Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master

by Gregg Taylor

  The ring of gas was rolling down the hill, away from the mansion. Reinforced by the second wave of shots, the knockout gas hit the men in the trees and again Ajay Shah, master of the mind, was overwhelmed. His mind was in too many places at once; he could not reach forth to enthrall his attackers. For an instant the swirl of confusion and fear within his mind was too much for him, and he crumpled by the great door, his head in his hands. He breathed deeply, and felt a wave of calm wash over him as the men in the trees fell, one by one. Shah summoned his strength and reached forth with his mind, but the men who had fired the gas mortars were gone.

  Shah hissed an oath. More of his enemy’s agents. He had taken enough knowledge from the minds of his captives in the cellars to know that there were many who served the masked man. But it was clear that none of these men knew enough for Shah to destroy the network at a stroke. He had therefore chosen a more personal confrontation, but his foe had surprised him.

  Shah shouted for his remaining troops. The last of the criminal henchmen he had held in reserve. If the Red Panda was coming through the wall of gas that still clung to the hills outside, it would not do for him to face no greeting of any kind.

  From around the mansion he heard a dozen sets of boots racing to his position. Shah rose to his feet as they entered the great foyer with no small amount of commotion.

  “Silence!” Shah thundered, and the shadows seemed to roll forth from his feet to surround the terrified criminals on every side. “Our enemy is upon us. Our army of slaves has fallen. Prepare for battle!”

  “The place is surrounded by knock-out gas!” one rat-faced gunsel whimpered. “There’s no way outta here!”

  “I said be quiet, coward!” Shah’s voice boomed throughout the empty halls. “Now you will bear witness to my true power! I will destroy this Red Panda – burn his mind from the inside and leave him as a husk!”

  The men looked at one another fearfully. Ajay Shah had always seemed aloof, superior, even when performing impossible feats of great power. It was what had made his henchmen believe that their Master was the man they had hoped for, the one who could at last rid their city of the man in the mask. To see him raving like just another supervillain inspired no confidence at all.

  Shah sensed the trepidation that was in their hearts and composed himself with a deep scowl. There was a buzz of consternation from his henchmen.

  “He could be anywhere!”

  “We gotta get out of here.”

  “Shaddup! There’s still plenty of us to fix him.”

  “Quiet! All of you, be quiet!” Shah’s voice rang out again, but this time he held his hand aloft in the air, listening.

  A hush settled over the room instantly. The night was utterly silent. There was almost no wind in the trees, and from the eerie quiet, it seemed as if the knockout gas had even affected the crickets; not a sound could be heard but the breathing of the frightened men. And then suddenly, there was something else. A low hum that was not quite a hum. A sustained whisper that rolled in closer, and seemed to come from above.

  “It’s him!” a gunman said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said another.

  “No. He’s right,” a third protested. “He’s got one of those… like a plane.”

  “That’s no airplane.”

  “Like a plane, but not a plane… I don’t know what to call it. I seen it once. It’s got wings that work like a propeller… but they’re on top of the ship.”

  “What are you saying?” Shah hissed.

  “It’s an airship,” the gangster whimpered. “It’s quiet like you wouldn’t believe, but that’s what it is.”

  Shah looked up at the ceiling, and reached out with his mind beyond the building, beyond the rooftop. The man was right. His rival was coming from above, and he was not alone. Shah began to laugh in spite of himself, and his men regarded one another as if their Master had gone mad.

  “So,” Shah said at last, “upon the precipice of failure, he hands me the weapon that shall be his undoing.”

  The men looked at one another nervously.

  “You two, come with me,” Shah said to the men who seemed the most composed. “The rest of you make for the cellars. There he must go to rescue his servants. In the unlikely event that the Red Panda should get past me, you will finish him off.”

  “Oh yeah?” said the rat-faced gunsel. “And where will you be while this happens?”

  A smile pressed its way onto Shah’s cruel, hawk-like features. “Don’t be afraid, little man,” he said condescendingly. “I am going to kill the man in the mask for you. The Red Panda dies tonight!”

  Thirty-Six

  The wheels of the wingless autogyro had no sooner set down upon the roof of the Westing mansion than the Flying Squirrel had leapt from her seat in the rear of the craft and landed in a crouch with a silent grace that would have left any unfortunate sentry breathless for the few seconds they still stood. She strode across the open space with three soft, long leaps, turning with each movement to take in every blind spot created by the bricks and mortar of the old building. It took her only the few moments that the Red Panda spent securing the vehicle to establish that the roof was otherwise unoccupied.

  She pulled her flight goggles to the top of her cowl and turned back to face him, her athletic form still a picture of readiness.

  “Quiet, ain’t it?” she said, the bob of red hair that hung behind her waving slightly in the wind of the slowing rotor blades. The Red Panda looked at her as he approached. There was always a fire in her eyes, but before a fight it burned with a special intensity. He was nearly a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier than her, and there was no mistaking just who was the master hypnotist with the spooky blank eyes in his mask. Still, he never wondered why many of the foes they faced seemed even more afraid of her.

  It did not occur to him until it was too late that he had been looking her in the eyes a little too long to pretend that it hadn’t happened. She drew herself to her full height as he approached, almost as if he had challenged her somehow. He stopped just a foot away from her. The blades of the autogyro had almost stopped and the silence of the night was all but total.

  For a moment neither of them spoke.

  “Hi,” she said, blinking first.

  “Hello,” he said, trying not to smile.

  “You ready for this?”

  “Not at all,” he said seriously. “I had almost hoped for a welcoming committee. I could use a warmup.”

  Kit Baxter let that one sail past. It was a pretty good pitch to hit, but they had other fish to fry. “Think the gas bombs thinned things out a little?” she said with barely a raise of her eyebrow.

  He touched his red gauntleted hand to the side of his mask and nodded. “There are dozens of thermal signatures scattered about the grounds. Perhaps hundreds. All of them prone and motionless.”

  “Seems your old pal didn’t know about heat-sensing mask-lenses,” she smiled.

  “A comparatively new wrinkle,” he admitted. “As is the autogyro, though I suspect the cat might be out of the bag there. Let’s go.” He moved swiftly and silently across the roof towards the access hatch. “Remember,” he whispered, “there may still be innocent parties in our way. And if Shah should use them as weapons, they will fight to the death.”

  “Not if I break their little legs first,” she purred.

  “There is that.”

  “We’re going to lose the dark when we move in there,” she said ruefully.

  “Perhaps not,” he smiled. With a smooth motion he produced a long strip of razor-sharp metal from a sheath within the folds of his coat. He flicked his wrist and, with a quick metallic ring, the blade folded out to reveal it was two identical pieces, joined at the centre. With the device locked into position like an “X” he turned and, with a seemingly effortless throw, propelled the perfectly balanced missile towards the connection between the power lines and the roof. The wires burst forth with a shower of sparks as they flew free of the man
sion and fell into the night.

  “Nice,” she said with a grin.

  “Well, one tries.” He leaned over and pried the roof hatch open, revealing the attic space below. “Stay on your toes,” he said seriously. “And remember what I told you.”

  “Yes, Boss,” she promised.

  Under a minute later they slid silently from the attic space into the upper level of the mansion. The carpet below their feet felt almost ankle thick. That could work against them. Few men living could have heard their approach under normal circumstances, but that much padding could mask a far clumsier opponent.

  An instant later the click of a hammer being drawn back confirmed that they were right to be on their guard. From behind two pillars down the hall near the stairs, a blaze of gunfire burst forth, tearing through the air and shattering the silence of the night. The Red Panda drew back against the wall, more to clear a path than out of fear of these wild shots in the darkness. With his night-vision lenses he could see the Flying Squirrel’s coiled form ready to spring from the first instant of the engagement.

  Using the thrusting power of her Static Shoes, she threw herself high into the air, tucking forward into a tight roll as she did so. The power of the shoes allowed her to roll forwards and higher through two revolutions of her body. At the second extension of her body’s arc she made a small sudden movement of the controls within her gauntlets and reversed the energy of the shoes, allowing their power to pull her up against the high ceiling of the hallway in a sudden, reverse free-fall. Held suspended in this manner, she ran forward across the ceiling as the two gunmen blazed their useless shots down the hall at chest-level above the floor. In the near pitch-darkness, they had only the momentary flashes produced by their own muzzles by which to see the girl in the catsuit racing across the ceiling towards them, and each was too preoccupied with his own terror to think to look up.

  It was a bad mistake, and she proved that to them as she launched herself through the air and turned the full kinetic force of her fall into a kick that shattered the first gunsel’s jaw. The second man had not even the time to fully realize what had happened before Kit Baxter landed on her left leg and sent her right out at full extension towards his head. She broke his nose instantly, and as he bent over in pain, he burst forth into a stream of curses that she put a quick end to by bringing her left knee up into his temple.

  An instant after it began, it was all over. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, expectantly at first, and then with disappointment.

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  No sound came from her partner. She turned back towards him.

  “No, I’m seriously asking… that’s it?”

  The Red Panda shook his head.

  “He’s here,” he said.

  The halls rang with a hollow laughter. It was a laugh that sang without music, without mirth. It was the laugh of a living dead man, his heart empty of anything but the thirst for vengeance and power. It was the laughter of an Unconquerable King.

  The Red Panda’s mask-lenses gave the pitch-black hallway the aura of an unearthly daylight. He could see the form of his rival, walking casually down towards them, the folds of his cloak flowing behind him.

  “Carefully, Squirrel,” the Red Panda said quietly. “He’s dangerous.”

  The laughter ended abruptly. Ajay Shah stopped, perhaps thirty feet away, his face transformed with apparent rapture at the glory of the moment. “That he is, old friend. That he is.”

  “You and I were never friends,” the Red Panda said gravely.

  “No. We were not.” Shah shook his head. “How sad. It strips the moment of some of the drama, does it not?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It has so much greater import, I find,” Shah smiled, “when one is forced to kill a friend.”

  In that instant, halfway between himself and Shah, the Red Panda saw the Flying Squirrel’s head whip around swiftly to face him. Even in the pale green glow of the night-vision lenses he recognized that fire in her eyes. It was a split second of stillness that hung like an eternity. The Red Panda knew that his preparations had been in vain. That his worst fears were confirmed and that his failure was nearly complete. Shah had taken Kit’s mind.

  There was a moment of despair in his heart as the Flying Squirrel raced towards him, a lust for murder written all over her face. After three steps she threw herself through the air and began to close the gap between them with a series of backflips, each augmented slightly differently by the power of her Static Shoes, making it impossible to get a bead on her as she approached. In the seconds he had before she reached him, the Red Panda knew that Shah had not burned out her mind and made her a puppet as he had with old James Armwald and the sarangi. Shah possessed none of these martial skills, he could not direct Kit’s attack as effectively as she could herself. That meant there was still hope.

  The time spent in these ruminations might have been better spent in preparation for the coming attack, something that occurred to him as she took the last six feet between them in an instant and sent a flying roundhouse kick into the side of his head. He rolled with it, coming back to his feet in a single smooth motion up against the wall, but his left ear still rang with the impact. That had been unexpected.

  The Squirrel threw two punches in rapid succession, each shattering the wallboards on either side of his head as he feigned and dodged. He swept her feet out from beneath her and ran hard in the other direction. August Fenwick had been a guest in this home many times and knew the lay of the land. Twenty feet further on, he knew the hall opened up into a walkway above a great open space, a ballroom on the second floor of the mansion. In the seconds that it took his partner to regain her feet, he had reached the gap and thrown himself over the edge of the banister into nothingness.

  As he landed far below, he rolled into a shadow and held as still and silent as he could. Even he could not hear her footfalls as she raced to the richly appointed catwalk, but he could see her in spite of the darkness.

  That was his advantage: the night-vision lenses. Kit did not like using hers, and if Shah was limiting his influence in order to allow her to press the fight, she would have a difficult time following him. If he could just double back and take Shah out of the picture, quickly, while he was distracted–

  He saw a momentary dull flash from high above and knew that it was too late. The Flying Squirrel had activated the night-vision device in her goggles. He heard the retractable gliding membranes in her costume unfurl and knew that she had seen him. He rolled quickly to find his feet… to get some footing.

  An instant later she crashed into him full-force. It was a brutal and clumsy attack, as likely to injure herself as him, but it was effective. They both staggered under the impact. August Fenwick knew that Shah would use Kit as a weapon, with no thought for her safety or survival. He knew that she would never rest, would never yield. And he knew just exactly what Shah expected him to do.

  The Squirrel directed a kick to his right side which he blocked with his left forearm. She followed that with two swift cross-punches towards his face which he slapped aside with long-practiced grace. He stepped to the side to avoid the front-kick to the stomach that he knew was next. In that instant, his heart sang! Her attacks were hard and brutal, but they followed one of the many traditional sparring forms which they practiced constantly. She was unable to resist Ajay Shah’s mind, compelling her to attack, and the rage and hate in her expression said that she could not even escape the true mastery of Shah’s mind; he had made her want to kill him. Want it more than anything else. But somewhere, buried deep within, his partner was still fighting, telegraphing her next attack by following a pattern they had practiced a thousand times.

  The Red Panda continued to parry and dodge the blows for a few more precious seconds. He could use his knowledge of her attacks to exploit a weakness, to take her out of the fight, but any hit he scored against her would only reinforce Shah’s hold on her with anger a
nd adrenaline. If he was going to take her out, it would have to be with a single blow that could kill or cripple her.

  He continued to back up as he followed the form of her attacks, desperately trying to see another way. There might be only an instant left to choose; if Shah sensed what she was doing–

  The punch to the right knee that he was expecting was suddenly replaced by a high front kick that caught him on the chin and sent him staggering backwards. He landed hard and pushed himself up with his hands. Too late. He held himself, frozen, as she closed the distance between them slowly… then more slowly… she stood over him, her hands clenched in hard fists, her whole body quaking with rage. The Red Panda knew that he could never do what needed to be done, but that if he didn’t she would kill him, and Shah would triumph. More to the point, Shah would never leave Kit in peace. He would kill her, or make her his slave, as he would enslave and terrorize so many once he had destroyed the one man who might have stopped him.

  The moon appeared from behind the deep cloud cover and a tiny amount of soft, pale light streamed in through the high windows of the ballroom. The Red Panda saw his partner hesitate. What could Shah be waiting for? Or was it something more: was Kit Baxter still fighting?

  There was no way for the Red Panda to know that in that moment, Kit Baxter’s mind held on with a savage fury to a single image. A single point of stillness. That as she stood above him, crouched in apparent murderous intent, every ounce of strength left to her was focused on the image of the unseen eyes that lay behind his mask.

  They were dark, she knew, so brown they were almost black, but they danced with energy. They were full of fire for the task ahead, full of concern for her safety. They looked tired from the fight and yet still bore great resolve. They were his eyes.

  Her fists opened as if pried by invisible hands. The Red Panda held still, did nothing that might break the power of her concentration. With a swift and sudden motion she pulled the gauntlet from her right hand and threw it to the floor with savage ferocity. His brows knit. What could this–