A glittering pseudopod shot blindly toward the officer. Cap shoved off the pavement in a flying leap that propelled him along the police line. Sailing past the arm of death just inches below him, Cap tackled the cop with full force. The powerful collision knocked his target five feet sideways and out of the path of the microbotic scavengers.
They hit the ground and rolled across asphalt and gravel, the cop howling with pain and surprise. Cap merely grunted upon impact, rolled, and sprang to his feet, catlike and ready.
Fearful and enraged, the officer yanked the revolver from his holster and fired at the slithering mass. The bullets pounded deep holes and disappeared into the stuff, the cavities quickly filling in. Shooting the parts had in no way harmed the whole.
“Forget it,” Cap said. “You’re just feeding them.”
The cop turned and ran to join his fellows at their new redoubt.
Cap switched on his earcomm. “I think they’re at least partially solar-powered,” he said to the others. “And I think they’re trying to follow the setting sun.” His dark, emerald-hued eyes scanned the horizon. Sunlight glinted off something atop a building.
“Or maybe they’re being guided!”
“Cap!” Flash’s voice sounded. “Am I glad you’re back on line! I’ve—”
“Not now, Flash!” With an alarming burst of speed, Captain Anger rushed down the street toward an ancient brick building, ratty tweed coat fluttering in the breeze.
“Rock—Follow me and bring the guns! Lei—clear everyone away from that stuff. Clear the whole block!”
Rock seized a holstered pistol and jumped from the van, rushing to join Cap at the far corner of the street. His short, thick legs powered him to an impressive speed for his height and ungainly, squat shape. His massive arms swung back and forth with each stride, adding even more force to his motion.
Cap disappeared into a doorway. In seconds, Rock sailed through.
“Cap!” he shouted, forgetting that he still wore his comm earplug.
“ Upstairs,” Cap replied. The sounds of his footsteps echoed through the building. Rock ran through the lobby of a seedy— and evacuated—hotel, heading for the stairway at the rear.
Four flights brought him to the roof door, which hung open on bent hinges. Cap had slammed through it at full speed.
Rock emerged into daylight, pistol drawn, gaze darting here and there across the tarpaper-and-gravel roofing. Cap stood to his left, peering up into the blue sky.
“Gun!” Rock cried, tossing the holster toward Captain Anger.
Cap’s outstretched arm snatched it from mid-air without his turning to look. He strapped it on while examining the object of his attention. In front of him, a small video camera stood mounted on a tripod. Its lens focused on the now-demolished diner. Next to it stood a satellite dish antenna pointed heavenward. Cap stared in the direction its beam would be taking.
Rock holstered his pistol, knowing better than to interrupt the captain while he was thinking. He knew that Captain Anger was deep in calculation, estimating the altitude and azimuth of the transmission’s destination. After a moment, he said, “Flash— someone’s been watching the action and uplinking to the military satellite Carnelian Sapphire. Find where it’s downlinking.”
“Might not be traceable,” Flash radioed back, but set to the task nonetheless.
Cap examined the apparatus closely, searching for brand names and serial numbers. The Anger Institute’s computer digitally recorded every word transmitted over their radios as part of its myriad duties. Cap’s transmitters scrambled the messages so that anyone even capable of intercepting the spread-spectrum transmissions would interpret the rasping signals as nothing more than static. If they tried to decode the apparent noise, the most powerful computer in the world—even the Anger Institute’s—would need centuries to find the incredibly huge prime numbers used as multipliers in the intricate mathematical function known as the One Way Trapdoor that served to encrypt the signal.
“All the serial numbers have been removed,” Cap said. “No unique components here. Off-the-shelf technology. I don’t expect there to be any fingerprints.”
It was when he concentrated on a deep mystery that Cap looked like the genius he truly was. Even in the absurd, almost surreal costume he wore, the power of his intellect shone through. Standing on the roof overlooking the advance of the ocean of silver locusts, he tugged at the last vestiges of his disguise. He stroked his beard in contemplation. Bits of latex rubber and spirit gum peeled away in his fingers, exposing more of his sharp features.
His lean and rugged face, though tanned from exposure to sun and wind, displayed none of the creases and leatheriness associated with sun-damage. His ally and personal physician— Dr. Uriah West—used Institute funds exceptionally well in his research into cell repair. Cap’s hair—dark as the rust on ageless steel—lay austerely close to his scalp. Cut short for utilitarian ease, it still revealed a roguish wave that gave him a piratical look, which was not out of character, considering his ancestry.
His eyes, though, captured the attention of any who saw them. Eyes that looked almost black at first glance revealed themselves to be a deep, rich emerald green when they gazed intently in the search for knowledge and truth. Those eyes gazed now over the parapet at the relentless advance of the microbots.
“Let’s get back down there, Rock. I want a live sample before we freeze that mass.”
That’s when the bullets started exploding around them.
Chapter Eight
Argent Slaughter
One of the helicopters circling overhead among the television and police choppers dropped out of the sky, twin turbine engines whining. From concealed weapons pods blazed the unmistakable flashes of machine gun fire. Lead bullets slammed into the roof with the crack and smash of copper-clad death. Splinters of shattered wood and clouds of exploding concrete blossomed around Cap and Rock.
Cap drew first, whipping the odd black pistol from his holster. Rock—only an instant behind him—snapped the weapon up to aim at the killer swooping in from above. The pistols roared in powerful bursts, firing armor-piercing tracer bullets into the air.
An instant after firing, both men threw themselves aside and rolled out of the path of the oncoming machine gun blasts. Cap’s headband videocam flew from his skull, clattering across the bullet-riddled roof. The rounds tore apart the mystery camera and its satellite dish. Bits of glass, plastic, and aluminum flew everywhere, accompanied by copper swages and lead fragments from the bullets.
“Take this up your tailpipe, zhopu kozina!” Rock shouted, using his thumb to flip a switch on the pistol. Fully automatic now, the pistol fired a steady stream of tracers at the retreating helicopter. The orange-red streamers of color flew inexorably toward the aircraft.
Captain Anger joined in, his pistol still semi-auto. Each shot— though
fired in rapid succession—was well-aimed, with Cap swiftly, reflexively calculating the proper angle of fire to ensure that bullet and chopper arrived in the same place at the same time.
Neither of the matte-black pistols ejected any brass casings. The weapons used caseless 10mm ammunition, which allowed for more than double the number of rounds in a magazine of similar size. And these pistols sported long, fat, double-column magazines, each holding forty-eight rounds, plus an extra one already chambered.
Rock’s volley and Cap’s more steadily paced stream of rounds hit the copter nearly simultaneously, peppering the fuselage with several direct hits. Undaunted, the aircraft rotated about for another assault.
With a loud curse, Rock realized that he had fired off his entire load. He ejected the magazine and drew a
