Victor Koman - Captain Anger Adventure #1 The Microbotic Menace

Scores of zombies milled about the interior of the chamber, performing tasks that microbots could not. They worked mostly on moving cargo from place to place with silent, unthinking dedication.

Cap pointed to one of the many hatchways dotting the bottom edge of the dome. “That one,” he said. “Let’s get through it.”

“Why?” Rock asked.

“It’s the only one with a surveillance camera above it.”

Sun Ra unholstered his pistol. “Shall I shoot it out?”

Cap raised his hand and shook his head. “Just keep close to the wall.”

The door Cap singled out stood a third of the way around the vast dome. Sticking closely to the perimeter, the four moved slowly toward their goal. Cap watched the camera to make sure it did not rotate toward them. It seemed to be mounted in a fixed position, pointing downward to view anyone approaching the hatchway.

Cap reached the door first and signaled to Paine. With a grin, Sun Ra sighted in on the camera and fired a single shot. Inside the massive cavern, the report sounded dull and muted, as if the dome had absorbed the sound and dampened any echoes.

The camera blew to bits.

Cap examined the locking mechanism, a simple touch pad similar to a telephone. Withdrawing a screwdriver from one of his many vest pockets, Cap removed the pad from the wall. Rock and Tex kept watch for any suspicious movements from the zombies. Some of them walked within a few yards of the four, but none noticed the trespassers.

Cap hotwired the door. It rippled open fluidly from the center as oil floating on water retreats from a droplet of soap.

That impressed even Captain Anger. “Door-microbots that assemble and disassemble.” Then he shook his head. “Dandridge could have made a fortune with these inventions. Instead, he’s made the choices that bring us to end his career.”

The same argent material as the dome formed the corridor and curved away toward a stairway a few feet from the entrance. The air smelled of ozone, acid, and solvents. Cap took a step in, but Sun Ra seized him by the arm.

“Cap-what if this tunnel has a defense barrier, too?”

The copper-haired man shook his head. “Once inside a fortress, it’s inefficient and dangerous to put deadfalls and booby traps everywhere. Dandridge is too smart to put himself in mortal danger every time he strolls around here.” He moved a foot toward the threshold.

“What if,” Rock suggested, “Dandridge has own implant to tell his creatures to stay away?”

The captain smiled. “Whom would he trust to implant it? More accurately, does a man such as Dandridge trust even his own creations?”

Tex spoke up. “Didn’t y’all call him-and I quote-’dangerously mad’?”

Cap stared at Tex for a moment, then put his foot down on the deck of the corridor. Nothing happened.

“Let’s go,” he said. Sun Ra, pistol still in hand, joined him. Rock and Tex drew their pistols and followed, Tex bringing up the rear.

As they silently approached the stairway they heard it-an inhuman moan that rose to a wail and fell again, like waves of despair on a sea of dread.

Jonathan Madsen stared at the strange contraption in the cargo hatch.

Leila threw a switch on the instrument panel and they both watched the device flip up from beneath a plate in the titanium flooring. At one end of the black and blockish four foot long box was a small hole, around which a circle of inward-pointing arrows had been painted in canary yellow, with the simple yet understated notice DANGER printed in the same color neatly below.

Four thick tubes wrapped in shiny gold-hued insulation entered the left side of the box and exited the right side. The top of the box sported a large and impressive-looking telescopic sight. Below it sat a smaller black tube marked with a laser trefoil.

Johnny-at Leila’s suggestion-stood behind the weapon and studied the control panel.

“These are the cooling pumps,” she said, flipping up four switches. From beneath the deck of the gently rocking Seamaster arose the sound of small compressors. The golden tubes feeding into the railgun grew frosty with condensation. “This is the main power switch.” She turned a dial halfway. Johnny felt a tingle in the air around him. “And this is the laser sight. Forty watts, so don’t even get near it.” She put her left hand on the left grip and pulled the trigger, then stretched to put her right hand out in front of the laser. A dazzlingly bright red spot blazed on her ivory-white palm.

“It feels warm. If I left my hand there long enough, I could actually get burned. And it would definitely blind you if you looked into it.” Her tone grew steadily more enthusiastic as she spoke about the weapon. “The laser’s used for sighting. Here.”

She swung the box about on its gimbaled base and pointed it toward a rock thrusting up from the waters a few hundred yards away between them and the shore. She let him stand at the controls and look through the scope.

The scope’s point of focus hung about eight inches in front of the lens, which made sighting in easy. He saw the brilliant red spot of the laser reflecting off the rock about a foot from its top.

“Want to fire it?” she asked.

“Sure!”

“The rail gun has a very flat trajectory, so wherever you point the laser is generally where the projectile will hit. The accuracy begins to drop off at about three miles, though.”

“What does it shoot?”

She pulled a small steel slug from her pocket. “One of these.” It looked like a miniature rocket about an inch long, pointed on one end with slots cut in the trailing end that gave the raised parts the impression vanes. It felt remarkably light compared to a lead bullet of the same size, which was about.40 caliber.

She stood behind him and directed his hands with hers. Her hair smelled like springtime and her touch was gentle and warm. “Your left hand controls the laser beam for the sight and your right hand fires the rail gun. It can cycle as fast as five hundred rounds a minute, but we usually keep it on single shot. You’ll see why.”

Johnny actuated the laser and sighted in again on the boulder. He aimed lower, toward the middle of the rock where the crash of waves left a wet, dark waterline. The red dot scintillated brightly like a ruby aflame. His right hand squeezed the trigger.

With a sharp schrack and a brilliant flash, the rail gun kicked backward on its mount.

“Whoa!” Johnny said in surprise. “I didn’t expect recoil.”

Leila smiled. “The magnetic field pushes backward against the bullet as it moves the bullet forward. Nobody breaks Newton’s laws.”

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.”