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"SPINNER OF WEBS III: Wild Lightning'
May. 26th, 2022 11:28 pmSPINNER OF WEBS III: Wild Lightning
3/28-3/30/2014
I.
At three thousand feet, the stealthcopter CORBY circled the uncharted island one final time. Completely black, with no external lights, the CORBY did not show up on radar and had no heat signature. Its rotors were silenced so efficiently that people standing on the ground would not hear it pass even directly overhead. The CORBYs operated beyond the limits of Human technology because they had been designed and crafted by the Trom, who shared their secrets only with the handful of people who belonged to the Kenneth Dred Foundation.
In the cabin, lit only by a row of six tiny monitor screens and the various subdued green and blue indicator lights and gauges on the control panels, Timothy Limbo was sitting in the co-pilot seat. He regarded the tiny whirlpool of barely visible energy that hovered over his hand and then dismissed it. "Thanks, fellas."
"You're positive about this, Timothy?" asked the woman at the control stick. Lauren Sable Reilly was wearing the full field suit, all black with its boots, heavy pants and waist-length jacket crammed with miniaturized weapons and tools. The helmet was hooked into the ship's sensors, but she had the visor slid open so her face showed deep worry. "That's a lot of palace to search."
"My caspers have been going through it for the past two hours," he answered. "They have glided through every bathroom, every storage closet, every bedroom. There is a harem of maybe a dozen women lounging around. There is a vast Alchemical laboratory. There is an outside pen of chickens and goats. There are fifty tough-looking guards mostly in a barracks building with some on patrol. No guns, just billy clubs and pikes. In a library room the size of a basketball court, Tzing-Dao Wang is bent over a tangle of scrolls while two women are writing down what he says on clipboards."
"Sounds fairly innocuous for a sinister mastermind," said Jocelyn Garimara from the compartment behind the cabin, divided off by a clear sheet of plastic which at the moment was slid open. She was an Australian Aborigine with thick straight black hair and a smooth brown skin without a single flaw. Her dark eyes seemed even more thoughtful than usual as she watched her teammates. Ever since the Red Spectre had manifested in her during adolescence, she had always had to be watchful.
"Honestly, it's almost a boringly sedate place," Timothy Limbo replied. "No dungeons filled with half-starved prisoners. No vats of raw opium, no torture chambers. I did find one man locked in an unfurnished room, but he looks like and is dressed as one of the guards. Maybe the women are being kept against their will, but I can't tell. They seemed preoccupied with practicing on mandolins and rehearsing dance numbers. They look more like a music revue backstage than oppressed sex slaves."
"I can't understand it!" Sable snapped irritably. This was so out of character for her that both Timothy and Jocelyn gave a start. "Olivia has told me about his network of crime. The Spinner of Webs provides addictive drugs made only by Alchemy, which no one else can supply. He provides undetectable poisons. He smuggles desperate women from North Korea to work California brothels. She has given me tons of details. This palace must be separate from his real enterprises."
Timothy hesitated but offered, "Sable, you only have this Olivia woman's word for all this? She IS Tzing-Dao Wang's daughter, maybe she has an ulterior motive-"
"No," said their team leader. "She wouldn't lie to me like that. Our own sources tell us that the Spinner of Webs owns gambling dens in the New York and Boston Chinatowns. He owns a dozen hotels and office buildings, which must be to launder money from his darker businesses. Besides, remember when you saved me from that torturer?"
"Yeah," admitted Timothy. "That guy had on rubber gloves and a leather apron and he was coming to visit you with a tray of sharp instruments. He was a skinner if I ever saw one."
"That was when I met Tzing-Dao Wang face to face for the first time," Sable grumbled. "The second time we meet will be the last."
Jocelyn and Timothy exchanged a concerned glance. This was not at all like the reasonable, quietly determined Sable they had known for years.
Through the light-enhancing windscreen of the CORBY, Sable gazed coldly down at the island far beneath them. Like the other five in this chain, it was little more than bare rock protruding up from the South China Sea. This one was marked by a peak that rose straight up six hundred feet like a spike, leaving only a narrow flat area around its base. The top of the peak had been flattened and now held a dozen ornate buildings connected by walkways with courtyards between them. China, South Korea and Japan all claimed ownership of these jagged rocks in the ocean, a territorial dispute that had been dragging on for seventy years and seemed fated to never be resolved.
"That mountain has sheer sides like glass," Jocelyn ventured to observe. "I can't see a way for anyone to climb it."
Sable's voice softened a bit. "Yes. For decades, Wang has had his men descending on ropes to chip away any projections. They've made the mountain almost perfectly smooth. Olivia tells me there is a concealed opening at sea level which leads to a vertical tunnel up inside the mountain to the top."
"Whoa, imagine the work that went into THAT project," Timothy said. "Digging down through all that granite...."
"I'm sending a signal to disrupt their security cameras," Sable told them. "The next few hours, their systems will keep jamming up and shutting down. While their techs work to find the glitch, Jocelyn and I will have some freedom to move. Timothy, take the stick."
"Got it," he said. "Co-pilot controls now in command. Captain, I wish you would let us land so I could go with you guys."
Sable had unhooked her helmet and scrambled through the opening behind the cabin into the rear compartment. As Jocelyn helped her buckle on a parachute pack identical to her own, the team captain said, "We stick to our plan, Tim. Bring us down."
"Stand by to jump," he said with obvious reluctance. The CORBY dropped straight down to just over one hundred and fifty feet about the palaces, and both Sable and Jocelyn leaped out through the side hatch which closed behind them. As soon as they had cleared the hatch, the CORBY hurtled upward faster than any true helicopter could and was gone from sight in a split-second. The two KDF members triggered their gas-powered mechanism and small black parachutes were fired upward. The shock of the chutes opening ran through the two women, then they barely had time to tuck and roll before they were slammed hard onto a paved surface. In another second, they had jumped to their feet and were hauling the chutes in by the lines.
Many of the stunts KDF members pulled were only possible because they were Tel Shai knights and had accelerated healing from years of the tagra diet. Microscopic bone fractures from impacts like this sealed up instantly, bruises and scrapes were gone so quickly that Sable and Jocelyn were hardly aware of them. They hastily bundled up their black chutes and stowed them beneath a stone fountain which featured a dolphin spouting water.
Swinging around in a circle, Sable used all her enhanced senses to search the area. "Safe so far," she said almost in a whisper. "I don't detect anyone within normal line of vision."
Jocelyn Garimara made sure the chutes and their lines were as concealed as possible, then stood up. "All right, captain. We're in the web itself of the Spinner of Webs."
( the rest of the story )
3/28-3/30/2014
I.
At three thousand feet, the stealthcopter CORBY circled the uncharted island one final time. Completely black, with no external lights, the CORBY did not show up on radar and had no heat signature. Its rotors were silenced so efficiently that people standing on the ground would not hear it pass even directly overhead. The CORBYs operated beyond the limits of Human technology because they had been designed and crafted by the Trom, who shared their secrets only with the handful of people who belonged to the Kenneth Dred Foundation.
In the cabin, lit only by a row of six tiny monitor screens and the various subdued green and blue indicator lights and gauges on the control panels, Timothy Limbo was sitting in the co-pilot seat. He regarded the tiny whirlpool of barely visible energy that hovered over his hand and then dismissed it. "Thanks, fellas."
"You're positive about this, Timothy?" asked the woman at the control stick. Lauren Sable Reilly was wearing the full field suit, all black with its boots, heavy pants and waist-length jacket crammed with miniaturized weapons and tools. The helmet was hooked into the ship's sensors, but she had the visor slid open so her face showed deep worry. "That's a lot of palace to search."
"My caspers have been going through it for the past two hours," he answered. "They have glided through every bathroom, every storage closet, every bedroom. There is a harem of maybe a dozen women lounging around. There is a vast Alchemical laboratory. There is an outside pen of chickens and goats. There are fifty tough-looking guards mostly in a barracks building with some on patrol. No guns, just billy clubs and pikes. In a library room the size of a basketball court, Tzing-Dao Wang is bent over a tangle of scrolls while two women are writing down what he says on clipboards."
"Sounds fairly innocuous for a sinister mastermind," said Jocelyn Garimara from the compartment behind the cabin, divided off by a clear sheet of plastic which at the moment was slid open. She was an Australian Aborigine with thick straight black hair and a smooth brown skin without a single flaw. Her dark eyes seemed even more thoughtful than usual as she watched her teammates. Ever since the Red Spectre had manifested in her during adolescence, she had always had to be watchful.
"Honestly, it's almost a boringly sedate place," Timothy Limbo replied. "No dungeons filled with half-starved prisoners. No vats of raw opium, no torture chambers. I did find one man locked in an unfurnished room, but he looks like and is dressed as one of the guards. Maybe the women are being kept against their will, but I can't tell. They seemed preoccupied with practicing on mandolins and rehearsing dance numbers. They look more like a music revue backstage than oppressed sex slaves."
"I can't understand it!" Sable snapped irritably. This was so out of character for her that both Timothy and Jocelyn gave a start. "Olivia has told me about his network of crime. The Spinner of Webs provides addictive drugs made only by Alchemy, which no one else can supply. He provides undetectable poisons. He smuggles desperate women from North Korea to work California brothels. She has given me tons of details. This palace must be separate from his real enterprises."
Timothy hesitated but offered, "Sable, you only have this Olivia woman's word for all this? She IS Tzing-Dao Wang's daughter, maybe she has an ulterior motive-"
"No," said their team leader. "She wouldn't lie to me like that. Our own sources tell us that the Spinner of Webs owns gambling dens in the New York and Boston Chinatowns. He owns a dozen hotels and office buildings, which must be to launder money from his darker businesses. Besides, remember when you saved me from that torturer?"
"Yeah," admitted Timothy. "That guy had on rubber gloves and a leather apron and he was coming to visit you with a tray of sharp instruments. He was a skinner if I ever saw one."
"That was when I met Tzing-Dao Wang face to face for the first time," Sable grumbled. "The second time we meet will be the last."
Jocelyn and Timothy exchanged a concerned glance. This was not at all like the reasonable, quietly determined Sable they had known for years.
Through the light-enhancing windscreen of the CORBY, Sable gazed coldly down at the island far beneath them. Like the other five in this chain, it was little more than bare rock protruding up from the South China Sea. This one was marked by a peak that rose straight up six hundred feet like a spike, leaving only a narrow flat area around its base. The top of the peak had been flattened and now held a dozen ornate buildings connected by walkways with courtyards between them. China, South Korea and Japan all claimed ownership of these jagged rocks in the ocean, a territorial dispute that had been dragging on for seventy years and seemed fated to never be resolved.
"That mountain has sheer sides like glass," Jocelyn ventured to observe. "I can't see a way for anyone to climb it."
Sable's voice softened a bit. "Yes. For decades, Wang has had his men descending on ropes to chip away any projections. They've made the mountain almost perfectly smooth. Olivia tells me there is a concealed opening at sea level which leads to a vertical tunnel up inside the mountain to the top."
"Whoa, imagine the work that went into THAT project," Timothy said. "Digging down through all that granite...."
"I'm sending a signal to disrupt their security cameras," Sable told them. "The next few hours, their systems will keep jamming up and shutting down. While their techs work to find the glitch, Jocelyn and I will have some freedom to move. Timothy, take the stick."
"Got it," he said. "Co-pilot controls now in command. Captain, I wish you would let us land so I could go with you guys."
Sable had unhooked her helmet and scrambled through the opening behind the cabin into the rear compartment. As Jocelyn helped her buckle on a parachute pack identical to her own, the team captain said, "We stick to our plan, Tim. Bring us down."
"Stand by to jump," he said with obvious reluctance. The CORBY dropped straight down to just over one hundred and fifty feet about the palaces, and both Sable and Jocelyn leaped out through the side hatch which closed behind them. As soon as they had cleared the hatch, the CORBY hurtled upward faster than any true helicopter could and was gone from sight in a split-second. The two KDF members triggered their gas-powered mechanism and small black parachutes were fired upward. The shock of the chutes opening ran through the two women, then they barely had time to tuck and roll before they were slammed hard onto a paved surface. In another second, they had jumped to their feet and were hauling the chutes in by the lines.
Many of the stunts KDF members pulled were only possible because they were Tel Shai knights and had accelerated healing from years of the tagra diet. Microscopic bone fractures from impacts like this sealed up instantly, bruises and scrapes were gone so quickly that Sable and Jocelyn were hardly aware of them. They hastily bundled up their black chutes and stowed them beneath a stone fountain which featured a dolphin spouting water.
Swinging around in a circle, Sable used all her enhanced senses to search the area. "Safe so far," she said almost in a whisper. "I don't detect anyone within normal line of vision."
Jocelyn Garimara made sure the chutes and their lines were as concealed as possible, then stood up. "All right, captain. We're in the web itself of the Spinner of Webs."
( the rest of the story )
