Victor Koman: Captain Anger Adventure #1 The Microbotic Menace

Cap had marooned eleven men there after discovering the new island. Aspiring or actual tyrants all, they were stranded there without henchmen, underlings, toadies, or sycophants: no one to act as their muscle; no one to protect them from one another. Violent, aberrant genii, the concept of cooperation among equals failed to occur to them. So they remained on their barren island without the hallmarks of civilization: trust, exchange, division of labor, or even mutual respect.

Cap lowered his binoculars and smiled. “If you only knew, Professor Dandridge, how little indeed we differ, you would have the answer to all your suffering. You all would. If you knew the one main difference between us, you would discover the way off your island.” With that, he sat down, strapped in, closed the canopy and fired up the jet.

Airborne within moments, he accelerated to a mere 200 mph, staying so close to the water that the wide, triangular wing supported the aircraft on ground effect, the same phenomenon seagulls use to conserve energy flying. The wings cruised so close to the surface-about six feet above the swells-that induced drag between the wings and the water slowed the air enough to create added lift. In this way, Captain Anger flew away from the island at a leisurely pace (for him).

Twenty-five miles west of the island-too far for one of them to swim, but close enough for a team-built raft to reach-floated a surplus oil rig. It served as a refueling stop for the SeaDart, which could only carry enough fuel to fly out to the island with a few gallons reserve.

Cap taxied to the center of one side, far from the thick pillars that provided flotation and stability. Connecting the long fuel line to the jet’s tank, he turned the nozzle on and filled up.

During moments such as this-quiet, solitary moments on the sea-Captain Anger belied his name. Calm and confident, Cap gazed at the horizon and saw a world bigger than the one envisioned by Dandridge and his ilk. After a moment, he shut of the fuel line, let it retract, and sealed up the tank. Gazing up at the retired oil rig, he pondered its significance.

Onboard, in a comfortable crew building half the size of a football field, lay stores of food, water, and a library of books hand-picked by Captain Anger. He intended it solely for the solace and education of anyone who might finally acquire the human genius necessary to escape from the island to this place that he fondly thought of as The Last Resort.

It had not happened yet, and the proof of that lay in pieces on the island’s shore. None of them could be satisfied simply to succeed; each had to ensure that the others fail.

Captain Anger fired up the Pratt and Whitney engine, donned his helmet, and lifted off into the sky like a rocket punching through the stratosphere. With a thundering sonic boom that rattled the island and all upon it-including its drenched and wheezing newest inhabitant-Captain Anger vanished into the golden sun like an avenging angel heading homeward.

The land on which the United Nations building stood did not belong to New York City or even the united States. New York had ceded it to the UN half a century before. Maruk Arafshi, head still bandaged, watched the blue-bereted UN military police escort away a violently kicking mirror image of himself.

“I don’t know why they needed you! ” the imposter cried. “I was good! No one would have checked my fingerprints or my DNA! I was great at being you!”

“I’m sure your were,” Arafshi said with honest amazement at the familiar face before him. At the moment, the recovering Secretary General looked less like Maruk Arafshi than did the fake being stuffed into the patrol car.

Welcomed back to his plush, mahogany-lined office with sincere applause from his staff and fellow delegates, he blinked from the flash of camera strobes and video lights. Leaning unsteadily against his broad desk, he said, “Please, I’m back and I am eager to get to work. My recent unpleasantness is not the issue here.”

“What is the issue?” shouted a reporter.

Without a thought of self-censorship, Arafshi honestly replied, “That the last superpower on earth doesn’t even pay its UN dues, yet shamelessly uses the General Assembly and Security Council as a rubber stamp for its policy of economic and cultural expansion and we all go blithely along with it, eager to trade self-determination for World Bank credit and national sovereignty for a false sense of security.”

Arafshi raised his hand to his mouth and nearly bit his tongue off. Allah take me now, he thought with growing terror. What have I said?

Captain Anger and his companions will return in Adventure #2: The Ivory Tower