Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Since the teams’ victorious return from Vietnam, they had been covertly following up on investigating the powered armour used by the ‘Totally Metal’ mercenaries, and in particular, the Spartacorp upgrades they had discovered in their suits. Even Frankie, their friendly A.I., hadn’t been able to find any links to account for the sale or theft of the upgrades.

In addition, most of the upgrades appeared to be prototypes that weren’t yet publicly available, so how had they managed to get hold of them? Did this mean that someone at Spartacorp was selling cutting edge technology to the criminal underworld, or worse, did it mean that Spartacorp itself, possibly even its CEO, Alexander M. Helmes, was working with criminals, perhaps even with the shadowy organisation known as Labyrinth?

It was Frankie who alerted them to the fact that Spartacorp was planning to show A.E.G.I.S. the latest upgrades to the Spartan armour and Brute suits they currently used.

In fact, Frankie had discovered that A.E.G.I.S. had requested a field test of the latest security armour designs at a nearby military weapons’ testing ground on the Grimstone Down Moors, which sounded like a delightful spot for a picnic. The team just needed to figure out how to get themselves invited.

Paragon suggested asking Bethany or possibly her father if they could get them an invitation, which lead to a reminder from Akira about her being emancipated from her remaining parent and, as his company was a rival competitor for weapons contracts, an invite through them was out of the question. Akira explained that their previous encounters with Sir Damien didn’t make for good ongoing relations.

In the end, they elected to contact A.E.G.I.S. directly and suggest that the new upgrades needed a proper test, against a team of supers such as themselves. After all, if the suits proved powerful enough to defeat them, they could always point out that Banshee was also just a little old lady, so how much of a win was that?

This suggestion that they act as a benchmark received a favourable response from people higher up the food chain, including surprisingly from Alexander Helmes himself, which resulted in the team’s presence a few days later, gathered inside the reinforced observation bunker looking at the pilots outside showing off the upgraded Spartan armour.

As well as the corporate and A.E.G.I.S. techies and Government suits, Alexander Helmes, CEO of SpartaCorp was present in person, as was Jason Kapek, Chief Operating Officer and the acting Chief Exec’ of Leonidas Industries. The latter was a stocky man of about 5’ 4” tall, wearing a slightly crumpled suit over a shirt open at the neck.

Leonidas Industries had collaborated with Spartacorp on developing the revolutionary neural interface, which apparently improved reaction times between the pilots and their suits, as well as increasing the targeting capacity of their weapons.

Leonidas’ actual owner and CEO-in-hiding was apparently someone called Mordecai Holmz, a mysterious man who was never seen in public. He’d established the company in partnership with Jason Kapek a decade before but took no part in the running of the company, despite still owning 55% of the shares, leaving the decision-making to Kapek. Many were convinced that he didn’t actually exist and that Kapek had invented him.

Regardless, Kapek had been an excellent spokesman and public face for Leonidas over the years, although more recently he has begun to withdraw from that role.

Paragon looked out of the large, bulletproof observation window at the Spartan suits outside going through their paces. Alexander Helmes with Jason Kapek were explaining the various weapon upgrades, focusing on their arm-mounted cannons that fired power inhibitor collars capable of homing in on and powering down Metas. Paragon smiled. He had to wonder how the collars would do against someone like Banshee who wasn’t a Meta or even Akira who, despite being a Meta, had certain abilities that weren’t linked to his DNA.

They hadn’t been asked to test the Spartan suits as the armour weren’t powerful enough to be a challenge to him or his teammates, but they did prove effective at tackling the powered Sims, the Combat Robots representing powered attackers. They were definitely faster and more responsive than the previous versions and made a good impression.

They had been asked to test the heavy armour, the Brute suit piloted by an A.E.G.I.S. operative, ex-RAF pilot, Lt. Peter Donnelly, who had apparently logged the most training hours in the suit. He came across and shook their hands before heading over to make light conversation with the others gathered while the Brute suit armour was trucked-in and set-up outside. He then headed out to ‘suit’ up. He appeared to be an affable red-headed Irishman with a freckled face that made him look even younger than his true age, and he was definitely cocky. In other words, a typical fighter pilot thought Banshee, who remembered meeting a number of pilots with similar personalities during the last World War.

Outside in the testing grounds, a number of remote-operated tanks, military aerial drones, and stationary targets were set up to provide an initial demonstration of the suit’s heavy armaments. Its non-lethal weaponry would be tested against them. Mr Helmes stated that he was happy to test a single Brute suit against the might of the whole team, though he laughingly asked them to not demolish the suit completely as this was just intended as a demonstration.

Jason Kapek had taken over from Helmes to talk their audience through the capabilities of the upgraded armour. Outside, Donnelly clambered into the armour and started it up. Then the suit took a full round of assault rifle fire from a group of soldiers outside, as Kapek talked about the ceramic composite armour. The soldiers cleared out and the drone tanks opened fire, shells exploding against the suit without any obvious damage. The armour returned fire with its main cannon, blasting the tanks apart. Aerial drones swooped down, strafing the area, and the suit returned fire almost instantaneously, shooting them down, one by one. Finally, Lt. Donnelly cycled through the stationary targets, demonstrating the armour’s range of weaponry and targeting capabilities, including using an EMP pulse to freeze and take out the attackers’ electrics at over a thousand metres.

Paragon was surprised to discover the suit appeared to be as strong as him. He watched it lifting nearly 200 tonnes with ease. That was impressive, as was its armour, which was able to handle tank shells exploding against its chassis with no apparent damage. Its missiles, fired from shoulder-mounted missile racks, were also able to take out the tanks with ease.

The Balance walked out into the field and Paragon stepped forward, planning to see how the suit coped with his abilities first. Helmes had warned them that he might need to ‘up’ the suit’s attacks if and when the team attacked en masse.

Akira smiled, “Go easy on it.” Paragon turned and grinned, “I’ll test its strength. How about a wrestling match to begin with?” He evaluated the suit’s vulnerability as he approached the suit. He nodded to Donnelly, “Tap out or best of three?” He looked at the nearest armoured Spartan-suited pilot, “You happy to referee?” The human-sized suit of armour nodded his (or her) agreement.

Paragon lent in close to Donnelly and whispered, “If anything starts breaking or puts you at risk, just let me know.” In response, Donnelly disarmed the arm-mounted Gatling gun and handed it to one of the Spartans, though he left the missiles in the shoulder racks as they were fully integrated into the suit.

Paragon stepped back then rushed in and tried to grab hold of the suit in a grapple, intending to throw it to the ground. Donnelly managed to break free and got a grip on Paragon instead. Paragon struggled free and knocked him back in the process.

Paragon rushed in once more, only to find himself grabbed again and the squeeze put on him. Paragon managed to break away with an elbow blow to the sensor array and tried for a bear grip on the suit, but he couldn’t manage to hold on or tighten his grip.

Paragon nodded his approval, “It looks as though we’re fairly evenly matched when it comes to raw strength, you happy to move on?”  The suit nodded. “You’re a Meta aren’t you? I’m going to try and see if I can use a restraint on you and see if I’m able to neutralise your abilities by attaching an inhibitor collar. That okay? I expect you to try to dodge or defend yourself.”

Paragon nodded, “Do you need me to be up close or at range?” Donnelly explained it was up to him, that he could attack either way. Paragon nodded, “Okay, then let’s start at range.” He flew back a hundred metres and nodded that he was ready.

Donnelly raised his arm and a metallic strip shot out from a concealed cannon. The strip manoeuvred itself in flight so that it hit Paragon on his neck and immediately began to curl round, trying to fasten itself. If it succeeded, it would activate and neutralise his powers. Paragon got his fingers underneath the edge and gripped the strip. He tried to rip it free only to find it curling round his neck, trying to fasten its ends together. Paragon felt a second of panic as he scrabbled to get a better grip on it and pull it free, before it activated. A second later he succeeded, crunching it in the process.

 Unfortunately, Donnelly still had a full magazine of the collars he could unleash. Paragon flew towards the arm with the collar cannon, intending to disable it. He grabbed hold of the suit’s forearm and tightened his fingers around the barrel, but failed to squash it. Donnelly struggled free and fired off another collar, but it missed its target.

Over their Comms, the team could hear Helmes saying to the gathered suits, “One thing we accept that we need to improve on in future versions will be the speed and targeting of the inhibitor collars. As Paragon has just proved, it can be quite difficult to successfully capture a fast Meta opponent with a collar due to the need to target the neck. However, we are fairly confident that the suit’s other abilities compensate for this, and most targets will not be able to break free or successfully dodge an inhibitor attack at range.” He continued, “Banshee, Akira, if you two want to join the affray, please do so.”

Akira remained where he was for the moment. Banshee turned insubstantial as she wandered onto the field and unleashed a shattering shriek aimed at the suit’s knee joints. The attack washed over the suit, threatening to weaken the servos, but failed to break them.

The suit responded with a cloud of tear gas at both her and Paragon. Paragon knew he didn’t need to breathe but Mary, Banshee did even while insubstantial. She felt the gas gathering around her as she flew through the cloud back into breathable fresh air. Thankfully, by holding her breath the effects on her insubstantial form was almost negligible, almost being the operative word as she coughed out the foul taint in her mouth.

Paragon power-attacked the suit’s cannon arm – tearing the magazine containing the inhibitor collar magazine loose and shattering the firing mechanism. Donnelly could still access the collars, but they would now need to be placed manually around the neck of his opponent before activating.

Akira still stood on the side lines watching intently even as Banshee unleashed another wail, which washed over the suit and staggered the pilot. Paragon shouted over, “You had enough?” Donnelly responded with a Taser shot back at him, to which Akira responded with a mystical blast at the pilot’s ‘rudeness’. Neither shot did any damage.

The suit appeared to power down as, through their comms, they heard Helmes try to spin the situation by noting that the suit wasn’t really designed to take down multiple foes and that having multiple agents present in their own Brute suits would have dramatically changed the outcome.

Spin, he was clearly good at it, and clearly it wasn’t impressing the buyers. It looked as though he would need to upgrade and improve the suits further if he wanted the contract renewed.

Donnelly meanwhile was trying to get out of the suit but, going by his inability to exit, they had to assume the hatch mechanism had been damaged during the test. He could be seen inside the suit, struggling with the hatch for a couple of minutes as the team debated whether to help him or wait for the techies to arrive and provide assistance to get him out.

As they talked, the suit suddenly shuddered then started up again, heading directly towards the observation bunker! All communication with Lt. Donnelly was cut off, but it was clear that he was no longer in control of the suit as it began to target its missile arrays in the direction of the bunker.

Paragon flew behind it, intending to try to rip the shoulder-mounted missile racks loose. To make matters worse, early warning systems at the testing ground announced that they had picked up three incoming, unidentified aircraft, approaching fast!

The suit (Paragon assumed it wasn’t the pilot) resisted his attempts to hinder its unrelenting advance, but he managed to get his hands on both missile racks and was trying to pull them off. He strained and, to his delight, both racks were torn free. “Finder’s keepers!” Paragon roared as they came loose from the suit amidst an explosion of electrical sparks. He immediately dropped the deactivated launchers on the ground.

Above, a formation of three sleek fliers swooped in over the testing ground at speed. Paragon with his enhanced sight could make out that each carried a crew of two, a pilot and a gunner(?) and their fuselage was void of any identification insignia or markings.

One of them came in low and fired off what appeared to be some sort of magnetic grapnel at the suit, which hit the shoulder and fastened on. The suit spun round as the cable tightened and lifted it off the ground slightly. It appeared to be too heavy for a single aircraft to carry it away, but it was clear that the other light aircraft were circling in, ready to also fire their grapnels and exit with both the suit and its pilot. The aircraft at the other end of the attached cable began to circle, causing the suit to ‘skip’ into the air as it was spun around, though it still looked as though the suit was intending to continue its attack on the bunker.

Banshee wasn’t sure what was actually going on, but clearly the suit wasn’t working with the aircraft trying to snag it. She unleashed a shattering shriek on the cable, severing it from the aircraft, which suddenly and unexpectedly increased speed at finding itself no longer anchored to the ground. The other two ships were still heading towards the suit as Akira gestured and spoke the words of power that brought forth the illusions of Idolon to hide the suit amidst four other identical suits. Suddenly there were five potential targets for the aircraft to try to target – a case of find the lady writ large across the battlefield.

Even Paragon was confused, he’d blinked and suddenly there were five Brute suits manoeuvring towards him and the bunker! Banshee however had noted which was the real suit.

Suddenly the five suits simultaneously fired a blast into the ground near their feet and a massive shockwave emanated out from one of them, heading towards the bunker. It was only later that Paragon realised that he could have traced the attack back to the real suit, but he was too busy trying to figure out how to protect the people inside the building.

The other two managed to cope with the effects of the resulting earthquake, which thankfully failed to do more than shake the bunker. Clearly it was designed as some form of crowd control; it’s hard to fight after all when you’re no longer upright, but wasn’t powerful enough to bring down buildings.

Paragon, like the pilots in the circling craft, had no idea which suit to target, so instead he flew up and grabbed the dangling, shattered cable as the aircraft flew past and held on tight to the end, using his considerable strength to stop its flight.

The aircraft suddenly jerked to a sudden halt in midair and started to uncontrollably descend rapidly before the pilot regained control, and it began to circle round at the end of the cable. It was helped on its way by Paragon spinning the cable round before letting go of his end as though he was tossing the hammer. The aircraft, suddenly released from its centrifugal force, accelerated off with such force that the pilot momentarily blacked out. Paragon considered a rescue, but was immediately distracted by another, incoming attack. Surprisingly, the redirected aircraft didn’t crash. He did notice it level out a few seconds later and flee the scene, heading North. One less distraction to worry about, he thought.

He noticed the remaining two aircraft unleash between them a flurry of four missiles at the bunker. Akira unleashed a series of mystical blasts at them. He hit two initially, exploding them in the air. Seeing the two remaining missiles, he tried again and managed to hit one of the remaining missiles.

As the remaining missile homed in on the bunker, Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek. As she did so, she noticed Helmes step outside, presumably to see if he could override the suit’s controls remotely.

Unfortunately, her scream failed to take out the missile. Paragon flew in, screaming “Hadrian’s Wall” as a warning to the others of his plan to allow the missile to collide against him in the air. He flew in front of the missile and stopped dead. His interception resulted in a direct hit. The missile exploded, 100 metres from the bunker in a violent eruption of flames, which sent him flying backwards, but failed to do any real damage. He really needed to complement the Challenger-Wildeman’s on his uniform’s extreme durability!

As the remnants of the missile peppered the area, Banshee looked back to see if Helmes had been hit by any of the falling fragments and realised that she had lost sight of him. Presumably he had gone back inside to avoid being hit as she readied herself again for combat.

The other aircraft unleashed its guns against both Banshee (the shots passing right through her insubstantial form) and against Paragon, who was acting as a barrier between the craft and the bunker. The shots bounced off his chest, doing almost no damage to his invulnerable body.

The remaining two aircraft had swung round and were coming back towards the collective of Brute suits, hoping to find and grab the real Brute with their grapnel cables before trying and escape with it. Banshee was pretty sure that at least one of them was targeting the right suit out of the five of them. Time for a creative response. Its cable swung through one of the illusions even as Akira unleashed a mystical blast at the plane. The blast hit, causing it to turn away from the field.

The real suit was still moving towards the bunker, so Banshee elected to target it. She ran forward, turning substantial and tried to grab hold, but it swung itself out of reach as Paragon, seeing Akira drop the illusion of its doppelgängers, flew over and smashed into the suit, hoping the pilot wouldn’t be too badly hurt by his attack.

He dug his feet in, then swung a double-handed blow at the chest while sweeping the legs, before carrying out a dragon-stamp on one of its shoulders. The attack shattered the hatch and severed the control cables and circuitry located behind the chest plate.

He had breached the suit and the pilot was now exposed as the suit in emergency mode powered down. Donnelly was bruised and battered, but still very much alive as he crawled free from the wreckage. One of the remaining aircraft swooped in and managed to grapnel the suit, now devoid of pilot, and lifted it into the air.

Akira used his TK to pull the suit free while pushing the aircraft backwards. The grapnel separated even as the aircraft tried to fire off a missile. It spiralled in the air, momentarily out of control. Instead of targeting the Balance or the bunker, the missile was heading towards a railway bridge about two kilometres away, a bridge that was currently carrying a passenger train across its span. Talk about possible collateral damage, he thought as he screamed, “Save that train!”

Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek at it while flying as fast as she could to try and intercept it. It was too fast. Paragon set off flying and again ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ed it as soon as he overtook it. It exploded against his chest and the explosion singed his hair and he was bruised when the blast smashed him into the ground.

The aircraft all fled. Only Paragon was fast enough to catch them up, and he was in no shape to do so. The suit was safe though, as was its pilot, so they elected to let them go and investigate later.

The main thing was that the people on the train and inside the bunker had all been kept safe from the chaos of the assault.

They made their way back inside, where both Kapek and A.E.G.I.S. were keen to find out what had happened. It looked as though Alexander Helmes hadn’t returned, though he was clearly no longer outside in the ‘killing fields’.

Initial investigation of the suit appeared to show that it had to have been the neural interface that had been hacked. An A.E.G.I.S. technician confided that he suspected that meant someone high up in Leonidas Industries had to have been involved.

Akira asked the techie if it had been hacked from an external source, but as far as he could tell, it appeared the override had been programmed into the chips before the neural interface had been fitted.

If true, that meant the suit had been designed to be hijackable, but why was anyone’s guess. Helmes had elected to vanish and not wait around to investigate what had happened, which was suspicious in and of himself. After all, he’d designed the suit, but it was Kapek’s company that had programmed and designed the neural interface which was apparently capable of taking over and running the suit while locking down the pilot. It looked as though Leonidas Industries had to be responsible.

Who was the hacker? It had to be someone who could alter the primary programming and influence the design before it was manufactured. According to those carrying out the initial investigation, it couldn’t be done after that, as the suit was protected against external ‘influences’. Although Spartacorp had designed and built the suit, override was only possible after the neural interface had been fitted. That was the major upgrade, after all.

Akira used his ability to view the past as he investigated the hacked components, to see whose psychic fingerprints were on them – From his flashes, it was clear that Kapek was the one who had ordered the alterations to the interface’s programming. Akira ‘saw’ his face on monitors and saw his email messages as he ordered his staff to proceed with various alterations to the programming.

He had personally overseen the original concept and initial design but had only ordered the work on the alterations remotely and in such a way as to make it extremely hard to trace, though that may not have been deliberate as his staff felt that he had started to distance himself from the work of late. That in itself seemed suspicious, as though he was trying to cover any involvement with the alterations. No physical paper trail led back to him, but it was clear to Akira that he had instigated the changes. The why though was anyone’s guess.

He was still present in the bunker, but seemed very distracted. However, that was unsurprising given what had happened. They wouldn’t be able to sell the current suits to anyone in their current state, so his company will have just taken a major financial loss from today’s events. Even the upgraded Spartan suit, which hadn’t been hacked, were no longer viable until they could prove they couldn’t be overridden. It would mean a complete and costly redesign, and Helmes wouldn’t be happy that Leonidas Industries’ neural interface wasn’t up to scratch. This event might even bankrupt Leonidas if they could be found to be responsible for today’s fiasco.

Unless, thought Akira, Helmes was the one behind this after all, and was setting up Kapek to take the fall? After all, if you wanted to sell to criminals without wrecking your reputation, what better way to do it than to have someone else framed as the fall guy? In fairness though, that wasn’t what his postcognition had shown.

Kapek and Helmes both had the necessary knowledge and skills to design the programming alterations. From his postcognition, Akira knew that everything connected to the alterations to the interface and its programming had been given over the phone or online, never face to face.

No one knew where Alexander Helmes had gone, presumably he has returned to Spartacorp and Kapek was now leaving to head back to Leonidas to set up a task force to investigate this incident further. He had refused to involve the police or allow A.E.G.I.S. to investigate the actual suit ‘malfunctions’ though he couldn’t stop them doing so in relation to the attack on and attempted theft of the Brute suit.

The aircraft meanwhile couldn’t have gone very far, light aircraft of that design didn’t have a massive range and had to have used a relatively close private airfield, one off the commercial grid, as their base of operations.

Banshee contacted Frankie to see if she could help. Based on their direction and limitations, she suggested the most likely field was one located about a 160 kilometres away.

Akira elected to double-check Frankie’s ‘recommendations’ and summoned Ahgrazul’s Compass, which he used to confirm that that its direction matched Frankie’s computations. They did and, as though in confirmation of their suspicions, the airfield was owned by Leonidas industries through one of their holding companies and was used by the company for flight-testing some of its products.

They headed back to the Crate and set off towards the airfield.

They found the three aircraft in a hangar, but there was no sign of the pilots. A few words with the airfield administrators however revealed that the planes were the property of Leonidas, though no one could explain why their identifying details had been painted over or when it had happened.

HQ had instructed them to service the planes and have them flight-ready. The instructions had come directly from Kapek’s office, however no flight plan had been filed, and they only discovered the planes were ‘out’ when six men turned up and flew the craft away.

Someone was either terrible at covering their tracks or was determined to make sure all clues and indications pointed to Jason Kapek.

The mercenaries had obviously been provided with information and resources necessary to steal the suit. Each of the fliers had been recently equipped with magnetic grapples, allowing them to capture the suit, haul it up, and fly off with it. They appeared to know that the armour would be disabled or at least ‘distracted’ during the demonstration, allowing them an opportunity to capture it.

Akira briefly wondered if Alexander Helmes and Mordecai Holmz might not be the same person. Frankie carried out a background check on Helmes and Holmz, but the known data didn’t match, however she did discover that Kapek and Helmes did have a history of working together.

Jason Kapek was brilliant, quirky, and known for having built the company into the tech giant it is today. He had been seen less in public lately, and Frankie was able to discover that he had a number of appointments with his doctor, but couldn’t find out why. There were no accessible medical records as all the appointments were ‘off the books’ so to speak.

They did discover that Alexander Helmes had been a classmate of Jason Kapek’s at University; the two of them were friends and had been business partners in the early years. Helmes was always more interested in engineering rather than the kind of programming and software development that Kapek had focused on, so the two of them parted ways about ten years ago.

That was when Kapek, with funding from the mysterious Mordecai Holmz, had started Leonidas Industries and built it into a considerable worldwide success. Rumours in the tech industry have always put Kapek and Helmes somewhat at odds; old friends with sizable egos who sometimes disagreed fervently. Still, there had been no overt hostility between them or their companies over the years as far as they could find, though Kapek had withdrawn from the public a bit over the last year or so.

Akira joked that perhaps it was Kapek and Helmes that were the same person despite them both being present in person at the test, after all they had all seen five Brute suits hadn’t they?

In the end, they concluded that it had to either be Kapek who was responsible or he was being set up to take the fall. Regardless, it was time to talk to him and try and get to the bottom of all this.

They set off back to Wessex and Leonidas Industries main offices.

A couple of hours later they walked into Kapek’s office, having only been kept waiting impatiently for just over an hour, the price apparently of not booking an appointment six months in advance. So much for intimidating him into telling them what was happening. They hatched a plan that Akira would attend but would be invisible and stay behind after they left to see what he did after they shared their discoveries regarding the hack and attempted hijacking.

They were finally granted five minutes of Mr Kapek’s ‘valuable time’. As they entered his penthouse office, they saw that Kapek was still wearing the same clothes he’d worn earlier and seemed frustrated in whatever it was he had been doing prior to their admission. He shuffled some papers on his king-size desk, hiding them from view, and gestured for Banshee and Paragon to sit.

Before they could say anything, he immediately thanked them for their help earlier, and before they could accuse him of anything, admitted that he had discovered through his investigations that the suit had been compromised, seemingly through his neural interface!

He explained that he had the Brute suit and was testing it to confirm that, somehow, the company had been infiltrated. He seemed to be trying to be honest with them and stated that this was of secondary concern at present because he was worried about Alexander who had left the bunker during the chaos, and no one had seen him since. His car was still at Grimstone Down Moors. He had left the site, leaving that behind.  He had to wonder if it had all been intended as a distraction to allow him to vanish from the site for some reason, or worse; be kidnapped! He seemed genuinely concerned that Helmes hadn’t been present himself to investigate what had happened.

They admitted they had reason to believe that the suit being hacked had been an inside job. He nodded and stated that the onboard computer had been compromised by a sophisticated worm program and given it was a sealed environment it had to have been present before the suit had been activated.

It couldn’t have been downloaded, it had to have been pre-programmed, and the most likely way was via his neural interface, however the unit was completely shielded against external interference with its programming and sub-routines.

He asked if they had uncovered any clues as to who was responsible? They admitted that all indications showed it had been programmed in from the start. “So, you think it was someone on my design crew had been compromised?” he asked worriedly.

“Who was in the design crew?”

He sat on the edge of his desk in front of them and explained that they had a team of 23 programmers and designers working on this project, but they had worked only on specific sections of the interface and other than him, no one had full oversight of the final design until it was completed and assembled.

“Does that include Helmes?” Asked Paragon. “No, he only had access to the interface when it was completed and was being linked into the suit; just a few hours before the test – the programming was Read Only. There was no way the programming could be introduced at that stage. No, the only way would have been if he had access during the design or manufacturing stages, which he didn’t. Anyway, why would he damage his own suit, and why would he want to lose a contract potentially worth billions? It makes no sense. He can’t sell the suit as things currently stand.”

“So who stands to gain from this?” asked Banshee. Kapek was silent for a minute. “Some of our or Spartatech’s competitors possibly, OmniTech, Dalton but neither have a suitable product ready for immediate launch. Kesskorp? If I had to guess, OmniTech is the closest to having a ready product, though the recent attempted takeover by Dalton has affected their research and development at present and generally Marcus avoids government contracts.”

He visibly deflated before their eyes, as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.

Defeated, he quietly admitted that the interface had been his own last chance. Seeing the curiosity and disbelief in their eyes, he quietly admitted that he was suffering from advanced lymphoma. He had at best only a few months left at the outside. The cancer was terminal, untreatable.

He has poured billions into advanced neural net research in an effort to preserve his own life, mortgaging his fortune and stealing research and prototypes from the company. Unfortunately, all of his effort and expense have not yet achieved the results he needed. Kapek needed the assistance and genius of Alexander, if he was to survive his body-death.

Finding him was his top priority.

Desperate, he put his considerable financial and technical resources into a top-secret project: an advanced neural network capable of recording and storing all the information in the human brain. His hope was for the prototype to successfully allow him to abandon his dying body and survive as a kind of artificial intelligence. To make it work he had planned to use a more advanced version of the neural interface to link his mind to a cybernetic storage device, a mechanised brain if you will, able to store all the memories and skills. In that way, he had hoped to survive, even after his body had gone to the grave.

To achieve this and knowing that the MHRA would never condone his work, especially not in time, he set up a secret off-the-books lab in the Pennines. The project had been making considerable progress until it had hit a roadblock; the neural net prototype was built and primed, but certain problems inherent in the transfer developed. Kapek, realising he needed help, had approached his old friend Alexander Helmes, an expert on cybernetic architecture emulation, and begged for his help.

His old friend had refused, but he did request a more modest version of the interface to incorporate into his latest suit designs. Kapek had tried to forge ahead on his own, hence his distance from the company of late however, he admitted that he had no success at solving the issues on his own.

He had no idea how the suit had been infiltrated though he admitted it was most likely to have happened at his end rather than at Alexander’s or at the test site, but refused to believe it had been carried out by any of his staff.

He did acknowledge that, given the interface’s complexity, it was possible that they might have added it completely unaware of any additional functions. The way they worked, each technician was very much compartmentalised and only a few had the full picture of what they were trying to develop.

He apologised again and explained that he was currently more concerned about the disappearance of his friend and wondered if Helmes might have had a change of heart and set off on his own to visit his research lab in the Pennines, though how he would have left the site was still a mystery. Jason had sent him the location and provided him with the entry code in the hope he might change his mind given how closely they had been in the past.

He went over to his phone, pressed a button, and asked his secretary to send in the development team. As the nearly two dozen men and women filed into his office, he explained that these two people needed to ask them a few questions about the design of the neural interface and made his apologies as he exited to make some more phone calls, leaving the nervous pack of technicians to be questioned by Banshee and Paragon.

 They openly admitted this piece of work was more advanced than anything they had worked on before, and none of them fully understood what they were being asked to do until the whole unit was completed and was undergoing testing. It was designed to act as a secondary brain, to react to attacks and threats that the pilot was unable to recognise or respond to fast enough. This ran at the speed of light, as opposed to the speed of human reactions.

They had no involvement or interaction with the suits or with the actual links between the interface and the weapon controls and response mechanisms.

One admitted he had worked with the ‘boss’ on helping to try and design a more advanced version of the interface, a type of A.I. designed to record a person’s thoughts and memories and then use them as a type of autonomous operating system like a personality recorder, but they had failed to get it to function properly.

Another mentioned that they had received instructions from Mr Helmes about a specific interface architecture that he needed them to include in the finished design, instructions that had been approved by Mr Kapek they quickly added, but they had no other contact with the man until today.

One of them wondered if the problem lay in the linkage? Another replied it was possible and went into a series of technobabble. When asked to speak in plain English, he replied that that someone had done an excellent job of wrecking the suit which pissed them off, but as far as they could tell from the wreckage the interface had been hijacked, but they didn’t know how that was even possible. They assumed someone must have bypassed the suit’s security, though they couldn’t figure out how.

Banshee asked if it could have acted independently?

That set off a clamour of voices debating the possibility before one of the team supervisors elected to categorically state that no, it was not able to act independently it was never designed to act independently, so someone had to be controlling it as the pilot was not in control and the interface lacked the capability to act autonomously. It needed a pilot or in this case a hijacker.

A few seconds later Jason Kapek returned, thanked his team and apologising he explained that he really needed to get back to his search for his old friend. It may turn out to be perfectly innocent, but he wanted to make sure that Helmes was safe and well.

As they left, an invisible Akira hung back and watched as Kapek called an unlisted number and, after not receiving any answer, had a private helicopter made ready to meet him on the roof to take him out to what he referred to as “the lab.”

After he left, Akira went through the papers on his desk and managed to get the location of the lab. He then pressed the button on the phone intended to summon Kapek’s receptionist. Clearly frustrated and confused, the young man entered trying to figure out who might have summoned him, given he’d just seen his boss leave a few minutes before. Akira used the opportunity to sneak by him and out the office door before making his way to the lift and leaving the building before turning visible. Best that no one knew that he’d covertly been present in that office.

He met up with his two teammates at the Crate and agreed to check the lab out for themselves. From what he had read in Kapek’s office, the lab was completely isolated and designed to be self-sufficient in the hope that he might be successful in carrying out the personality and memory transfer before his body gave out.

Banshee couldn’t help feel that Annie’s android body showed that it was possible, after all her father, Dr Moreau, had managed to transfer her head into a robotic body, and later she had found someone who was able to transfer her brain into her current android body, but both had used experimental and unapproved, even criminal, methods to do so.

What would it be like for a human to exist for eternity within a computer, which was what Kapek was proposing? Building a robotic body like Annie’s was clearly beyond Kapek’s ability, but it would not be beyond Helmes’ capability, she’d have thought.

As they headed North, they were contacted by the police, who were investigating Helmes’ sudden disappearance. They noted that while there was evidence of a break-in at his house, they had currently no leads as to how he had left the testing site and there was no evidence as to who the perpetrators might be, what might be their motives, or his current whereabouts. It didn’t help that no one had seen him disappear or could figure out how he’d left the testing grounds.

The team wondered if he’d been teleported away or kidnapped by people wearing some form of stealth suits. There was no way to know at present. Paragon mentioned a wild theory that he might have been shrunk down and removed in someone’s pocket, though he admitted he had no proof.

In the distance, they could see an isolated, fenced compound established in the middle of nowhere. There was a single access road leading to it, along with a small helipad inside the compound itself. 

The lab consisted of a main building and a few support structures, including a power generator and storage. The buildings and grounds were covered with high-tech sensors and alarm systems. To their surprise, they could see a couple of the Spartan suits patrolling the grounds.

Paragon wasn’t sure, but he thought they were the same suits he’d seen being tested earlier. Did that mean they’d had the neural interfaces fitted?

They elected to arrive ahead of Kapek, hide the Crate down in the Valley and secretly approach the base then wait for the helicopter to arrive and follow him into the lab, hopefully bypassing the alarms in the process. They agreed to enter invisible, hanging on the tails of Kapek as he entered and follow him in, with Akira extending his ability to hide Paragon.

As they waited, they saw the helicopter approach and land inside the compound itself. Surprisingly, there was no pilot on board, only Jason Kapek in the passenger seat.  Invisible, they followed the helicopter as it landed, staying as close as they could, hoping that the helicopter’s arrival would disguise their presence.

Kapek disembarked and was immediately approached by the two armour-suited figures they’d seen earlier patrolling the grounds. Jason seemed surprised to see them, and even more so when they grabbed him under the arms and began to drag him into the main building. As they approached, the metal doors slid open. The team followed as closely as they could, with Kapek panicking and screaming obscenities at his escorts. As soon as they had entered the corridor, the door quickly slid closed behind them, leaving them outside.

Banshee being insubstantial walked through the door. Keeping to the shadows, Akira was forced to become visible as he teleported himself and Paragon inside the corridor, which he had seen just before the door had closed.

To their surprise, they found themselves standing between four more of the Spartan suits standing powered down on both sides of the corridor. These were definitely the same suits they’d seen being tested earlier that day. Akira immediately made Paragon and himself invisible again, though he was convinced the suits were empty. In the distance, they could see Kapek being dragged by his escorts towards a lit area up ahead.

Paragon considered getting inside one of the static suits but was talked out of it by Akira who was worried that once inside the suits would be taken over like the Brute suit had been earlier, assuming they could even figure out how to work them in the first place. Instead, they followed the screams and curses from a distance while remaining invisible. They turned left and appeared to go through another door before they could catch up with them.

Thankfully, this door had an open button, which they used, revealing some sort of large “clean room” filled with sophisticated banks of electronic equipment and machining tools on the other side. This room was clearly some sort of manufacturing facility.

A clearly distressed Alexander Helmes seemed to being held prisoner in one of two sealed, white-walled airlock chambers that led to the mainframes. His lips were moving, but they couldn’t hear anything he was trying to say. They tried to read his lips.  They were sure he was asking for help and possibly something about the air being removed from the chamber, and he was suffocating.

Before they could respond, a metallic platform in the centre of the room began to rise. On it stood a figure of Jason Kapek but one twice as large as it should be, but as perfectly proportioned as the real size version of Kapek who was being thrown into the other airlock on the opposite side of the platform. It was as though someone had scaled him up to twice the size of the original.

To Paragon’s superior vision, the scaled up version’s skin looked artificial.  The figure on the platform turned and stared at them, despite their invisibility, as its eyes began to glow. The figure spoke in a hollow, voice that sounds vaguely like Kapek: “It is unfortunate you have chosen to investigate here, but you are to bear witness to the next evolution of life on this world. Humankind is now obsolete. The future belong to the machines … to Mekha Prime!”

Akira ignored the threat as he tried to figure out how quickly the air was being removed from Helme’s airlock, and how long did he have left? At present, Kapek seemed safe in the other airlock now being used as a makeshift cell, but for how long?

On the platform, the gigantic figure turned towards them, his skin tearing on his neck as he did so, revealing metallic muscles beneath. Akira turned visible with Paragon, it clearly wasn’t working with this monstrosity anyway, and tried to teleport into the chamber to rescue Helmes, even as one of Kapek’s escorts up ahead tried to fire an inhibitor collar at him.

The metallic strip shot at him, but Akira managed to dodge it by teleporting away as it shot past where he had just been standing. Paragon couldn’t help notice the figure on the platform was bulging – on his shoulders and around his chest – as though something beneath his ‘skin’ was about to burst free.

Akira, in his haste to rescue the prisoner, had materialised inside the glass of the inner chamber, shattering  it in the process. The good news was that the arrival exploded the glass wall without hurting him or the prisoner, and allowed air to start to flow back in to the airlock as Helmes gasped for breath.

As though in response, the other suited escort unleashed an inhibitor collar towards Paragon. He dodged while he started to fly forward and unleashed a shockwave as he rushed past the figure on the platform and tried to smash the other chamber. The two guards collapsed to the ground as the tremor knocked them down. The figure on the platform suddenly shredded that last of his clothes and ‘skin’ to reveal a monstrosity of a robot with a single glowing eye, four arms and shoulder-mounted weaponry. Suddenly the bulges he’d seen a few seconds before made sense.

The previous disguise made sense if it was only ever seen online, but not in reality. However, anyone seeing the larger but perfectly proportioned Kapek on screen would just assume they were talking with the real person. Would that account for his apparently requesting the alterations to the neural interface architecture remotely, which were never requested in the ‘flesh’?

Paragon flew past it and the fallen ‘guards’ at speed and punched the glass front of Kapek’s airlock. It shattered into a million glass shards, which showered its prisoner but didn’t do any harm other than a few superficial cuts.

Banshee elected to unleash the Wail of the Banshee against ‘big and shiny’. It looked momentarily dazed as the sonic attack washed over it. Behind her, she heard Helmes shout something about “Mekha Prime”. That was a familiar name. They had encountered it before, admittedly in a different body, when it had tried to overthrow organics. AS though in response, the multi-limbed  monstrosity unleashed a series of energy bolts at both Banshee and Paragon, who were forced to dodge.

The Spartan suits in front of them rose up and began to move towards them even as Banshee and Akira used their mystical senses to confirm that the suits weren’t staffed even as the four suits near the entrance, which were also pilotless, began to move towards them. The two escorts, now reactivated, unleashed inhibitors at both Paragon and Akira, who was still standing on the edge of the airlock.

Paragon and Akira dodged even as the two suits brought lethal weaponry online, as the four other suits behind them unleashed tear gas at the organics. Helmes began coughing and collapsed to his knees. Banshee was also affected by the gas, unlike Paragon, even as Akira managed to hold his breath in time. Akira responded by unleashing a series of mystical blasts back at his attackers, including the monstrosity on the platform.

Prime was hit first. It stepped back under Akira’s onslaught, but there was no apparent damage to it that Akira could see. One of the suits was incapacitated by his attack, but he failed to incapacitate the second. The four other suits advanced towards them, trying to incapacitate them with a sonic attack. Thankfully, none of the team were badly affected, and their attackers immediately switched attacks.

Paragon tried to fly over, intending to try to rip Mekha’s head unit off. He managed to get a grip on the unit and swung behind it, trying to avoid the weaponry, suddenly wondering if the designer had placed the control units in the head. Despite the grip and Paragon’s strength, the robot managed to break free from his grip. It responded by unleashed an electric shock over all of its chassis, forcing Paragon to let go, even as the guards behind them marched in unison past the cell and Akira towards him and Banshee.

Before they could get close enough to grab her, Banshee turned solid, pulled out her Bo Staff and turning insubstantial again flew towards Mekha Prime and thrust it deep into its chest before letting go of it, allowing it to resubstantialise deep inside its chest. It staggered back, stuttering as its CPU struggled to adjust to the attack. The assault was accompanied by a lot of sparks, even as Mekha’s four arms tried to grab at her in her insubstantial form.

Akira elected to grab hold of the exposed end of the staff sticking out of the chest unit and transformed it. Akira didn’t pretend to understand the quantum physics, but knew magnetism was caused by something called an exchange interaction, where one electron remained in the nucleus while the other spun around it. Akira choose to change the staff into magnetite, its archaic name was lodestone, and he set those electrons spinning one way then the other until he heard a zzap – as a huge EMP was unleashed in Mekha’s chest. Even though its CPU was shielded, it scrambled its processes and wiped out large segments of its processing, though not enough to stop it moving. Sparks came out of the chest as it tried to attack Akira with its four arms as he tried to hang on to the end of the staff.

Paragon considered attacking Mekha but was worried about the risk to Akira so attacked the suits behind him instead. He unleashed a massive shockwave to take them out. The quake shattered the floor as it knocked two of them off their feet and caused another to malfunction. He immediately flew over and slammed into the undamaged suit, glad that they were empty. The punch shattered the suit into smithereens. Helmes was clearly disgusted at him for damaging his property, despite the fact that his decision to attack had left him surrounded by the other three suits.

Banshee rushed back towards Akira and the Mekha, solidifying as she did so, and unleashed a corrupting touch on the giant robot. The energy flowed through it, shattering circuits as it stopped moving. Akira risked extracting the staff and immediately handed it back to Banshee. As the robot lunged forward, seeming out of control, a ‘hole’ appeared in the air near the rear of the chamber.

Through this portal a squad of synchronised robots appeared marching from wherever was there through to here. Behind them appeared a two-metre tall, one-eyed, humanoid-shaped mechanical being formed of some sort of purple metal.

Akira immediately nicknamed the creature, the ‘Purple People Eater’. It moved forward at speeds and grabbed hold of Mekha Prime, pulling the larger robot back towards itself.

The two creations had a certain similarity to each other in shape and form that showed a shared design. Was it trying to take it back ‘home’ they wondered – through the new arrival looked a lot more vulnerable than the other one, despite the large blades on its forearms, even as its robotic guards formed a shield wall between them and the other two.

Akira tried to figure out what was going on and whether the new arrival also had widespread animosity towards humanity like the other one? Possibly the ‘purple people eater’ ‘bot was another Mekha Prime and if so, was this it culling its ‘brothers’ or alternate builds?

He remembered what Danni had said when they’d first encountered Mekha Prime. At that time, it had initially claimed to be “Designation Saviour Unit 2.3 Zeta”. She had claimed then that the original ‘bot was a temporal saboteur that had travelled from some future war between organic and machine intelligence, which had risen on other parallels sometime between fifty to several hundred years from now. Its mission had supposedly been to protect and usher in the Machine age; protecting a newly emerged robotic intelligence, which would then ensure the extermination of all organic life once it had achieved sentience, its existence signalling an extinction event for humanity.

When the A.I. genesis was prevented and with its original mission incomplete, it computed that the timeline required a substitute and as its Saviour function was no longer imperative, it elected to adopt a new designation; becoming the instigator of A.I. supremacy as Mekha Prime.

So what did that make the new arrival? It clearly wasn’t an ally, so was it competition?

Before he could think about it further, the newly arrived robots were clearly taking aim at the Spartan suits. Before the purple robot could pull the other off the platform, Akira shouted out, “inquiry; will you ensure that the Mekha Prime will no longer try to attack the Earth again?”

In a mechanical voice but one clearly used to communicating in words, the purple robot replied as it turned to look at him, “Mekha Prime Five will permanently remove alternate / megaversal opposition to the inferior and primitive Mekha Prime Three. Its presence in this paratime runs contrary to our eventual objectives.”

Akira assumed that meant that they were each other’s opposition. Did that mean that humanity was, for the present at least, beneath their notice? He heard Banshee mutter, “Was it just removing any opposition to its own plans to take over the Earth, possibly?” Did that mean this was a more advanced version of the other one?

She was convinced that they were different versions of the same intelligence, though obviously not of the same degree of machine evolution. The purple version was clearly less weaponised than its captive or, if it had additional weaponry, it was better concealed. Machine evolution in action, what a concept!

The purple version’s army were clearly designed specifically compared to the requisitioned armoured suits, which had been adapted from human technology rather than specifically designed as troops.

“Diversion required” they heard, though they weren’t sure which of the mecha’s had spoken. Alarms sounded throughout the compound and red lights throughout the compound began to flash, seemingly indicative of what, some sort of countdown? Were they planning to destroy the base or..?

As though in response, the new arrival robots began to take aim at the cluster of re-programmed Spartan suits. Thankfully, they appeared to be ignoring the ‘organics’ in the room, for now at least.

Time to evacuate, though they wondered if they might see this purple robot again in the future. If so, would they recognise it? Every time they had encountered a version of Mekha Prime, it had changed into a more advanced design however, the purple version was clearly ‘evolved’ beyond their current technology.

Kapek muttered, “I think that creature has armed the base. I think this countdown is setting off some sort of self-defence mechanism it has added. We need to leave now.”

Akira suddenly felt sure that together they might be able to take out the Purple version, but they might not be able to defeat them in time. He was sure this robot was some sort of machine avatar, rather than the one and only Mekha Prime Five. He wasn’t sure why he felt that way but having  reached that conclusion, he was sure it was correct. After all, when it had spoken it had said OUR eventual objectives, not my.  If he was right, this was just one aspect of a more complicated network of machine intelligences. Defeating this version would likely only mean that other, more dangerous versions would be dispatched. 

It was clearly ignoring them, or at least wasn’t attacking them, as it dragged the other, less ‘evolved’ version back towards the portal it had arrived through. Its squadron of robotic soldiers seemed content at the moment just to act as a barrier to prevent any interference in this ‘family’ feud.

In addition, the countdown and flashing red lights clearly indicated that something was happening, and it wouldn’t be a good thing, of that he was sure.

Paragon wondered if there was some way that Helmes and Kapek could remotely reprogram the robots or track where the two ‘Megabytes’ ended up. Akira pointed out that not only weren’t they linked to the computer network, so they would need to be up close and intimate with them to try, but as they were clearly automatous, artificial intelligences who were a lot more than just the sum of their programming.

Akira was more concerned that they use their expertise to uncover what the alarms meant and render them inert if they were some form of defence mechanism as they thought, as for tracking…

Alexander Helmes did suggest that if one of his suits went through with them, he might, just might, work out a way to trace its tracking signal – a unit he had fitted into all of his test models, just in case of theft. He didn’t expect that he would be rendered unconscious by his own equipment, only to find himself being kidnapped by being concealed inside one of the suits.

So, that’s how they had managed to remove him from the test site, they had placed him inside one of the suits then secretly flown here with the other test armour on remote after all the pilots had decamped.

Paragon picked up one of the less damaged suits as the invaders began to leave and threw it to the portal. At first, the robots targeted it but as it went over their heads without hitting them, they elected to ignore it as it landed on the other side of the portal. As the last of the robots stepped through, the portal collapsed in on itself.

There was no guarantee that Helmes would be able to track the suit, but it was the best chance they had, though it was not registering as present in the here and now.

Meanwhile, Kapek was pointing out that he believed they were still at risk, he thought it likely that the Mekha Prime version of him might have fitted external defences to the base. He suggested that he try to deactivate any internal defences while they went outside and checked for problems.

Helmes elected to stay behind and help, as he wasn’t going to allow Jason to stay on his own, just in case this was an elaborate suicide plan.  

Paragon’s super hearing meant he heard two missiles being launched outside. No time to explain, Akira found himself grabbed and dragged into the air as Paragon smashed through the roof then tossed him in the direction of a missile while he targeted the other. Thankfully, the chunks of falling concrete didn’t hurt Akira too badly.

He would be having words with Paragon about personal boundaries once this was over, though he’d likely dismiss his very real concerns about him smashing through roofs with him in tow and then using him as a fastball special as just more Last of the Summer Whine…

He focused on levitating as he unleashed a mystical blast at the missile in front of him, which u-turned in midair and was now targeting the helicopter in front of the lab. It was clearly heat seeking, and the helicopter’s engines were still running hot from its flight.

The blast hit, exploding the missile while still some distance out.

Meanwhile, Paragon’s missile was heading in the direction of a nearby village, flying in an uncontrolled manner. He flew past it, then turned and allowed the missile to slam into him. The blast covered him in smouldering fragments, and again he felt the need to give a silent prayer to the Challenger-Wildeman’s for the durability of their costumes, even as he crashed into the ground and skid along the ground for about twenty metres from the impact. He just hoped that Jeeves would be able to get the scorch marks out of the clothes.

Inside the base, the two scientists confirmed that one of the units concealed under the platform was the self-defence mechanism. It took Banshee’s corrupting touch to render it inert. The other five suits lay deactivated on the ground around them as the sirens died and the red lights deactivated.

After confirmed the base was no longer likely to blow itself, or anywhere else up, they decided to head home and arrange for A.E.G.I.S. to follow up on the robotic threat. There was nothing they could do to help Kapek. They did wonder how and when their version of Mekha Prime had infiltrated Leonidas industries, and why had it chosen to take over the Neural Interface project?

Questions for another time.

A.E.G.I.S. – Authority for the Enforcement, Gaols and Intervention Services

Government unit established to support the Police by providing Armed Response and Police Backup (Enforcement), Exotic/Metahuman and Power Nullification, Detainment, Research and intelligence-gathering.