As they trooped past the hidden observers, though, Cap saw that the hideous control devices only suppressed the victim’s pain, but could not erase it. Each man’s face revealed a contorted mask of agony, their mouths twisted in torment, their eyebrows knotted in unbearable anguish. Their glazed eyes stared with a vacuous mockery of awareness, as if the computerized masters buried in their brains knew every step of their path and needed no visual input to guide them.
Sweat poured off their brows and trickled into those eyes. The sting
would have driven other men mad. These damned souls trudged forward unflinchingly with their loads, unbidden tears running from their lifeless eyes to trickle down cheeks, lips, and chins.
Cap glanced at Tex. The doctor shook his head with a grim sadness. “High-tech slaves,” was all he said.
“Walk close to them,” Cap said. “We’ll stay in their protective zone to get in, then drop away from them when we’re within the perimeter.”
“What if the sentries are crawling all over the complex?” Sun Ra asked.
Cap shook his head. “Too dangerous even for Dandridge, I suspect.
What if they put a piece of equipment down and walked away from it? Look at the statues—there seems to be a distinct starting line twenty yards from the mouth of the cave and an end zone about twenty yards inside.”
“Let’s go,” Rock said, “before they get inside!”
Cap stepped out first, boldly walking over to the line of men and insinuating himself between the first and the second. They tramped far enough apart that this was possible without tripping them up. If any of the zombies noticed him, they gave no reaction. He matched his stride to theirs and signaled the others to join him. First Tex, then Sun Ra, and finally Rock stepped into the gaps between the slaves. Rock positioned his massive body behind the last slave, the only place he fit safely.
They watched with interest as they crossed the invisible perimeter. The silver floor of the cavern turned whitish and unreflective at the entrance of the first worker. Cap’s advance caused no alarm or sudden attack.
They shuffled in at the slow, unchanging pace of the zombies and made their way past the horrifying garden of the dead. Every one of the metalized corpses bore a visage of dread and stark terror. Their deaths came slowly enough—they saw their end coming and it showed in their death masks.
The statues marked a very definite end to the defense zone. Beyond the last preserved body, the cavern floor possessed a semi-glossy look. The passage of the zombie crew caused no reaction. Tex breathed an audible sigh of relief when his feet touched the white flooring.
A few yards beyond that, Cap and the others broke away from the line of cargo handlers and stopped to survey their surroundings.
The interior of the cave formed a gigantic silver dome, braced along the interior in the manner of a geodesic dome, but with the same sort of fractal isogrid construction in which the pentagons and hexagons composing the structure each comprised smaller five- and six-sided polygons. Those polygons surrounded even smaller polygons and so on, presumably down to the molecular level. It gave the dome a look of almost spherical smoothness.
Tunnels radiated out from the dome at regular intervals around its circumference. Odd, crystalline overhead lights illuminated some while others extended into darkness. Iris-like doorways sealed some corridors shut while others lay wide open, and formidable hatched closed off three on the far side.
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.
Chapter Fifteen
Target Practice
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.”
“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 an
d 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.
“Tex!” He slipped off his bandoliers of hand grenades and tossed them up to the doctor, who caught them on the toes of his boots.
“These things weigh a ton!” Tex shouted.
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