Tales of the Red Panda: The Android Assassins

by Gregg Taylor

  “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.

  Twenty-Nine

  Chief O'Mally came down the stairs from his second-floor bedroom carefully. It was still hours before dawn, but he was certain that he had heard something downstairs. A sudden thump that could only have come from his small study. Now that he thought of it, he wasn't entire certain that he had heard it, but he knew that he was somehow certain that it had happened. He had almost settled back to sleep, convinced that the cat must have knocked some of the books off the small shelf by his desk, when he had noticed the feline in question sleeping quite contentedly at the feet of Mrs. O'Mally to his left. He had slipped from the comfort of his bed as gingerly as possible to avoid waking his wife and crept to the stairs as silently as he could.

  From the top of the stairs he had seen that the house was silent and still. There was no sign of anything being disturbed and no indication that anyone had been there since he had made his way to bed a few hours earlier. Yet something seemed to compel him towards the study. A cold chill ran up his spine, but he pressed on, down the stairs towards his goal, more certain with each step that there was something waiting to be discovered behind the study door.

  As he entered the room, he felt for the switch to the electric light and flipped it, to no response. He turned the switch two or three more times in irritation before moving cautiously into the room, trying to find his desk without barking his shins on it. Having done so, he reached out carefully in the near-total darkness for the electric lamp on his desk and switched it on. His corner of the room was bathed in a glow that made him blink hard, but left the rest of the room swathed in shadow. As his eyes adjusted, the first thing Chief O'Mally saw was a small, white globe resting on the desk near the lamp he had just illuminated. It took a moment for his sleep-addled brain to realize that it was the electric light bulb from the overhead light, which had been removed and placed here… how exactly?

  “I did that,” the Red Panda's voice cut through the still of night like a dagger.

  “What in blazes?” O'Mally cursed, throwing open the right-hand drawer of his desk and producing a service revolver. He pointed it into the darkness from whence the voice had come and pulled the trigger three times, fast, the hammer dropping on an empty chamber with a loud click each time.

  “I thought of that, too,” the mystery man said, looming forward into the edge of the light spill from the desk. “Give me a little credit.”

  “What do you want here? What did you hope to find in my study?” O'Mally gasped as he met the cold, hard gaze of the Red Panda's blank eyes.

  “You aren't under the impression that you're being burgled, are you?” the Red Panda seemed amused. “If I had been breaking into your home, I promise you, you'd never have known it. You certainly wouldn't have heard this,” and at that instant O'Mally once again had the starling sensation of a loud noise coming from downstairs, just as he had moments ago in his bed.

  “How did you do that?” he said, shocked.

  “I was in your head. Just a little.” The masked man grinned infuriatingly, the angle of his face in the shadows making him appear all eyes and teeth. “I had very little interest in having this conversation with Mrs. O'Mally.”

  The Chief bristled. “If that is meant to be a threat…,” he began.

  “Try not to be obtuse, O'Mally,” the Red Panda said. “I meant just what I said. I think the time has come for plain speaking between you and I.”

  “And why is that?” the Chief narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

  “Because there is a city out there that is teetering on the brink of chaos,” came the reply.

  O'Mally snorted. “I would have thought you'd be cheering at that. Who represents anarchy better than the local masked outlaw?”

  The grin seemed to get wider, which made O'Mally's eye twitch, but the Red Panda moved forward into the light a little more. “It is an interesting point, Chief, but we simply don't have time for the debate. You've never made a secret of your opinion of me, and I have never pretended to care what you thought one way or another. You refuse to acknowledge that I have done some good, or admit the possibility that doing good is even my real goal. That suits me fine. In many ways it helps me. My mission often depends upon striking fear into the underworld, and what is more fearful than the unknown? There are mystery men in other places who are forever posing for photographs and accepting keys to the city. I've always wondered how they get anything done in a day.”

  “It isn't a joke,” O'Mally blustered with as much dignity as a public official could summon in his pajamas. “When the honest citizens of Toronto look for their salvation to a man who is answerable to no one–”

  “They will sometimes find it,” the Red Panda interrupted. “And sometimes they won't. I do what I can. But this is a discussion that we simply can't afford right now. Captain Clockwork is on the ropes, and we have one chance to put him down for the count. If we don't take it now, he'll regroup, change his spots and return, taking more innocent lives when he does.”

  “And how do I know that you aren't working with him?” O'Mally said angrily. “Or that you aren't actually him yourself?”

  The Red Panda raised an eyebrow above his domino mask. “I would be expending quite a bit of energy to thwart myself, don't you think? And if I were already Captain Clockwork and the Red Panda, would I really have felt it necessary to invent the Viper as well?”

  O'Mally's eyes narrowed. “What do you know about that?” he growled.

  “I know enough,” the Red Panda said matter-of-factly, “and by tomorrow night everyone who rea
ds a paper will know much of it. The publicity will drive this villain to a last, desperate strike, and we must be ready. You have been answering a great deal lately to a certain group of earnest but outraged businessmen forced to the brink by the Viper's plot. O'Mally, this fiend can only be a member of that committee!”

  “You're mad!” O'Mally sputtered. “That's impossible!”

  “Think about it, O'Mally,” the Red Panda said. “Captain Clockwork had information that would only have been known to that group of men. Things that were only revealed in that room.”

  “You think so, do you?” the Chief smiled. “Even the newspapers had some of this story, masked man. Clockwork had offices around the city bugged with some kind of terra-vision.”

  “Tele-vision,” the Red Panda corrected. “Tele. Like telephone, but with vision.”

  “What does it matter?” O'Mally blustered over his embarrassment. “The point is he had dozens of private rooms bugged.”

  “But not the conference room at the Club Macaw,” the Red Panda said quietly.

  O'Mally stopped and thought for a moment. “I'll be thundered,” he said. “And my office was bugged, but I didn't work on plans to protect Harrison's armored transport test there, I went over that with my men in the detective's bullpen. The only other place that the timing was all laid out was in that conference room!”

  “And why should Captain Clockwork bother to monitor a room which he will actually be in when anything of interest happens?” the Red Panda smiled.

  “What about you?” O'Mally said suspiciously. “You seem to know everything that happens everywhere.”

  “I do, don't I?” came the reply.

  “The waiters!” O'Mally said with a snap of his fingers “Bringing in coffee… they were in and out… no one paid any attention to them. They say that you're a master of disguise.”

  “I dabble,” the Red Panda said with a smile.

  “And the monitors,” O'Mally said. “How could you possibly have known what they cover and what they don't? My men have that entire complex locked down.”

  “Do you really think that would stop me?”

  “Now you listen here–,” O'Mally began.

  “Chief O'Mally?” the Red Panda said gently. “I think it is just possible that you're trying to solve the wrong mystery again.”

  “You would think that,” O'Mally glared, “but you expect me to trust you, to share information with you, while you hide behind a mask.”

  The Red Panda tried not to look like he was very amused by this, and was not entirely successful. “Share information?” he said. “Chief O'Mally, I feel fairly certain that this time you don't know a thing that I don't.”

  “Then what in blazes are you doing here?” the Chief said angrily.

  “I come bearing gifts,” the Red Panda said, placing a large but still portable device upon the desk between the two men. The Chief raised an eyebrow that seemed to demand that the masked man not make him ask. The Red Panda smiled and complied. “It's a radio tracking unit,” he began, “keyed to a specific frequency. Its operation should be fairly self-explanatory to any of your men versed in radio equipment, but there is an envelope with some more detailed instructions just in case. In any event, there is nothing to suggest that it came from me.”

  “And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this?” O'Mally sighed.

  “When the android that was sent to destroy the MacKinnon shipyards was unable to complete his programmed mission, it did something very interesting,” the Red Panda said. “It called for instructions.”

  O'Mally paused to consider this. “You're certain?” he asked.

  “Quite.”

  “This is how you beat Captain Clockwork last time,” O'Mally said, “by tracing his signals back to him.”

  The Red Panda grinned. “Are you suggesting that I'm not actually Captain Clockwork myself?”

  “Oh, shut up,” O'Mally growled to the masked man's great pleasure. “How do you know you've got the right frequency?”

  “I've had an expert dissecting some captured robots,” the Red Panda said. “Once he knew what he was looking for, it wasn't difficult to find.”

  O'Mally nodded. This could work. “How long will we have to trace the signal?”

  “That's the tricky bit,” the Red Panda admitted. “The signal only lasts a few seconds, and the response would likely not be much longer. This is why Clockwork has given these new models so much autonomy.”

  “So the only way we'll get any kind of useful signal is if we can make one of these monsters call for help over and over again.”

  “Yes,” the masked man agreed. “And we'll have to keep the requests simple enough that they can be handled automatically by the equipment at Clockwork's new base, or he'd start to wonder and terminate the link.”

  “I suppose you have a plan for that?” O'Mally snorted.

  “Yes,” came the reply.

  “Marvelous,” the Chief said. “What am I supposed to do while you handle this secret plan?”

  “Use the tracker,” the Red Panda said. “Make up whatever story you like to explain where you got it. I'll get word to you with the precise timing so you can stand by. If all goes well, the signal should lead you right to the guilty party.”

  O'Mally was dumbfounded. “You've cracked this nut, and you're handing the collar to me? Why?”

  The man in the mask grew serious. “Say what you like about my methods, Chief O'Mally, but we have done what we can to bring hope to the people. But this campaign of terror has struck at the very heart of the people's faith in their city. The safety of their homes, their neighborhoods. The ties that bind them together as a people have been weakened by fear. I cannot give that back to them. But you can. You and the system your police force represents.”

  There was a small pause as the Chief of Police considered the masked outlaw standing in his study. “That's a very pretty speech, Red Panda,” he said seriously, “and if you mean it, then it does you credit. But if you don't, if this is some kind of double-cross to kick my city when it's down, I will hunt you down and shoot you like a dog.”

  “That's tough,” the masked man said, fading back into the night, “but fair.”

  And he was gone.

  Thirty

  Wentworth James stepped up to the podium before a small assembly of reporters. His arm was still in a sling, but otherwise he was none the worse for wear after the accident that had destroyed the power plant. The complex at James Laboratories, however, was still devastated by the explosion. This press conference was therefore being held in the company's administrative building, which had been spared the wholesale destruction of the secure labs. It had been arranged in haste and most of the support staff didn't seem to fully understand what was being announced today, but if Wentworth James wanted a press conference, they were not about to question him.

  Jack Peters yawned and wondered what could possibly be so important about some stuffed-shirt inventor that he had to roll out of bed at this hour of the afternoon and shove aside the cub reporter the Chronicle had intended to send to this event. But the voice who called herself Mother Hen had been most insistent. It had to be him and it had to be now. He had a terrible, sudden thought and hoped that she had not intended that he should be prepared for action. Jack Peters did occasionally get into trouble of the life and limb variety on behalf of the Red Panda, but he was not the sort of agent who was assumed to be carrying a gun unless instructed to the contrary. At least, he hoped that was still the case.

  James nodded past the small, disinterested group of reporters to a cluster of a dozen men in white coats at the back of the room. On his signal, they began to walk past the podium and towards a door at the back of the room which lead to the inner workings of the complex.

  “Gentlemen of the press,” James began, “no doubt you are aware of the disaster that rocked this facility just a short time ago and the setback that this explosion caused to one of our ongoing projects, a revolutionary new power
plant upon which we base great hope for the future of James Laboratories. But what was not revealed at that time was that the most important and irreplaceable component to that power plant, the revolutionary new drive system that allows the power core to operate with an efficiency previously unknown in the industrial world, was not yet installed and remains undamaged.” The last of the technicians disappeared through the door behind the young scientist. “I had hesitated about going public with this information. As you are no doubt aware, this and many of the industrial accidents that have plagued our city of late are thought to be the work of this same madman who has sent mechanical terrors into the streets to cover his other crimes.”

  Every reporter in the room sat up a little and began to pay attention. No one had expected a Captain Clockwork angle to this story. Wentworth James cleared his throat to silence the excited whispers of the small crowd. “I asked my father, our company's Chairman Ian James, to consult with a group of business leaders like himself on this subject. He spoke with them by telephone last night and they were all in agreement that perhaps the strongest gesture we could make to this madman who calls himself Captain Clockwork, would be to demonstrate that for all his sound and fury, he has been unable to take from us the fruits of innovation that make us strong. Therefore, gentlemen, my associates are on their way to our secure vaults in the back of this complex to produce the main assembly for the drive system and display it here for you today.”

  The white-coated technicians suddenly reappeared by several different entrances, which they sealed and locked behind them as they entered. Again there was a small buzz that rolled through the crowd. James nodded at the two of his men and they closed the doors by which the reporters had first entered, locking them soundly.

  Wentworth James raised his hands for silence. He turned to another technician who was manipulating dials on a large device near the podium.

  “Clear, sir,” the technician said.