Harmony Angel was used to taking the most tours of duty over the Christmas holiday period and she really didn’t mind. Much.
It was just that she had been doing it willingly for several years and now she realised her colleagues just assumed she would be as willing and happy as ever to carry on doing it. Oh, they were grateful; she knew that, but sometimes it was nice when people just said they were grateful.
Besides, she had also spent several of her off-duty periods contriving ornate wrappings for the presents everyone had bought for their friends and loved ones and, while she didn’t mind doing that either, she couldn’t avoid registering the fact that the ‘help’ they all tried to give her made the task take twice as long as it needed.
She sighed and looked out across the vast expanse of the starry night sky.
Harmony always enjoyed night duty in Angel One. She’d made a study of the constellations and kept a check on the planetary orbits, so that she could identify most of them without any difficulty. Tonight, the slim crescent moon made it easier to see even the less brilliant ones, and she had already counted four shooting stars.
Yet, despite the pleasure she found in star gazing, she couldn’t help but turn her gaze wistfully towards the deck below her and back up the control tower high above the vast runways of Cloudbase. There were lights on all across the base, and she knew that below her in the Amber Room, the ‘traditional’ Christmas Eve party would be in full swing.
Whilst she’d been on Standby Duty as Angel Two, she’d watched as Melody (Angel Three) and Symphony decorated the small, sweet-smelling pine tree, shipped by Rhapsody’s parents to Cloudbase every year. It had been hard to hide her dismay at seeing them pile on flashing lights, gaudy baubles and garish tinsel until there was barely a speck of green visible. She thought it was a shame, but said nothing, as she didn’t feel she had any right to. When they’d started piling the presents around the base with much laughter and some fairly ribald suggestions about what each one might contain, she had taken the opportunity to visit the rest room. It wasn’t that she considered herself a prude, just that somehow, she couldn’t feel part of this girlish cabal.
Harmony understood that Western Christmases were very different from those she’d grown up with in Tokyo. There, the celebrations were more low-key and although there were Christmas lights to be enjoyed, the event was more of a romantic occasion than the quasi-religious one her friends indulged in. She fondly recalled a walk along the main shopping streets to view the Christmas lights with the handsome young man she’d met at university, followed by a romantic meal in a restaurant. That had been the year before she decided to dedicate her life to flying, and helping her father run his air taxi business, but, sadly, he was not prepared to play second-fiddle to airplanes and so their relationship had ended on rather a sour note.
She knew that some of her friends took the religious side of Christmas seriously. Destiny went to Mass regularly throughout Advent and at Christmas – duty permitting – and quite often Captain Magenta went with her; although Harmony wasn’t sure if that was from religious conviction or just to be with Destiny. He was very fond of her, after all; almost as fond of her as he was of Symphony.
For the others, Christmas was a welcome time to let their hair down and relax. Colonel White often turned a blind eye to even the most juvenile of the pranks and games they got up to, unless he thought they had gone too far when a sharp word would bring his boisterous officers back into line.
Cloudbase’s celebrations tended to start on December 17th with a party for Captain Scarlet’s birthday. There were several birthdays around this time, most of them coming in the New Year, so the season ended with a second ‘birthday’ party on Twelfth Night for Symphony, Melody and Lieutenant Green. Because the New Year was more of a celebration for the Japanese, Harmony was never asked to provide cover in Angel One for that party. It even amused her that unwittingly her friends’ choice of food generally coincided with the now traditional New Year meal in Japan: fried chicken and a ‘birthday’ cake piled with strawberries and whipped cream.
She glanced at the chronometer.
Another two hours before her stint ended; still, she knew she could rely on Melody to relieve her on time. In fact, she knew her well, as she was trying to teach her Japanese, and Melody was a diligent pupil, with a good ear for pitch and cadence, and an aptitude for languages Harmony thought she did not exploit enough.
Of all the Angels, Harmony was probably closest to Melody and thought of her as a good friend, so that she couldn’t help taking her side in the occasional bust-ups between Melody and Symphony, who were far too alike in many ways to rub along together without friction. Besides, Harmony privately thought Symphony was a spoilt brat, at times.
The tallest, most athletic of the Angels, Symphony wore her heart on her sleeve, and frequently disengaged her brain to follow her all-too-often fallible instincts. Her roller-coaster emotional life revolved around Captain Blue, who Harmony considered to have the patience of a saint, as well as something of a martyr complex. Nevertheless, Symphony was intelligent, courageous and resourceful when she was at her best, and Harmony knew she could implicitly trust Symphony to have her back, should the occasion ever arise.
Of course, if they were all obeying the regulations they signed up for, none of the officers, or the Angels, would be emotionally involved with anybody in Spectrum. Watching the complex interplay of relationships between her friends and colleagues from the side-lines, Harmony often considered that it must’ve been wishful thinking on the part of the Colonel to write that regulation, because if the elite agents weren’t destined to find their lifelong soul mates in Spectrum, it was still highly improbable that they’d be able to resist the lure of a little on-base romance. Given that there were about 600 people on Cloudbase at any one time, and even if the rumour about Doctor Fawn adding bromide to the drinking water was true, there was simply too much testosterone in the air to prevent relationships forming.
For herself, Harmony liked all of the captains, and they all treated her with great respect. She treasured the memory of the first time they had been training together and Captain Black, who had been a senior officer at the time, had ordered her to fight with Captain Scarlet. Scarlet, a professional soldier trained in unarmed combat and a foot taller than her, had been reluctant to obey and his approach had been almost apologetic. The look of surprise on his face when she’d thrown him to the mat was priceless. Scrambling to his feet, he’d approached her warily, only to find himself flat on his back again in no time at all.
The ripple of nervous laughter from the witnesses to this encounter had annoyed Scarlet, whose third approach was business-like and determined. It had been much harder to throw him that time, but she’d done it. Bowing politely towards her red-faced and angry opponent, she had calmly mentioned that she was a Fourth Dan black belt in Judo, in the hope of salving his wounded pride.
Scarlet’s temper had evaporated immediately and he had laughed, turning to Black to say, “You knew that, didn’t you? And you let me walk right into it.”
Black had raised a sardonic eyebrow and replied, “Never underestimate your opponent, Scarlet, however innocuous they seem.”
Grinning, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement, Scarlet had given her a very low bow.
“Harmony Angel, I surrender. You win.”
That was probably the moment she had fallen in love.
Things hadn’t gone so well after that, with Captain Scarlet’s murder and retrometabolisation by the Mysterons. All of the Angels had been shocked and upset by the events at the London Car-Vu, when Blue and Scarlet had battled for the life of the World President. Blue had saved the day and been awarded the Valour Star for his efforts by a grateful WP, yet it was Captain Scarlet, now free of Mysteron control, who routinely risked – and often gave – his life to save the World from the Mysterons.
Of course, Harmony could never tell him of how she felt. She knew that he suffered with every injury and had to hide her anxiety at seeing his lifeless body brought back to Cloudbase, uncertain that this time he would recover his life and health. What added a stab of pain to her heart was that when everyone comforted Rhapsody, Scarlet’s fiancée, she had to do the same, even when she felt like doing nothing but weeping.
Melody had once asked her if she had ‘a partner’ on Cloudbase, someone she felt drawn to and could confide in, which had made her worry that her secret love was no longer a secret; but it turned out that Melody was simply making an opening for herself to confess her secret feelings for someone else. Harmony listened, kindly and sympathetically, knowing that it was the least she could do for someone who was in as much of a quandary as she herself, only, thankfully, not over Captain Scarlet.
Ironically, it was after that conversation that she became a sort of Mother Confessor to the Angel squadron, and would find herself listening to the ins-and-outs of their love affairs and squabbles whenever she was on stand-by duty with another of the squad, and nobody else was in the Amber Room.
Harmony sometimes wished she had someone to listen to her griefs, but she had too much respect and affection for Rhapsody to ever take the risk that she might find out about her feelings for Scarlet. It was better to keep her friendship with both Scarlet and Rhapsody, and enjoy the few times she had his company to herself.
She glanced at the chronometer. Just another ten minutes and she would be relieved. She wriggled in the seat and stretched her shoulders, anticipating a hot shower and sleeping in her quarters rather than the Room of Sleep.
“Control to Angel One: Immediate Launch!”
“S.I.G.,” Harmony replied, already firing up the engine.
“Proceed at speed ultimate to the co-ordinates transmitted to your onboard navigation computer. Further instruction to follow.”
“S.I.G.,” she replied, glancing across at Cloudbase as she banked to readjust her flight path.
Angels Two and Three were manned and ready to launch.
“Merry Christmas, Captain Scarlet,” she whispered, as she pushed everything except the mission to the back of her mind. “Only, please, just you be careful, okay?”
Author’s notes:
My thanks to Hazel Kohler for beta reading this short story. It developed out of a picture I saw in one of the 1990s comics of Captain Scarlet & Harmony Angel on a mission together. As Harmony is one of the characters who doesn’t get much exposure in fanfiction, I thought I’d try and make a story out of it.
Thanks also to Chris Bishop for her indefatigable work in bringing us the best website around! Where would we be without you, Chris?
I hope you enjoyed the story, and that everyone had a pleasant Christmas and has a healthy and happy 2022.
Marion Woods
12 January 2022