It looked like a cross between an enormous insect and a gargantuan crab. The setting sun drenched the creature in blood-red hues as it thundered across the wet, glittering shore. Thirty feet high and twice as long, the six-legged machine pounded toward Rock and Sun Ra firing tracer bullets that lit up the landscape like laser blasts. Inside its head sat Campbell, furiously working a pair of joysticks and peering down on his victims with an insane gleam in his eyes. He fired wildly, with no attempt to aim. Cap’s powerful legs slammed into action to speed him toward the battle, Dandridge wrapped around his shoulders like a hunter’s prize. As he ran, he spoke into his earcomm.
“Leila! Take out that thing with a missile!”
“You’re all within the blast radius. I’ll use the rail gun.”
“Aim for the head.” Shrugging Dandridge off his back, Cap freed up his hands for the fight. From his many-pocketed shirt, he withdrew a sphere the size of a golf ball, colored white and dimpled the same as a golf ball. This object, however, had two red stripes slightly off axis from each other. With his powerful hands, he twisted the two hemispheres of the ball until the red lines met at the equator. Something inside chirped electronically. Planting his feet on the unyielding shoreline, he took aim and pitched the ball in a high arc toward the advancing macrobot. Bullets ricocheted around and behind him like electric raindrops.
Rock and Sun Ra saw the sphere rise upward toward its target.
“Duck!” Ra cried, turning his back to what he knew came next. Rock belly-flopped to shore, slipping across the wet Penrose tile pattern and nose-diving into the briny foam.
An ear-pounding explosion lit up the gloaming sky, briefly outlining the three men and the towering machine in its white, angry glare. The shock wave roiled across their flesh like waves on water.
Inside the head of the colossal creature, Campbell clapped hands over his ears and stared overhead in agony. Released from his grip, the joysticks fell dead and the machine halted in its tracks. In a burst of furious rage, the undeniably mad scientist seized the controls and fired the machine gun into the growing darkness, peppering the seaside with near misses.
Suddenly, from hundreds of yards over the water lanced an eerie white line of blinding light. The stream curved to shore and slammed into the spidery monster with the force of a god’s fist. The battle ended in less than five seconds. The trail of ionized air glowed for an instant or two after the rail gun ceased its deadly roar. In the fading glare, Captain Anger saw the dripping mass of slag that had seconds before been the head of the killing machine. The rest of the macrobot remained standing on its five of its six legs, the right front lifted up as if slain in mid-stride.
Sun Ra joined Cap’s side. Looking up at the damage wrought by the Seamaster’s mighty superweapon, he smiled and said. “I guess Campbell just lost his head.”
From behind them, they heard Tex shout “Need some help here!”
Turning around, Cap saw the doctor at the mouth of the artificial cavern, the secretary general-head wrapped with bandages as if turbaned-cradled in his long arms. Cap also saw that Dandridge had vanished.
“Rock! Help Tex. Sun Ra-find us a boat that can get us to the plane. Then round up the zombies and prisoners for evacuation. I’ll find Dandridge. Leila!”
“Here, boss.”
“Preflight the plane and prepare to take on passengers. We’ll need zipcuffs if any of them get violent.”
“Roger.”
Just before he vanished into the cavern, he added, “If I’m not out in six minutes, drop the canister.”
“But Cap-!”
They heard nothing more from Captain Anger.