Disclaimer: I do not own any movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books, or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with a commercial aim. It is not for sale or rent.

Phase 4: Changing world II

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Part 5

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Stark mansion
New York, US

It was late autumn and perhaps one of the last lovely sunny days of the year. That's why we were in the large backyard of the mansion, which now had tall reinforced walls that would give a bomb truck pause.

Hannah didn't get a broom to fly on despite her best attempt to blackmail me with puppy eyes. Instead, I got her a small drone to fly around, which now buzzed over the yard. So far, it crashed twice but still could get into the air.

I wisely did get a box with spares, just in case.

Speaking about the drone…

"A pet drone, really?" Pepper asked me over the phone after I explained that, for once, I wasn't in the lab tinkering.

"It's not a pet." I pointed out.

"A cat, a dog, a bunny! Those are pets, Tony! Drones don't count!"

"Hannah is a Stark. Of course drones count. How do we get to talk about Hannah's new toy anyway?"

"Tony, the last time I heard buzzing around you, I found you in the basement with live wires sparkling near you, and you were too busy to fix them! How you didn't fry yourself, I'll never know!"

In my defense, I was drunk like a skunk, and still, I have no idea what I was tinkering with then. After recovering from that bender, spare parts were all over the basement. Even Jarvis couldn't tell me what I'd been trying to do.

Despite what I often claimed, I didn't do my best tinkering when drunk or after a few days without sleeping. Doing so led to mistakes I had to spend more sleepless nights tracking down. If it wasn't for Jarvis' helping, I am not sure I would have done anything constructive in the last few years before Afghanistan.

Hannah's drone buzzed overhead, missed the stairway leading up into the manor, then made a sharp turn and managed to avoid slamming into a window. I raised an eyebrow at Hannah, who paid me no attention and kept driving the drone around with a huge smile on her face.

"Tony?"

"Yes, I was distracted watching Hannah play."

"She's good for you," Pepper muttered in a wishful tone. "I've scheduled a remote meeting with the R&D team leaders like you wanted. It's at four this afternoon, your time."

"Thank you, I appreciate it. How's Grant handling being interim CEO?"

Grant was the leader of the legal department. Considering the ongoing investigation and the new contracts being negotiated, he seemed a fitting fellow for the post. He would hold it for no longer than a year before returning to his previous job. By then, I hoped to have Pepper trained for the position because I wouldn't have the time to play CEO.

As things stood, this was my first kind of free day in weeks, and I would be busy from four to late in the evening.

"He's not happy and already regrets accepting your offer. Grant's busier than ever, and everyone knows who is to blame, Tony."

"I aim to please. Grant is getting a fat paycheck for his trouble, isn't he?"

"You were overly generous. You're a good boy, yes. That's true." Pepper sang. "You offered him enough money he couldn't possibly refuse to take the position, Tony. You knew exactly what you avoided by sticking him with the job, didn't you?"

"Guilty as charged."

"Try to stay out of trouble and say hi to Hannah for me. Now, I need to go put out another fire."

"Stay safe, Pepper." I closed the phone and picked up my tablet from the nearby table.

Hannah's drone came back, buzzed overhead, and did its best to trim the hedges surrounding the back of the manor. A whole maze of them offered too many cover spots for bastards to sneak through the backyard more easily. That's why said maze no longer existed. Now it was mostly open and a good killing field if it came down to it.

Let's see the news.

Green parties, or at least parts of them in Europe, were busy losing their minds over the incredible radiation danger fusion posed.

Like usual, the Coal Lobby here in the States were right bastards screaming about the dangers and pollution everything else under the sun produced. That was darkly hilarious, considering coal was nasty toxic stuff that let out radiation when burned. Coal plants produced more radiation than fission ones, as long as there wasn't a catastrophic meltdown.

Environmental lobbies in the US were stirring. Greenpeace were their usual delusional selves, news at eleven.

Oh, this was good! Justin Hammer vowed to sue both the US government and yours truly, over governmental overreach and creating a government-backed monopoly.

This was going to be interesting. My lawyers would be even busier soon, it seemed.

I should have a hand-crafted blaster ready for testing by the end of the following week. A prototype fusion reactor meant as a technical demonstrator was already under construction in the old industrial zone outside the city. That one would be ready in about two to three months. One of the reasons for the delay was the need to retool and upgrade various industrial lines to build the necessary components. This would be an investment in the future because once overhauled. Those plants would make components non-stop – just larger, for the commercial version of the reactors.

Once those projects were complete, no one would doubt that I could offer Earth precisely what I promised, provided I got the necessary support.

The drone screeched in distress, and the buzzing ceased. I looked up and saw Hannah staring at one of the few small trees in the garden. Her drone was now snugly parked near its top. It somehow got entangled in a pair of thin branches.

Hannah stomped with her right leg, glared at the tree as if it had just committed a particularly vile offense, and turned to look at me. Her lips twisted in a pout, and she pointed at the tree.

I looked back at the drone and raised a hand. The Force eagerly jumped to obey, and the small machine tore free from the branches, leaving behind a shower of yellow and brown leaves.

The drone flew into my open palm, and I looked at it.

"Hannah, I'll clean it up and bring it back."

Or perhaps I would have someone on the vetted staff do it later. I went to the box with drones, pulled out one of the boxes, switched their control modules, and went back out. Hannah was at the table, drinking apple juice. Her face lit up when she saw the drone. Hannah grabbed the remote and switched the drone on as soon as she put down her glass. It buzzed in my hand, and struggled to fly away. I let it go and flew straight into the hedge, where its fans spluttered in a shower of autumn leaves.

"That's not fair!" Hannah pouted.

Getting a box of those things was a good idea, after all.

The third drone managed to survive until Hannah tired out, and it was nap time.

=SI=

Part 6

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Stark mansion

New York, US

I've been to thousands of meetings over my combined lives. That was how the world, even whole galaxies, were run to a large extent. People meet, talk, make decisions, issue orders, and receive directives. Sometimes it was a quiet, pleasant conversation in the back of a nice club. It could be in one of countless conference and meeting rooms spread across the galaxies; throne rooms, Imperial courts, balls, dinners, and supposedly innocent get-togethers.

I've seen the fate of whole star systems decided by exchanging a few words in a booth, watching a concert.

No matter their importance, most of those meetings tended to be tedious affairs.

Today was no different.

I was in my father's refurbished office. Well, now it was mine. Holographic projectors formed multiple windows in front of the desk, showing me dozens of team leaders working for Stark R&D.

"Good afternoon, folks! It's homework time. Jarvis, send them the notes." I offered an encouraging smile to my minions.

"That's the kind of homework I don't mind doing." Dr. Shaw beamed. "We're making good progress with the precursor materials, Mr. Stark. We can use tweaked conventional methods to get good results. However, there is some contamination doing it that way. We're losing about thirty percent of the end product. Given time or new production methods, we should be able to both increase production rate and mitigate contamination."

"That's good to hear. Run them through a plant once you have a few batches for testing. We need to know if the existing infrastructure will be sufficient. Dr. Shaw, give your team my appreciation. You're about to earn yourselves hefty bonuses." I looked over the holographic windows until I saw the right fellow.

That was Professor Joakim Holt. He has been trying to invent a superior alternative to Kevlar. His goal was a weave that lacked any drawbacks or weaknesses of the alternatives on the market.

So far, the best alternative in the market was a few times stronger but worse at dissipating impacts. It was better at stopping bullets but worse at dispersing their kinetic energy, which meant the wearer would suffer more from the energy transfer.

There were various experimental alternatives in the works, but nothing on the open market yet. Until and unless Rhodey proved correct and the US government ensured I would get what I needed when I needed it, we had a few existing options to play with. The last I heard about that was that there were closed-door discussions between Senate and Congress commissions. For now, the President was reluctant to sign an Executive order to make the Pentagon Memorandum a reality.

"Professor Holt, what do you have for us?"

The aging man looked up from his tablet. His dark eyes squinted at the camera and focused on me.

"The basic idea of armored weave has merit. Sadly, at this time, we lack a better material that can do what you require, Mr. Stark." He smiled. "While it's a tall task you gave us, Mr. Stark, I like that you're shooting for the stars now." Holt sobered up. "Until we have a better alternative, the best option to explore is going to be to take the name literally and try to create an actual armored weave – a combination of Kevlar and the right kind of metal mesh. I'm thinking about some composite soft armor. It will be an interesting challenge to figure out an ablative outermost layer and the right kind of flexible metal cable to mesh with a synthetic weave. If it pans out, the flexible steel idea might be what we need for this project unless we figure out how to make a much better synthetic weave that could do the job itself."

"Thank you, Professor. Dr. Umira?"

She was a middle-aged woman with light brown skin. Dr. Umira was in charge of a metallurgy team working on finding new valuable alloys. Her team got us a gold-titanium alloy five times stronger than titanium alone for use in satellite construction. Needless to say, that discovery made Umira and her team independently wealthy.

"Mr. Stark, you've given us a large list of tasks to complete. As instructed, we've contacted and contracted various vetted laboratories and research centers across the country for assistance. I don't believe we will be in a position to create several of the alloys with the properties you require in the foreseeable future. Other ideas are more practical now, and we're looking at them. An alloy meant to disperse energy and better shield components from electromagnetic weaponry and interference might be within reach. After that point, a composite structure might be the best option for your desired armor types."

"That's less than I hoped for but in line with my reasonable expectations. We can't have everything just because we want it. Keep up the good work, Dr. Umira."

"Next, the exoskeleton prototypes. What's their status?"

"We have the frames for the first test units, and we should be able to begin assembly within a couple of days. The designs appear solid. There are no snags in manufacturing so far. If the test phase is successful, we can begin limited production by the end of the month."

"Excellent. Design status on the powered variants?"

"We're working on perfecting lightweight, durable, and powerful enough servomotors." The design team leader reported. "We can simply plug them into a power source for testing purposes. However, for a proper trial, we'll need better batteries."

"We have teams working on various power cell concepts, better capacitors, and such. Realistically, you'll likely have the other issues ironed out before we have a practical power source for testing. That would be an excellent achievement anyway."

If push came to shove, I might risk sharing the Arc reactor. The issue was that it was an ace in the hole that could give me an advantage, and second, I wasn't sure how well the tech would practically scale up and down. The math said it was possible, and I had one small example in my chest and the large one Howard built. The engineering issues for anything in between, as well as any drawbacks, were in the air. The same was true about the repulsors in the core of the Jericho missiles. I knew the tech had a lot of potential, but I did not know its practical limits with our current tech base. That was for me to explore later when I might find free time for personal projects.

Until then, the plan was to focus on tried and tested technology that I knew would work.

"Dr. Mathews, your team has been looking over the fusion reactor schematics, and you have all the available documentation. Thoughts?"

"We're working on the prototype. It should be viable, and despite going multiple times over the design, we've found no flaws. We're still exploring the details of the larger commercial model and rechecking all the math. So far there are no issues we could find. We'll begin working on smaller designs when we're more comfortable with the designs and better understand the science and engineering you gave us. I'm confident we'll be able to eventually create portable reactors. However, those might be theoretical designs. I don't believe we have the materials science to create small, safe containment vessels that would last for a reasonable period."

"Our dear weapon design teams are next. How is your homework progressing?"

"Boss, I must say I love what you're thinking about! If we ever get it to work, it will be awesome!" Jakie Li grinned like Christmas just came early. "We've been toying with a few mock designs for possible arm and hand configurations for power armor and armored exoskeletons. That way, we can know what ergonomics we need to look at for infantry-scale heavy weapons. Light machine guns and some off-the-shelf grenade launchers will be easy – pick them up and let them rip!" The young man waved his hands in excitement. "Now, for bigger guns, we'll need to rebuild them to partially make them more convenient to use. The expertise will help us design dedicated weapon systems for the new paradigm!" His eyes shone in a way that I might have found disturbing a few months ago.

Jackie loved his job a bit too much, which was fine with me.

"In that regard, boss, when are we going to play with the good toys? Please, we've been good!" Jackie begged.

"When I have the prototype ready and the tech patented. Then you maniacs can happily figure out how to get us a full line of particle beam weaponry – from side arms to vehicle-mounted machine gun equivalents. After that, we'll work on laser weapons for light anti-vehicle work, point defense, and other creative ways to ruin people's day."

"We'll be good, boss! I promise! Just give it here, and we'll fix you up!" Jackie promised.

"Now, it's time for the more mundane work that still makes us money. Communications? What do you have on current gen phones? Do you need other pointers and ideas to toy with?"

Damn it! This was going to be one long-ass meeting. The way things were going, I would be fit to be tied sooner rather than later.

=SI=

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