Control Room - Cloudbase

Colonel White frowned as he read the report in front of him for a second time. For months now Spectrum Intelligence had been sending alarming signals regarding a possible Mysteron plot against the summit currently taking place between the World President, the Triumvirate of Europe and the new Director General of the United Asian Republic. All appropriate precautions had been taken, Spectrum had taken over responsibility for security at the summit, which had itself been moved to a Spectrum maximum security facility in central Germany, additional armed guards had been deployed and Captains Scarlet, Blue, Grey and Ochre had been assigned to oversee the operation.

And yet, as the conference now proceeded, 100,000 feet below, there had been... nothing. No hint of anything amiss - and perhaps more significantly the radio frequency from which the Mysterons issued their characteristic taunts and cryptic challenges to the 'Earthmen' remained silent. The Colonel glanced up and noted that Lieutenant Green appeared visibly nervous, the tension wracking his mind clearly written in his posture and over his face.

"It is conceivable Lieutenant" said the Colonel with the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice "that our haste to do our duty has in this instance made us overzealous. The summit is all but complete and the Mysterons have so far failed to make an appearance."

The Lieutenant nodded "it would appear that way Colonel, but after the things we have seen them do, the powers we know they have, I wonder if we might not be overlooking something, or someone. Perhaps if..."

Colonel White held up a hand to silence his tense subordinate "Lieutenant Green, you know as well as I do what sort of war the Mysterons are fighting, you know their methods, you know their primary objective is to instil confusion, fear and hopelessness. These are feelings which you cannot allow to take hold in yourself. We have taken every possible precaution. Perhaps they will come, perhaps not, but we stand ready come what may."

"Yes Colonel."

Lieutenant Green had perhaps intended to say something more but in that instant a blinding white flash filled the control room, blinding Lieutenant and Colonel alike. A great shudder ran down the length of Cloudbase like nothing any of the roughly 600 strong crew had felt before. Several alarms sounded at once so that the Colonel's barked demand for a full report was barely audible.

As his sight began to return to him the Lieutenant fell back on his extensive training and began the standard procedure for what he could only assume was some sort of major incident aboard Cloudbase.

"All external pressure locks sealed Colonel, horizontal and vertical jets operating as normal. We are holding at 98,00 feet. Reports coming in from senior staff, no visible damage or sign of central computer malfunction. Dr Fawn reports no casualties as of yet."

Colonel White's mind was being pulled in 1,000 different directions but it would take a lot more than turbulence and a flash bang to unnerve or even unduly worry the man who was reckoned by those who took an interest in these things to be amongst the finest military leaders and security officers of his generation.

"Lieutenant Green, launch all Angels immediately. They are to make a visual inspection of Cloudbase for external damage and then enter a holding pattern as per Operation Home Defence."

"Yes Colonel. All Angels, immediate launch. Angel One, you are to asses Cloudbase for any sign of damage and then join Angels Two and Three in a standard pattern as per 'Home Defence'."

The Colonel took a deep breath "put me onto the internal communication circuit Lieutenant" make sure everyone can listen.

"Yes Sir, Sir, I can also report that I am unable to raise Spectrum Headquarters in London or any regional headquarters from around the world on any Spectrum frequencies. We may have suffered some sort of malfunction to our long range radio system"

"Thank you Lieutenant... this is Colonel White to all Cloudbase personnel. As you all will have felt, we have experienced some sort of incident the nature of which is not immediately clear. I can tell you that Cloudbase is undamaged and fully under control, furthermore there are no reports of injury as of this time, something for which I know we will all be extremely grateful. There is no indication of Mysteron involvement as of yet but as a precaution we will remain at red alert until the situation is resolved. I know I can rely on each of you to do your duty to the full. That is all. Out."

It had not been a great speech but the Colonel knew from experience that simply hearing a calm, authoritative tone from the higher ups was extremely valuable in a crisis. He turned to Lieutenant Green who had apparently just finished a radio conversation with someone. His face was an expression of concern the Colonel had never before seen in his young Operations Officer.

"Sir" began the Lieutenant stiffly, something approaching disbelief in his voice "I have to inform you that Commander Ryan reports that his security officers have a number of Spectrum personnel detained at gunpoint in the conference room, there is..."

"WHAT" barked the Colonel, forgetting the dignity of his rank for a second. "How in heaven's name does he justify that? I'll have him guarding a power plant in Peru if he doesn't have a VERY good explanation..."

"If I may Sir, the staff which the Commander has detained are Captains Scarlet, Blue, Grey and Ochre as well as the handful of other Cloudbase personnel who were away from the base at the time this 'incident' took place. All report the same blinding flash of light we experienced here - and all were apparently transported by some unknown force into the conference room at the same instant."

Colonel White did not hesitate for a second "continue to keep them under armed guard until each and every one of them has been tested with the Mysteron detector. This could be a ruse of theirs to sneak a hostile operative aboard."

"Yes Sir, the Commander tells me this has already begun, all tests have been negative so far with the exception of Captain Scarlet, but that is as expected."

"Very good Lieutenant, now I want you to..."

"Excuse me Colonel, there is one more matter I must bring to your attention. The flight team has checked and double checked our current position and can absolutely confirm that we are no longer positioned over Germany. We have, in a way they cannot explain, moved to a position directly over Greater London."

Colonel White couldn't begin to process what this news might mean, London, how had they arrived at this spot and why? London was Spectrum's global headquarters but that didn't seem a likely explanation for an unknown, or possibly Mysteron, force seemingly teleporting Cloudbase around at will to what was obviously a specifically chosen location. In the end he settled for "I assume that's all the surprises you have for now Lieutenant Green?"

Green looked at his superior, a stony look on his face as he pressed a single button on his large console "actually Sir, we have been picking up this radio transmission from down below which you will want to hear..."

"This is BBC News at six o'clock, Monday 20th February 2017. The Prime Minister said in the House of Commons this afternoon that she continues to have full confidence in the Foreign Secretary despite his recent..."

10 Downing Street - London, UK

Theresa May was tired, more than tired, she was drained of the will to do anything besides retreat to her private study and enjoy the quiet, the sanctuary from endless briefings, meetings and speeches. The year had so far been mired in controversy regarding her handling of the Brexit issue and as a result her ambitious domestic agenda was hopelessly bogged down.

There would be no respite today though, a few minutes ago her military attaché had burst into her office and without warning physically taken her by the arm insisting that she must come the Cabinet Office for an emergency briefing at once. The seriousness of the man's tone, and the fact he was willing to manhandle his Prime Minister left May in no doubt that whatever was up was a matter of the utmost importance.

"Is it war?" she managed to ask as they paced down the long corridor towards Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

"Not yet Prime Minister" was all the man offered by way of a reply.

None the wiser the Prime Minister entered and took her seat at the head of the long conference table. The chatter from assorted Admirals, Generals and intelligence officers faded away as she did so.

Without waiting for a prompt and with a look of grave concern on his face Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier stood up and began to speak.

"Prime Minister, you will excuse me for coming straight to the point, some 20 minutes ago we detected an unidentified flying object in British air space, more specifically over central London itself. Now to be clear, this object did not enter our airspace from any particular direction, it just... appeared. On my authority we launched four Typhoons from RAF Coningsby less than five minutes after the object was detected. Their mission was to investigate and report. However, as we expected from our radar reports on this object, our aircraft were not able to climb to sufficient altitude to make an analysis. Our operational ceiling being 65,000 and the object currently sitting at around 95,000. I must emphasise Prime Minister, this object, whatever it is, is approximately 200 metres long is hovering almost 100,000 feet above our current position.

The Prime Minister had always portrayed herself to the public as a calm, unflappable type but now she felt nothing less than physically sick... after some pause she managed a single word "alien?"

"We have strong reason to believe that is not the case Prime Minister." As the Air Chief Marshal spoke the Foreign Secretary burst into the room, red faced, collar and hair askew, breathing heavily.

"Sorry Theresa... came as soon as I heard, just had a quick chin wag with the journos outside on next week's by election. So, what's afoot? Don't tell me our friend Donald has started a war already?"

The Foreign Secretary's jovial manner seemed to evaporate as he took in the ice cold glares of every face in the room.

Regaining some composure the Prime Minister snapped "Sit down Boris or I swear to Christ I'll send you to Northern Ireland here and now. Air Chief Marshal, you were saying that you don't believe this object to be alien, what evidence do you have for that conclusion?"

"Well Prime Minister, our aircraft did intercept some sort of highly encrypted radio signal emanating from the object, it didn't take our friends at GCHQ more than a few minutes to unwrap the recording we sent them. Play it Major."

Silence filled the room as the recording started, at first only static and then "...this is Cloudbase calling Spectrum Headquarters London. I repeat, this is Cloudbase calling Spectrum Headquarters London. Spectrum is RED, we have been impacted by some sort of anomaly and have gone to red alert. Please acknowledge this message."

The Prime Minister said nothing for what seemed like eternity before finally "would someone please tell me what 'Spectrum' is or this, what was it, Cloudbase?"

"That's just it, we have no idea" replied the head of MI6 who had appeared in the room unannounced and unnoticed. "What we can say is that these terms do not refer to anything American or NATO affiliated. My analysts have also ruled out Russian or Chinese capacity being able to develop something of this magnitude. In any case, the voice that this message was sent in is clearly English! Essex if I'm not mistaken."

"So" began the Prime Minister, "if it's not alien and is in fact crewed by human beings, then what exactly is it?"

"That is what we must ascertain as soon as is humanly possible" replied the Air Chief Marshal. "Prime Minister, I must advise you that for now the heavy cloud cover across much of the country and the setting sun are working in our favour in terms of keeping this arrival secret. But in what could be hours, but honestly possibly as little as minutes, some amateur stargazer with his telescope is going to catch a clear view of this object and then the cat is out of the bag for good. This says nothing of other state actors with the same radar capacity we maintain, in fact I would not be surprised if an American satellite is re-positioning as we speak to get up close pictures of whatever is up there. This could all be on CNN within the hour."

The Prime Minister closed her eyes and imagined the next hours, the panic, the hysteria, the diplomatic crisis bound to ensue. "OK, Air Chief Marshal you clearly have a grasp of the situation. I am ordering you to remain here and coordinate our efforts to communicate with our visitors. However you do it, I want it to be as covert as possible. You will state that we have no hostile intent but that as intruders in our sovereign airspace, they must identify themselves immediately. I will return to Number 10 and prepare a statement to the nation to be released as soon as this breaks on the internet. I will expect reports every half hour. Thank you gentleman. And Boris, tuck your shirt in for God's sake, this is an emergency."

With the Prime Minister's words the meeting broke and people stood to leave, as they did so the series of screens at the end of the conference room blinked, flickered and cut to black, emitting a high pitched whine as they did so. Before anyone could react a chilling voice, filled with malice and hostility filled the room:

"This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know that you can hear us earth men. We have arrived in this time by unknown means - but our judgement against you remains unchanged. Mankind has proven itself an enemy to the Mysterons and shall not be allowed to attack us again. Our War of Nerves will continue. Our retaliation for your unprovoked attack on our complex will be slow, but nonetheless effective. It will mean the ultimate destruction of life on earth. Our first act will be to assassinate the Prime Minister. Prime Minister May will die.