Tony read the scrolling blue text in right-hand corner of his readout with a quirked eyebrow. Each line of text illuminated information that practically screamed for his attention; one scrolling headline about the hostage situation, the intelligence report about Akabar that Jarvis had just pulled up from the sea of currents events news, and the other about, what, Indian food? Which was, you know, all very well and good, but there were more, uh, pressing matters at hand-
Okay. Well. Maybe not. It would still take about a half an hour to reach the destination Jarvis had just pulled up on the the screen's grid map. He had time to kill.
"Mediterranean isn't quite what I had in mind." He paused, then smirked. "But, hey, let's make it a date. I'm feeling kind of exotic. You know how I feel about grape leaves."
The suit could have made the course change for him, but Tony had always preferred manual direction-switching over automatic (it was the all flashy moves he could pull, way too much fun), even if he was going to ask Jarvis to put the suit on autopilot as soon as they were heading in the right direction. Quickly, he shifted the palm repulsors in front of him and kicked his legs out, effectively halting his progress just about a mile overseas. He hovered on the repulsor burn from the boots, scanning the horizon.
"Point the way, will you? I want to go save people."
A dotted line sprung up over the grid map, corresponding to the flight path Jarvis pointed the suit towards. "An excellent choice, sir. Better than the local dolma, anyway."
With a blast of power they were back at one hundred and fifty. Nothing near the suit's full capabilities, but as long as the US forces were kept at bay, the situation would be at a stand still; they could spare another estimated 24.354 minutes. Theoretically, anyway.
The shock absorbers took most of the heat from the sudden increase in speed, but Tony grinned as he felt the remaining percentage of pressure on his knees and calves as he took off once again. He would never get over the sheer exhilaration of flying the suit; it was almost as good as taking the Hot Rod out for a spin on a sunny day in Malibu. If flying a suit could be called driving. If, uh, driving the suit could be called flying. Technically, Jarvis was the designated driver the current moment, but it was totally better to have a talkative GPS system with an autopilot function than none at all, otherwise Tony would have been bored sick and halfway to Russia by now.
Otherwise, they were keeping a steady speed, and if the softly flashing readouts were any indication, they were also shaving miles off by the minute. The display showed that if they kept their current speed, they would arrive just within the hour. Tony wasn't punctual if he could help it, but he supposed he could let this one slip on the basis that he was saving a bunch of people who would doubtlessly forever admire him for his selfless act of courage. But that was an aside.
"And you've sampled the local dolma, then?" Tony said, not passing up a chance to trade barbs with his favorite robot. "Jeez. Save some for your old boss next time, why don't you? He's paying you good money to sit around and serve his every need, you know. Least you could do is treat the poor man."
"Of course, sir. Your every need," said Jarvis in his unvarying tone. And, in the same cool voice, "Stealth aircraft bearing up from behind at 1500 meters. Advise gaining altitude to at least 4000 meters."
Of course, he mouthed childishly. Jarvis had just the right amount of cool sarcastic wit to simultaneously entertain and annoy him. Tony had originally modulated Jarvis's artificial voice from the frequencies in his own, so the smooth derision in the AI's tone was a given. And that whole thing had been more of a 'yeah, I can totally listen to myself talk all day' type of deal anyway, but after Tony had spent hours confusing himself in his shop he had caved and upped the original vocals a note, adding a unruffled British lilt and thereby putting the final touch to Jarvis' sort-of personality.
Who was, apparently, also alerting him to stealth aircraft activity just behind him. Hell, he’d already done this dance once this month-
"Duly noted. Bring us up." Tony growled, annoyance giving way to procedure. "I swear to God, they always do this. If they follow, engage the boosters to 200 mph and get us to Akabar as soon as possible."
"For you, sir, anything." The aircraft blinked sporadically on and off the radar as Jarvis attempted to track it. The radar indicated three dots along a common line-- four.
"Their intentions are indeterminable with the information available to me. However, they do not appear to have detected us, and are executing no evasive manoeuvres. Any similarity of flight path appears coincidental. For once in sir's life, he is not the centre of things."
Coincidence, indeed. 2000 meters below, the stealth plane, now identifiable as a F-34 Flash, was clearly going where they were, and if Jarvis was not mistaken (he rarely was) one or more would follow it. Almost as if on second thought, they accelerated to 400mph. In response to the inevitable question, Jarvis answered smoothly, "As soon as possible, you said, sir. We are 53 miles away from the destination. We will arrive in 7 minutes and 2.4 seconds, unless sir requires a pit stop."
"Anything?" Tony smirked, pointedly ignoring the jab about his ego. He made a disgruntled noise as the suit's speed increased dramatically. It wasn't quite a jolt so much as a gradual shove when the boot and palm burners threw him forward, and his altitude increased. He could feel the arc reactor hum warmly in his chest as its powerful resources were put to a slightly more strenuous use. It was a nice feeling. Being enclosed in metal with his own heating system, personal robot, fucking flying- yeah. Pretty damn swell.
The readouts flashed in front of his eyes and Jarvis was, as always, correct with his analysis; the grey shine of the ship’s hull was barely visible as it moved through the clouds, good cover for its flight path. Super. Kindred spirits during a mission to save the world. Okay, maybe not the world, and maybe it wasn’t going to save people; actually, he didn’t know what it was doing there. Backup? For which party?
He decided he didn’t care. He was going to arrive faster than the party of four anyway; he’d deal with the consequences when he arrived.
“No, Jarvis, I do not require a pit stop.” Tony’s lips curled upwards. He scanned the view screen, already thinking. “How’s the weather looking for the trip back? Any sudden thunderstorms I should be worrying about?” He paused. It would suck if they couldn’t grab the aforementioned food. Maybe he didn’t require a pit stop, but he wasn’t going to stand being hungry for longer than he had to.
"The nature of sudden thunderstorms is that they are sudden. Displaying predicted weather patterns within the parameters instead, sir. Be advised that the destination will be reached in 45 seconds. Altitude 3000 feet and decreasing."
They dropped through the clouds and suddenly a red and gold desert stretched before them, interrupted by stripes of black pebbles that grew closer and closer together as they neared a pass in the group of plateaus.
"Switch manual control to me!" Tony nearly yelped as they emerged suddenly from cloud cover, shooting through the fine white mist, and rapidly neared the huge expanse of desert at an alarming rate. The ground sped up to meet them and Tony tried to level their descent with a twitch of the palm repulsors, still rocketing through the air at 400mph and closing in on their destination in a matter of seconds. Crap. Still had to get used to that bit.
The sand was too familiar and did not strike the most welcoming pose to a man who had spent three months of detainment in a similar area. As they raced over the pockmarked valleys and towering plateaus, Tony almost bit his tongue in an effort of not reacting to what his mind was calling 'extreme danger'. A manual stop at this speed would most definitely kill his arms and legs, reinforced body-suit or not. "Wait, no, I lied- slow us down, before you do that!"
Despite the steepness of his learning curve, Jarvis had still not mastered the fine art of panicking; there was something about it that did not quite fit in with being able to predict hundreds of parameters accurately to at least the 5th decimal place and/or estimate them with .6% deviance or less.
"Don't trust your own creation, sir?" a note of what seemed to be perturbance creeping into his modulated voice. And after a calculated second, factoring in sir's being as yet unaccustomed to a 400 to 0 mph landing, "Retroboosters on." The numbers on the screen clicked down quickly, levelling out at 50mph and then decreasing more slowly in proportion to altitude.
He followed through with the rest of the landing procedure with particular attention to the customary safety precautions, and 1 minute and 15 seconds later they were on the top of a plateau overlooking the valley, the rocks a little scorched from the heat of the repulsors on 2% power, but everything intact.
They stood hidden from direct light behind a rocky outcrop in a dent in the plateau, heat rising up to meet them from all sides of the sun-baked stone. To the south of the valley, a small group of white-plastered plain rectangular buildings sat facing the bay; to the north, more black pebbles stretching away to mingle with the sand. "Reverting to manual control, now, sir."
Their speed decreased dramatically, the mph tally on the screen rolling down until it met an even zero, blue double-0s glowing faintly blue on the display. The other information, scrolling in smaller text on the readout, was still available for viewing at any second. As soon as the metal encasing his feet touched solid land, plans, really stupid ones, began playing themselves out in Tony’s head. He had a good idea of what to do now that Jarvis had briefed him on the news concerning the area, though how he was going to do it was more of the relative factor than what the outcome would be.
More importantly, he was breathing normally now, heart-rate slowing down. He threw Jarvis an offhanded reply ("If I didn't trust you, I'd be dead and you'd have to deal with Pepper's constant nagging for the rest of eternity”), and essentially began calming himself down for the inevitable crash and bang that was to follow his mental yoga routine. Or whatever. Point was, he was going to, you know, pummel stuff. And he didn’t want to exert any more energy than was necessary.
Oh, great, now he was thinking like Jarvis.
The view from the plateau was something familiar, but what it lacked in caves it made up for in industrial-looking white buildings that looked rather out of place in the steaming desert. Tony noted the switch to manual, but he didn’t investigate the scene immediately. He need to know more about the hostage situation, if there were really big guns involved, how many people. That kind of thing.
The sensors whirred, kicking collected data up through a labyrinth of peripheral processors and the relevant programs to translate into commands, more commands, yet more, all of which were reflected in the silent, controlled movement of symbols on the screen almost instantaneously. At the top of this deceptively silent information hierarchy sat Jarvis. Well, if there was a physical form designated Jarvis that could sit, anyway, given that there were no chairs in cyberspace. He took all this information in and sifted through it; ran it against existing data; formulated conclusions.
"The hostages are likely being held in that building," said Jarvis, magnifying it and bringing it to a forefront. As expected, a mottled assembly of half-uniformed personnel paraded in the front. "I cannot exactly specify their numbers. Estimate 50." The image was further magnified and dissected-- SM60s, strings of grenades, black G6s. Nothing unusual about this display. The big guns were inside. "There would appear to be no weapons of mass destruction."
He wouldn't bother Mr Stark with the political aspect of things. Even if he had selected the option to, it was too late; new variables to factor in: the cracked wooden door of the building was kicked open, and a man tottered out, his hands behind his back. A booted foot slammed into his back and he stumbled a few more feet forward. More men filed out, squinting in the light, and huddled in a dejected circle before the line of glinting metal and khaki.
The shot of the building in question doubled in size and flashed in HD before his eyes, courtesy Jarvis. Tony checked it over, noting entrances, exits, the kind of tech being used, guard formations, what the personnel had decided to wear to work that day, and if it was causal Friday for their chosen profession. Did terrorists do casual Fridays? Come to think of it, did they even do formal at all? Apparently not. Or, their version of formality was bringing their best grenades to the office party. And there was certainly no shortage of those.
Just as he began to formulate a plan to take out the guards in front, all, what, twenty of them, the door was kicked open and the hostages were filed out. There were young males, late teens, early twenties, but the rest of the assembly was comprised of men over thirty or so. The terrorists were most likely trying to reap the benefits of a large company, hence the white buildings and large hostage count. Oil, maybe? Whatever it was, it was apparently was big enough to warrant complete takeover of the company’s employees. Tony frowned, remembering his own captivity.
What had been twenty was now around Jarvis’ estimation of fifty, hostages included. Well, crap. It was nice being a one-man army and everything, but by the time Tony took out half the men, the hostages might all be dead.
“We should get the hostages to safety first, and we’ll deal with the big scary bad guys after that. What are the chances of half the party leaving to check out a disturbance, and leaving the remaining half with the hostages? Should I distract them?” He murmured. Time was running short. He needed to do something.
Magnified a rather plain building, near enough to the hostage site for an explosion to be threatening but far away enough to prevent civilian casualties; and after a quick analysis (well, there were no people around it, and there would have to be sacrifices): "This should prove a sufficient distraction, sir. Once distracted, suggest deploying auxiliary missiles on the guards immediately surrounding the prisoners, and once the militants are split, a direct attack. Possibility of success with current information: 80%."
The militants gathered around the group of prisoners, levelling their guns in what might have been a harmless, coincidental readjustment of weight, or preparation to destroy part of their collateral: either way, they needed to get going. Now.
Sure enough, the explosion rocked a nearby facility as Tony, at Jarvis' discretion, deployed a small, lightweight stinger missile from a compartment in the armor's forearm. The backfire pushed against his shoulder and traveled up his arm; the built-in shock absorbers in the body-suit took it, and the plates realigned themselves as another stinger rotated within the compartment, ready for second use.
The heads of the men swiveled to take in the disturbance. Several of them shouted to each other in a language Tony wished he had spent more time learning. As expected, half of them motioned wildly and broke off from the group, toting their guns with definite malicious intent and cursing at the detonation of what was probably one of several manufacturing buildings. Oh, well. Take a little, give back more. That was his motto. Well, okay, so he just made that up on the spot, but it totally justified blowing up whatever that thing was.
Now that the little distraction bit of the plan was over, it was time to take care of the real threat.
In response to the blast, the other militants had yanked the hostages closer and were pressing the barrels of their weapons against heads, and the back of chests, as if scared their bargaining chip would somehow explode in addition to the structure he had discharged a missile into. Tony threw the repulsors into motion and shot down from the plateau, wind rushing past the drag fins, until his threw his hands out and and came to an abrupt stop in front of the line of prisoners and their captors. He dropped like a rock and the suit's boots clunked metallically into the dirt. It wasn't quite a threatening sound, but he supposed the sight of a completely capable walking, talking one-man army with several nifty weapons features was enough to put that look on their faces.
Tony spoke comfortably, opting not to turn on the outward speakers so that the men could hear him. They wouldn't understand, anyway, and it wasn't his thing to speak unnecessarily. At least, not to terrorists. "Mind training the darts on these nuisances, Jarvis? You can deploy them at any time, I'm not picky."
Twenty darts; twenty satisfying thuds. They were incapacitated in seconds, if not in the first round then the second, too soon for them to react. Jarvis was, as ever, efficient, with time as with bytes.
The hostages didn't need instructing. They sprinted for cover as soon as the guns hit the sand, and the suit turned with a heavy thump to the other half of the militant group, who were only just now turning back, realising their mistake. They flattened themselves against the ground and bullets pinged noisily off the suit. Another mistake of theirs. Tony raised an arm and sent a missile hurtling past them to the building just behind them; far too close for comfort. The heat from the explosion crashed past them. Arm still raised, the expressionless metal mask of the suit tilted to one side, communicating in that universal language Owned.
The men slowly, cautiously lay down their arms. A few around the fringes of the scraggly bunch accelerated their movements into an attempt to dive behind the shed ten yards away; collapsed to the ground in mid-sprint. Jarvis silently noted the depletion in their dart supply.
"The stealth planes should be arriving at any second to clean up after you. There is little doubt now that they were sent on request to assist the US ground forces with the hostage situation. May I suggest an inconspicuous exit, sir, if that is not too difficult for you?"
Okay. Well. Maybe not. It would still take about a half an hour to reach the destination Jarvis had just pulled up on the the screen's grid map. He had time to kill.
"Mediterranean isn't quite what I had in mind." He paused, then smirked. "But, hey, let's make it a date. I'm feeling kind of exotic. You know how I feel about grape leaves."
The suit could have made the course change for him, but Tony had always preferred manual direction-switching over automatic (it was the all flashy moves he could pull, way too much fun), even if he was going to ask Jarvis to put the suit on autopilot as soon as they were heading in the right direction. Quickly, he shifted the palm repulsors in front of him and kicked his legs out, effectively halting his progress just about a mile overseas. He hovered on the repulsor burn from the boots, scanning the horizon.
"Point the way, will you? I want to go save people."
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With a blast of power they were back at one hundred and fifty. Nothing near the suit's full capabilities, but as long as the US forces were kept at bay, the situation would be at a stand still; they could spare another estimated 24.354 minutes. Theoretically, anyway.
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Otherwise, they were keeping a steady speed, and if the softly flashing readouts were any indication, they were also shaving miles off by the minute. The display showed that if they kept their current speed, they would arrive just within the hour. Tony wasn't punctual if he could help it, but he supposed he could let this one slip on the basis that he was saving a bunch of people who would doubtlessly forever admire him for his selfless act of courage. But that was an aside.
"And you've sampled the local dolma, then?" Tony said, not passing up a chance to trade barbs with his favorite robot. "Jeez. Save some for your old boss next time, why don't you? He's paying you good money to sit around and serve his every need, you know. Least you could do is treat the poor man."
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Who was, apparently, also alerting him to stealth aircraft activity just behind him. Hell, he’d already done this dance once this month-
"Duly noted. Bring us up." Tony growled, annoyance giving way to procedure. "I swear to God, they always do this. If they follow, engage the boosters to 200 mph and get us to Akabar as soon as possible."
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"Their intentions are indeterminable with the information available to me. However, they do not appear to have detected us, and are executing no evasive manoeuvres. Any similarity of flight path appears coincidental. For once in sir's life, he is not the centre of things."
Coincidence, indeed. 2000 meters below, the stealth plane, now identifiable as a F-34 Flash, was clearly going where they were, and if Jarvis was not mistaken (he rarely was) one or more would follow it. Almost as if on second thought, they accelerated to 400mph. In response to the inevitable question, Jarvis answered smoothly, "As soon as possible, you said, sir. We are 53 miles away from the destination. We will arrive in 7 minutes and 2.4 seconds, unless sir requires a pit stop."
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The readouts flashed in front of his eyes and Jarvis was, as always, correct with his analysis; the grey shine of the ship’s hull was barely visible as it moved through the clouds, good cover for its flight path. Super. Kindred spirits during a mission to save the world. Okay, maybe not the world, and maybe it wasn’t going to save people; actually, he didn’t know what it was doing there. Backup? For which party?
He decided he didn’t care. He was going to arrive faster than the party of four anyway; he’d deal with the consequences when he arrived.
“No, Jarvis, I do not require a pit stop.” Tony’s lips curled upwards. He scanned the view screen, already thinking. “How’s the weather looking for the trip back? Any sudden thunderstorms I should be worrying about?” He paused. It would suck if they couldn’t grab the aforementioned food. Maybe he didn’t require a pit stop, but he wasn’t going to stand being hungry for longer than he had to.
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They dropped through the clouds and suddenly a red and gold desert stretched before them, interrupted by stripes of black pebbles that grew closer and closer together as they neared a pass in the group of plateaus.
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"Switch manual control to me!" Tony nearly yelped as they emerged suddenly from cloud cover, shooting through the fine white mist, and rapidly neared the huge expanse of desert at an alarming rate. The ground sped up to meet them and Tony tried to level their descent with a twitch of the palm repulsors, still rocketing through the air at 400mph and closing in on their destination in a matter of seconds. Crap. Still had to get used to that bit.
The sand was too familiar and did not strike the most welcoming pose to a man who had spent three months of detainment in a similar area. As they raced over the pockmarked valleys and towering plateaus, Tony almost bit his tongue in an effort of not reacting to what his mind was calling 'extreme danger'. A manual stop at this speed would most definitely kill his arms and legs, reinforced body-suit or not. "Wait, no, I lied- slow us down, before you do that!"
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"Don't trust your own creation, sir?" a note of what seemed to be perturbance creeping into his modulated voice. And after a calculated second, factoring in sir's being as yet unaccustomed to a 400 to 0 mph landing, "Retroboosters on." The numbers on the screen clicked down quickly, levelling out at 50mph and then decreasing more slowly in proportion to altitude.
He followed through with the rest of the landing procedure with particular attention to the customary safety precautions, and 1 minute and 15 seconds later they were on the top of a plateau overlooking the valley, the rocks a little scorched from the heat of the repulsors on 2% power, but everything intact.
They stood hidden from direct light behind a rocky outcrop in a dent in the plateau, heat rising up to meet them from all sides of the sun-baked stone. To the south of the valley, a small group of white-plastered plain rectangular buildings sat facing the bay; to the north, more black pebbles stretching away to mingle with the sand. "Reverting to manual control, now, sir."
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More importantly, he was breathing normally now, heart-rate slowing down. He threw Jarvis an offhanded reply ("If I didn't trust you, I'd be dead and you'd have to deal with Pepper's constant nagging for the rest of eternity”), and essentially began calming himself down for the inevitable crash and bang that was to follow his mental yoga routine. Or whatever. Point was, he was going to, you know, pummel stuff. And he didn’t want to exert any more energy than was necessary.
Oh, great, now he was thinking like Jarvis.
The view from the plateau was something familiar, but what it lacked in caves it made up for in industrial-looking white buildings that looked rather out of place in the steaming desert. Tony noted the switch to manual, but he didn’t investigate the scene immediately. He need to know more about the hostage situation, if there were really big guns involved, how many people. That kind of thing.
“What have you got on the situation, Jarvis?”
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"The hostages are likely being held in that building," said Jarvis, magnifying it and bringing it to a forefront. As expected, a mottled assembly of half-uniformed personnel paraded in the front. "I cannot exactly specify their numbers. Estimate 50." The image was further magnified and dissected-- SM60s, strings of grenades, black G6s. Nothing unusual about this display. The big guns were inside. "There would appear to be no weapons of mass destruction."
He wouldn't bother Mr Stark with the political aspect of things. Even if he had selected the option to, it was too late; new variables to factor in: the cracked wooden door of the building was kicked open, and a man tottered out, his hands behind his back. A booted foot slammed into his back and he stumbled a few more feet forward. More men filed out, squinting in the light, and huddled in a dejected circle before the line of glinting metal and khaki.
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Just as he began to formulate a plan to take out the guards in front, all, what, twenty of them, the door was kicked open and the hostages were filed out. There were young males, late teens, early twenties, but the rest of the assembly was comprised of men over thirty or so. The terrorists were most likely trying to reap the benefits of a large company, hence the white buildings and large hostage count. Oil, maybe? Whatever it was, it was apparently was big enough to warrant complete takeover of the company’s employees. Tony frowned, remembering his own captivity.
What had been twenty was now around Jarvis’ estimation of fifty, hostages included. Well, crap. It was nice being a one-man army and everything, but by the time Tony took out half the men, the hostages might all be dead.
“We should get the hostages to safety first, and we’ll deal with the big scary bad guys after that. What are the chances of half the party leaving to check out a disturbance, and leaving the remaining half with the hostages? Should I distract them?” He murmured. Time was running short. He needed to do something.
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The militants gathered around the group of prisoners, levelling their guns in what might have been a harmless, coincidental readjustment of weight, or preparation to destroy part of their collateral: either way, they needed to get going. Now.
3...2...1.
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The heads of the men swiveled to take in the disturbance. Several of them shouted to each other in a language Tony wished he had spent more time learning. As expected, half of them motioned wildly and broke off from the group, toting their guns with definite malicious intent and cursing at the detonation of what was probably one of several manufacturing buildings. Oh, well. Take a little, give back more. That was his motto. Well, okay, so he just made that up on the spot, but it totally justified blowing up whatever that thing was.
Now that the little distraction bit of the plan was over, it was time to take care of the real threat.
In response to the blast, the other militants had yanked the hostages closer and were pressing the barrels of their weapons against heads, and the back of chests, as if scared their bargaining chip would somehow explode in addition to the structure he had discharged a missile into. Tony threw the repulsors into motion and shot down from the plateau, wind rushing past the drag fins, until his threw his hands out and and came to an abrupt stop in front of the line of prisoners and their captors. He dropped like a rock and the suit's boots clunked metallically into the dirt. It wasn't quite a threatening sound, but he supposed the sight of a completely capable walking, talking one-man army with several nifty weapons features was enough to put that look on their faces.
Tony spoke comfortably, opting not to turn on the outward speakers so that the men could hear him. They wouldn't understand, anyway, and it wasn't his thing to speak unnecessarily. At least, not to terrorists. "Mind training the darts on these nuisances, Jarvis? You can deploy them at any time, I'm not picky."
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The hostages didn't need instructing. They sprinted for cover as soon as the guns hit the sand, and the suit turned with a heavy thump to the other half of the militant group, who were only just now turning back, realising their mistake. They flattened themselves against the ground and bullets pinged noisily off the suit. Another mistake of theirs. Tony raised an arm and sent a missile hurtling past them to the building just behind them; far too close for comfort. The heat from the explosion crashed past them. Arm still raised, the expressionless metal mask of the suit tilted to one side, communicating in that universal language Owned.
The men slowly, cautiously lay down their arms. A few around the fringes of the scraggly bunch accelerated their movements into an attempt to dive behind the shed ten yards away; collapsed to the ground in mid-sprint. Jarvis silently noted the depletion in their dart supply.
"The stealth planes should be arriving at any second to clean up after you. There is little doubt now that they were sent on request to assist the US ground forces with the hostage situation. May I suggest an inconspicuous exit, sir, if that is not too difficult for you?"
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