Original series Suitable for all readers

 

 

 

Frozen, a Captain Blue story for Halloween by Marion Woods

Captain Blue winced as he edged along the ledge and tried to get out of the biting wind.  It was growing darker and the wind was strengthening.  He wondered how long it had been since Scarlet left him.  It must be a couple of hours - easily a couple of hours… and he’d be back in another couple of hours, so that was no time to wait.

He fought the urge to look at his chronometer but couldn’t prevent himself from glancing at it. 

Scarlet had been gone exactly 47 minutes. 

His mood plummeted into an abyss of disappointment, self-pity and despair. 

I shouldn’t look at my watch… I know I shouldn’t – what’s wrong with me?  I’ve always had limitless patience, so why is this time any different? Besides, I trust Paul.  I do.  Why am I so anxious?

Scarlet had left his tunic to keep him warm. He pulled the red uniform tunic tighter around him and tried to bury himself in the fabric. 

It is keeping me warm.  Thanks, Paul. 

He shuffled again: the damp cold seeping through his leather coat and trousers was making him uncomfortable.  He winced and glanced down at his foot.   He couldn’t feel it any longer, so at least the pain had dulled, but he knew that it was serious. 

Worst case scenario time:  I lose a toe… or two.

He knew that wasn’t the worst that might happen, but he refused to follow the potential consequences any further.  

He shivered and curled up as much as he could, drawing his knees up towards his chest to conserve heat.  He buried his mouth and nose in the fabric of his uniform and exhaled, using his body heat to raise the temperature between the layers of fabric. 

A wave of exhaustion hit him.  He closed his eyes.

Gonna get some sleep.  Be more alert when Paul gets back… just a doze… a cat nap… forty winks…

‘Wake up, Adam; come on – we’ve got to get out of here.  We’ll be late for the party.”

“Party?”  Blue struggled to wake up and focus on Captain Scarlet, who was leaning over him, a hand on his shoulder, shaking him.

“Come on.”

Blue struggled to his feet and blinked, wincing at the bright lights in the room.

“Party?  On Cloudbase?”

Scarlet sighed, exasperated.  “Yes, of course it’s on Cloudbase - in the Amber Room to be precise.   You can’t have forgotten?  You really did sleep deeply, didn’t you?  Buck up your ideas, Adam.  Come on.”

Scarlet stepped away, beckoning him to follow and Blue hauled himself to his feet and stepped out after his friend. He staggered, almost toppling to his knees, but Scarlet wasn’t waiting, so he drew himself upright and hurried after him, limping heavily.   

The corridor to the Amber Room was familiar enough, apart from the fake cobwebs and giant spiders in the corners of the doorways.  Crewmen walked past him, all wearing masks and laughing with the pleasure of the Halloween holiday.

Halloween.

Blue shook his head.  Too many things had gone horribly wrong on previous Halloweens for him to feel comfortable about another one.  He remembered that Paul was very anti-Halloween and frowned.

This must be a really special party, or Paul wouldn’t go – he hates Halloween parties, he thought, trying hard to speed up and keep pace with Captain Scarlet. 

 Scarlet had reached the Amber Room door.  He turned as it slid open. 

“In you go, Adam,” he said, a huge smile on his face.

Blue was smiling in response as he entered the Amber Room.

Everyone was there: Colonel White, Lieutenant Green, Doctor Fawn, Captain Grey, Captain Ochre and all of the Angels:  Rhapsody, Destiny, Melody and Harmony. 

He looked around – the important Angel was missing. 

No, there she was!  Standing under a brightly-coloured ‘Congratulations’ banner, wearing civilian clothes and smiling happily.

“Karen.”

Her smile faltered momentarily, and then she said, just a shade too brightly for it to be real:  “Hello, Captain Blue.  I’m sure glad you’re up and about now and that you could make it.”

“What’s going on?”  He limped towards her. 

“Oh.”  Her smile evaporated and she looked uneasy.  “I thought you’d heard – but then, you were in Sick Bay and it was a bit ‘spur of the moment’.  We thought we’d do it here and now… it made more sense.”

Blue looked around.  There was a table bearing a two-tiered, elaborately iced cake.  There were flowers and party favours decorating the table.  He stared at the cake.  On the top tier were two figures: one represented a female pilot – an Angel pilot – and the other a pink-uniformed Spectrum captain, with black hair. 

Before he could question Symphony, Captain Magenta appeared at his side, a smug smile on his face.

“Glad you could make it, Adam.  Karen and I were hoping you would; somehow the wedding wouldn’t have been perfect without you.”

“Wedding?”  Blue turned and stared at Symphony Angel in perturbation.  

She glanced anxiously at Magenta and moved slightly closer to him before answering. 

“Surely you remember, Captain Blue?  When I came to see you in Sick Bay we talked about it.  You said that… you completely understood.  You realised I couldn’t marry a man who was … well – your injuries and everything that means… It just wasn’t going to be … I mean… I couldn’t.  And Patrick… well, we’d always been … such friends.  And it’s all for the best, isn’t it?”

Blue stared in confusion as she continued to ramble:

“I really am so glad to see you back on your feet.  You must be getting used to the prosthetic at last?  By the way, Fawn brought your wheelchair, in case you needed it.  Please don’t think you have to stand… sit down, if you need to.”

Hesitantly, Blue looked down at his legs.  The left leg ended in the expected blue leather boot, but the right terminated at the knee in a single carbon-fibre blade. 

He stared in total shock. 

This can’t be right!  I can feel my toes – I can feel my foot!

Such was his surprise that he lost his balance and slumped against Symphony, who backed away in alarm.

Scarlet rushed in to steady him and Magenta went to Symphony’s side, drawing her into his arms to comfort her.  Scarlet beckoned to someone in the distance and a medical orderly hurried forward with a wheelchair.  Scarlet steered Blue into it and patted his shoulder reassuringly.

“My fault, Blue-boy; I guess you’re still getting used to the blade, eh?  You can’t rush these things. I should’ve realised you were barely awake and not hurried you so.  Only, Pat and Karen are leaving Cloudbase in about a quarter of an hour – for their honeymoon – and I just didn’t want you to miss the festivities.”

“Take me back,” Blue said harshly.  “Wherever it was, take me back there – now.”

“Adam, come on.  Don’t take on so – you’re making an exhibition of yourself.  Everyone agrees that Symphony couldn’t marry you now.  Besides, she and Pat… well, you know – you must’ve known?   Everyone knew.”

Blue’s expression was bleak. “I thought she loved me.” 

“Oh, come on,” Scarlet said, rolling his eyes.  “Would anyone make such a song and dance about a real affair?”  His smile faded as he stared at his friend’s heart-broken face.  “No kidding: you really thought she loved you?” 

He gave a deep sigh of wry sympathy.  “I thought you were more clued in than that, Adam.  Karen’s got expensive tastes and even Pat, with all the millions he’s got salted away, would’ve been hard-pressed to keep her in the style she expected, if you hadn’t met most of the bills.”

 “Take me back,” Blue insisted. 

“No way!” 

“Yes, way.”

Scarlet sighed and rolled his eyes.  “Okay, have it your way, but I’m staying at the party; I reckon I’m on a promise with Destiny tonight.”  Scarlet winked lasciviously.  “I’ll get the orderly to wheel you back to your new quarters.”

The orderly fussed about the room, insisting he wanted to make Captain Blue comfortable.  Eventually, Blue’s overwrought temper snapped and he roared at him to get out.  Startled, the man fled. 

Alone, Blue sat in the wheelchair and tried to come to terms with his new-found reality.  He forced his bruised mind to search his memory for the events that had left him here: a shattered man in more ways than one.

The Mysteron threat to the life of an international industrialist would have led to the collapse of a major power supply corporation, putting the safety and comfort of many millions of people at risk, and, as such, it was a legitimate mission for Spectrum’s finest officers:  Captains Scarlet and Blue. So, Colonel White had sent them to fetch the man and escort him to a Maximum Security Building, while Captains Ochre, Magenta and Grey set about foiling the threatened attack.

The man had been a jerk – a frightened jerk, but a jerk, nonetheless.  Bewailing his misfortune while insisting on having his own way, he was uncooperative from the start.  Scarlet had quickly lost patience and left Blue to deal with him.  It had taken several hours to convince the man to come with them and leave behind his personal entourage.  By then, the weather was closing in and it was growing dark.  

Even so, Blue had not been convinced that the plane crash wasn’t engineered by the Mysterons. 

They’d all survived, but the plane was a write-off and they were out in the wilds – somewhere – way off track.  The industrialist had become hysterical and it had taken both of them to calm the man down. They’d only succeeded because Scarlet had finally had enough and laid the man out with a right-hook – and nobody argues with a punch like that.

They’d gathered what they could carry and set out in what they hoped was the general direction of civilisation. 

Then the blizzard had hit. 

They’d constructed a shelter against a bare rock face and huddled in it for - two days?  Three?  Too long, anyway.  By the end they could both have cheerfully throttled their unwilling companion, who blamed everything on Spectrum, and them specifically. 

Eventually, the wind dropped slightly and it was then Scarlet had made the decision that they had to start walking again: cowering against the rock face meant that anybody searching for them would never see them.   So they climbed: gaining height gave them greater visibility and if they saw a rescue plane, they stood a better chance of attracting its attention.  

It was hard going and the civilian was not in good physical shape, so progress was slow.  The rations – never generous – had dwindled to a few mouthfuls a day and Blue was aware that the cold was beginning to affect their judgement. 

He was not surprised when the industrialist collapsed. Physically unable to go further, he was already suffering from frostbite and becoming delirious.   They carried him as best they could, trudging through the deep snow, weighed down by the inert body. 

Blue shuddered at the memory, recalling how, when it was his turn to carry their companion, the weight had broken the snow cover of a deep crevice.  The industrialist, who had been thrown ahead into the snow, escaped injury, but Blue’s foot had become wedged.  It had taken Scarlet some time to get him free and in doing so, Blue had broken his ankle – although they didn’t know that at the time. 

They did realise that this was the end of his march.  Scarlet got him into the best shelter the locality afforded, left him his uniform tunic and more than his share of the remaining provisions.  Promising to get help and be back soon, Scarlet had trudged off into the snow with the industrialist across his shoulders.  

The miracle was that he had found help.   Blue wasn’t sure how or when because his next clear memory was of Cloudbase’s Sick Bay and the concerned face of Doctor Fawn peering down at him. 

Hooked up to saline drips and intravenous painkillers, his memories of the time he spent in Sick Bay were patchy and confused.  He recalled seeing people’s faces, all of them reassuring and sympathetic.  Scarlet had been a frequent visitor and he was sure that his friend had talked for hours to him, but he had no recollection of what the conversations were about.   The drugs had dulled his mind and even his prodigious memory struggled to make sense of the jumble of half-remembered events. 

For the first time he realised that Symphony had not been one of the frequent visitors.  As far as it had impacted on him at the time, he’d assumed she was too upset at seeing him in the hospital, trussed up like a chicken, to spend time with him.    

A wave of anger, generated by his misery, flooded his mind. 

How could I have misread the situation so completely?  When did she and Pat become… intimates?  How could she lead me on so?  How could I be led on, like a total jackass?

He blinked away the scalding tears that threatened to overwhelm him and stared down at his feet. 

He knew that amputees often reported still feeling the missing limb and even now – well aware that he had lost his leg – he could swear he was wiggling his invisible toes and that there was an irritating itch on his heel. 

He surrendered to the misery and let the tears flow.

This was the end: he couldn’t be a field agent any longer, and he had no wish to be incarcerated behind a desk, so he’d have to quit Spectrum.   Money wasn’t a problem, but how to fill his days was: the prospect of working for his father was one he’d spent his adult life avoiding, but without a job to keep him occupied the days would be endless.  He wouldn’t even be able to do the sports he enjoyed. 

And he was alone – even Scarlet was distancing himself – so totally alone.  Again.

“You have never been alone, Adam.”

The much-loved and greatly missed voice was an echo from his memory.   He swivelled the wheelchair in its direction.  The far corner by the bed was dark and yet he could swear there was someone there.

I have always been with you.”

“Soraya?”

“Who else?”  She moved from the gloom into the pool of light created by the bedside lamp. 

“You’re a Mysteron!” Blue wailed in anguish – just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse…

She shook her dark head.  “No I’m not.  You’re forgetting: it’s Halloween, the one time when the spirits of the dead can manifest themselves to the living.”

“You’re a ghost?”

She approached him slowly and reached out a slender hand to touch his cheek.  Her fingers were cool, but felt solid to him – at least as solid as his invisible right leg…

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, her dark eyes widening in pleasure at the warmth of his skin.  “I just knew you needed me and so I came.”

“You said you’d always been here,” he reminded her, a little sulkily.

“I have.  I am.  But you don’t always need me and you can’t normally see me.  It’s just your need and the ability for me to become visible have coincided.  So, here I am.”

“And you’ll disappear again when the sun rises, I guess? Leaving me all alone again,” he said resentfully.

“I really don’t know,” Soraya replied.  “You needed me and I love you, so I came.  I’m not even sure I know how to go away; unless you send me away, of course.”

“I’d never send you away – I never wanted to lose you – you know that!”

She smiled.  “I know.” She moved away to look around the room.  “These aren’t your usual quarters, are they?”

Blue shook his head.  “They just put me in here.  I guess they must’ve been adapted for my… disability.”

With a graceful movement, Soraya was suddenly crouched at his feet, her hand on his bad knee and her eyes awash with sympathy. 

“You mustn’t think your life is over,” she urged.  “You have so much to give.”

“And if I don’t want to give any more?” he muttered angrily. “I’ve spent my life ‘giving’ and what have I to show for it?  A ruined body that condemns me to a wheelchair for the rest of my life; the reassurance that the woman I loved, and who I thought loved me, never did – in proof of which, she prefers to hitch herself to an ex-gangster with a swollen bank balance and the requisite number of feet.”

“I suppose you have a right to be bitter.”

“Yes; yes I do.  Since I lost you, Suri, nothing’s gone right for me.  I thought Karen might be the change of all that.  I thought she loved me as much as I loved her.”

“More than you loved me?”

The question was innocent enough, but Blue was cautious in his response. 

“Differently – you’re not the same sort of woman.  And you were my first love, Suri.”

“So you said.  I never believed you though – you were far too skilled in making love to be a novice, Adam.”

“I never claimed to be a novice…” He sighed and complained, “I obviously wasn’t ‘skilled’ enough to satisfy Karen.  She prefers Patrick to me!”

“I expect she will come to regret that decision,” Soraya said absently.  She had settled herself on the carpet, with her head resting against his injured leg. 

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t – I just expect it.  But then, he reminds me a little of Toby… so perhaps I’m being unfair to him?”

“That jerk.”  Blue never liked any mention of Soraya’s ex-husband. 

“I hope, for her sake, I am wrong.”

“I kinda hope you’re right,” he responded viciously.

Soraya chuckled.  “There speaks your father’s son… You Svensons hold grudges without any equal.”

“She made a fool outta me!”

“No; you made a fool out of yourself.  Admit it, you were happy to be her slave – for as long as she convinced you she was your slave.”  She looked up at him and shrugged.  “That’s no basis for a lasting relationship, Adam.”

“And did you fake it too, Suri?”

She shook her head.  “You arrived in my life like a real knight in shining armour.  You told me I was your girl, and I believed you.  Maybe it wouldn’t have stood the test of real time - who knows? - but while my life lasted I loved you to distraction and I’ve never changed.  Be content, Adam; nothing is more rewarding than knowing you were truly loved.”

Blue took her hand and held it between his.  Her flesh was clammy, but the touch was comforting.   Time passed in companionable silence: minutes? Hours?  He wasn’t aware of anything but the soothing presence of the first woman he had really loved and for whose death he had long carried a harrowing guilt. 

“Will you stay with me, Soraya?  Will you leave Cloudbase, leave Spectrum, with me when I go?”

“If I am permitted to.”

Permitted?  By whom?”

Soraya shrugged, gently withdrew her hand and got to her feet. 

“I don’t know.  The Powers That Be?  I am here and happy to be here.  I would be happy to stay here, if that meant I could to stay with you, but I have no say in the matter.”

“These ‘Powers’ can still separate us?”

“Unless you come with me – yes.”

“Come with you?  Where?”

Her smile was serene and unfathomable, but she did not answer.  Instead she walked away from him towards the door, then turned and held out her hand.

“Come with me, Adam.  Let’s investigate ‘Forever’ together…”

“Can we?”

“There is no one who can stop us.  Together we are invincible.”

“Soraya?”

“Come with me… don’t be afraid… come…”

Blue struggled to his feet and took a few halting steps towards her.  Their fingers made contact and Soraya’s smile widened in delight. 

“My love…”

“Soraya…”

He surrendered to the embrace of the unknown and in his happiness did not see the sudden green glint in her dark eyes as she welcomed him.

The medicopter hovered above the snow-bound plateau while Captain Scarlet and Doctor Fawn descended using hoverpacks.   The wind had dropped from the gale force it had been, but it still buffeted them, making a landing close to the rock face too hazardous to be attempted by the craft. 

Once the officers were safely down and the packs had been discarded, Scarlet led the way.

“Hurry, Doc!  It’s this way!”

Fawn stumbled after him as fast as he could go. 

They found the deserted bivouac against the rock face soon enough. 

“Where can he have gone?” Scarlet gasped.  He turned and bellowed at the top of his voice:

“BLUE! Where are you?  ADAM!”

The only response was the eerie moaning of the wind.

Scarlet began to scan the ground and quickly found the shuffling footprints leading away from the rock out into the open expanse of snow.  He followed them, with Fawn in close attendance. 

Blue’s body was about a quarter of a mile from the bivouac, face-down and partially covered by wind-blown snow.  One hand was stretched out as if reaching eagerly for something.  Scarlet bent to examine him, but there could be no doubt that Captain Blue was dead. 

Fawn knelt beside him and gently turned the body over. 

The expression on Captain Blue’s face was one of overwhelming joy.

Captain Black nodded a welcome to the newcomers and gestured for them to sit down. 

“I’ll make some coffee,” the woman said, rather than taking a seat.

“You can, but he won’t need to drink it,” Black reminded her.

Captain Blue glanced up from contemplating his two blue-leather shod feet and shrugged. 

“Old habits die hard, Con.   I can’t think straight without a cup of coffee in my hands.   No milk or sugar in mine; thanks, Soraya…”

 

 

Authors Notes:

My thanks to Hazel Köhler for beta-reading this story. Any mistakes still in the text are mine.  I should know by now not to tamper with the text once Hazel has completed her read-through and, with her impeccable grammar, put me to rights, but the urge to edit is too strong!   

The idea for the story arose from an online conversation about the nature of inspiration with Skybase Girl, so I offer my thanks to her for the many, varied and always interesting discussions we’ve had over the years.  

Thanks are also due to Chris Bishop for accepting the story for the websites Halloween Challenge, and for the presentation of it online.   It allows me to say that - so far - I have had a Halloween story posted for every year of the Challenge. 

Final thanks go to the creative teams of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who, 50 years ago, introduced a generation of children to a brave new world of heroes and aliens.  It is a world that still fascinates me.

Hope you enjoyed the story.  Happy Halloween!

Marion Woods

September 2017

 

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