Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins

by Gregg Taylor

August Fenwick dragged the crippled android back into his cell. It wasn't going to be a perfect match, but he couldn't afford to wait. Clockwork's army was on the move and that meant the Red Panda would be needed, and soon. But if it was at all possible to emerge from this encounter with his secret identity intact, and preferably not under arrest for multiple homicides, there would need to be a little bit of subterfuge on his part.

  He had got enough of a good look at the schematics on the wall of the command chamber to see one weak point in the new designs for the mechanical men. At the waist, the multiple servos that allowed for a full range of motion did not adequately protect the central power relay. It took both precision and power to exploit such a small target in combat. Clockwork could never have realized how much his guest possessed both traits in abundance.

  Slipping out of his restraints had been nothing to him, and working the lock of the steel door of his cage was child's play. Fenwick had trained with some of the greatest escape artists in the world in his youth, and it had been time well spent. A single kick to the precise target in the robot guard's mid-section had been enough to send it into a kind of palsy as the power relay shorted out, and it still twitched as it lay on the ground.

  The Red Panda stripped the coveralls off the mechanical man and dressed it hastily in his own jacket and pants after donning the blue uniform himself. The creature's twitching was becoming more subtle, as if some of the actuators were burning out from the uneven power flow. He hoped it didn't actually catch fire, but he didn't really have time to care. He hoisted the robot's feet up into the bunk in his cell, then hurried to the other end to lift the head and shoulders and roll the creature's body into bed. It was devilishly heavy, but in the end it settled face down and continued to shake from within.

  The Red Panda looked down, not entirely displeased. The hair wasn't quite the right color, but if one didn't look too closely, or if whomever happened to be looking in the cell was only a robot themselves, this just might work. He covered the creature with the rough blanket that had been left for him and made his way out of the cell cautiously, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Here he paused to check himself. He wondered if the coveralls would be enough to hide him from the other mechanical men, or if they would instantly know that he was not one of their kind. They had not seemed interested in much when he had seen them earlier, but Fenwick had no way of knowing how much of their expressiveness was simply put on when they were attempting to disguise themselves as human. It was certainly possible for them to take in a vast amount of information about the world around them while betraying no outward sign, but he had not seen anything in the schematics to suggest that their visual systems were possessed of any special scanners that could tell man from machine. In the end he decided to risk it, since nothing stood out much more than a machine that was trying to hide in the shadows.

  Calmly and evenly, he turned and walked back towards the great central command chamber to which he had been brought twice before. He doubted very much that Captain Clockwork would still be there, but if he were, it would be an opportunity to end this madness in an instant, secret identities be damned. Assuming that the villain was gone and the chamber was as empty as it had been a short time ago, there were three things that he needed.

  First and foremost, he needed another look at those schematics. The weakness he had exploited in his escape was all very well and good, but it wouldn't be terribly effective against an army of these monsters, and it would be nearly impossible to exploit that kind of close-quarters attack against the models that used the whip-like extensions to their arms. But he had been almost certain that he had seen something else in the moment before Clockwork had cut the lights to the blueprints, and he needed to be very sure.

  Another mechanical man was leaving the chamber as he approached, moving at a smooth, even pace, just as the Red Panda was. It was one of the silver-skinned models with pincers for hands, and he would meet it in mere moments. He stared straight ahead, impassively, and forced himself not to make contact with the creature's red, glowing eyes as the two of them passed in the hallway. It took great effort not to look back, not to vary his pace in any way that might betray him as he turned into the chamber, but he could hear the even footfalls of the robot growing steadily more faint as it walked away.

  The chamber was empty. Fenwick raced up the stairs to the command platform and immediately found the switch to illuminate the panels. Slowly the images of the schematics reappeared. The Red Panda stared intently at them for several moments, tracing the lines of circuitry with his eyes until at last his face broke into a wide grin. The answer was so simple he almost hadn't seen it, and he felt certain that it had never occurred to Captain Clockwork. Unless the blueprints themselves were some kind of trick, but Fenwick found that difficult to credit. His captor had assumed August Fenwick to be as brainless as he was supposed to be, and certainly the first weakness he had discovered had proved to be genuine. Fenwick turned off the lights to the panels again. Now they had a fighting chance anyway, if he could only exploit it in time.

  He began to dig around the control area in search of the second thing he hoped to find: some kind of map or plan for this complex itself. He had been unconscious when he was brought in and had no idea which of the many tunnels above him would lead him out by the most direct route, or which might get him back to the lair as quickly as possible. After several fruitless minutes, he abandoned his search. He would have to hope that his assumption was correct that each of these tunnels led to a different exit from the complex, spread throughout downtown. If that was right, and he could find his way out any of them, his network of pneumatic tubes would have him in the crime lab soon. He could only pray it would be soon enough.

  He heard a noise above him and quickly rose and stood where he was, completely impassive to the clatter of metal feet approaching on a catwalk above. It sounded like just one machine, but with the perfect time they moved in he could not be certain. It took a terrible force of will to keep himself rooted to the spot, hidden in plain sight, but the footsteps grew louder and then quieter, and finally disappeared altogether. The Red Panda held steady for a few more moments in case the machines had hearing that was superior to his own, and then quickly made his way back to the control panels. He had one more hunch to play.

  Quickly, he activated the tele-vision monitor from memory, using the controls as Captain Clockwork had. The grainy image of the Mayor's office now reappeared, and Fenwick rapidly mastered the instruments, turning the dials to force the machine to show him each of the rooms in which his adversary had secret eyes and ears.

  In rapid succession he saw many rooms he did not know at all, some inhabited, some not. He also saw O'Mally's office and the office and boardroom of every member of the committee who had been so concerned about the Viper, and with good reason as it turned out. He saw the chambers of Judge West, as well as several other outspoken members of the judiciary, and offices of the Crown Attorney. All of this was as he expected. Eventually, as he made his way around the dial, the office of the Mayor appeared again. The Red Panda had seen everything, and more importantly, he had not seen exactly what he had expected not to see.

  “Gotcha,” he said with a grin, and then quickly thought of Kit. He would have really enjoyed explaining his reasoning to her right now. If he was very lucky, the army of mechanical terrors constructed by Captain Clockwork would not yet have struck, and he might still find her in the lair. He calculated that the odds of him having that kind of luck tonight were not great. He was going to have to go looking for her, though tonight that would probably just mean listening for the loudest explosions.

  He turned off the monitors and raced for the steps to the catwalks above. He was far from home free, but he had more pieces of the puzzle at last, and if he could only put them into play in time, this master fiend would face justice at the hands of the Red Panda!

  Twenty

  The roar of gunfire echoed down the alleyway, now bathed in
the light of a dozen burning mechanical men. Agents were crowded behind every bit of available cover, but the high wire fence behind them was making further retreat difficult, at least without exposing one's self to the withering crossfire their enemies had been generating. A piercing tongue of flame shot forth through the mouth of the alleyway one last time and then sputtered and gave out.

  “She's outta sauce again, Squirrel!” Joe called, giving Doctor Chronopolis' heat ray a shake in frustration.

  “How long?” the Flying Squirrel called from behind the still smoldering wreck of a large robot.

  “Don't know why it cut out the first time,” Joe called, “or why it started workin' again. Or if it ever will again. Bought us some time though.”

  “All right,” she called, “see if you can use it. Get your team over that fence before those monsters regroup.”

  “We can't just cut and run!”

  “We're sittin' ducks in here, Peaches!” the Squirrel called. “If some of you can't get out of here and flank those tin men, this is just a matter of time. Now go!”

  A volley of gunfire from the mouth of the alley suggested that the point was now academic, to say the least.

  The running battle between the Red Panda's agents and Captain Clockwork's mechanical men had been raging for more than two hours now. Every time Kit's teams discovered a weakness in the android lines, the tin soldiers corrected for it somehow. The gizmos and ray-guns were the teams' most effective tools, but they were deeply unreliable, and often deserted them just when they were needed the most. The Flying Squirrel did not know for certain how many of her men were wounded or if any had been killed, but she knew she only had twelve left in play and every single one of them was bottled up in this blind alley with her. She knew that they had destroyed a great many of Clockwork's monsters, but there still seemed to be more than enough to finish her and her men off if things continued as they did.

  “Don't shoot back blind!” she called to the troops. “Conserve your ammo!”

  “Wait 'till you see the reds of their eyes!” somebody quipped in reply. Had to be Mac Tully, only he would be stubborn enough to keep making lousy jokes at a time like this. They still had enough of the armor piercing rounds to do some damage, but given how many shots it was taking them to bring one robot down, this was not going to end well. Kit herself had finally run out of bolts and was forced to abandon the crossbow in favor of a pair of .45s, and she knew that it was not poor marksmanship that was to blame for their foes' resistance.

  The high-percentage shot, the one most likely to drop a human target, was to fire center mass, in the chest. Biggest target, not much soft tissue that could stand a bullet wound. They had applied the same logic to their mechanical foes – certainly the barrel-chests of the beasts were hard to miss – because Kit remembered what Doctor Chronopolis had said, that these boys carried their brains around inside their torsos. Seemed like a decent shot to take. But the tin soldiers had resolutely refused to drop until shot after shot had been poured into them, and with them firing back at rapid speed, those didn't make for the very best odds.

  Some of the boys had tried shooting for the heads – if you could get a few clean shots into them, they did sometimes pop right off leaving the monsters without eyes, but it wasn't any more of an effective target and, since it was smaller, it was harder to hit to boot. She had taken to shooting for the knees. One, maybe two direct hits to the joint and you stood a good chance of crippling the leg. Like most bipeds, these tin terrors didn't dance so good after that. It helped thin things down on the other side, but not fast enough, and if she couldn't come up with something soon this alley was going to be their last stand.

  Kit gritted her teeth and squeezed off two rounds into the darkness. She and her men were the last, best hope the city had to hold off Captain Clockwork. If they fell here, there was no telling who could stop him or when or even if. They had to keep fighting. Somehow, they had to fight on.

  “Squirrel!” It was Andy Parker's voice calling from behind another fallen foe. “Mac says Debora might have some juice again!”

  “Andy, if you don't stop calling that thing Debora…,” she called. “No way that ray has the guts for a frontal attack yet!”

  “No, but he thinks she can punch a good hole in the fence!” came the reply.

  “So what are you waiting for?” Kit hollered. “Do it!”

  She could hear nothing more than the scuffling of metal feet in the growing darkness, and a series of sharp pings as the wires of the fence gave way.

  “We're through!” Mac called.

  “Everybody move!” the Squirrel ordered, laying down covering fire as the agents started to make for the breach. The tin soldiers returned fire, targeting the flashes of her muzzles. Hot lead hissed through the air around her, pelting off the corpse of the mechanical man she was using as cover. Both of her big automatics clicked empty and Kit honestly couldn't remember if she had another clip or not.

  “Closing time, Boss-lady!” Parker called from behind her, and then began to blast away with his own guns. From through the fence to all sides the agents poured gunfire at their unseen foes as the Squirrel raced through the gauntlet of hot death and dove through the breach.

  She hadn't had an instant to get to her feet when she felt hands pulling her clear by the arms. She shook herself loose and rolled forward just in time to see a burned out husk of a car half-rolling, half-dragging its way to block the hole in the fence. As it clattered to rest on the ground she could see Tank Brody behind the car, spent from the effort.

  “That oughta slow 'em down,” he puffed.

  The Squirrel gave a crooked grin to the big man. “Okay,” she said, “you can stay.”

  “It's clear up here!” a voice called.

  “Come on, boys!” the Squirrel called. “If we hustle we might just catch 'em flat-footed and finish this off!” It was grossly optimistic, she knew, but after being pinned down against the wall the prospect of a fair fight felt awful good.

  They raced through the alley and cut back to the main street, each man reloading his weapons as he ran, all of them counting the few precious rounds they had left. They turned the corner at full-speed and found themselves face-to-face with a solid wall of mechanical monsters.

  “Aw, biscuits,” Mac cursed.

  If the machines were at all surprised to meet them there, they certainly didn't show it. Kit gritted her teeth and flipped the empty .45s away, settling into a Squirrel-Fu stance. If nothing else, she'd go out fighting like herself, she thought.

  From somewhere beyond the wall of tin soldiers there came a sound unlike any they had ever heard. A cry that gave chills to the most hardened fighter. The robots heard it, too, and they began to react, turning their backs on the small band of agents and moving towards the source of the unearthly cry. A second wail was heard, then a third, and the machines began to react as if in a panic, closing in quickly on whatever had caused their brethren such pain.

  “You don't think,” Parker muttered, “… it couldn't be…”

  There was another inhuman wail, this one followed by a small explosion.

  An unholy grin spread across the Flying Squirrel's face, and her mask could not hide her pure joy. “That's my Boss,” she said quietly, “always with the dramatic entrance.”

  “It's him!” Joe shouted, but there was no need – they could all see him now, fighting his way through the remnants of Captain Clockwork's metal army, his long grey coat flying behind him like a sail as he dodged the deadly blows of the electric whips. He varied his pace, broke up the line of his movement, rolled with each blow struck, all of the thousand tricks that kept him alive against armies of human marksmen. But tonight there was something different.

  “Is it me,” Mac Tully asked, “or is he spending more time on the ground than usual?”

  Kit could tell instantly that it was true. The remarkable Static Shoes he had developed to help them climb walls had long been modified to repel them away from solid o
bjects as well, and the hang time it afforded them had long become part of their fighting style. He was still using them, but he was flat-footed by his usual standards, and he seemed to be leading with his fists as if he'd lost all interest in attacking with his feet.

  “Should we be doing something?” Tank Brody asked no one in particular.

  Suddenly the Red Panda connected with a right cross to the torso of one of the tin soldier models. There was a flash like lightning and the creature screamed like the devil himself, dropping to the ground a moment later never to move again.

  “What was that?” someone cried as another machine fell.

  “Whatever it was, I want one!” yelled someone else as two more of the beasts hit the sidewalk, smoke pouring from their insides.

  Kit didn't hear a word they said. She only had eyes for the spectre in the red mask, punching his way through a brick wall of killer robots to come back to her. It wasn't Paris in the Springtime, but these days a girl couldn't be too picky.

  When a dozen of their kind had fallen, the mechanical men broke their ranks to regroup. They had done it before during this long fight, and she knew they would not go far and would be back soon. They needed to end this now.

  Suddenly the Red Panda was in their midst, and if every man there wanted to slap him on the back and shake him by the hand, there was something holding them back. It was an aura of authority that each of the agents felt deeply, even when the Red Panda smiled, as he was now.

  “Sorry I'm late,” he said. “Was jury-rigging these.” And as he held his gauntleted fists up, every man could see that the mystery man was wearing a pair of brass knuckles – except they did not seem to be made of brass, and each had a long electrical lead running out of them that disappeared into the folds of his coat.

  “Electric knuckles?” Parker said, admiringly.

  “Yes, something like that,” the man in the mask grinned. “I'm sorry I don't have time to explain them just now because they're actually quite clever.” He looked at the Squirrel without meaning to. She was smiling and biting her lip, and it made him look just a little longer.