Through the lens of the scope, Johnny saw the boulder explode in a flash of light and dust. An instant later, the booming thunder of impact reached them. When the sea breeze swept the air clear, he saw a deep crater in the rock.
“Wow!” was all Jonathan Madsen could say. He swept his long blond hair from his eyes and sighted through the scope again, centering the laser dot in the deepest part of the rock and squeezing off another round. The same flash and report followed. This time, the top of the boulder shattered into three big pieces and a lot of gravel. They toppled over and fell into the waves with large and satisfying plumes of foam. The roar reached them like the sound of a bomb.
“Sweet!” Johnny shouted out. “The biggest thing Id ever fired was my dad’s skeet gun. This is great!”
Leila smiled and stepped away from the weapon. “Captain Anger developed the rail gun to overcome the inadequacies of gunpowder.
There’s a limit on the expansion of gases when gunpowder ignites, so there’s an upper limit on the muzzle velocity of a bullet. The rail gun uses superconducting electromagnets to accelerate the projectile up to about ten thousand feet per second.” She leaned against the side of the aircraft and put her hands in the pockets of her skin-tight black jumpsuit. “That bang when you fired it was the sound of the pellet breaking the sound barrier as it shot out of the muzzle. It superheated and ionized the air by friction, causing the flash. At night it leaves a glowing trail, sort of like tracer bullets. It’s pretty.”
“What do you do for Captain Anger?” Madsen asked.
“I’m an industrial design engineer. Whatever Cap wants, I model and
test it on computer and then we manufacture it.” She nodded toward the rail gun. “I designed that.”
Johnny cocked an ear toward the hatchway. “What’s that sound?” he asked.
Leila straightened, listening to the high-pitched, distant buzzing noise. “Sounds like a swarm of mosquitoes,” she said.
“But this far from land?”
“Over there!” Madsen shouted, pointing toward the shore.
A transparent darkness whose shape changed from instant to instant in chaotic, random patterns drifted over the shoreline heading out to sea.
Directly toward the Seamaster.
Jonathan gaped in fascination at the pulsating, flying mass. “It looks more like a swarm of bees. Or locusts.”
Leila shook her head with grim realization. “Those aren’t insects,” she said.
The buzzing grew louder. Darkness filled the sky.
Chapter Sixteen
The Devil’s Doorstep
The moaning grew louder as the four ascended the stairs toward darkness. Cap raised a hand. Rock and Sun Ra stopped silently. Tex, who had turned his head to watch their rear, bumped into Rock.
“Watch your step, quack!” the Russian hissed over his shoulder.
Tex ran a hand through his long grey hair and said “When you get outta mah way, short, round, and ugly!”
Cap turned to gaze sternly at the pair. They instantly shut up and he continued along the stairway, climbing the steps with a silent, cat-like tread. Darkness filled the corridor at the top, but at the far end—from whence came the moans—light shone around the edges of hospital-style doors.
“This is maddening,” an exasperated voice behind the door said. “A few simple commands involve so many neurons!”
“This,” another voice insisted, “isn’t as simple as moving cargo from one point to another or firing a rifle. You want coordinated movement and speech that you can control!”
“Try this,” the first voice demanded.
The moaning increased, then became a garbled collection of guttural hisses and glottal clucks.
“That’s closer,” the second voice agreed.
Captain Anger quietly eased the door open. Even with his care, it creaked ever so lightly.
William Arthur Dandridge, leaning with both hands on a computer terminal, turned to see the powerful figure in the doorway. His assistant, bent over a monitor, looked up too. Startled, Dandridge stared into Anger’s deep green eyes and saw the confidence there. He felt that steady gaze peer into the deepest recesses of his soul. Nonetheless, he straightened up from the terminal and spoke in a loud, firm voice.
“Get the hell out of here.”
Sun Ra followed Cap into the room and glanced at the moaning figure—a middle-aged man lying supine on the table, surrounded by a phalanx of computer equipment and monitors. “Hey— that’s the Secretary General of the UN!”
Cap spoke, his voice deep and commanding. “I’ve come for you, Dandridge. Your dreams are finished. It’s nightmare time.”
Dandridge smiled almost wryly. “I don’t know who you are, but you look old enough to know never to threaten a man on his own turf.” He tapped a few keys on the terminal keyboard. With a chunking sound, semi-circular slit appeared in the floor between Dandridge and Captain Anger, spewing a blackish dust that spread toward the four intruders.
Rock and Sun Ra pulled their pistols and aimed in on Dandridge. Cap motioned them to hold their fire. The black stain spread toward them at a speedy clip.
“Don’t be concerned for your lives,” Dandridge said snidely. “These just devour free metals, such as that of your weapons. I want you alive for research.” He smiled again. “And don’t worry on my account—they’re programmed to stay away from the center of the room.”
At that, Cap smiled. Crouching down, he kept an eye on the approach of the microbotic horde as he pulled a metal cylinder from a bulging cargo pocket and set it behind him. Just before the dark wave reached his feet, he sprang toward Dandridge with a long and powerful leap.
Mouth agape, Dandridge watched in shock as the human missile flew toward him. The impact threw him against a bank of monitors, slamming them down together in a hail of shattered glass. The smell and heat of burning insulation choked his stunned senses. Behind him, his assistant sprinted to a door at the rear, abandoning his master to the violent strangers.
Dandridge stared into the white teeth that grinned within his attacker’s wild expression. Captain Anger gripped the renegade scientist by his lab coat, ramming him against the shattered equipment. Two nerve-jarring shoves reduced Dandridge to compliance. Rising, Cap dragged the man up with him, then turned to check on his companions’ escape from the malicious microbotic horde.
Acting swiftly, Rock gave the lawyer a leg up off the ground. Sun Ra wrapped his huge dark fists around a high-intensity operating lamp and pulled himself up, mighty biceps bulging with power. Rock did the same for Tex, who grabbed on to another lamp and held on with his strong surgeon’s hands.
With the tide of microbots closing in on him, Rock looked up to find another lamp. None were in reach.
“Chyort vosmi!” he shouted.
“Here!” Sun Ra extended a foot within Rock’s grasp.
“Are you kidding?” Rock shouted. “We’d pull damn’ thing out of ceiling! I’ll—”
Rock stared with alarm at the black dust as it engulfed the cylinder Cap had placed on the floor. The shiny stainless steel quickly grew pitted and disintegrated, gnawed away by creatures so small that hundreds could ride on the back of an ant.
Cap clamped a tan, muscular hand around Dandridge’s throat and lifted him up. “Shut them off,” he growled.
“You think they’re radio dispatched like taxis?” Dandridge gurgled. “They leave the gate programmed. They keep working till they can’t find any more metal in their target zone.”
“Sunny!” Rock cried, tossing his pistol up to his comrade. Sun Ra caught the gun in one hand and wrapped the arm back around the lamp.