Disclaimer: I do not in any way own Captain Scarlet; that honour goes to the wonderful Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. I only own the plot of this story and Lieutenant Onyx. Special thanks go to Chris Bishop for beta-reading this and ironing out any mistakes and to my friend who drew the amazing cover image for me
"The combination can be as long as you want it to be," Lieutenant Green told Lieutenant Onyx as he fiddled with the control pad outside her new quarters. "It can be the classic four digits or a more advanced code, but you do, of course, need to be able to remember it." He tinkered with it for another couple of seconds before motioning Onyx forwards to enter her code. The new lieutenant swiftly entered a combination of numbers and pressed the button that Green had indicated. The code pad beeped and a green light flashed as the doors slid open.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Green," Onyx smiled.
"My pleasure, Lieutenant Onyx." Green returned the smile. "I'd best be getting back to the Control Tower now: Colonel White wants me to do a maintenance check to make sure everything on Cloudbase is operating at maximum efficiency and that there aren't any faults anywhere. I guess I'll see you at dinner then?"
"See you at dinner." Onyx waved goodbye to him before entering her quarters and pressing the button to close the door behind her.
Stretching slightly, she sat down on one of the armchairs and pulled her new Spectrum ID card out of her pocket. She flicked through it absently before putting it down on the table in front of her. Getting up again, she walked over to the bookcase which stood by the porthole on the left of the room. Her fingers ran lightly over the spines of the books she had stacked on the shelves before selecting one. She walked back over to the armchair, sat down and flicked to a page. Her eyes travelled down the page before flicking up at the sound of a knock on the door.
"Lieutenant Onyx?" a voice called from the other side. "It's Captain Blue. May I come in?"
"Yes, Captain," Onyx responded.
She rose up from her chair in order to press the button to let him in. As she did so, the sharp corner of one of the pages pierced the skin of her index finger, leaving a small cut. Onyx blinked down at it in surprise and watched as the split skin joined back together and the small line where the cut had been disappeared almost instantaneously. This had always happened to any injury, minor or more severe, she had managed to obtain over the years. During her check up with Doctor Fawn, she had inquired as to why this happened and why so quickly.
"From what we know of the Mysterons," he had replied, "their powers of retrometabolism take different amounts of time to work on their reconstructions, depending on the severity of the injury. For example, a fatal wound means that they need several hours to recover from it, as it is the case for Captain Scarlet, whereas a cut may only take a few minutes to heal. However, although human, you are an actual Mysteron so it would be assumed that your powers of recovery can surpass those of a reconstruction's and therefore, any injury you receive might heal in a much faster time. In fact, even if you were shot at point blank range, I doubt that the bullet would have time to do any damage whatsoever before your retrometabolism healed the wound."
"Lieutenant?" Captain Blue's voice jerked Onyx out of her thoughts and she hurried to the door to let him in.
"Sorry Captain," she apologised as he stepped into her room. "Just experienced a slight… head rush from standing up too quickly."
"No need to apologise, Lieutenant," Blue smiled. "It happens to everyone occasionally. I just stopped by to check how you were doing, what with this being your first day and all."
"Cloudbase is certainly very different from Koala Base," Onyx replied softly as they sat down. "There's a lot to take in."
"I can assure you that we all felt the same when we first arrived here," Blue grinned. "I remember Captain Ochre muttering that he must have inhaled a bunch of narcotics in a drug raid and was hallucinating."
Onyx's lips curved up into a smile. "Captain Blue," she began tentatively, "could I ask a question?"
"Of course, Lieutenant," he replied jovially. "Ask away."
"Well…" Onyx bit her lip. "In training, we were told very little about the Mysterons, just that they're from Mars and have the power of retrometabolism, among other abilities, so I was just wondering… what are the full extents of the Mysterons' powers?"
"Well…" Captain Blue knitted his fingers together and thought for a moment. "The only powers we definitely know the Mysterons have are those they've revealed to us. They keep telling us that they have 'powers we cannot hope to understand', so it can only be assumed that they have more. We just don't know what they are yet."
"And those they have revealed?" Onyx inquired. "What are they?"
"Obviously there's their retrometabolism which they can use on people and objects," Blue answered. "But over the past five years, we've learned that their weakness is high voltage electricity and they can be detected by X-rays. They also possess the power of teleportation and, if some of our theories about Captain Black are correct, mind control. There is also a possibility that they can manipulate the weather. Additionally, they can turn their reconstructions into walking bombs, which is what happened to Captain Brown and Major Brooks from S.H.E.F., and can control objects which they haven't even retrometabolised. On one occasion, a Mysteron reconstruction was able to mimic Captain Scarlet's voice precisely and on another, the Mysterons were able to actually change the molecular structure of a piece of metal in order to affect the machinery it was part of. Does that answer your question?"
"Thank you, Captain Blue. Yes, it does," Onyx smiled gratefully.
Blue grinned back. "Glad I could help, Lieutenant." He checked his watch and got up out of his chair. "Well, I'd better be getting back. I promised I'd meet Symphon- er, I mean, Colonel White has asked me to look over some reports."
"Of course." Onyx smiled. She got up and opened the door for him. "Thank you again, Captain."
"Not a problem, Lieutenant." Blue waved as he set off down the corridor towards the escalator that would take him up to the Control Tower.
Once she had shut the door, Onyx whirled around and walked briskly over to the doorway of her bedroom. Bending down and reaching in, she pulled out her suitcase and flipped the top open. Her fingers ran over the inside until they found the zipper of the secret compartment. Opening it, she pulled out the small object that was wrapped up in tissue paper and set it on the floor. She took a screwdriver and some tongs from her suitcase, before closing the lid.
She picked up the object and walked back to the armchair she had been sitting it. Putting the object, the tongs and the screwdriver down on the table, she carefully unwound the tissue paper, revealing a toy car and a small bent screw next to it.
The car had been a gift from her grandmother, the only member of her family she cared for, when she was seven. What made this car special was that it had tiny thrusters in its base which allowed it to hover two inches off the ground when they were engaged. Onyx had loved it, but her brother had gotten jealous and had kicked it across the room, just a week after she had received it, which damaged the thrusters. Since they hadn't been completely destroyed, Onyx had been unable to use her powers of retrometabolism to repair them and so her gift was broken. A few years later, she had taken it apart and found that the problem was that a screw had become bent when her brother had kicked it, which prevented the tiny propellers in the thrusters from turning and so stopped the thrusters from working properly. She had had no idea how to fix it. Now though, she had an idea of how to. She picked up the screw.
"The Mysterons were able to change the structure of that piece of metal in the machinery Captain Blue said," Onyx muttered to herself. "Now how exactly did they do that?" Her eyes squinted, as she scrutinised the screw, and then began to glow. Slowly, the screw began to straighten out, until it was as good as new. Onyx set it down, satisfied with her work. Popping open the bottom of her car, she carefully slotted the screw back into its rightful place, using the tongs and the screwdriver, before replacing the base.
"Here goes nothing," she murmured and pressed the switch to engage the thrusters. A low hum was heard before the car began to rise. A slow smile spread across Onyx's face.
"I think that this is going to work out after all."
Over the next month, Lieutenant Onyx gradually began to come out of her shell. She began to engage in and initiate conversations with the other officers on board and the Angels pilots, she didn't seem as unsure about spending time in the officers' lounge as she had been before and she had even begun to take judo lessons from Harmony Angel.
As the lieutenant walked down the corridor towards the officers' lounge, shuffling some of the reports that Colonel White had given her to look over, she heard her name being called from behind her. Turning, she saw Captain Scarlet walking towards her.
"Hello, Captain," she greeted. "Can I help you?"
"You've got reports to look over too?" Scarlet inclined his head towards the small pile in Onyx's arms. She smiled wryly and nodded. "It's such a pain," Scarlet grumbled, shifting the files in his own arms slightly. "Even though the paperwork's a necessity. Give me thwarting the Mysterons any day."
"They haven't been very active recently, have they?" Onyx responded as they began walking towards the officers' lounge.
Scarlet frowned slightly. "No, they haven't, and I have to admit, Lieutenant, that it has me worried. We know that they're planning something but we never know what until they announce it."
"Could their lack of activity mean that they're planning something big?" Onyx suggested, as they reached the door of the officers' lounge.
"Possibly," Scarlet replied, entering and holding the door open for her. "One never really knows with the Mysterons. They like keeping us in the dark up until their announcement and even then, it doesn't always reveal everything about their plan. Usually, they'll just tell us who or what they're going to try and destroy, and sometimes, we'll get a time period, but never how they're going to attempt to do it."
"Getting a bit edgy, Paul?" Captain Magenta's voice floated towards them. Scarlet and Onyx turned to see Magenta standing by the window and Captain Ochre was fiddling with a model on the table he was sitting at.
"Don't tell me you're not concerned about the Mysterons keeping quiet, Pat," Scarlet grumbled as he and Onyx set their reports down on the nearest table.
"I never said that," Magenta protested. "All I said was that you were getting edgy."
Onyx rolled her eyes at their bickering and wandered over to the coffee machine in order to get herself a drink.
"Don't touch that!" Ochre shrieked suddenly, throwing himself across the room to place his body in between Onyx and the machine.
The lieutenant's eyes widened in confusion, her finger suspended as if to press the button to distribute a drink.
"Um…" she glanced around the officers' lounge, hoping that someone would explain why Ochre was behaving like this.
"Honestly, Rick," Magenta sighed. "You're so melodramatic. Tasting Captain Blue's coffee isn't going to kill the lieutenant."
"It near enough will," Ochre snapped back. "Have you ever tried that stuff, Pat?"
"Once," Magenta conceded, barely concealing his shudder. "Never again."
"I rest my case." Ochre smirked. "Take it from me, Lieutenant," he wrapped his arm around Onyx's shoulders and led her away from the coffee machine. "When Captain Blue has made the batch of coffee for the machine, only drink it if you have no sense of taste whatsoever."
"I have tried to teach him how to make a decent coffee." Scarlet shook his head in despair. "Honestly, I've tried."
"From the sound of things, I take it that hasn't worked?" Onyx inquired dryly.
Ochre chortled and opened his mouth to respond before Cloudbase's speakers crackled into life. The voice that sounded, however, was not that of Colonel White:
"This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know that you can hear us, Earthmen. We intend to deal you yet another crushing blow. Our next act of retaliation will be to assassinate the Chancellor of Europe, Suzanne Vögel. We have not forgotten."