The Adventures of the Jade Dragon

Episode 10

The Jade Dragon’s Defeat

Chapter 5 Rescuers

Scorpion shuddered as a spider walked down her spine. Something wasn’t right. She froze, her dark-clad body blending in with the shadows of the waterfront building. As the hairs on the back of her head stood up she dove forward, landing on her hands and somersaulting behind a thick wooden piling.

Thunk! Something heavy slammed into the other side of the piling and Scorpion pressed her back to it, trying to sense who was trying to kill her. The six foot piling was wide enough to hide almost all of her body; just part of her arm extending into the open. Since her dark costume blended into the darkness she should be safe enough, but in order to move she would have to cross an area that was lit by a light over the door of a nearby building. Carefully, she retrieved a throwing star from her belt and with a quick flick of her wrist sent it spinning toward the naked light bulb.

There was a tinkling of glass and the wharf was plunged into darkness. Scorpion darted from her hiding place and rolled under a loading platform in front of the warehouse; then she listened.

There were at least four of them. One on the roof above her; another at one end of the warehouse; and a third moving from piling to piling at the other end of the warehouse. She had lost track of the forth; the one who had fired the missile that had hit the piling. In spite of the lack of light she could see what it was now; some sort of dart, possibly fired from a blowgun of some sort.

“Assassins,” she thought. But she was not thinking of conventional hitmen like the one who had tried to kill Sun Lin a few nights ago. If they used darts instead of guns they were something out of the ordinary. Whoever was trying to murder the heroines of Metro City had gone out of his way to hire someone special, or rather, several someones if her count was right.

“Damn,” she thought. She had located the fourth assassin; he was moving behind a large stack of wooden boxes that had been unloaded from a ship. They were almost directly across from her. Between them the four assassins had her boxed in.

Normally Scorpion would not have been particularly worried by the situation. The average thug, even those who had taken up the profession of a contract killer was no match for her. Even hemmed in the way she was she would almost certainly have escaped, but if her assailants were who she thought they were, then it might not be so easy.

What she wondered about was what members of the Assassins’ guild were doing in Metro City. She could think of only one man who might have hired them, but as far as she knew Zhuang Zhijian, the master criminal she and her heroine companions had defeated, was nowhere in Metro City. It was just possible that he had returned, but if so he was keeping a low profile.

These thoughts sped through her mind in less than a second. She was really much more concerned about someone else. Where was Solange?

She and her sometimes headstrong daughter were supposed to be on patrol together, but Solange had disappeared just a few seconds before Scorpion’s premonition of danger had sent her diving for cover.

To Scorpion, also known as Melissa Gallant, her daughter was something of an enigma. Trained from infancy to be a heroine crimefighter, the girl sometimes exhibited a rebellious streak that Scorpion found hard to understand, especially when the girl was compared to the daughters of her longtime companions, the Jade Dragon and Nova.

Scorpion worried about her daughter. The girl was not like the others. She lacked discipline or at least the level of discipline demanded of a heroine. Sometimes she wondered if any of the girl’s training had sunk into her pretty head. “Why can’t she be like Huan Yue?” she thought. “Sun Lin’s daughter wouldn’t spend her free time running off to speakeasies or drinking herself senseless with illegal whiskey.”

That last rather unkind thought, however, was pushed to the back of her mind and replaced by one that was much more urgent. Had Solange fallen victim to the same assassins that were closing in on her? It was a thought that tied Scorpion’s gut into a knot. She had long accepted danger to herself as the norm, but the fear that her daughter might have been killed or captured increased her levels of apprehension close to that of panic.

“Damn,” she thought again. “What’s the matter with me? I never used to be like this.” But she knew what the answer was. Solange had already suffered through one terrifying and brutal ordeal. Scorpion would have sacrificed herself without a second thought to save her daughter’s life. Unfortunately saving Solange would have to wait until she had saved herself.

Deliberately she put her daughter out of her mind. Trained as an assassin before becoming a heroine, Scorpion had learned to suppress her emotions, and now she called on that iron discipline to force herself to concentrate. She was surrounded and trapped. She first had to find a way to escape and then dispose of the men who had her hemmed in. She reached over her shoulder and unsheathed the deadly Song blade she had received when she had completed her training. Then she reached out with her highly tuned senses and sought to locate her enemies.

Four. She checked their location again. She would have to be absolutely precise. The slightest error and she would be dead, sealing the fate of her daughter as well.

She was like lightning escaping from a bottle as she darted from her hiding place. Her emergence attracted a rain of missiles from the surrounding assassins as they rained darts and throwing stars upon her.

Incredibly, not a missile reached its mark. Half of them missed simply due to the fact that she was not in the area where they struck. The others she deflected with lightning strokes of her sword. And then she was upon the first assassin.

To give the man credit, he acted better than might have been expected. He had just seen a woman charge through a cloud of deadly missiles without a single one striking her. He should have been terrified. Instead with a hiss he drew his own blade and met her head on.

The man she engaged was shrouded from head to foot in midnight black. Only his eyes showed, but Scorpion knew him well enough. He was a member of the very guild that had trained her in her murderous work. “Slut,” he growled. “Your luck has run out. Now you will die.”

“Sorry,” Scorpion returned. “I’ve no time to chat.” The Song blade hissed through the air. The assassin raised his blade to parry, and stared in a millisecond of disbelief as the mystical blade she had received from the Mountain of Heaven cut through his sword as if it were no more than a reed and then took his head from his shoulders.

Scorpion whirled as the remaining assassins headed toward her. Only three now, coming at her from three directions. This time none of them wasted any breath on idle threats. Her sword whirled faster than the eye could follow; describing an arc that first deflected a blow at her head and then took off her opponent’s sword arm just below the shoulder. He had not even started to scream before her blade had traveled on and ripped out the throat of his companion.

The remaining assassin backed away, his dark eyes wide with incredulity. “Who are you?” he gasped.

With a flick of her blade Scorpion silenced the screams of the man whose arm she had amputated and then advanced on the last assassin, her blade at the ready. “Where is my daughter?” she hissed.

The assassin gave no answer. Instead he took a further step backward, moving so that a power pole jutting up from the dock served as an obstacle between him and the heroine. Scorpion followed, annoyed at the delaying tactic. She didn’t want to kill the last assassin, at least not right away. She needed to find out what had happened to Solange and she could not afford the luxury of playing with her last opponent.

She attempted to circle the pole to get at the last assassin, but he moved as well, keeping the obstacle between him and the heroine. Scorpion cursed under her breath. She couldn’t afford to waste time. There was always the chance that there might still be more assassins close by. Getting tied up with a single opponent was the last thing she wanted to do.

She darted toward him, using her speed to cut the assassin off from the pole. With a sweep of her blade she knocked his guard aside and then before he could recover drove her foot into his midriff, knocking him off his feet. Before he could blink her sword was at his throat.

“Now tell me,” Scorpion said, the point of the Song blade slicing through the material covering the assassin’s throat and puncturing the skin.

The assassin, however, was not quite finished. He brought up his foot, jabbing it toward her. Scorpion caught the glint of steel as the poisoned barbs jutting from the toe of his boot sliced into the fabric covering her thigh.

“Bastard,” she grunted. She slammed the flat of her blade into the side of his head, knocking the assassin senseless. “Thank god for Suzi,” she muttered. The barbs had not penetrated the synthetic spider silk fabric of her costume, a material the heroine known as the Scarlet Falcon had been able to copy from the evil genius Ivan Retinoff. Light, but much stronger than steel, it was worn by every heroine in Metro City and one or two villainesses. More importantly at the moment, it had probably saved her life.

The assassin was still conscious, but he was no longer resisting. He lay still, watching her through eyes that were mere slits. “Again,” Scorpion prompted. “Where is my daughter?” She held the blade to his throat once again, slicing through the skin of his throat to emphasize her point.

She got no answer instead the man’s eyes shifted ever so slightly. “Five!” The number flashed through Scorpion’s mind just a millisecond before she was struck from behind. Her finely honed athletic abilities saved her from the blow that would have crushed her skull, resulting in only a glancing blow.

It was, however, enough to drive her to her knees. As the heavy weight of a man’s body pinned her to the ground she mentally repeated the number. “Five.” There had been five assassins. Somehow she had missed the last one. As her head was slammed against the wharf and all thoughts were driven from her mind she thought about Solange. She would never help her daughter now.

Solange brought her arm up just in time. The thin wire that would have sliced into her windpipe caught on the tough material of her costume. Her assailant was strong and even the spider silk would not have prevented her throat from being crushed had she not reacted in time. The man tightened the garrote, preventing her from breaking free and exerting so much pressure that she was arched back and almost lifted off her feet. The position made it impossible for her to exert any leverage to fight off the attack. All she could do was struggle to prevent herself from being cruelly strangled.

Mindful of the fact that she was on the edge of a sloping warehouse roof, and that a single step to the side would send her and the attempted assassin plunging two stories to the dock below, she shifted her weight, gaining enough purchase that she could exert a part of her strength. Then she focused, calling forth her reserves of strength in a sudden explosion of power.

She jerked the arm protecting her throat straight forward, forcing the garrote over her head and then whirled on her surprised assailant. The assassin fell back, but his hands flicked in quick motion as he hurled several gleaming objects toward her. Solange leapt straight up, her body rising five feet into the air, but her hands also were not still. A metal dart flew toward the assassin who twisted his body to avoid the attack, but as Solange dropped back toward the roof she made a quick snap of her wrist. The dart jerked to a halt, hauled in by the thin metal wire attached to it, and before the startled assassin could move the wire looped around his neck. A second snap of her wrists jerked the assassin off his feet.

She was on him in an instant. Had she wanted to she could have strangled him to death with the razor-thin wire, but she wanted him alive. The heel of her palm slammed between his eyes and he went limp. “Alright, you little bastard,” she murmured. “Now we’ll find out what you know.”

She looked around over the rooftops of the surrounding warehouses. Where was her mother? She had been only a short distance ahead of her when the assassin had struck. It was surprising that she had not heard the commotion. She thought about calling out and then she heard the clash of steel.

The sound came from behind a warehouse two roofs from where she was. She gave the unconscious assassin one more thump to the head for good luck and ran to the edge of the roof. It was a twenty foot gap to the next warehouse but she leapt across the intervening space as if had been a matter of only a few inches. Darting to the other side of the roof she leapt that gap with equal ease and then moved on cat feet toward where she had heard the sound.

There was no sound now, so she moved with caution, in spite of the fact that she was bursting to know what had happened to her mother. The gained the edge of the roof and peered over the edge.

Directly below her were a half dozen men clad in black. Three she could afford to ignore. Their bloodied bodies would never move again. The other three were clustered around what appeared to be the body of another dark-clad figure. Solange could only suppose that it was probably her mother. She wasn’t moving, and was lying face-down, but the men around her had pulled her hands behind her back and were busy tying her wrists and ankles. It was a good sign. There was little use in tying up someone who was dead.

She waited no more than a second to make sure that there were no other assassins about and then drew her jian from the sheath at her back. The straight-bladed Chinese sword glinted in the streetlights. Without a sound she dropped toward the dock.

It was a thirty foot drop to the dock, but she landed as softly as a dandelion seed, her sword at the ready. There was a hiss of surprise from the assassins and then she was upon them.

They reacted like the highly skilled murderers that they were, but Solange was faster. She cut down the first assassin as he drew his sword and then whirled on the other two. They separated, maneuvering to come at her from two directions. The man on her left held a sword similar to her own, the other assassin held twin blades that were wickedly hooked at either end.

Solange gripped her sword with both hands, her eyes flickering from one man to the other. She wanted to end the fight quickly, but any rash action against men so highly trained would do little more than get her killed and so she waited for her opponents to make the first move.

The man to her left moved first, attempting to force her attention toward. She went for the bait, catching his blade on her own and then with amazing finesse flicked his blade aside and drove the point of her sword for his throat. It was just what the assassins intended. Her attention diverted, the man to her right came in with his twin blades.

Solange gutted him like a fish. The man’s eyes bulged from his head in pain and disbelief and then he slowly sank to the wharf, but Solange wasn’t watching, she had already turned her attention to the remaining assassin. Although the man’s face was hidden beneath the dark hood her wore she could sense his fear. He backed away from her waving his sword like a fan. “How could you move so fast?” he quavered. “Are you some sort of demon?”

“Put down the sword,” Solange ordered, “or you die like the rest.”

“I am an assassin,” the man returned. “It is my duty to succeed or die.”

“This is no good,” Solange thought. “We need him alive.” The man she had knocked unconscious up on the roof might still be there, but she couldn’t be sure. She had no intention of letting the man in front of her escape. She also needed to check on her mother. Scorpion had not moved or made a sound. There was no telling how badly she was injured.

She made up her mind. It was always more dangerous to disarm an opponent than simply kill him, but she didn’t have much choice, not with the disappearance of the Jade Dragon and her daughter. “Have it your way,” she said in reply to the assassin’s comment. Then she moved.

The assassin screamed as she took off his hand. “Damn,” Solange muttered. “Didn’t mean to do that.” She stepped forward and finished her attack by slapping the flat of her sword into the side of his head. It took her only a few seconds to remove the assassin’s sash and use it as a crude tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Then she moved to her mother.

Quickly she cut through the ropes binding the heroine’s wrists and then rolled her over. Scorpion’s eyes fluttered. “Mummy?” Solange whispered.

Suzi Kendall, also known as the Scarlet Falcon paced up and down the centre of her luxurious living room. “So,” she said. “Zhuang is involved, but he is not the one who has Sun Lin or Huan Yue?”

“If the assassins Solange captured were telling the truth that appears to be the case,” Melissa answered. “It seems that Nails Larson has them and that is certainly not good news.” She looked toward her daughter for affirmation.

Solange nodded her agreement. “I think they were telling the truth,” she added. “It’s amazing how talkative men become when you threaten to cut off their balls.”

“Yes,” Suzi agreed. She didn’t smile at Solange’s blunt comment although she might have under different circumstances. Unfortunately the fact that the most brutal criminal in Metro City had Sun Lin and Huan Yue in his clutches took all the humour out of the situation.

“We’ll have to move fast,” Suzi continued. “It’s too bad that Kyla and Natassia are not here. We could certainly use their help.”

“I’ve sent them a message,” Melissa said. “But they were supposed to be gone for several weeks and the mission they are on is too important for them to just drop it.”

“Then we’ll just have to do it on our own,” Suzi said. “After all three heroines should be able to find a way into Nails Larson’s hideout.”

Melissa nodded. She and Suzi had been up against tough odds before. Almost certainly they should be able to find a way to save Sun Lin and Huan Yue. In the back of her mind, however, lurked a thought she could not voice. What if the Jade Dragon and her daughter were already dead?

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