Tales of the Red Panda: The Mind Master (17 page)

The Westing mansion was set high upon a hill, with grounds
that extended far on every side. Quaint groves of trees, deliberately placed
long ago by Terrence Westing’s forbearers, broke the line of the carefully
manicured lawns as they ran up the hill to the house. It was easy to see why
Ajay Shah had selected this seat for his coronation of sorts. There was no
route towards the main house that his enemy could take under cover. The Red
Panda could, and almost certainly would, flit from one stand of trees to the
next in a vain attempt to approach unseen, but within each small grove of
trees, he would find only death.

Within each island of cover there were crouched a dozen men.
Men of wealth, men of privilege. Men who would shortly pay their final tribute
to their new Master. But first they would serve as his soldiers.

Ajay Shah smiled at the thought, his fingers playing about
his lips as he did so. His exceedingly well-dressed army was composed entirely
of weaklings. Plump, pampered socialites who stood no chance against the skills
for which the Red Panda was known. But Shah’s mind was in theirs. Their will
was his will. Each man that lay concealed around the house would fight as a man
possessed, in a frenzied desperation to serve before he faltered or fell. If he
who called himself the Red Panda truly wished to stop the ascent of the Ajay
Shah, he would be forced to destroy these so-called innocents. Shah would savor
that moment still more than he would his enemy’s eventual destruction.

And beyond the trees, ringing the house on every side, stood
the matrons and daughters of the city’s finest families, each staring rapt into
the middle distance awaiting a sign, and each holding the cold steel of a
machine gun in her hands. Skill-less, but deadly through sheer number, they too
would fight until they were destroyed. Only by killing those whom he had sworn
to protect could the Red Panda reach Ajay Shah. Only by becoming that for which
Shah had been cast out all those years ago.

Shah shook his head suddenly. He did not choose to think of
such things, but since confronting his rival in the Club Macaw, his mind had
wandered often to that mountain top, long ago. He lit a cigarette and drew upon
it heavily, his eyes scanning forth from the front landing on which he stood,
waiting for the show to begin. He reached out with his mind and felt the thoughts
of every man and woman on the lawns, using their eyes and ears to spot the
movement of his foe and finding nothing. Some of those sheep would not survive
to be fleeced, he knew. Those that fell would be unable to sign their wealth
over to Shah in the ceremony that was to follow. But there were so many that
the loss of a few scarcely mattered, and Shah still hoped to have his enemy
alive to witness his triumph.

Shah peered into the darkness impatiently. He let the smoke
slowly curl out of his nostrils. If it be not now, yet it would come.

The stillness of the night was suddenly broken by a sound
which was unfamiliar to Shah. A dull, metallic sound, like a steel tube struck
as one would a percussion instrument, but only once. He spun his head around
and reached out with his mind in the direction of the sound, using the senses
of his hive of captive minds to seek its source.

The sound came again, on the far side of the house. Then
again, twice in a single instant. And then again, a host of the strange sounds
came within a few moments, and the first cracks of tiny explosions began. Shah
started at first, but the blasts were no more dangerous than were firecrackers.
Shah peered through the eyes of his slaves, seeking any sign in the darkness
for the sources of these strange missiles that now burst all around the house
in a tight perimeter.

Shah hissed suddenly as he began to understand the reason
for this strange assault. A thick white fog was rolling around the house and
down the hill on every side. The sounds Shah had heard were the firing of
dozens of mortars, each bearing charge after charge filled with gas! Shah
retired quickly inside, pulling the heavy door shut behind him. From beyond
this barricade he could still see the entire field of battle through the minds
in his thrall. The gas was heavier than air, and it clung close to the ground
and rolled away from the house towards the line of machine-gun bearing women.
Shah willed them to stand their ground, to fire their weapons at the attackers,
but most were already struggling against the gas. Some shots rang out, but Shah
knew that they were wild and hopelessly out of range.

As the women were overcome by the knockout gas, the
collective confusion of their minds began to overwhelm Ajay Shah. He heard the
mortars again, ringing out on every side, and reached out with his mind, trying
to find the minds of those responsible for the attacks. He could just begin to
sense them, but the clutter and confusion feeding back into his own mind was
too much for him. He knew that there were dozens of foes, that even as the
second round of gas bombs burst in a ring further from the house, the men who
fired the shots were scrambling for vehicles and beginning a wholesale retreat.
If Shah could only focus…

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!”

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 mansion 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 and 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–