”

“About damn time!” Rick canted a grin at his friend, well pleased by the news. “Someone’s finally smacked the guy up the head with a clue-by-four. Here’s all fingers and toes crossed that that goes well.”

“Agreed,” Brad nodded, “Very, very heartily agreed.”

0o0o0

Well wrapped up in long woollen coats, gloves and scarves, standing side by side and leaning against their car, Adam and Paul looked up the slight rise to the Svenson family home in Boston. It was early enough that not many people were about, and the air was dry and crisp with the first true bite of winter.

Paul looked first at the house – he was fairly certain he saw a curtain twitch at a ground floor window – then at his friend. “You going to be okay?”

Adam took a deep breath before answering. “... Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

“I’m staying right here. I’ve got a book and a thermos, I’ll be good for three hours,” Paul reminded him. “You’ve got your phone, your communicator and your beacon. Signal on any of them and I’ll come get you for a hot extraction.”

The jest got the huffed laugh that Paul had been hoping for. “S.I.G.” Adam pushed himself off the car, straightened his coat and steeled himself, striding up towards the house.

Two firm knocks with the brass door knocker, a pause, then the heavy oak door swung open to reveal John Svenson, looking careworn and aged as he stared at his son with a dozen different emotions chasing across his face.

“... Adam...”

“Hi Dad,” Adam swallowed thickly, “can we talk?”

“Of course.” John stood aside to let his son in. “Adam... I’m so sorry...”

Paul watched as his friend vanished inside the house and the door shut behind him, granting the two Svensons the privacy they needed for what would hopefully be the first of many long overdue and very much needed conversations.

Postscript

Seven years later...

Standing in the ensuite bathroom of the family’s London apartment, Paul turned his head and examined his reflection with care as a glint caught his eye. “I think I’ve picked up some more,” was his dour thought as he noted the silvery additions to the coal black hair at his temples. “Adam’s absolutely going to rib me at the meeting next week. It’s highly unfair, his blend in. But...” He couldn’t help the flicker of vanity that made him smirk at his reflection, “... At least my hairline is still where it used to be.”

Getting back to the task that had sent him to the bathroom in the first place, Paul stroked one hand over his cheek and jaw to gauge his stubble. “I suppose I’d better shave, I still get a five o’clock shadow by three pm,” he decided as he reached for the can of shaving foam. “It’s Kathryn’s first school play, I’d better not look scruffy in the photos or Mum will never let me hear the end of it.” He smiled at the thought of their little girl, all of five years old and almost the spitting image of Dianne at the same age. The school was putting on a play based on nursery rhymes and Kathryn had been cast as one of Bo Peep’s sheep. It was all she had been talking about for weeks now.

“Darling, are you almost ready? Wheels up in twenty!” Dianne called from the bedroom.

“Almost!” Paul called back. He quickly applied the foam to his face and gave the razor a rinse before quickly tidying up the day’s stubble. But haste made him careless and when touching up a spot he’d missed he managed to cut himself just above his lip. “Ow!” Paul pressed his free hand to the spot, dropped the razor into the sink and cast about for a tissue. “Just my luck, right when I don’t have time for it. Typical! Hope I didn’t bleed on my shirt, that’d just cap it all off.”

Tissues found, he turned back to the mirror, peeled his hand away from his face and wiped off the worst of the blood to see what the damage was... finding only a smear of drying blood and perfect, unblemished skin underneath.

“Paul?” The door opened and Dianne came in. “Is everything...?”

She trailed away, her eyes wide, as Scarlet turned to show her the blood and his unmarked face.

“Yes, it’s back,” Scarlet replied to her unasked question.

This could only mean one thing, but neither of them could give voice to it right now.

“What do we do?” Rhapsody asked, glancing towards their daughter’s room.

“You call International Rescue and see if they can get a status check on the generators,” Scarlet ordered as he washed his hands and fished the razor out of the sink. “I’ll contact Blue and have him do the same and send a squad to make sure that Conrad is safe.” Two quick swipes finished his shave. “Once that’s done, you and I are going to pack some bags, go to Kathryn’s play and watch our daughter be the most adorable little lamb in Bo Peep’s flock. After that we’ll go to Spectrum London while Blue sorts out a flight up to Cloudbase.” Paul wiped his face with a wet cloth, dried his hands and came across to Dianne, tightly wrapping his arms around her. “It’s important we go to her play, love, it’s most likely going to be the last bit of normality we’re going to have for a while.”

“I think you’re right, Paul.” Dianne held him close, her voice very quiet. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right.”