Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins (16 page)

The moon overhead seemed impossibly close that night, hanging
in the clear summer sky as the heat of the day slipped beneath the horizon and
let the black carpet of night roll over the city.

Andy Parker gripped the wheel of the delivery van he was
driving hard as he roared through the nearly empty streets. He tried to keep
the speed down to avoid attracting the attention of the traffic cops, but his
adrenaline was racing and it made his foot heavy.

“Are we headed somewhere in particular,” Tank Brody asked
from the passenger seat, “or are we just in a hurry to get no place?”

Parker grinned and eased up on the throttle somewhat. With a
number of agents still on the injured list, they were down to two-man teams,
and he was still responsible for the big man he had brought in who was manning
the radio in his truck, or would be if the signal ever came. The set-up was
similar to the Squirrel's war plan of the other night, except that the watchers
on the street had been replaced with a network of radio listening posts around
the city. Andy Parker didn't know what they were listening for exactly, but he
knew that he wanted to be on the scene when it was found.

“You'd prefer a nice drive in the country?” Parker asked.

“I rode across the prairies on top of a boxcar,” Brody said.
“I seen all the scenery I ever need to see. I was just
thinkin
'
that you don't know where we want to be, so why hurry to get anywhere, is all.”

“It's an interesting point,” Parker smiled. “So just how far
west would I have to look to find a file that tells me what a rotten apple you
are?”

Brody looked at Parker in surprise, but even in the
semi-darkness, the expression on the young policeman's face told him that he
had no intention of doing any such thing.

“Not sure that's any of your business,” Brody said quietly.

“Pretty sure it isn't,” Parker nodded.

“She tell you to ask?” the big man wondered aloud.

“Yep,” Parker nodded. “She probably thought I'd be more
subtle about it, but that's a little out of a Constable's pay grade.”

“I imagine,” Brody nodded. “Listen, Andy, don't get the
feeling that I'm changing the subject or anything…”

“I gotcha,” Parker said, “but I had to ask.”

“No, don't understand me so fast,”
Brody
said pointing out of his open window. “I was just
gonna
ask what in the hell
that
thing is?”

Andy slowed the van down and peered in the sky above the
buildings to the south. Hanging there, suspended before the shining disc of the
moon wrapped in silhouette, was a flying machine like nothing Tank Brody had
ever seen before. It looked small for an aircraft, and had no wings that the
men could see, but it seemed to hover in one place for an impossible length of
time. Parker whooped and made a hard right with the van to bring him closer to
the streets over which the strange shadow seemed to hang.

“What is it?” Brody shouted over the sound of the engine
straining under the demands for speed that Parker's heavy foot was making.

“It's called an
autogyro
!” Parker
shouted back. “And I only know of one guy who's got one!”

“The Red Panda?” Brody asked, hanging on to the frame of the
door through his open window as the van made another gut-wrenching turn.

“You catch on quick, big fella,” Parker said. “He's got
listening posts all over town, but if he's flying over
there
,
my guess is that he's confirming what they've found from the air before calling
for a mobile unit.”

“And you want it to be us?” Brody asked.

“Sure, don't you?” came the reply.

“I was just
askin
',” Brody said.
“Thought you might have become all suicidal all of a sudden.”

“Ha!” Parker cried. “You should drive with the Flying
Squirrel sometime!”

Suddenly the radio in the truck sprang to life with a hiss
of static, followed by the even tones of a calm woman's voice, instructing the
nearest available units to close on a position not two blocks from where they
now were.

Tank fumbled with the radio. “It's us!” he called into the
transmitter. “Unit six, in position, less than a minute out!”

More instructions followed, confirming what the two men
already knew. Brody acknowledged and signed off as the van screeched to a halt
on the quiet street.

The two men hurried to open the back doors of the truck and
began to unload equipment, each resisting the urge to look up at the aircraft
that floated silently in the air above them, watching.

“Looks like the Chief was right about Clockwork using the
sewers,” Parker said. “Get that manhole cover up,
wouldya
?”

“Got it,” Brody shouted, lifting the steel disc as if it
were a toy and casting it aside. “Are the pipes here even big enough to walk
through?”

“Not walk,
Tank,”Andy
said,
pulling a length of heavy cable from the truck, “crawl or swim. Remember, these
things aren't human. Clockwork lost his tunnels when the cops took his
clubhouse, so the sewer pipes were his best bet for getting his troops into the
city without them being traced back to him.”

Suddenly the two men heard a crash and
clatter
as another manhole was cast aside, just a half a block up the street. Brody ran
past the truck and saw what he feared: a man-sized horror with silver skin
crawling out from the sewer, ready to destroy lives and property for his master,
with another immediately on his heels.

“It's them!” he shouted back to Parker. “Up the street,
they're coming out! Get that cable in and fry '
em
!”

“I don't have the generator running yet!” Parker called as
he struggled to start the gasoline-powered engine in the back of the truck. “I
need time!”

“Roger that!” Brody called, reaching into his pocket and
pulling out the only special ordinance that had been issued for tonight's
mission: a brand-new pair of the Red Panda's electric knuckles. He slipped them
on his hands and ran towards the growing swarm of metal men emerging from the
pipe with eyes as fearsome as the glowing red orbs of his opponents'.

Brody ducked under a lash from one of the shock tentacles of
the monsters and buried his fist into the midsection of the first robot to
crawl from the slime with an uppercut that sent a vibration all the way back
through Brody's shoulder. The mechanical beast was lifted off its feet by the
force of the blow and glowed briefly with the power that coursed through the
remarkable device on Tank's hand. It fell to the ground, black smoke pouring
from its seams.

From somewhere high overhead, Tank heard a whoop of fierce
joy, followed by another as he fried a second tin man with a cross that nearly
took its head off at the shoulders. He jabbed twice at a third, dodging a
cruel-looking set of pincers as he did so before scoring the hit that destroyed
the beast. The voice above really seemed to enjoy that, and Tank was now almost
certain that it was the Flying Squirrel, cheering as if she were watching a
championship
prize fight
. For the very first time Tank
Brody felt the part as he mowed down two more mechanical monsters, leaving the
street clear but for the open manhole. Another machine stuck its head out of
the hole, a manlike model this time in a policeman's uniform, but if Brody was
at all put off by the android's disguise, he certainly didn't show it as he
sent the creature back down the escape ladder as a smoking piece of scrap.

“Brody!” Parker called from the truck. “Get clear!”

Tank ran back a dozen paces and stopped as he began to hear
the sounds of the struggle from within the sewer pipe. Parker had dropped the
cables into the pipe and electrified the water and waste through which the
metal men traveled, turning the sewer into a deathtrap for the inhuman
monsters. They thrashed about and screamed for almost a minute, and then at
last all was still.

The
autogyro
passed overhead three
more times, the Red Panda visible now in the pilot seat, the Squirrel still
shouting incomprehensible encouragement from above as she swept the area with
some kind of device. A moment later it seemed they were satisfied, and the
autogyro
turned on a dime mid-air and whisked away into the
night.

Parker and Brody looked at each other and began to laugh.
The radio was already buzzing with new instructions to other agents, those who
would notify police, those who would work with the city crews sent to clean up
the mess, and other instructions for more patrols to remain vigilant until given
orders to stand down. But the two men in the delivery van knew the truth as
they sped away from the scene. There would be no terror in the city tonight.
Their enemy had been beaten and the people were safe. Just as the Red Panda had
sworn it!

Jack Peters was just leaning back in his chair, a cup of
coffee in one hand and a flask of bourbon in the other wondering if it might
not be an idea to skip the coffee altogether just to shake things up, when his
door burst open with a loud clatter. Peters did not need to look up from his
deliberations to know who it was.

“Morning, Chief,” he said, “
is
that
the bulldog?”

“Of course it's the bulldog,” Pearly growled, nearly
splitting the stem of his pipe with his clenched teeth as he did so. “Don't ask
me stupid questions.”

“Something's under your saddle awful early this morning,”
Jack smiled. “Care to join me in a nightcap before I retire?”

The morning edition of the
Chronicle
slapped down on Jack's desk. The headline blazed in bold
print, “
Red Panda Destroys Mechanical Men
”
above a large photograph of city workers extracting the remains of Captain
Clockwork's army from the sewer pipe that had become their grave. Editor Pearly
glowered. Jack Peters smiled and batted his eyelashes as appealingly as he could.

“It's real pretty,
ain't
it?” he
asked, taking a drink.

“Confound it, Jack, where in thunder did you get this
photo?” Pearly snapped.

“Photos,” Jack smiled. “Plural. Not much good unless they
need to buy a paper to see the others.”

“I saw the others,” Pearly snapped.

“I thought you might. The close-up on the card that says
Courtesy of the Red Panda
was my
favorite,” Jack swung his feet off the desktop. “What was yours?”

“I thought we talked about this,” Pearly said sternly.

“About your irrational fear of beating the pants off of
every paper in town? No, we never really got around to that one. Everybody's
got this story, Tim, but we're the only ones with pictures, which means
everybody in town buys a
Chronicle
today. A sane man buys me breakfast. Ham and eggs at least.”

“The pictures are the problem,” Pearly said. “They're
today's tip of the iceberg. Everybody I've talked to swears up and down that
there were no cameras and no reporters allowed within eight blocks of the
scene. So how come you've got pictures?”

“Contacts, dear Mister Pearly, contacts,”
Jack
said as seriously as he could. “A little bird on the city works crew got them
to me.”

“But how did he take them? The site was locked down!” Pearly
sputtered.

Jack's brows furrowed. “Chief, when somebody hands me a
golden goose, I don't ask a lot of questions. I've done some folks a good turn
when I could over the years, and they tend to remember me. I'm a memorable
guy,” Peters grinned.

“So someone just waltzed in and handed you these photos?”

“No,” Jack smiled, “he told me what they were and asked for
fifty bucks. The night editor
okayed
the expense.”

“Oh,” the wind seemed to drop from
Pearly's
sails somewhat.

“Yeah, I thought you'd feel more comfortable once you knew
there was larceny involved,” Jack said, knowing there was no way for his boss
to guess the fifty was still in his pocket, destined to be dropped in the poor
box on Peters' way home.

“And does this contact on the work crew have a name?” Pearly
asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“He does,” Jack nodded. “One that he prefers to keep
anonymous.”

“Of course,” Pearly said. “Why should this one be any
different?”

“Oh, come on, Tim,” Jack said, raising his hands high in the
air in frustration, “you can't expect the guy to lose his job for fifty bucks.
He's probably spent half of it by now. He'll sleep it off and spend the other
half tomorrow, and next time he's got the goodies, who do you think he's going
to call?”

“It isn't just the pictures,” Pearly snapped, “and you know
darn well it isn't. Yesterday you dragged this paper into your latest
half-baked theory with two more anonymous sources. How far out on a limb can
you take us before we hit the ground, hard?”

“Are you talking about the story that every other paper in
town hopped on for the evening edition?” Jack said. “About these tin man
attacks being the cover for a campaign against the city's big businesses?”

“You know darn well that I am,” Pearly growled. “I gave you
an inch and you took a yard, as usual. And what was all that about more
revelations still to come? If you know more, why not say so?”

“I was still getting my ducks in a row, Chief,” Peters
protested, “and if you don't trust the sources, how about trusting the fact
that nobody downtown will go on record denying that the story is true. If this
was any other reporter you'd be having a parade.”

“I don't have any other reporters with this many rabbits in
their hats!” Pearly almost shouted. “We may not be much to look at, we may just
be another yellow hack rag, but I won't have this paper made a fool of, Jack
Peters. You got more, you tell me right now or I'm benching you, you hear me?”

Peters chewed his lip and closed his flask. “There's another
little story that I sat on tonight, Mister Pearly. I kept it quiet 'cause it
was just the confirmation I was looking for on the
big
story, and I didn't want it shoved aside by the sewer full of
dead robots. But a few hours before, out at the shipbuilding yards, the local
masked do-gooders stopped another tin man from blowing the new MacKinnon boat
to Kingdom Come.”

“What?” Pearly thundered. “Why didn't I hear any of this?”

“'Cause they did it fast and they did it quiet,” Peters
said. “The thing was a walking bomb, disguised as one of the workers.
O'Mally's
boys came and took it away, but I got the foreman
who knows the whole story. He's all
ours and he
don't
mind talking on the record. Don't you see? Again, there was going to be a big
distraction just after an act of industrial sabotage, but this time they both
got stopped before they got started.”

“And you think all of this proves, what exactly?” Pearly
asked, chewing on his pipe.

“Darn it, Tim, this is what you asked me to do. We saw
something that looked random and you told me to find out the why and the how.
This is why, and this is how. There's some bird out there with plenty of money
to burn
who
is trying to drive big businesses under so
he can take them over. And he's covering for himself by slaughtering innocent
people and keeping his real goals off the front pages. And if he wants to stay
out of the press that bad, that's exactly where we want to put him!” Peters
dropped his fist down on the desktop emphatically.

“So, let me get this straight,” Editor Pearly said quietly.
“Just days after we somehow escaped the largest libel suit of all time for
suggesting that the richest man in town was a
supervillain
,
you want me to commit to a story that says even if August Fenwick
isn't
Captain Clockwork, one of his
high-society chums
is
?
That about cover
it?”

“Yes,” Jack Peters said, raising his flask. “Want that drink
now?”

Pearly grabbed the flask away from his star reporter and
opened it. “You have no plans to make any specific accusations, do you?” he
said, taking a small pull on the flask.

“Not yet,” Jack shrugged.

“Not
ever
without
my approval,” Pearly said with his index finger raised for emphasis, “or I'll
bust you down to
newsie
so fast it'll make your head
spin.”

Jack grinned. “I got a real sweet-sounding
'
Extr
-y!
Extr
-y!
'
.
Worked my way through reform school selling papers.”

There was a pause. Editor Pearly considered his grinning
star reporter carefully. “You're good, Jack Peters,” he said. “You may be one
of the best I've ever seen. But you aren't this good.”

Jack blinked at him in surprise more for the compliment than
anything else, which was outrageous by
Pearly's
standards, but he said nothing.

“Whose theory is
this?”Pearly
asked simply.

Jack Peters sighed. “Chief, if you don't trust the source,
trust the story,” he said. “I'm right about this, and I think you know I am.”

Pearly nodded. “Get some sleep,” he said almost serenely,
“then bring me the story in the finest prose you have ever mustered. And then
bring me a list of at least five public officials who refuse to go on record
saying that your story is wrong. And then we will discuss the possibility of
running it in the evening edition, and also perhaps not firing you.”

“Just perhaps,” Jack agreed.

“Very, very perhaps,” Pearly said, walking out the door and
taking Jack's flask with him.