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

by M. A. Wisniewski

  Joy saw men scrambling across the deck of the captured ship, pointing at her. With guns.

  She raised her shield hand to cover the cab. As bullets pinged off the heavy steel, Joy craned her neck to get a peek at the ship. She heard more metal shrieks and the sound of snapping wood. If she wasn’t careful, the golem claw would rip through the hull again, and the Joanne Spaulding would get away.

  A further issue was the shuddering and lurching of the cab itself. It occurred to Joy that this crane had been built to pick things up and set them down, so it was strong in the vertical direction—but this sideways shearing force was something else entirely. Joy was suddenly very aware of how high up she was, as the steel beneath her groaned, and the entire crane began to lean out towards the harbor. Joy felt her stomach lurch, and she let the gripping arm extend out, like a fisherman with a huge catch. Don’t let the line snap. Keep it here until the KIB and the Specter can catch up. Then there was a huge reverberating bang, her gripping claw met resistance, and all the gunfire stopped. Joy lowered her shield claw enough to take a peek.

  The Joanne Spaulding had skewed around diagonally, its asymmetric thrust combined with the crane grip causing it to grind against the pier on its right, while its butt had smacked into another cargo ship moored to the adjacent pier on the left. The gangsters on deck had been thrown off their feet by the impact. Joy saw a plume of spray shoot up from the far side of the ship, and it surged forward some more, at an angle to the docks, its front swinging around the end of the pier, its tail end jostling and grinding across the other ship.

  But the Joanne Spaulding's bid for freedom was hampered by its wide hips, which flared out to accommodate the paddle wheels. The angled deck crashed into the corner of the pier, and the whole ship slewed around, rocking from side-to-side as it shoved against the ocean in a way that boats were never designed to do. It gave her an idea.

  She ripped further into the steamship’s hull until she caught a solid point— the mangled axle of the paddle-wheel, twisted, and shoved the claw arm against the side of the steamship, trying to amplify its momentum. The Joanne Spaulding fishtailed around the end of the pier, sending out waves that washed over the docks. Joy even tried lifting up on the axle as she pushed, hoping to reduce the resistance of the water against the hull, and the ship listed way over to the side, even as its nose swung around to point back at the docks.

  The crane golem shuddered and shook, thrashing Joy around in her seat, while the entire display console flashed red. It was not engineered to get in wrestling matches with massive cargo steamships and was screaming against the abuse. Well, too bad. Joy kept up the pressure, even as she felt the whole cab list at an increasingly severe angle, the crane golem's steel spine bending under the stress. Instinctively, she tried throwing her shield-hand out for counterbalance, even as she hauled on the steamship, trying to drag it up onto the docks. The massive vessel crunched against the tugboat, shoved it under the pier as it flew by, engines steaming full.

  By the time the captain thought to reverse engines, it was too late. The prow of the Joanne Spaulding crashed into the dock, sending up a cascade of exploding wood planks and splinters as the entire ship rose up, and Joy felt a violent shock as the crane golem's spine snapped, both of its arms seized up, and the whole cab tipped over with a horrifying screech. Joy felt her insides go all weird as she experienced a moment of weightlessness, followed by a jarring impact that threw her sideways. She slammed against the cab door, knocking it open, and felt herself falling out into space.

  Fortunately, she still had a death-grip on the control sticks, though she still might've lost her grip if not for the ring-triggers. It was a mixed blessing, as pain shot through her wrists and captured fingers, as they took the entirety of her weight at an awkward angle. None of this was doing her mangled pinky any favors, either. All the windshield fragments spilled out from the cab floor, rushing past to shatter on the ground below with a tinkling chorus, signaling an end to the symphony of destruction.

  The remnants of the crane golem formed a lopsided tripod, with the control cab at the apex, and the two arms and spine as the legs. The spine hadn't been completely severed—it had been bent over midway, twisted at an extreme angle, still hanging by a thread, while the right claw lay tangled in the wreckage of the Joanne Spaulding's paddle wheel. The left arm was splayed out, bent at the elbow, all its weight resting on its wrist. Joy looked down, and found she wasn't too high up, though the ground seemed a bit farther than she'd care to drop, especially onto a concrete surface covered in broken glass.

  She just hung there for a minute, trying to shift the grip on her right hand to something that wasn't too painful on her fingers. Then she began the tricky work of freeing her hands from the rings without losing her grip entirely. After a few nerve-wracking moments, she succeeded at climbing up through the empty hole of the broken windshield to rest on the upward-facing side of the cab. From here she got a good view of the devastation she'd wrought—the massive hole in the dock with a giant steamship lodged in the middle, bow tipped up, propped up on the wreckage of more cargo and equipment; the capsized tugboat; not to mention the destroyed crane golem she was sitting on.

  Now that the immediate danger had passed, the sight of all this began to worry her. Maybe she'd gone a bit overboard? Just a tad? She started taking an inventory of the destruction: the busted thick wood planks, the mangled ruin of the paddlewheel, the scraped-up hull of the Joanne Spaulding, the twisted frame, bent-over smokestack, and busted drive-train of the crane-golem, and tried to estimate the cost of all this damage. Oh dear.

  Well—maybe it would be okay? At least she was still alive. Compared to that, all other problems seemed trivial. She’d worry about the rest of it some other time. And she’d stopped the bad guys from fleeing with Lin Lin. That was what mattered most.

  Joy saw motion on the canted deck of the beached steamship. All the remaining Triad gangsters were lining up on their knees, hands behind their heads, while the Red Specter stalked the deck, brandishing his sword and herding them along like a big, scary sheepdog. His charges seemed too dazed and shaken to bother resisting as they staggered out of the ship's interior. KIB agents scaled up ropes on the side of the ship. When they reached the top, they went down the line and started binding the criminals' hands behind their back. A sudden chorus of yelling rang out as one of thugs emerged escorting a hostage. Joy had an anxious few seconds, wondering if there'd be some kind of standoff, but the Triad man had no will for that, and surrendered peacefully. But Lin Lin cowered back from all the strange, shouting men, particularly the Red Specter.

  In the morning light, Joy saw that he actually did have a red skull pattern on his mask. It wasn't painted on—it was a separate layer of material colored a deep, dark red—not nearly as bright as the comic version, but it was there. But it certainly didn't inspire trust. The Specter seemed to realize this and step back, but Lin Lin had no reason to trust a bunch of strange men in uniform, either. Joy stood up and began to wave and shout.

  It took a minute to get their attention, but Lin Lin's face lit up when she saw her. Somehow Joy managed to convey that things were okay now, as best she could over the awkward distance, and Lin Lin allowed that nice KIB officer to take her into custody. The Specter looked her way, and gave her a brief nod, before returning to his business.

  Joy let out a long sigh. She felt a lot better. At least she'd managed to do one thing right. And since the Red Specter didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave, maybe she could corner him and try to wrangle an interview. It was worth a shot.

  Carefully, Joy picked her way down to the ground, being careful not to jostle her injured pinky too much. She picked the shortest route, via the left arm, since she didn't like the looks of the tangled mess at the end of the right. Wisps of smoke still trailed out of the ruined smokestack, and Joy had a short rush of anxiety when she considered what the state of the steam engine might be. But the whole thing was controlled by an analytical engine at the
base, which should be smart enough to do an automatic emergency shutdown. After all, it was a spin-off of military hardware, where catastrophic failure was an expected event, right?

  Even so, Joy decided to get the hell away from the destroyed crane golem just in case the worst happened and the boiler did go kablooie. So she picked a circuitous route through the ruins of the cargo maze on her way to the Joanne Spaulding. She made it to about twenty-five yards from the cluster of KIB agents gathered around the wrecked ship, when a soggy, smelly armored gauntlet clapped over her mouth and she found her arms pinned to her sides. She managed to tip her head enough to spot her attacker, then wished she hadn't.

  For Joy found herself looking up into the eyes of Shiori Rosewing. She was sopping wet, she smelled like shit, and she did not look happy.

  "Funny how we keep meeting like this," Shiori whispered, and Joy knew there was nothing about Shiori's sense of humor that she wanted any part of. Unfortunately, her opinions were moot, as the renegade Caliburn dragged her off through a narrow gap in the cargo containers, deeper into the maze, out of sight of anyone who could help her.

  Chapter 48

  Showdown

  They kept going until they reached another clearing, a wide aisle in the stacks of cargo, where fallen debris had cut off both ends. Joy didn't bother to struggle. She'd seen what Shiori could do, and what she was willing to do. Shiori wasn't Yang or Chen. She was in a completely different league. And Joy was just too exhausted to even consider fighting. She had a tiny bit of hope left, based on the fact that she was still alive. Shiori could have killed her already, easily—and she hadn’t. It was a faint hope, but it was something. She tried to cling to that as Shiori shoved her up against a pile of burlap sacks, hand still clenched around Joy's jaw, holding her mouth shut.

  "I suppose you're wondering why I've brought you here—what I've got in store for you," Shiori said.

  Joy felt just the barest loosening of Shiori's grip. It was enough to allow her to nod her head.

  "Well, what we've got here is a bit of a lesson," said the former Caliburn. "This is where amateur do-gooders start to learn how the world really works. And what happens when they start to think they can get away with messing with the pros."

  Shiori paused to let the weight of that sink in. Then she made a snapping motion with her free hand, and a knife appeared. Shiori brought it up to Joy's cheek and let it rest there, on the side that wasn't covered by her gauntlet.

  "Did you think it would be fun?" She continued. "Did you think you could cross the Triads and get away with it? Did you think you could dirty my face like that? Try and hit me with a crane? Cover me in shit—twice—and just walk away? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

  Joy tried to shake her head, deny it—the first time hadn't even been her fault, and the second time had been a semi-accident. She hadn't even seen the impact—she’d been hiding behind the claw-shield. But she saw the results, that Shiori stank and had been dunked in the harbor at some point; that despite her dunking, she still had gritty, gooey remnants of fertilizer lodged between the segments of her armor and smeared all over her precious Rosedeath cape. Her sword-on-a-pole weapon, on the other hand, appeared to be in fine shape, clipped to the back of her armor somehow.

  "Nobody crosses me. Nobody crosses Shiori Rosewing. That's me. The Hemlock Witch. The Butcher of Brentonsville. That name used to mean something. Used to command respect. Before that insipid comic came out."

  Shiori's face twisted at the thought. "Is that it, huh? You a comics fan? Think reality works like that? Foil the hapless witch's schemes every week, then skip off into the sunset? Is that what you thought? Huh?"

  Joy still couldn't reply or shake her head in denial, though she hoped her efforts to do so conveyed that message to Shiori. And where had this rant about comics come from? All Joy had ever thought about was saving the girls and getting an interview. She hadn't been thinking about Benny or Shiori or their reputations at all. Why did Shiori have to make it all about her? And why wasn't Shiori letting her say anything, apologize? She'd be happy to—

  Shiori leaned in, until the crest of her helmet pressed against Joy's forehead. "You scared now? You wondering what I'm gonna do now? Thinking maybe you're gonna die?"

  Joy could only tremble in fear and gaze back at Shiori with wide, terrified eyes. That seemed to be the Caliburn's desired response.

  "Well, guess what? I'm not gonna kill you," said Shiori, and Joy felt a brief wave of relief before she saw Shiori's vicious grin as she continued.

  "I'm gonna do way worse than that."

  Joy trembled under Shiori's grip, as she tried to avoid speculating about exactly what a wanted war criminal would consider to be 'worse than death,' and failed. Shiori snickered, apparently able to guess what she was thinking.

  "You know what your deal is? I been watching you, and I can tell. You're vain."

  Joy's confusion gave her a brief respite from her terror. Vain? Sure, she wouldn't claim to be free of faults, but of all the things to berate herself for, vanity wouldn't even be in the—

  "Oh, you don't see it? You don't agree?" Shiori said, leering over her. "That's funny. It's funny how people are blind to their biggest flaws, when they're dead obvious to everyone else. Through that whole ordeal at the warehouse, I saw you get really mad one time, so mad you totally forgot where you were. You remember that?"

  Getting constantly asked questions while being prevented from answering was frustrating, and Shiori knew that. But Joy had to try to think of the answer, or what Shiori thought was the answer. Joy was sure she'd been the most upset when Benny had been threatening to bite off Lin-Lin's fingers, but what that had to do with vanity was beyond—

  "I'm twenty-six years old, dammit!" said Shiori, in a screechy falsetto, that sounded nothing like Joy's real voice, though she guessed it was supposed to.

  "Of all the things to get mad about," said Shiori, snickering at her. "I wasn't even serious—I was just messing with those pedophile pigs, but you got soooo mad, didn't you?"

  Oh, so she really hadn't looked like a little kid in her suit? She’d been kidding. That was…That was a relief? Even now? Joy felt a flush rise to her cheeks at the idea that a war criminal might be right about her.

  "And when you were getting worked over—you took the punches okay. And you hated getting your finger cranked, but you didn't really start freaking out until I threatened to cut off your ear," said Shiori. "As soon as I threatened to ruin your pretty face—total panic time."

  Well, of course I did. Amputation of anything would be scarier than a broken finger. A broken finger could heal up, but if something got cut off, that was it. That didn't have anything to do with vanity, it was just—

  "So, that's how it's gonna go," said Shiori. "I'll leave you alive, but not until after I start cutting. We'll start with your ears. Then your nose. Then both eyes. Then maybe I'll carve out something on your cheeks. Haven't decided on what yet, whether it'll be a message, or a little doodle, or whatever. Maybe I'll get inspired. I'll save your tongue for last, so when you have to beg for help—which you'll be spending the rest of your life doing—whoever you cling to is gonna have a bitch of a time figuring out what the fuck you're asking for. I wonder who that's gonna be, if anybody? You got a boyfriend? Think he'll be willing to stick around nursing what's left of you when I'm done? I bet he won't. But we'll see, won't we?"

  Joy gazed in horror as the knife twirled about in front of her face. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And her terror had nothing to do with excessive vanity, either. Anyone would hate losing their speech and sight, and...and getting disfigured. Anyone would. And so what if Joy cared about her appearance and wanted to look good. That was common. It wasn't her defining trait. It didn't drive her actions. A person driven by vanity would've never gotten herself into this situation to begin with. If anything, Shiori was the vain one—she was the one prepared to torture someone over an insult. Over a smear to her reputation. Talk abo
ut angry—Shiori got the maddest over how she was portrayed in a comic strip. This was projection! All projection! And stupid! If Shiori really cared about her reputation so much, the best thing to do was...

  A bolt of inspiration hit Joy, and she struggled against her captor's grip, pleaded with her eyes. If she could just get her mouth free for a second, just a bare second, she had a chance. Just give her a chance! A chance to say one thing.

  "Eh, what's this?" Shiori said, "You got something to say? Maybe you want to beg for mercy, huh?"

  Joy made what muffled noises she could with the gauntlet over her mouth, and continued to beg with her eyes. Whatever answer gave her the opportunity to speak. That one. That was her answer.

  "Or maybe you want to scream for help," said Shiori speculatively. "Maybe you think I'll just kill you then, instead of forcing you to live as a freak. Well, that won't work. I'll just have to work faster, is all. Sloppier. But maybe you'd prefer that, huh? Well, you know what? I'll be generous. You've got guts, if nothing else. But this better be good."

  The vise grip on Joy's mouth relaxed. She would get her chance to speak. Joy couldn't waste this. She took a deep breath, looked Shiori square in the eyes, and said,

  "How would you like an interview?"

  Shiori stared back at her. "What?"

  "Hello I don't think we've been formally introduced My name is Joy Song Fan freelance reporter working for the Dodona Gazette and I'd love to do an in-depth interview for the paper so the world can learn about the real Shiori Rosewing instead of some fake four-color tramp and—"