Viktor Koman - The Microbotic Menace

“Leila,” he radioed. “Is the countermeasure ready?”

“Ready to drop as soon as we’re airborne,” she replied.

She turned the massive aircraft around in the water and powered it up to move toward the advancing boat. At fifty yards and closing, she

throttled back and turned the plane’s bay to face them. Jonathan cycled the hatch open and helped the refugees inside.

In less than a minute, everyone clambered aboard and he sealed the hatch shut. Sun Ra guided the freed captives to their seats—really nothing more than one-foot-square pieces of stamped metal that folded down from the fuselage. He ordered the zombies—in Spanish—to seat themselves. Leila helped Tex strap the UN Secretary General into a rescue basket.

Captain Anger made his way to the cockpit and slipped into the pilot’s seat. Without a word of warning, he slid the four throttle levers forward and gunned the engines to full power, the four Pratt & Whitney J75-P-2 turbojets each providing 17,500 pounds of thrust. Anything not bolted or strapped down slid to the nearest rear bulkhead. With a minimum of water-taxiing, the Martin P6M Seamaster rose up on its hull and leapt out of the water.

The ride instantly smoothed out as Cap’s deft hands controlled the wheel. Turning and banking steeply yet gracefully to the right, he saw the island below as a dark abomination in the night-shrouded water. A short distance beyond stood its unaltered sister island. As he maneuvered the aircraft into position for a bombing run, he radioed the Anger Institute.

“Flash, dispatch Falcon III to monitor the mainland closest to Escollos Alijos. Dandridge tried to release a flying scavenger and a few may have escaped the percussion grenade I set off in the lab.”

“Roger.” The Falcons—unmanned autonomous aircraft—flew at up to sixty thousand feet altitude and could circle for months or years at a time over a selected site, sending back real-time images of the ground below with a resolution far better than satellite photos. This one—the third in the series of solar-powered, ultra-lightweight spycraft that the Anger Institute had in the air, monitoring danger zones around the world—would watch the mainland for any signs of destruction caused by any winged scavengers that made landfall. Until Captain Anger could devise and release his own flying reprogrammers.

“Heads up back there,” Cap said over the intercom. “Rotating the bomb bay door!”

The black titanium rack on the center deck of the bomb bay held only one weapon: a gunmetal grey cylinder four feet long with stubby red vanes on one end. Machinery whirred into life and the entire rack rotated downward as a large section of hull rotated upward. For a few seconds the cool evening air blew into the compartment like a mini-hurricane. Then only the sound of the jet engines and a faint clunk as the bomb dropped

toward the island.

Cap glanced out the starboard window as he banked to the right over the island Dandridge engineered. He smiled with satisfaction to see the bomb hit squarely in the mouth of the elemental mountain.

Instead of exploding, though, the bomb burst open to release an inky black cloud into the cavern. Cap maintained a two-minute circle and watched as the stark columns and pillars and patterns of the artificial island lost their luster. The chambers of Dandridge’s laboratory collapsed in on themselves as Cap’s own scavenger microbots stripped the foul island apart. Within minutes, the towering monument to madness turned fluid and ran into the sea like a melting ice cube.

Just then a scream of unstoppable rage erupted from amidships.

Captain Anger’s meditation on one man’s folly ceased the instant he heard the commotion in back. Engaging the plane’s powerful artificial intelligence computers, he left the plane flying itself toward California to make his way back to the cargo bay. He had one more fight to break up.

Johnny Madsen squeezed Dandridge’s throat with one hand while the other formed a fist that pounded the man’s temple with unrestrained fury. Rock wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist, trying to separate assailant from target.

Captain Anger clasped Jonathan’s wrist in his powerful grip, freezing the boy’s arm in mid-swing. His other hand released its grip on Dandridge, who curled up into a fetal ball, whimpering and speaking to himself in a disturbing sing-song whisper.

Cap said, “I think there’s someone onboard more deserving of your attention.” Cap led a stunned Jonathan Madsen to the small man sitting dazed in one of the folding flight seats.

“Gramps?” he said, staring at the old man with eyes wide in grateful amazement. “Julie?”

Julius Madsen gazed up at his grandson and started to weep uncontrollably. He reached out to hug the young man and whispered in a

hoarse, parched voice, “Johnny boy—you found me.”

His grandson crouched down to look the old man straight in the eyes. “I thought you were dead. The man the scavengers killed first—they said it was you!”

The elder Madsen shook his head weakly. “Dandridge and Campbell replaced several key world figures with imposters in the hope it would give them time to perform the surgery on the real people they‘ve kidnapped. Then real people would switch places with the imposters and be high-level zombies under Dandridge’s control. I was his first captive, but he wanted my knowledge, so no implant for me.”

Tex tapped on Cap’s shoulder. “I’ve patched up Dandridge’s bullet holes; do y’all think we could put the spurs to this filly? Mr. Arafshi’s got to get some critical care within a couple of hours or his brain won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”

“Sure,” Rock interjected. “With your ten thumbs in his head, it’s wonder he can lie flat on his back without falling over!”

Tex slowly turned his head toward his stocky antagonist, saying, “At least I didn’t get caught with my pants down, robot bait.”

Tex and Rock traded barbs all the way back to Long Beach. Sun Ra used one of the onboard computers in the rear compartment to study in depth the medical/legal ethics of surgical personality alteration. Cap and Tex might need his advice when it came time to dezombify Dandridge’s victims. Leila Weir—after Tex treated her bullet wound—spent the time in the co-pilot’s seat, watching the moon shimmer on the sea and imagining great floating cities resistant to wind, water, sun, and rust. She occasionally conversed with Flash, whom she filled in on the details of their recent exploits.

Jonathan and Julius Madsen simply held each other, grandfather and grandson, happy that a mysterious red-bearded enigma named Captain Anger had saved their lives and vanquished a madman. The freed prisoners conversed among one another, wondering what would happen next.

What happened next was a night landing in Long Beach Harbor followed by disembarkation. The Seamaster was left to its ground crew and everyone took refuge in a dockside hangar. Cap dispersed the crowd with a few quick directions.

“Rock—take anyone with implants back to the institute. Leila— the same goes for the Madsens. Put them up in the guest quarters.

Tex—you’ve got your work quite literally cut out for you. Sun Ra—handle all the legal problems for our prisoners and find out how to remove quietly that imposter at the United Nations.

“As for our visiting professor.” He turned toward the huddled mass that had once been the arrogant and self-possessed William Arthur Dandridge. In a mock TV announcer’s voice, he said, “Well, Bill, you didn’t win the world this time around, but you did come in second. Wait till you see the lovely parting gift you’ve earned.”