Chapter 14.
By Carycomic
PANAMA CANAL ZONE (1930)
'Lin Kuei Tang' had found it the proverbial child's play to pick the locks on the captain's cabin. The Seven Seas had left the British Honduras coast over a week ago. And Captain Flamingo had still neglected to show himself to her! Even for a chronic alcoholic, that was an affront she refused to tolerate any further. So, while First Mate Van Dahl was on duty up in the wheel house, she broke into the captain's cabin, with her Shadow League bodyguards left outside to keep watch.
At first glance, it looked no different from any other sea captain's quarters she had ever been allowed to visit (alongside her father). A wooden desk with a paper-strewn top and two helm-shaped clocks doubling as paperweights. A moderately-sized book shelf filled with all kinds of nautical history texts. Plus, more personal mementos gathered from many lands over a long career at sea. But, there was one particular item among the latter that attracted a greater deal of interest. Namely, a bladed weapon that resembled some form of trident. Only, each of the prongs looked more like a cross between a Japanese sickle and a Malayan kris!
And the trident, itself, appeared to be grafted to a mummified hand.
Her curiosity now hopelessly aroused, she bent down to examine the scrimshaw plaque on the glass-topped, velvet-lined wooden box in which the trident was encased. Inscribed on the plaque was the following: 'RAZORBACK WHALING STATION: 1904'.
"It is the pride of my collection."
The Eurasian girl spun about, the first mate's voice taking her completely by surprise. A surprise that was almost instantly doubled by the sight of her bodyguards lying unconscious at Van Dahl's feet!
"Who are you?" she whispered, half in rage and half in fear.
Van Dahl smiled, his reply no longer containing any trace of a Netherlands accent.
"Like your father, I have gone by many names over the years. Arthur Gordon Pym; Dr. Curtis Knox; Harold Duggan (alias Capt. Nemo)! But, you, yourself, have more recently known me as... El Hijo de Kukulcan."
INDO-TIBETAN/BURMESE BORDER
(OCTOBER 31, 1962)
The Chinese infantry regiment had been dispatched to the Leng Plateau because of intelligence reports that the British government was going to be smuggling arms and ammunition to a company of Indian Sikhs maintaining a radio listening post at a set of ancient ruins called the Temple of Shadows. Yet, upon arriving there, the platoon that had been dispatched to scout ahead found nothing but a group of vultures... feeding on headless corpses!
"Aiwa!" exclaimed the platoon sergeant. "What could possibly have happened here, commissar?"
The young lieutenant, serving as the platoon's 'political officer', could only shake his head in open-mouthed shock. So, another voice was left to provide the answer.
"The same thing that would have happened to your men, had I not avenged mine."
Every AK-47 in the platoon immediately pointed in the direction of the voice's owner. A tall, muscular Sikh with a blood-drenched beard, a kukri knife in his left hand, and a severed head in his right. But, a severed head with a reptilian-looking face... and a set of mandibles like some overgrown insect. And the look of horrified amazement on that reptilian face was soon mirrored on the faces of the Chinese recon platoon. For, unlike the other-worldly thing that had killed his men, Khan Noonein Singh was not some barbarian!
He would let the approaching Chinese regiment find and bury their dead, intact. That is, before sending them to their own ancestors, as well.
GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
(JUNE 27, 2001)
With his two bare hands, the eugenically enhanced Sikh ripped the turret right off the top of the small-tank vehicle! But, Deathstroke had been capable of too many such stunts, himself, to be phased at seeing anyone else demonstrate them. Consequently, he sprang upward, through the jagged hole, and gave a biochemically enhanced la savate kick to Khan Noonein Singh's jaw with his left foot!
"Back off, Singh! This E.T. is coming with us. You've already got your own goodies to play with, back home."
The Sikh separatist leader got back on his feet. His left hand massaging the remaining ache out of a broken jaw that already regenerated.
"No! I made a promise, a long time ago, that if any other of this thing's kind came to Earth, I would hunt each and every one of them down till either the whole race was extinct. Or, failing that, just to scare them to the point that they would never return here! Obviously, they have not had the good sense to adopt the second choice."
For the second or third time, that night, Deathstroke withdrew his katana. "Over my dead body."
Singh smiled like a Cheshire cat with rabies. "As you wish."
Yet, even as Singh began to step forward with deliberate slowness, a voice started chattering over Deathstroke's right-earwig.
"Deadshot to Deathstroke. Deadshot to Deathstroke. Don't respond. Merely duck and roll to your left when I yell 'now.' "
Whereupon, Singh found himself pinpointed from above- -and momentarily blinded- -by a wide-angle spotlight beam! Followed a micro-second later by Deathstroke yelling:
"Now!"
Deathstoke did as he had been instructed. At the same time, the spotlight was shut off. To be replaced, almost instantly, by a laser targeting beam that planted a red dot on the Sikh separatist's chest. Yet, the laser was not attached to a sniper rifle. Instead, it was atop the barrel of one of Dr. Keyes' cryo-static guns!
The cloud of frigid white mist that subsequently enveloped Singh quickly- -and literally- - froze him in his tracks.
"Way to go, Deadshot!" exulted the katana-wielding mercenary.
"Never mind that," replied the ex-marine. "Here comes our ride!"
The Sikorsky skycrane (code-named "Black Spider") consequently lowered its electromagnetic hoisting disc down atop the damaged APC, prompting the two extra-legal Federal operatives to hurriedly climb on to it.
"Robin!" Batman yelled into his transceiver. "Hit the underside of that thing with a 'tracerang.' Now!"
"Roger, that!"
Whereupon, the Teen Wonder fired what looked like a crossbow bolt from a high-powered air pistol. Only for that "bolt" to suddenly sprout wings like a bat! As a result, when the bolt hit home, in the undercarriage of the armored personnel carrier, a red light began blinking at the tip of each bat wing.
"Alfred," the Dark Knight now addressed his faithful butler. "Follow that skycrane as long as you can. And see it its general trajectory matches up from the last time it disappeared."
"Understood, sir."
Meanwhile, a certain quintet of "FBI agents" were having a similarly urgent conversation.
"We cannot allow them out of our sight," Picard stated the obvious.
The Traveler agreed. "When that Yautja awakens, they won't be able to handle it. Wesley, use what I taught you. Teleport among them disguised as one of them! It should be dimly lit enough in the interior of that vehicle that they won't notice one extra armed guard right away. Not with the masks they were wearing!"
Wesley Crusher nodded in affirmation
"I'll telepath you when we land."
He then faded away from his much older comrades.
Meanwhile, back in New York City, Piotr Chekhov was making a long-distance call by scrambled radiophone to Tokyo, Japan.
"Konichiwa, Kobura-sama. I am having trouble with certain 'business associates.' Is the specialist you once offered to loan me the services of still available? Da? Very good! How soon can you get him here?"
PANAMA CANAL ZONE (1930)
"You?!" exclaimed the Eurasian woman called Lin Kuei Tang. "That's impossible. It took my people ten days to reach the estuary! You…"
"…have much greater stamina. Plus, much more experience at running long distances with minimal encumbrance! If, however, you are referring to my leadership of the Feathered Serpent Clan, I have been exploiting mortal power bases for ten times longer than your father has been alive. Much like he, himself, has used the Lin Kuei Tong as a front for the Shadow League's activity in present-day China! Speaking of which; it was not very imaginative, using their name as your adopted alias. At least my captaincy of this vessel is based on the name of an actual person! Specifically; the kind-hearted (if ill-fated) Argentine whaling captain who rescued me from Bovetoya Island… twenty-six years ago."
The young woman was positively stunned. Too much so to speak! For an awkward moment or two, anyway. Finally, however, she regained her voice.
"How do you know all this?" she whispered, terrified despite herself. "How _can_ you know all this?"
"Van Dahl" grinned.
"My dear Talia. Do you think your father was the first one to hold the title of… E'mo'Tou?"
tbc
Special note: "Harold Duggan (alias Capt. Nemo)" refers to an 1873 British pastiche ( =, in this case, plagiarism) of Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, authored by one Bracebridge Hemyng for a serial story about a Tom Sawyer-type named "Dick Lightheart."
E'mo'Tou: Mandarin Chinese for "the head of the demon."
