Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins (15 page)

The wind roared in Kit Baxter's ears as she unfurled the
gliders in her costume and turned her dive into a soaring flight path high
above downtown. She had elected to take the high ground on their rooftop patrol
knowing that she could easily catch up with the Boss once she was in flight.
But he must have covered an enormous amount of territory in the time it took
her to run up the side of the tower, as it was several minutes before she could
see him from afar, leaping from roof to roof with enormous strides.

She arched her back to increase her speed and quickly closed
the distance between them but maintained her altitude, watching him. With every
leap over the city streets he threw himself into the air with abandon,
manipulating the controls within his gauntlets and using the powerful Static
Shoes to repel himself away from the first rooftop, then draw himself towards
the next. It all appeared effortless to the untrained eye, as though he was
possessed of inhuman strength and agility, but Kit had watched him make this
run often enough to know that something was different tonight. He was pushing
himself harder, challenging
himself
as he only did
when he was trying to work something out. The Flying Squirrel knew him well
enough to know when to hang back and give him space to think, and when he was
ready to think aloud.

He made the long leap over Bloor Street and Bay and hit the
side of the high building at full stride, running up the wall as if it were a
flat plain. Only the occasional sparks from the soles of his feet betrayed the
device that helped to propel him forward. In seconds he reached the roof and
stopped, looking south over downtown with a proprietary air. This she took to
be her cue. She circled around the rooftop several times on the way down,
preserving the energy of her flight in case he changed his mind and bolted, but
when he kept his position she pulled the gliders close to her body and
descended rapidly. At the last moment she dropped her feet and spread the
gliders to increase her drag, firing her own Static Shoes and landing softly
and silently. He did not turn, but he cocked his head slightly, and she knew
that he was aware of her presence.

“Quiet tonight,” she offered.

“Even the criminals are afraid to walk the streets tonight,”
he said grimly. “Just as well. We really don't have time for them.”

“I'm always willing to make time,” she said gamely.

He smiled and looked at her as she moved to stand beside
him. The
city below was as bright and shining a thing as it
was on any night, but the streets were almost empty, devoid of the happy, busy
energy that a summer evening such as this ought to bring. They both knew that
the city could only bear this kind of coiled tension for so long. Before too
much time had passed, it would explode of its own accord and Toronto would tear
itself apart. It was not human nature to live in fear, and in time that could
turn even decent men into animals. Somehow they had to release the city from
this bondage of terror and they knew it.

“So,” she opened, “anything shake loose at the meeting?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing. So little that I'm
beginning to doubt my own theory.”

“But in the absence of anything else…”

He shrugged. “Any port in a storm, I suppose. It is still
the best notion we have to work with, but let's not get so wedded to the idea
that we become blind to other possibilities.”

“Yes, Boss,” she nodded. “I still think you're right about
this being a rich bird.”

“Explain,” he said simply. It sounded like an instruction,
but she knew him well enough to know that he was hoping for a little
encouragement.

“Getting power by taking over companies? Driving their stock
down so he can buy them up? This isn't the crime you come up with if you grew
up in a tar-paper shack,” she said with her arms folded before her. “A poor
super-genius would just want a room full of gold coins that he could swim
around in and say
'
Bwa
-ha-ha'
.
That's what I think, anyway.”

He considered this for a moment and nodded, looking pleased.
“It isn't exactly Sherlock Holmes, but I'll take it,” he said.

“Good,” she said happily. “So what happens now?”

He turned his gaze back out towards the city, the blank eyes
within his mask shining as he scanned the horizon. “He's out there somewhere,
Squirrel,” he said. “He's lost his headquarters and his routes below the city.
But
O'Mally
wasn't wrong when he said that those
mechanical men weren't built in that underground complex. Somewhere he's
reorganizing, rebuilding.”

The Flying Squirrel shook her head. “The last time we beat
Captain Clockwork back, he went to ground for so long we'd thought he'd quit
the business, remember?”

He nodded, his brow furrowed. “You're right, Squirrel,” he
said. “But he's invested so much in his dual plans. Do you think he'd be
willing to wait?”

She pursed her lips and tried not to look like she enjoyed
being asked quite as much as she did. “If he does,” she said, “we've got
problems. He might figure out how we smashed his army and make improvements.
Then we've got trouble, don't we?”

He nodded and looked at her, impressed. That hadn't occurred
to him either. “So we need to motivate him to resume his campaign now, perhaps
catch him ill-prepared.”

The pair
were
silent for a moment.
At last he spoke again. “Thus far the papers have been silent on the connection
between the Viper and Captain Clockwork,” he said.

“Sure,” she agreed. “I don't think the Viper has made the
papers at all. All of his crimes were reported as accidents and the killer
robots have kind of monopolized the headlines.”

“Which was rather the point,” the Red Panda agreed.

“Right,” she said, feeling like they were on to something. “So
right or wrong, maybe Clockwork is publicity shy, at least where his master
plan is concerned.”

“Could be,” he nodded. “But if we could find a paper willing
to take a chance on breaking the Viper angle wide open, it might just rattle
his cage.”

“I think we know darn well what paper that is,” she grinned.
“Jack Peters is
gonna
owe us something special for
this story.”

He broke a wide smile back at her. “Jack Peters already owes
us tonight. Didn't you see the evening edition?”

“It's been kind of a long few days,” she said. “I had nap
and took a long bath.”

It was dark out, and she was still wearing her flying
goggles, but she was almost certain that his ears turned the deep crimson of
his mask when she said the word
bath
,
but it didn't seem quite the time to press the point.

“The dailies exhausted the
'August Fenwick is Innocent'
story in the morning edition,” he
said, quickly changing the subject. “They are now quite full of detailed
reports on the war on
Yonge
Street last night.”

“There weren't a lot of witnesses to get details from,” Kit
snorted. “By the time we got there, most of the locals had run for the hills.
We didn't even see a lot of cops, except when the fight got close to the
roadblocks they'd set up.”

“Yes,” the Red Panda smiled, “that's why the evening
Chronicle
is selling so well. Seems Jack
Peters found a number of eyewitnesses who could describe events in great
detail. Particularly where a certain mystery man is concerned.”

She blinked at him and lifted her goggles at last. “Say that
again in my good ear,” she said, offering one of the small ears on top of her
cowl. “Are you saying you took credit for that?”

His reaction suggested that this hadn't really occurred to
him. “I promise you, Squirrel, I had no intention of stealing your thunder. But
by morning every paper in town will have picked up the story, and it will be an
established fact that the Red Panda was battling tin soldiers downtown at the
exact same time that Captain Clockwork knows he had August Fenwick in his
custody.”

“And since he already knows there's
somethin
'
fishy about your
story…,”
she had the thread now.

“It seemed the best way to make sure he didn't put two and
two together,” the Red Panda nodded. “But I am sorry to upstage you. It was
awfully good work on your part, and I'm sorry if I've been too distracted to
say so.”

“It's okay,” she purred. “Jack owes us something special,
and
you
owe
me
.”

He looked down at her, mischief shining in her eyes. He was
certain she was only teasing him and he ought to tell her to behave herself,
but something in him resisted the idea. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

Her eyes grew wide and she stammered slightly at the
response. “I'll make a list and get back to you,” she said. “So where does that
leave us now?”

He looked back over the city. “With what I hope will be a
very lucky guess,” he said.

The evening sun was sinking low, hanging just above the
horizon and casting the day's last light at that impossible angle it only can
in mid-summer. The MacKinnon shipbuilding yards were abuzz with activity as
shift change approached, and the men were milling about, talking excitedly.
Their latest project was due to launch in less than a week, and the atmosphere
always
became
more charged as a ship neared
completion. The mighty lake freighter still lay in her cradle, but soon she
would be loaded with goods and carrying the MacKinnon name and fortune with
her.

High above, hidden within the growing shadows atop a disused
industrial crane, two dark shapes watched the hubbub below keenly.

“You think it'll be now?” the Squirrel asked.

“If it be not now, yet it will come,” the Red Panda said
absent-mindedly, staring intently at a small device with a long antenna in his
hand which
he moved slowly to pan over the crowd of men.

“What?” she asked.

“What?” he replied, suggesting that he hadn't really been
listening to himself either, which happened
sometimes.
“Sorry, Squirrel. I'm a little absorbed in this device.”

“You sure you're using it right?” she asked, leaning over to
see the small lights in the control panel blink in no apparent sequence.

“Not really,” he said, “hence my preoccupation.”

“You still haven't told me what it does,” she grumbled.

“I still haven't entirely established that it does much of
anything,” he smiled, continuing to vary the direction of the antenna.

“Then maybe this isn't the very best time for a field test,”
she offered.

“On the contrary, it strikes me as the only time,” the Red
Panda said, adjusting his position to try and get the device's antenna further
away from the steel of the crane. “Today's
Chronicle
did an admirable job of linking the crimes of Captain Clockwork to this rash of
industrial accidents. Jack got quite a bit of mileage out of two unnamed
sources in the police department, and his promises of more revelations to come
should light a fire under our foe, if anything does.”

“So what makes you so sure that he'll hit the MacKinnon
shipyards?” she asked. “I thought Gilbert MacKinnon was on your list of
suspects.”

“Sadly, that's hardly an exclusive position,” he grimaced.
“But it does stand to reason. That ship represents a very large investment on
the part of MacKinnon Shipping, and its destruction would certainly cast public
doubt upon the company's stability. That strikes me as more than enough to make
it a target. In a week it will be on the open lake and be much more difficult
for Clockwork's killers to interfere with, but today it lies helpless.”

“And if the
Chronicle
makes things too hot for Captain Clockwork he can crawl back under his rock and
work from the shadows, as long as the company takes a bad hit before he does,”
she offered. “But what if MacKinnon's guilty?”

The Red Panda grinned. “I'm hoping that he would be so
concerned about new revelations linking a wealthy suspect to the case that he
would feel compelled to make sure that his company was not the only one never
to suffer an attack.”

“
Geeze
Louise, Boss!” the Flying
Squirrel exclaimed. “You think he'd really hit his own company?”

“MacKinnon is the last member of the committee to remain
unscathed by the campaign of the Viper,” he said. “One way or another, if this
ship is targeted, then Captain Clockwork will have done exactly that, whomever
he may prove to be.”

“That's cold,” the Squirrel said. “I thought we had agents
looking into the books of all these birds.”

“We do,” the Red Panda nodded, “but they'll be days, perhaps
weeks, sorting that out. In the meantime we need to stop Clockwork from
destroying more lives and property, even if he is just covering for himself.”

“Wait – that means that whatever happens here, we
won't really have learned a thing?”

“Not exactly,” he said, playing with the device some more.
“We'll have learned if this detector works or not.”

“What does it detect?” she asked suspiciously.

“Robots,” he said, grinning at her wide-eyed response. “At
least I hope it does.”

“How did you manage that?” she asked, angling for a better
look at the device. “Send in a
boxtop
to
Mad Scientist's Weekly
?”

“More or less,” he said as the machine began to whir at
last. “Aha!” he said appreciatively, playing with the device's switches in
order to get a more precise reading. “Captain Clockwork used Fenwick
Industries' parts in the construction of his mechanical army. He's certainly
had no time to change his stripes.” He was momentarily lost in the clicking of
the detector, which seemed to be registering most strongly towards the bow of
the ship as it sat in dry-dock.

“So?” she prompted at last.

“So the problem with buying off the rack is that the
components have specific properties, and some of them are already known.
Particularly to the manufacturer,” he smiled. “Captain Clockwork used a type of
actuator in the main joints that emits a small burst of interference on a
high-band radio frequency when they power up. Nothing that would normally matter
in the slightest, unless you prefer that certain very cunning superheroes
be
unable to detect your devices in operation.”

“Am I crazy or is it pointing towards the nose of the boat?”
she asked.

“C,” he said, “both of the above. And it's called the bow.”

“You think maybe a nice big bomb near the front of those
dry-dock doors would throw a wrench in the works?” she said, preparing to move.

“I think it would be the most dramatic spot, do the most
damage and take the most lives,” he offered.

“Then it's unanimous,” she said, leaping into thin air.

The heroes moved quickly, following the beacon of the
detector until it cried out in a continuous signal, and then dropped suddenly
to the deck of the ship. There was a general cry of alarm all around them and
the Flying Squirrel could instantly see that they had another problem.

“Um, Boss?” she called above the din.

“Yes?” he asked, sweeping the crowd of workers circled
around them with the device, to their greater alarm.

“Any idea which of these thirty guys is our metal man?” she
called.

“None,” he said, noting which of the crowd had picked up
blunt instruments, and who looked most likely to use them. “At this range the
device is going crazy.”

The group of men closed their ranks. Several of the more
aggressive looking stepped forward.

“I kind of assumed I'd be able to tell,” the Flying Squirrel
said, “but I really can't.”

“Gentlemen!” the Red Panda called to the crowd. “We have
good news and bad news. The good news is that we mean you no harm. The bad news
is that one of you is most likely a walking bomb.”

The crowd grew more agitated and closed ranks still tighter.
They looked ready to strike, if only someone would move first.

“These boys know we're good guys, right?” the Squirrel
asked, settling back into a
Squirrel-Fu
stance and preparing for the worst.

“They're frightened,” he said gravely. “They distrust
everything but each other.”

“Bad mistake,” she said. “If we have to fight '
em
the tin man could blow any time! Got any ideas?”

“Just one,” the Red Panda said. “Be ready.”

“For what?” she snapped.

“Sleep,” the Red Panda ordered in a quiet voice that rolled
like thunder through the subconscious mind of every man in the crowd. In near
perfect unison they dropped to the deck like sacks of wet cement.
All but one of them.

“Nice!” she said.

“Taxing, but nice,” he gasped in agreement, recovering his
footing after the exertion of his mass mental attack.

“What did you do?” the last man standing asked. He looked to
be about twenty, though both heroes knew that he wasn't.

“Don't move, Tin Man!” the Squirrel ordered.

“What are you talking about?” The man seemed genuinely
afraid. “What is this?”

“Squirrel,” the Red Panda was astounded, “I don't think that
he knows.”

“Knows what? What is this?” The man was clutching a crowbar
and backing away, seemingly unaware that he could have bent the thick steel bar
in his bare hands if he wished to.

“Take it easy, son,” the Red Panda said calmly. “We need you
to come with us now. You're perfectly safe, but we need to leave the shipyards
at once.”

The man seemed to freeze. “I can't leave this place,” he
said. “I have to get below decks.”

“Sorry, Sparky,” the Flying Squirrel said sternly. “If
that's where you need to go, we
ain't
gonna
let you get there, and that's a fact.”

“But I… I… I…” The natural movements of the young man's face
stopped and faded into expressionlessness as his entire body went rigid.

“What's he doing?” the Squirrel called.

“Fascinating,” the Red Panda said. “Unable to complete his
task, he must be calling for new instructions.”

“And we've got a pretty good idea what those will be,” said
the Squirrel, slipping her electric knuckles on to her right hand. The new
model was self-powered and less cumbersome, and she was glad to have a chance
to try them out.

“Squirrel, wait!” the Red Panda called, but it was too late.
Power coursed through the android and he dropped to the deck, harmless.

“Problem?” she asked sweetly.

“I thought you just might set off the bomb doing that,” he
said with an air of calm that neither of them really believed.

She shrugged. “It was
goin
' off
anyway, yes?”

“Very likely,” he admitted reluctantly. “We should get our
mechanical friend out of here.”

She looked around at a dearth of tall buildings to fire a
grapple gun at. “Any thoughts on how exactly we're supposed to do that?”

“None,” he sighed. “I hate to leave this one for
O'Mally
, but perhaps we should try and have a quiet word
with the foreman.”

“Keep these other fellas from getting fired for sleeping on
the job, too,” she offered.

“There is that,” he said as they walked towards the stern.

“Why do you look so glum?” she smiled. “We brought down the
baddie and you didn't even dust up your lily-white knuckles.”

“Just thinking, Squirrel,” he said seriously. “When the
android couldn't complete its task, it signaled for new orders.”

“Is that good?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It may be the answer to everything,
Squirrel. Or it may be nothing at all. I only wish I had more time to figure
out which.”

“Wish I could help you there, bright boy,” she chirped, “but
if Captain Clockwork sticks to his pattern, he'll have something
brewin
' to shove the explosion we just stopped right off
the front page. Which means we've got no kind of time at all!”