The next day, I was back on the therapist's couch, mentally counting the tiles in the roof.
"This...lack of progression. Do you feel like you're letting anybody down because of it? You touched on that in a previous session."
I shrugged. "I get frustrated whenever I get stuck, Doctor. I don't think it's that deep."
I was still thinking about it when I got home. The CT scanner was an irksome setback. Without that I wouldn't be able to get a sense for the interior layout of the helmet. Juryrigging something was right out. I wasn't familiar enough with CT machines, or the physics involved, and didn't want to expose myself to radiation, especially not in Earth-616. I considered breaking into a local office, but that was dicey. I had no idea how to operate a CT machine myself. I could try to read about it, but it was out of my area of expertise.
I got out of the van, realizing I had been sitting in the driveway with the engine off for 5 minutes.
Might as well ruminate inside.
Closing the door behind me, I walked back to my front door, unlocked it, and sighed as the AC hit. It was hot outside.
I dropped into a chair and sat with it for a minute.
"If Muhammad cannot go to the mountain....."
The CT scan was a dead end anyway, I realized. Even if I'd gotten access, what would I have done with that knowledge?
I couldn't fabricate SERF vapor cells in my basement. I didn't have a cleanroom, I didn't have the parts, I didn't have the experience and I didn't have anywhere near enough neuroscience background to know if anything I built from scratch was safe to put on someone's head.
Knowing the physical layout in detail would just tell me in precise terms how screwed I was on the hardware side.
But I didn't need to understand the interface at that level.
I was a software person at heart. I knew how to treat a system as a black box, characterize its inputs and outputs, and build a functional model from observation. Another boon was the database from Stane meaning I wasn't completely blind. The bus tap was already in. I had time and a library card.
What I needed was a deeper theoretical vocabulary. Signal processing, BCI literature, whatever neuroscience I could get through without a graduate degree. Not enough to become an expert. Enough to gain a workmanlike understanding of the problem domain so I could handle any complications.
I stretched, cracking my joints and yawning as I stood up from the test bench, the basement lights beating down on the blue steel of the Iron Monger helmet in front of me.
Time for a change of page.
I pulled up a stool and started going through the Stane database more systematically instead. I'd been searching it reactively up to this point.
Most of it was what I'd expected. More Guardsman documentation. Maintenance procedures for the Guardsman armor. HR records for the Long Island facility that had been put in what AIM dumped on here for some reason. Probably something with the search keywords.
I was about to call it a night when I noticed a directory I'd skimmed past before. The files in it had a naming convention I didn't recognize. Everything had a ,v suffix that I'd assumed was some kind of archive format.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out I was looking at an RCS repository. I'd never touched RCS in my life. Time for another book....
After getting hold of a relevant book the next day and some light reading, I knew what I was looking at. Most of the sensitive material had been pulled out of the Stane DB I had swiped. No circuit documentation, no vhdl or verilog files, nothing that would tell me how the SERF hardware actually worked at a physical level.
However, the move of the sensitive material (probably to the basement lab that Stane had built) had been a rush job. There were more leftovers than I had initially assumed. What was left was a compiled firmware image sitting in what looked like a release archive. The revision history told me it was old. The final commit message told me a bit.
"archive contingency image, SERF deployment stable."
So this was some sort of fallback.
The revision history filled in the rest. This was a fallback mode. It used the electrode array for direct EEG reading instead of the closed loop SERF approach. Cruder, noisier, but it would initialize without the SERF hardware being functional Probably designed for bench testing, or for situations where the primary interface was compromised.
Excellent.
I waved at the postman as he pulled away from the end of my driveway. Collecting my three newspapers, I went back inside.
The month had been spent at the library more than the bench. I'd worked through what BCI literature I could follow without a neuroscience degree. Signal processing was fresh in my mind. I had even been able to start sketching out some more concrete ideas for the startup. No progress on a name yet though.
I opened the first paper. "Stark Enterprises opens Silicon Valley campus."
Well, there it was. I skimmed through the rest of the article. The article talked in glowing terms about Tony Stark's return to the world of tech with a new company, Stark Enterprises after a brief stint at Imperio Techworks and Circuits Maximus. There was a mention of an incident with "technical difficulties involving a drone", which was the official spin on Justin Hammer's housewarming present, but other then that, the opening had gone without a hitch.
We were around Iron Man 215-217. I couldn't remember the exact issue number, just that it was in the high teens. I needed to start getting Slate's name out as someone who tinkered with power armor if possible.
Prof wasn't going to be able to swing the connection. From what I could surmise, Prof was a street-level operator at best. Getting me in touch with a C-D list tech villain was out of his payscale. What he could do that would be productive was get my name out, and hopefully, something would come of it.
I clubbed my brain for alternatives, but I was constrained on what I could feasibly do. I didn't have a good criminal network, and wanted to limit my exposure. If I had spent more time building my network instead of tinkering....
I shut the thought down. There was reasonably only so much I could have done. Better to have something and have less reach, then have nothing.
I'd also need a LA Times sub, I was pretty sure that some of Armor Wars had occurred in SoCal, not NorCal.
Time to make some calls.
I'd need to rig up a Faraday cage as well. With how much the landlord had moaned about me swapping out the basement door, turning the basement into a proper cage was out of the question.
I'd come up with something on that front.
Speaking of complications...These were power armored criminals. My normal gyrojet pistol wouldn't cut it if one of my clients decided to....permanently assure my silence.
I didn't have access to a MANPAD, which (might) work, or any fancy man-portable directed energy systems, which (I was pretty sure) existed in Earth-616.
I had previously had the SHIELD rifle, but that didn't seem like a sure bet, and I had sold it anyhow.
My most viable option was a backdoor in the suit's firmware. I'd need to modify the backup firmware, but I had the source code for that. I wouldn't be able to test it properly, I didn't want to reflash the Iron Monger and degrade my own interface to EEG fallback mode, but I was used to operating on incomplete information.
I was deep in the guts of the firmware for the neural unit. The documentation wasn't the best, but I found the code that handled the bus input from the other parts of the suit. Partially out of a sense of completeness, and partially because the existing implementation was making my eye twitch, I wrote my own ring buffer to handle it.
The Stark philosophy treated the suit like a distributed embedded system. Dedicated processors for dedicated functions, everything talking over the internal bus. The neural interface processor was one node among several. It received commands, sent movement primitives, minded its own business. Which meant anything that happened on the bus was visible to it if it was listening.
I didn't have access to the code for the rest of the software stack so anything requiring deep integration with the main firmware was out.
What I did have was the observation that the Iron Monger, when powered on, was passively listening to radio frequencies. The radio subsystem generated bus packets for anything it detected. That was the thread.
I bought a handheld VHF radio and spent a day at the bus tap, transmitting on different frequencies, watching what packets appeared. The suit reacted across a broad range, reporting everything it heard. I found a quiet spot in the 150-170 MHz range (above FM broadcast, below aviation) The suit responded consistently. Nothing in normal operational use would generate traffic there.
The solution was straightforward once I had that. Every node on the bus received every packet. Broadcast to all, filter by header. The radio subsystem was always listening, sending those packets to every node including the neural interface/ helmet processor. Nobody had given it a reason to pay attention to radio events before.
I gave it a reason. A small function registered in the dispatch table: when the processor received a packet matching my frequency and burst pattern, it stopped sending movement primitives. I wasn't sure how the main compute would handle that, since I didn't have the code (thanks Obadiah, very cool!), but the suit wouldn't move regardless.
I'd carry a handheld transmitter to every client meeting. If someone got aggressive about paying up and decided to use their newly functional hardware to attempt to twist my arm, I'd key it. Whether the radio was reliably on in all operational states was something I couldn't fully verify without testing against a flashed suit, which I wasn't willing to do. I was making a reasoned bet based on the design philosophy.
Good enough, given the alternative was thoughts and prayers as some armored character attempted to turn me into chunky red paste.
Several weeks later, the neuroscience books had gone back to the library. The fallback firmware handled the most likely failure modes. Anything beyond that was hardware I couldn't fabricate anyway. Better to use the time on something actionable.
I'd been picking up what business and tech literature I could find, trying to get a read on Earth-616's market landscape. I'd also been getting lunch with Sunny once a week to keep a eye on the startup scene. My startup was still theoretical but I was refining some ideas.
Prof had left his weekly message with the answering service I had paid for (in cash, with the name Bryce Williams),indicating no interest in Slate's services as yet.
I dropped my weekend papers on the kitchen table.Opening the LA Times, I idly paged through until an article in the crime section leapt out at me. Basil Sandhurst had been defeated by Iron Man. The article went on about a tanning salon Sandhurst had been using as a front to attach his control disks to unsuspecting clients.
I got up, and made the trek back downstairs to my workshop, which was playing host to a new piece of furniture.
I had an oak wardrobe, around eight feet tall, currently occupying a corner. It had taken a while to modify. The doors had compression gaskets along all four edges and a rubber sweep along the bottom, the interior lined with a layer of copper mesh bonded to the wood and grounded through a wire running to the workshop's earth connection.
I unceremoniously moved the Iron Monger armor into it over thirty sweaty minutes.
Finally, I closed the doors, checked the gasket seal, and confirmed the ground connection, wiping my brow afterwards.
Now, to wait.
On another morning I collected my papers from the front step, the weekend editions stack thick enough to take two trips.
I settled at the kitchen table with the Chronicle first.
The headline was above the fold, which told me everything before I'd read a word.
IRON MAN BATTLES ARMORED ASSAILANT OVER MARIN
The subhead: New appearance of armored hero raises questions about earlier reports of his death; Stark Enterprises facility opening disrupted.
I read the lede twice.
A celebration turned to crisis Friday when an armored assailant attacked the grand opening of Stark Enterprises' new Marin County research facility, sending guests fleeing before being defeated by what witnesses described as a new Iron Man.
I set the paper down and looked at my coffee for a moment.
So. Armor Wars was over. I was pretty sure that Stark had fought Firepower in Marin at the end of the arc and had decisively beaten him. Might as well check the answering service, see if anything had shaken loose yet.
A day later I called the answering service from a payphone in downtown San Jose.
'You have one message. A man going by "Professor" called. He says a party expressed interest, and left a contact number."
The operator rattled it off,and I jotted it down.
I dialed the number. Someone picked up immediately.
"Hello?"
"You Slate?" inquired the male voice on the other end
"I am. Who's asking?"
"An...interested party. Heard you can fix powered armor. Might as well give you a shot before I head back east."
"Neat. I have a location. What times work for you?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Excellent."
The next day, I pulled my van to a halt outside a warehouse in Fruitvale at 7 AM. The sun was just clearing the hills to the east, throwing long shadows across the concrete. The 880 hummed in the background, the only sound at this hour.
Prof had sourced the location. It was an abandoned warehouse that still had power, nobody using it. Given the state of Oakland's industrial corridor, that wasn't hard to believe. I unloaded my bench setup, various devices spread across three cardboard boxes, and hustled everything inside. Smuggling power armor into a suburban basement for every client meeting wasn't a sustainable plan, and this was cleaner anyway.
It took me an hour to set up, then I pulled out a book and waited.
My wait ended when an engine rumbled outside. I put my book down and watched a van back up to the rear loading dock.
The driver climbed out without acknowledging me beyond a cursory nod. He wrestled a pallet jack out first, then positioned it under a bulky crate with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this before. White, around 5'11, in a fedora and a loose trench coat over a button-down and slacks. Leather gloves. All of it a size too big, which on a warm morning meant something.
He pushed the crate across the uneven concrete, correcting for drift without breaking stride.
The man stopped at my workbench, unceremoniously unloading the crate from the jack, looked at my setup for a moment, then looked at me.
"Let me guess. Engineering degree."
Weird opener.
He took my silence as a response, and continued.
"You're new to costumed work. I fought Spider-Man once. That puts me lightyears ahead of not just you, but most of these west coast clowns."
I cleared my throat.
"Who are you exactly?"
Instead of answering, the man pried the crate open, picked up a helmet and slapped it down on my workbench.
The helmet was green, with a purple faceplate and two sharp antenna-like projections sweeping back from the crown. Big yellow insectoid lenses for operator vision.
"The Beetle." I said flatly.
"You betcha." Abner Jenkins said smugly. "Ever heard of the Masters of Evil? I was a part of that."
I racked my brain. Masters of Evil....the Beetle had been on the third? Iteration. I thought. I was pretty sure they all got beaten singlehandedly by Hank Pym, but it would be impolitic to mention that.
"That's..nice." I said rather lamely.
"Fuckin west coast..." Jenkins muttered.
With that, he slapped a three ring binder onto my desk.
"My notes. I tried everything. Took apart the actuators, swapped out everything in the flight pack, even changed the onboard batteries. Nothing"
"I had Mason help on the design for this suit. Genius. I'll give him that. But then Hammer's boys punched it up—" The gesture covered everything wrong with the suit. "Then it goes back to Mason for final integration and by that point I don't fully understand my own shit, then Iron Man slaps that pack on me,and it's fucked, and I don't know why."
He watched me turn the helmet over in my hands for a moment, then pushed himself up out of the chair.
"Fifty thousand," Jenkins said. "If it works."
Not exactly the amount of cash I was expecting. I needed something else from him. I had been obscenely fortunate that spreading the word in Prof's network had actually landed someone from the tech villain side of things, but I couldn't count on that happening twice.
"Fifty thousand, and you spread the word in your circles that Slate can fix power armor." I paused. "I also have a HUD upgrade available. Projected display inside the faceplate. Hooks into the existing bus."
Jenkins picked up the helmet, turned it over once, set it back down.
"Pass. I designed this helmet with Mason. I know what I need. Don't need addons from a grad student."
I ground my teeth. I had spent a month on that HUD.
He stuck out his hand. "Mason charges ten grand just to look at something, so consider yourself lucky."
The handshake lasted about two seconds longer than it needed to. He had a lot of grip strength.
'I'll check back tomorrow afternoon,' he said, already moving toward the door. 'See if you're actually competent.'"
I subtly wrung my hand behind my back, trying to restore some feeling into it.
He turned. "Oh, and if you get any ideas—"
Jenkins turned to face a rusted engine block that was on the floor and his arm blurred. A single sharp crack split the air followed by the low groan of stressed metal. He pulled his fist back out of the engine block, rolled his shoulder once like he'd done nothing more strenuous than knock on a door, and walked out.
I was very sure Abner Jenkins didn't have super strength. I racked my brain, finally recalling an older Spectacular Spider-Man issue where Jenkins had been wearing a cut down version of the Mk1 armor under his street clothes. He was probably doing that again. Would explain the bulky trench coat and gloves while we were approaching the end of summer, and the fact that he had struggled far less with the crate than he should have.
I wondered why he wouldn't just use that suit. Probably felt like it wouldn't cut it against the current level of opposition compared to his (currently nonfunctional) suit.
Oh well. I opened the ring binder to get a sense of what I was working with.
The first page helpfully declared that these were the notes/documentation on the mk III Beetle suit. I flipped further in.
There was typed documentation in two different fonts. Hammer's engineers wrote in corporate block formatting, clean and impersonal. None of their names were on the documentation, all redacted via blocks. Phineas Mason's contributions were denser, annotated in cramped handwriting that crowded the margins and occasionally migrated onto separate sheets clipped between pages. Mason had built the original suit with a lot of input from Jenkins, then Hammer's team had handled the S-Circuit integration and the power systems upgrade, then shipped the suit back to Mason for more systems integration work.
Mason hadn't loved everything Hammer's people did to his original build. There was a pointed annotation about the electrobite discharge routing being "suboptimal". A separate note documented the heat buildup fix he'd implemented while integrating.
I flipped forward. Here, more recently were Jenkin's operational notes.One that jumped out was transient faults with the microwave collection during what he'd described as a radioactive burst. The note ended with "fucking Chen Lu" and no further technical detail.
Mason had handled most of the electronics on the Beetle mk3 including an onboard combat computer. Hammer's engineering team had slapped another processor on the central compute for the suit when they were putting in the electronics for "Per client specification, additional dedicated processing unit installed to support combat prediction subsystem. Primary compute load isolation maintained."
Mason hadn't seen fit to comment on that and neither had Jenkins, so I assumed it was fine. I'd love to take a look at that, ML in an embedded context would look pretty interesting in Earth-616. I didn't have the code, but I was sure that something else about the system had to be in here somewhere.
Looking back through the binder, the picture of Abner Jenkins that emerged was interesting. He was a genuine mechanical and aerospace engineering prodigy. Building functional powered armor from scratch was a massive feat that most engineers with formal training couldn't have pulled off without support. A lot of tech villains in Earth-616 were engineering wunderkids.
Time enough for that later.
After removing the various parts of the suit from the crate, I hooked up the diagnostic cable and powered the suit on. The firmware was pretty much the same minimal Guardsman armor RTOS run on the Iron Monger, and for that, I was thankful. I suspected that all the Hammer-influenced suits would be similar, but it was good to have some confirmation.
I owed Justin Hammer a good turn for ensuring some cross-compatibility in the tech villain ecosystem.
Whatever Stark had done, he hadn't gone after the power systems. The suit was electrically intact, and whatever bits and bobs of the software Hammer had got, they had gotten the basic RTOS.
Smooth sailing thus far.
I plugged my workstation into the diagnostic port and the suit's main computer responded immediately. I pulled the logs and worked through them for the rest of the morning, browsing for anything that looked unusual.
As the sun grew higher in the sky, heating up the warehouse, something jumped out. A few weeks back, there was an emergency shutdown flag, timestamped, with a fault code that translated roughly to ... I pulled out my notebook and looked through my notes on the suits ....catastrophic neural interface failure.
The fault pattern and the timestamp told me enough to have a working theory. The neutralizer pack had hit the SERF hardware specifically. Not the power systems, not the main compute, not the bus infrastructure.
I didn't want to open the helmet. Once I was in there I was committed. But the logs were pointing at a specific location and I already knew what I expected to find, so I got my toolkit and opened it up.
The SERF cell housings were obviously damaged. Physical distortion, discoloration consistent with a localized high-energy event. The shielding system hardware adjacent to the cells showed the same signature.
I ran the impedance analyzer across the electrode array while I was there. The contacts were passive hardware and they'd survived whatever hit the SERF cells. The array came back mostly intact. A few degraded contacts in one quadrant, nothing that would critically compromise signal quality. Good enough for government work.
The repair path was exactly what I'd tentatively hoped. Flash the fallback firmware, deliver the suit. It was nice for things to go in a straight line.
At around 9 AM the next day, Abner Jenkins returned to the warehouse, hopping out of his van in the same loading dock. I was waiting for him, radio laying idly on the test bench, armor unassembled.
Today, Jenkins was still wearing his loose clothes. I idly wondered if he was still wearing a poweredsuit under it.
"How goes it?"
I looked at him. "It's fixed. Now, the suit is going to be less responsive, but it should work as a impromptu fix to keep you relatively operational, and not lead to you having to use one of your older suits."
Jenkins grunted. "We'll see what's acceptable." With that, he stripped off his jacket, revealing a t-shirt and sweats.
"No armor today?" I asked.
Jenkins smirked. "You noticed that,didn't you?"
With that, he began to suit up.
Soon, the armor was on, and Jenkins lifted off the floor, the armor's wings spread and buzzing,and the wind blowing trash around the closed warehouse.
"Hmmm." Jenkins voice came through the helmet,electronic and flat.
Suddenly,he spun in the air, I felt a charge in the atmosphere of the warehouse, a brief smell of ozone and Jenkins fired a bolt of energy at a nearby shelf. The shelf shattered,and I dived under my desk. I hoped nothing from my test bench was broken
"A little warning next time!?"
He then rapidly shifted to another shelf. My hand tightened around the transmitter, but I didn't send the signal yet. I was pretty sure he wasn't trying to kill me.
Jenkins landed. "Noticeably less responsive, but it's not unflyable. It'll do. Not worth rebuilding the Mk I over this anyways."
That was as close to approval as I'd get from him.
He stripped out of the suit, exited the warehouse and came back, carrying a duffel bag.
"I'll drop a word in some ears before I head back east this afternoon." He set the bag down on the bench. "Few people who might need your services."
He paused. "At least I won't have to cough up as much for Mason now."
"Mason?"
"He'll sort the input lag properly." Jenkins shrugged. "His rates are high, but this buys me some wiggle room."
He looked at me for a moment. "The fifty, plus the referrals. You got a number?"
I rattled off the number for the answering service.
"Neat." Abner jotted it down on a notepad, and scooped up his binder.
"We're square."
Five days later, I dumped my weekend newspapers on the kitchen table and flipped to the Chronicle.
CORD CONGLOMERATE CEO ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH MARIN IRON MAN BATTLE
Edwin Cord taken into federal custody at Bel Air home; sources cite conspiracy, destruction of property charges
I skimmed the lede. Cord, 54, arrested at his Bel Air estate by a joint federal and state task force. Charges incoming: criminal conspiracy, destruction of property, reckless endangerment. Sources were floating additional federal charges related to the unauthorized deployment of a classified defense asset.
His attorney was calling it politically motivated, which seemed pretty lame to me, considering what Cord had gotten up to.
It was nice to know what charges they had hit Cord with afterwards.
I folded the paper and left it on the table. A few days of startup research, then I'd check the answering service and see if Jenkins had shaken anything loose.
Four days later I found a payphone on South First and dialed into the answering service.
The operator sounded as bored as usual. "You have one new message. They left a number, no name."
I dialed it, idly hoping it wasn't Stilt-Man.
The phone rang longer this time before someone picked up.
The voice on the other end was male, slightly wary.
"Who is this?"
"It's Slate." The swab in my nose barely bothered me at this point.
"Good. Expected you to call at some point. Got a referral to you. Having similar problems to our mutual contact."
I shrugged.
"Might be able to solve them for you."
"Excellent. We have a lot of leeway in terms of compensation, especially in relation to our...mutual acquaintance."
We arranged a time for tomorrow morning at the same location. Excellent.
I was back in the warehouse bright and early, bench configured the next morning. I passed the time by reading, yet again. There had been some hints about Stark Enterprises releasing some consumer electronics items in the trade magazines, and that was a development I'd be wise to keep abreast of.
I heard an engine outside and the sound cut. I looked out the grimy window. A box truck had backed up to the loading dock. Three men climbed out. Two went around to the rear and started working the doors. The third stood off to the side, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the lot.
All three wore jackets despite the morning heat.
I stroked my fingers over the holstered gyrojet pistol. I didn't think I was being jumped. That didn't stop my heart from beating faster.
The two at the truck dropped the gate and wrestled out a hand truck, then muscled two crates onto it. One was black, bald, built like someone who'd never stopped doing PT. The other was white, blond, high and tight, moved with the same unhurried efficiency, same ex-military build. The third man, white, brunette, same haircut, shouldered a bag and came through the side door ahead of them. The other two followed, the hand truck wheels chattering on the uneven concrete.
These had to be the Raiders. All obviously ex-military, and all (probably) carrying.
The brunette looked at my bench setup, then at me.
"Slate, I presume."
I nodded. "You'd be correct."
"The Beetle told us you could fix suits. We'll pay around six hundred thousand in bearer bonds if you can pull it off."
"Fair enough." I wasn't going to squawk about that.
"Mr. Cord would also be very interested in someone with your skillset."
I frowned under my mask. "Isn't he presently in jail?"
The man smirked. "He has ways."
The two men cracked the crates without being asked. The suits came out in sections, torso and limb components nested together and packed with moving blankets between the pieces. Deep blue, with a metallic sheen that caught the warehouse light. The helmets were last out, each wrapped separately. The bags went on the bench beside them. Weapon systems, from the look of the modular receivers on the wristbands when one of the men unrolled the first one.
The lead crossed his arms. "They power on still but nothing afterwards. They needed someone to get us out when Iron Man hit us with the packs."
I picked up the nearest helmet. Heavier than it looked.
"Documentation?"
"I can't give you Cord Conglomerate IP."
Of course. I set the helmet down.
"Three hours," I said. "Come back then."
The lead looked at me for a moment, then nodded at the other two. They filed out. I heard the truck door slam, then the engine turning over and fading into the sound of the 880.
I cracked my knuckles and got to work.
The helmet construction was close enough to what I'd seen before that I wasn't starting blind. I got the first one open cleanly. Inside, the SERF cell housings told the same story as the Beetle's suit. Absolutely cooked, same localized high-energy signature, same physical distortion. Stark had been thorough. The electrode arrays had survived, which was the only piece of good news.
I ran the diagnostic cable to the first suit's main computer. Same Hammer-influenced RTOS, same basic architecture. I queued up the fallback image and started the first flash while I opened the second helmet.
Same story. The third suit was also similar.
While the firmware wrote I took a longer look at the suits. Rigid plate over the torso and limbs, joints using some sort of artificial muscle. The modularity of the weapon systems was intresting. The receivers were standardized across all three suits, any weapon system interchangeable between them.
I looked at the bag with the weapons systems. They were pretty much comic accurate. Shatterguns, selective fire wristbands, and a wristband that I assumed was the force shield, with some wire that looked like the (unpowered) syphon net.
I staggered the flashes, ran initialization on each in turn.
Everything checked out.
Sometime later, I heard a engine outside. My customers had returned.
The three men filed back in, the brunette holding a bag. The leader looked at me.
"The suits are ready?"
I shrugged.
"I'd say so. There's going to be a bit of latency, but it's better than nothing."
The brunette clicked his fingers. "Gomez, Parkhill. Let's gear up."
They were already moving. Parkhill shrugged off his jacket first, revealing a shoulder rig, and lifted a Hi-Power out of it and set it on the bench with a deliberate clunk. Gomez was a half-second behind him, same motion, a Beretta 92 joining the Hi-Power. Both men hung their rigs on the edge of the bench and started on the undersuits, pulling them up over their legs with an air of mild indifference.
The brunette took his jacket off a beat later, his own Beretta going on the bench beside the other two. He watched me while he did it, which I suspected was the point.
All three men were wearing some sort of undersuit. The undersuits were close-fitting, matte black, some kind of heavy nylon weave. The three of them started pulling armor sections over them in sequence, limbs first, torso last, each piece clicking into place with casual ease.
The lead had his helmet on in under five minutes.
He rolled his shoulders. Raised one arm and sighted down the shattergun at the far wall.
"Thanks, Slate." A pause. "Less responsive."
"Fallback mode. The primary interface hardware is gone. This runs off the electrode array directly. It's what's available."
"Workable." He turned to face me. "Anything else?"
"I also have a HUD upgrade available. Projected display inside the faceplate. Hooks into the existing bus."
Hopefully these guys would bite.
The lead didn't even pause. "We've got our workflow dialed in. Don't need more crap in the way." He rolled his shoulders once, settling the armor. "Keep your toy."
Damn it.
Then he raised the shattergun and leveled it at my head in one smooth motion.
I kept very still. I hadn't had my hands on the radio. It was on the desk, but I'd have to reach for it. Could I trigger it faster than his trigger finger? Well, I guessed we'd find out. I had no desire to enter indentured servitude for Edwin Cord.
"What's this about?" The steadiness in my voice surprised me.
"That six hundred thousand is contingent on you taking a friendly call with Mr. Cord."
"I see. Can I refuse Mr.Cord's generous offer?"
"Mr. Cord's instructions were that an uncooperative party should be retired."
Several things happened at once. I leapt for the radio, furiously keying it as I threw myself toward the ground, just as the shattergun charged up and discharged with a WHUMP that missed me and absolutely destroyed my workbench.
Something caught my face on the way down. I put my hand to my cheek and it came away red. Shrapnel had clipped me through the mask. It was askew but still on, still covering my face. The SHIELD undersuit had done its job on the torso. Just the face then.
Peering over the desk, the three blue units of power armor were locked in place. My precautions had worked.
"That wasn't very smart. Crossing Mr.Cord is unwise."
Evidently the operator could still talk.
I picked up the briefcase, keeping my voice steady by some minor miracle.
"What's not smart is trying to press-gang the guy who just fixed your armor."
"Going to tell the cops all about you, Slate. Sing like a bird. We'll be out before you know it, and Mr. Cord is going to be very unhappy with you."
Well that was just great.
"He's welcome to whatever opinion he likes from his bunk at Club Fed. Send my regards."
A synthetic chuckle emerged from the immobilized mercenary.
"Check the briefcase. You think we'd bring the bonds into a meeting?"
I opened it. Empty.
The mercenary continued. "Something wrong, bud? No smartass crack?"
I turned around without answering, swallowing the sudden surge of fury and suppressing the irrational instinct to spitefully kick his immobilized armor.
I took a breath. I could loot their truck on the way out, it'd make me feel better, although not six hundred thousand dollars worth of better.
I grabbed one of my boxes from the van and swept the fragments of the bench gear into it. I had to sweep twice. My hands weren't cooperating. Didn't want to leave any evidence, especially not the drive from my workstation.
Shortly after I sat in my van, taking my mask off. It was ruined. The shrapnel had cut through the plague doctor's mask, slicing my face. Thankfully,the cut wasn't too deep, and the lenses had held. If one of the lenses had shattered into my eye, I didn't want to think about it. I shuddered briefly.
I was out my bench setup, time and money. However, I had a very nice carbine with an interesting optic, plus a carrying case I had found in their truck, along with their lunch cooler.
Small comforts.
I sat there for another minute before I started the engine. My hands were still shaking.