The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

  Joy hopped on the beam, starting off on all fours, straightening up as she ascended. Just like a balance beam, only this one bounced and wobbled under her feet with every step. She had to be precise when she planted her feet: straight up-and-down, with no sideways shear. She increased her pace as she approached the top, as she saw the upper end of the beam start to skid from its resting-place, and she had to make an emergency leap to reach the top of the pile, as her walking-beam clattered to the pavement below, followed by several of its brothers, and the black cat darted away, down to the next aisle.

  “What the… She’s a damned monkey,” came a shout from below. Joy didn’t bother to look back. She crawled to an adjacent pile, one lashed in place with ropes, grabbed a handful of rope, swung down to hang from it, and let go, landing into a forward roll to break her fall, just like a Caliburn course. Only she forgot she still had her purse with her, and she felt the contents painfully as they got squashed between her back and the hard ground.

  She regained her feet and instantly realized she’d made a huge mistake. Why did she jump down? She should’ve stayed on top for as long as she could, so she could see her way out of the maze. This wasn’t an obstacle course. Now she’d trapped herself in another cul-de-sac. The thugs were going to catch her, as soon as they ran around the wall she’d just climbed over.

  Another meow caught Joy’s attention, and Joy caught a glimpse of yellow eyes from the shadows before they vanished entirely. Wait, where had they gone? Joy ran to the spot where the cat had disappeared. She got down on her hands and knees, forcing herself to stay calm and focus, and then she saw it. What had first appeared to be just a shadow was actually a thin tear at the corner of one of the big container’s panels. Just enough for a cat to squeeze through. But not her.

  She stifled a scream of frustration and pounded at the offending super-crate, startling herself at the way it jumped in response. The whole panel was loose. She seized it, yanked on it as hard as she could, and the gap widened to bigger than cat-sized. Was it Joy-sized? Today seemed to be her day for trying new things. She wrenched the panel outward as hard as she could and jammed herself into the hole.

  The panel snapped down on her, and she muffled curses as she shoved with her legs to force her way in, as the rough wood edge snagged her clothes and hair and scraped her skin. She had a bad moment where she was sure she’d been trapped, but she fought down the panic, and, through a mix of wiggling, sucking in her belly, and pushing against the panel from the inside, she finally wormed her way into the big container-crate. The panel snapped shut, and she was in the dark.

  She tried to hold herself perfectly still and make no sound whatsoever, but that proved impossible. The feeling of weightlessness from earlier was gone now, and her thighs felt like they’d expanded to twice their normal size. She could feel her pulse pound through her body, traveling in a great wave originating from her chest. She heard it each time the wave crashed past her ears. Her breath came in huge gulps, and she couldn’t will herself to stop or slow down, or stop shaking. She pressed herself against the side of the huge crate with her ear to the wall, tried to listen to the outside world, and hoped that the racket her body was making wasn’t as loud as she feared.

  She heard footsteps outside, and a voice raised in anger and disbelief. It was kind of muffled, but she could recognize Chen’s voice, saying he knew she was in there, and she’d better come out if she knew what was good for her. Joy stayed where she was as the voice came closer, grew more menacing, making it harder and harder to control her breathing. He could hear her! Any moment now it would be over. There was a great crash, the snapping of splintering wood… but the loose panel stayed where it was. The noise was coming from outside, accompanied by some sloshing sounds. Chen must’ve thought she’d tried to hide in one of the barrels, and he was tearing his way through them. And not finding anything.

  This went on for what seemed like forever, with the thumping of the barrels being overturned, or knocking into each other as Chen worked his way through them. It felt like it took forever. How much time did he need to realize that nothing was there? Why couldn’t he just give up and go away, already? What had she done to deserve this level of scrutiny, anyway? Didn’t he have better things to do? Joy sent out a fervent prayer to Lir Kovidh, to the spirits of her ancestors who might still be around, to any higher power that might be listening, just do something to make this man go away.

  Yang arrived instead. He and Chen got to arguing again. That went on far longer than it needed to, as far as Joy was concerned. The yelling reached a crescendo, but the last phrase she was able to make out sounded like, “Okay, FINE!” and the two of them took off, but not before one of them took a hard, frustrated punch at the wood panel she was leaning against. The whole thing shook, and it was like someone had fired off a cannon straight into her ear. She nearly had a heart attack right there, terrified that they might notice the loose corner of the crate, but they didn’t stop running. She put her head back to the crate wall, and heard their footfalls recede into the distance. Finally, she was alone.

  Slowly, her breathing began to return to normal. Sweat poured out of her hair and formed a small rivulet that ran down her forehead and dripped off her nose. Large patches of her clothing were soaked through, and beneath that her clothes pinched at her and itched. The skin on the backs of her heels had been rubbed raw—she could just tell. She really wanted to take her shoes off, but decided against it. She remembered reading something about your feet swelling up and not being able to get them back on later. That had been in one of her field manuals, she was sure of it. She felt an unpleasant stiffening in her calves and thighs, and forced herself to her feet, suppressing a groan as she did. She shuffled around in a circle, as quietly as she could, trying to loosen up.

  The air in the cargo container was hot and stifling, despite the dark. She wanted to go outside, or at least stick her head out for some fresh air, but she didn’t dare. She wanted to wait a good long time, until she was sure her two new bestest buddies had definitely given up on her. She still had no idea what she’d done to even make them want to chase her, other than exist and be witness to their petty little dick-waving contest.

  Joy sighed and remembered the warnings of the Guardsmen. She supposed this section of the docks really was dangerous, after all. Oh, and she still had a whistle to summon them, which she’d tossed in her purse and completely forgotten about when she’d needed it. She looped the lanyard around her neck. Better to do that now, when it was fresh in her mind.

  Also, she should write down what the fuck just happened, while that was also fresh in her mind. The longer you waited, the more subjective and unreliable your memories were prone to become. That was a key tenet she remembered from one of her college courses. Though in college, she’d never had to take notes while she was this sweaty, and in the dark. She found a spot on a nearby crate, illuminated by a beam of light creeping in through a crack in the container wall, where she could prop up her notepad and write without dripping on it too much.

  What had she learned from that bizarro encounter?

  1. The Triad leadership, namely Ben Li Fang, aka “Benny the Shark,” didn’t want any reporters poking around “their” territory, particularly the Joanne Spaulding.

  2. They really didn’t like anyone asking about the event from three nights ago, and expected that any eyewitnesses would keep quiet “if they knew what was good for them.”

  3. One of them, Chen, was certain that the Red Specter was real, and he was also certain that the Red Specter was acting against the Triad, but indirectly, from the shadows. Why had he thought that? Because Chen was an out-of-work officer from the old Imperial Army, and he saw similarities between what had happened during the war to army units targeted by the Red Specter and what was happening now to his new gang.

  Joy tried to sort through her agitated mind to remember what Chen’s evidence for that had been. What had he actually said? People going missing, things going wrong�
�.

  That had been it, hadn’t it? If you laid it out like that, it was a pretty weak case. Joy jotted it down in her notes anyway. No wonder Yang didn’t take it seriously. The only compelling evidence for Chen’s case was his own conviction that it was true. He’d said he could feel the Specter’s presence, with total certainty.

  But Joy had been working for the Gazette long enough to see that same level of conviction in people who believed in things that turned out to be utter nonsense. Yang was probably right to dismiss Chen’s worries, though that created a simmering resentment between them, one that blew up as soon as she mentioned the Red Specter’s name. Actually, it had to be about way more than that. Chen seemed to fancy himself a man of honor—career military—and was finding any standards of honor that the Triads possessed to be beneath him.

  Joy had to wonder if the oppressive presence the veteran complained of—that constant sense of being watched, of being judged, and found lacking—was really the Red Specter. Because, to her, it sounded a lot like a little something called a guilty conscience. Joy had been feeling a bit of that lately herself. The thought made her pause, as she found herself sympathizing with Chen. But no, it wasn’t that similar. Tabloid reporting wasn’t breaking the law. And she was going to quit as soon as she could, and Garai wasn’t going to send goons after her to break her legs when she tried to leave. So it wasn’t the same thing.

  She was getting off-topic. Focus, Joy! What else had the thugs said? Something about another Albion army vet in the Triad, higher-ranking than Chen, a woman named Ah Nei Wei. Joy scratched the name out in Kallish characters, as she wasn’t sure which Xiaish characters were the right ones. And was it Ah Nei Wei or Ahn Ei Wei? And had she heard that right? It could be a regional dialect she didn’t know. It was such an odd name.

  Though she was one to talk, with a name like Joy Song Fan. A lot of ethnic Xia here tended to give their kids a Kallish first name and a Xiaish middle name, which they could reverse if they went abroad, but Joy’s parents had decided to be different and tried to give their kids Kallish names that would easily convert to Xia phonetics, an idea they’d given up on by the time they’d got to Belle. They’d wanted to call her Jen, but that would’ve meant the Fan sisters would’ve been Joy, June, Jen—which was too many J’s in the family. They could’ve used May, but there were already a bunch of May’s and Mei’s on their block, and how could they think of having May follow June—that would look ridiculous.

  Joy was glad Belle couldn’t see her now; she’d have laughed herself silly. Every time Joy fell short of living up to her title as the role model, Belle was there to rub it in her face. Well, it wasn’t like Joy had ever asked for that job, but she had it anyway, for as far back as she could remember. She wasn’t allowed to misbehave. Her worst rebellion had been her expedition to Perun Lake. Funny how the skills she gotten from her most disreputable habit had been the exact thing that had saved her ass just a few minutes before.

  Joy sighed and rubbed at her temples. What was she doing, dredging up childhood resentments at a time like this? That wasn’t going to help her with anything. She needed to focus on the now.

  She studied her meager notes from her encounter with the Triad goons. Not much here, and she wasn’t going to get anything useful from anyone in this area if she had to deal with the Triad chasing her around all the time. Was there a way to get them to leave her alone? They’d said something at the beginning—Joy managed to concentrate enough to remember: “Go downtown and talk to Benny’s secretary—Ms. Chow?” Was that right? Joy scratched the name out on her notepad.

  Well, that might work. Mr. Ben Li Fang maintained at least the pretense of being a legitimate businessman, so there would have to be some sort of real office that she could contact to clear this up. Granted, Joy had some misgivings about bringing herself to the attention of a gangster. The very idea made her nervous. But she couldn’t shy away from those risks. Part of being a good reporter meant incurring the ire of dangerous people in search of the truth….

  Wait, what truth? What was she talking about? She’d forgotten where she was working again. This was a stupid fake story for a stupid fake newspaper and she’d already wasted too much time and effort on it already. Nothing about this nonsense was worth crossing the Triads over. What was she even thinking? As soon as it was safe, she would go straight back to her apartment and never come anywhere near Pier 25 ever again. She would make up some bullshit about whatever it was that happened three nights ago that nobody wanted to talk about, and have the Red Specter creep out of the shadows at the last minute to toss off some cool-sounding cryptic garbage that the Gazette’s readers would eat right up.

  Yes, that was exactly right: an “interview” that consisted of a few terse exchanges, uttered by a mysterious figure in the darkness, who warned her not to get too close. That was perfect and fit in exactly with who the Red Specter’s appeal. Only problem would be figuring out exactly what those exchanges would be. She was drawing a blank here. Why was that? Maybe it was because, despite all her work, she barely had any idea what was really going on here. She had a ton of loose threads, but the meat of the story was missing.

  She supposed she could just make something up, but she found herself drawing blanks every time she tried to think of specifics. Eventually she decided to quit trying. As soon as she felt the coast was clear, she was going to go home, make herself a mediocre meal, organize her notes, and go to sleep. Maybe a fresh day would giver her ideas. And she still hadn’t spoken to Thiago directly—and she still hadn’t checked last name on Garai’s list. All she needed was for either of them to give her enough detail to make up something decent.

  So now she just had to wait. Idly, Joy took note of her surroundings: a huge box filled with smaller boxes, with enough free space in the center to form a narrow aisle. Joy edged through that aisle, looking at all the boxes piled up to the ceiling, wondering what was in them. She tested a few and found them nailed shut. Just as well. She really didn’t have any business poking through them just because she felt like it.

  The crates didn’t seem to be labeled with anything useful—just some random numbers and an odd, swirling sigil that seemed familiar somehow, but she couldn’t quite make out the details. The interior of this container was dimly lit, by sunbeams coming in from cracks in the walls and ceiling, but they weren’t hitting the most convenient spots to let her see what she wanted. Maybe she could use her compact mirror to redirect the sunbeams. Joy started fishing through her purse when a high-pitched noise, something like a cross between a squeak and a chirp, emanated from the darkness around her feet.

  Joy got on her hands and knees to look around, and saw two amber eyes looking back at her. It was the cat from before; a big beautiful short-haired black cat with little white patches on its feet—little “socks.” It was lying on its side on the floor, in a “cave” created by a long crate lying on top of two shorter ones, and it was covered in kittens. Even in the dim half-light, she could tell they were adorable. She counted five of the little darlings, and she had to count tails because their heads were buried in their momma’s belly, except for one who was crawling over the rest of its siblings, who was making all the noise. Momma cat alternated between licking the heads of her babies and staring at her with a steady gaze. Joy wished she could get a closer look, but that probably wasn’t a good idea with a strange cat that was nursing. She heard they could get really protective of their kittens.

  She began to wonder if maybe she might be too close. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in here, and she didn’t want to spook Momma Cat into moving her kittens when she didn’t have to. Joy tried to stand up, but she grazed her head on the long box that formed the “ceiling” of the cat’s cave, and had to swallow a curse. No startling the kitties!

  But as she cleared her head to look down on the offending box, she noticed the lid had been knocked loose. No, the nails on this one had been pried out. She could see inside where a bit of polished wood poked out from the shr
edded straw packing material. Was that a sculpture of some kind? Well, if the lid was already off, it wouldn’t hurt anything to look. Gently she pulled off the top of the crate and set it aside. The wood bit she’d seen was the only exposed portion of the object, the rest being wrapped up in an oilcloth bundle along with three other identical bundles laying right next to it. She untied the twine holding the cloth in place, knowing she could re-tie it later, and pulled off the wrappings to reveal…

  …A nice, shiny, brand-new fully-automatic submachine gun, exactly like the Kallistrate military would’ve used. Actually, she was sure it was the same model, straight from the Matev factory in Sarpedon—see, there was the maker’s mark burned into the stock.

  Joy had gotten a general overview of firearms for some of her supplemental field training courses. This model was called the Manticore, and it was the first of its kind—an automatic rifle small enough to be carried and fired by a single infantryman, as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or a larger machine, like a steam golem or iron crawler. Joy dug through more of the straw packing and found the disk-shaped high-capacity ammo drums that went with the rifles. This was no joke. This was the complete package.

  It made Joy’s blood run cold. She’d been given a turn with a Manticore once on the firing range. All you did was squeeze the trigger, and the monster roared to life, spitting out bullets in a continuous tongue of flame, shuddering and jerking against her shoulder like it was trying to buck free of her grip. She had a hard time keeping the muzzle pointed down at the target, and she couldn’t believe how quickly the bullets ran out. She finished her turn feeling shaky and exhausted… and just a little bit exhilarated. But the destruction they caused when they hit their target—they had no business being used by anyone who wasn’t in the military.