Disclaimer: I do not own any of the movies set up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor any of the Star Wars movies, cartoons, games, books or comics. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.
The Iron Sith
=IS=
Prologue : Rebirth II
=IS=
A cave
somewhere in Afghanistan
"I'm surprised, Mr. Stark." The translator spoke quietly much later in the evening. "I didn't expect you to agree to built them more weapons."
"What's your name anyway? I didn't catch it." I looked up from the cup of hot tea in my hands. I've forgotten how cold could be in the desert during the night.
"Doctor Ho Yinsen." He frowned.
"Sorry, I had a lot on my mind earlier." I sipped the tea. It was strange but nice. "What choice do we have? We both know they will kill us once we've done what they want. However, they will either kill or torture us if we do nothing. At the very least this..." I waved at the workshop taking shape in our prison, "will buy us time." I needed to get in a decent shape, got the device keeping me alive improved.
"So this is it? You last act? Your legacy?" Yinsen asked.
"My legacy? Doctor, my family's legacy is war and death. The only reason why I don't have even more people after me is because I'm building toys for not only the 'good' guys but the most powerful country on the planet." That thought was amusing. America might be the sole superpower here on Earth, however in the big scheme of things that didn't mean much. A single country or a whole species still stuck in its lunar orbit weren't things that could impress me anymore.
Still… Was it being back on Earth? Or perhaps Tony's memories… This place, well not the bloody cave, was my home. I suspected there were dangers out there this planet wasn't ready for. I could do something about it once I got out and for the first time in years I could live more or less free from the legacy of the Sith, though I wasn't sure what to think about that.
"I've wondered, Mr. Stark…" Ho trailed off and looked me in the eyes. "How do you want to be remembered?"
"A very good question. I'll tell you if I ever figure it out, Doctor." I knew how I would be remembered back… was it home? I've called that galaxy so for very long time. A warlord, a monster… a failure in the end who died over his own hubris.
I finished my tea and dragged my battery back to the bed. I needed rest first, then there was work to do.
=IS=
To my astonishment, I got a more or less serviceable workshop to play with by the late afternoon. How these nice folks managed to get about eighty percent of the equipment I needed in such a short time-span I wouldn't know until I could get close and personal with a few of them, which unfortunately might not happen. I couldn't afford to play with them.
I was busy killing time with the help of Ho, who was assisting me in performing a surgery on honest to god cruise missile – just another proof that more was going on than Tony has ever been aware of. Joy.
"Who exactly are our hosts?" I asked quietly hoping that the noise of our work would keep the conversation private.
"They're your loyal clients." Yinsen rolled his eyes at me as if it was obvious.
I glanced at the logo painted on the missile between us. I could see how people could get that impression. Yet, you'd think that my official customers – the US DOD would have made an issue if American soldiers got blown up with my weapons. As far as I know, there has been nothing official coming to surface about that… More questions.
"They call themselves the Ten Rings."
"I've heard of much worse names." I nodded absent-mindedly… here goes the warhead… I carefully removed it and put it out of the way. Now for the rocket fuel… Oh, the things I could to to people with it…
"What exactly are we doing?" Ho asked.
"I need some off the shelf components for power-cells among other things. Better magnet for my chest, way to power it, some way to power our way out when its built..." I trailed off and carefully looked at Yinsen.
"I'm listening..."
"We have a few problems. It so happens we're outnumbered quite a lot. While our hosts were good enough to give us a lot of weapons to play with, a few stray shots and we're done. I have some ideas about that but first," I tapped my chest. "We need to buy me some time."
And so we got to work. From Tony's memories I figured out a few very interesting things. That ark reactor he had built to power up some of Stark Industries factories – it was amazing tech. I could see how to built one, I could calculate its output too, figure out how to safely connect it to equipment too, yet, I had trouble wrapping my head around the theory, not to mention the equations that explained it didn't really make sense. They appeared to work, but…
Let's just say that I might have Tony Stark's memories, but I lacked his genius. Or madness if you want to put it that way. Eh. I had a lot of tech in my head to play with and from what I knew thanks to Tony, it should work here too.
Building a mini ark reactor with what we had was problematic. Without any really advanced equipment we had to practically craft everything by hand which took a lot of time. There were errors that set us back, not to mention the need to appear we were working on the Jericho missile too. In fact, it was faster and easier to make a compact, backpack sized fusion reactor and a couple of power-cells in the rough shape of soda cans. They and a better elector-magnet kept me alive thanks to Yinsen who had to operate on me without anything to knock me out.
That sucked, yet couldn't compare with some of the fun and games back at the Sith academy on Korriban, much less the few times I fucked up by the numbers as Baras apprentice.
Properly applied Sith lighting is much, much worse than chest surgery while awake. Its telling that I was more concerning about how effective the antiseptics we cooked up were going to be than Ho cutting my chest open.
Still, it kriffing HURT, damn it all to hell!
=IS=
It took us three weeks to get the ark reactor going. It was a piece of art if I say so myself. That evening we were celebrating by getting a bit of well deserved rest and passing time by playing backgammon. I remember occasionally enjoying the game as a kid, though I don't think Tony ever touched it.
Somehow we ended up talking about home and family – painful topics, no matter who I really was.
"To Gomira and getting you back to your family." I saluted ho with my tea cup.
What can I say? The Doctor got me back on my feet so I owed him, more than one at that.
"What about you?" Yinsen asked.
"My family is dead." I admitted.
"Then you're a man who has everything yet nothing." Ho intoned. "Its sad when you think about it."
"True enough." I shrugged. More than he would ever know.
Kriffing up by the numbers and being too far away to do anything when each of my wives were murdered – by the never sufficiently damned Jedi both times was one of my greatest failures. Ashara murdered in our home because of her Battle Meditation and Bo-Katan cut down when she engaged Windu during the Jedi coup while I was on the other end of the galaxy… Well, this was a great mood-killer.
At least there were no Jedi or other such do gooders on Earth. I needed a distraction, damn it.
"I need to get my hands busy." I muttered to Yinsen and went back to making servo-motors for the exo-skeleton we were building.
Getting the job done while building a couple of fake missiles was challenging but at least we had visual proof we weren't siting on our hands or obviously plotting mischief. It bought us the time we needed to figure out how to make a decent armor with what we had, because surprise surprise, the things needed for a combat exo-skeleton and those to build a proper missile were quite different.
Well, for the most part…
The hardest thing to hide were actually the pieces of the armor once we created them. We had to deliberately keep the clutter up to manage it but it happened.
In comparison, making a pair of arm-mounted coil-guns, a flamethrower using modified rocket fuel and adding micro rockets was quite simple. On the other hand mounting everything on the armor once it was done and ensuring I would be able to fire without blowing myself up – that was a challenge.
Making weapons is reasonably easy. Often its harder to create an effective platform to deploy them from. Frankly, I would have preferred to use an assault rifle or two, but no one was dumb enough to give them to us. Making enough conventional ammo to shoot my way out turned out to be harder with what I had on hand so that's why I went with the coil-guns. It wasn't like we were hurting for energy. The ark reactor and bunch of power-cells saw to that. The fusion one would be better but hauling it too would have required much more sophisticated exo-skeleton. All the weapons and armor were already straining what our kit-bash Frankenstein could haul.
In the end the biggest challenge was to get everything to work with minimal computer support because we simply didn't have much to work with on that front. Honestly, building the control system for my portable fusion generator was so much easier it wasn't even funny.
It took us bloody months stuck in that cave. How we weren't found by the US military in that time I would never know. Yet, we did it in the end, just in time too, because our hosts were getting increasingly impatient and even more unpleasant…
=IS=
Prologue, Rebirth 3
=IS=
A cave slash an irritated Sith's workshop
somewhere in Afghanistan
No plan survives contact with the enemy, even if they were bunch of zealots hiding in a cave in the desert. Unfortunately for our hosts, I've been trained by some of the nastiest murderous commando types the Sith Empire ever produced. They gave me months to prepare too with minimal supervision.
That's why when the exo-skeleton was ready, we mined the door, prepared a few remote detonated surprises along with a bunch of grenades for Yinsen and only then did we get the armor set up for deployment in a blind spot for the only camera too. Getting inside the kit-bash war-machine was a long and arduous process which would likely get us noticed even if we started late in the evening.
It did too. We were three quarters done when our hosts got a wind of something being wrong and began bashing on the door and screaming at us.
"Not happy, are they?" I quipped.
Before Yinsen could answer someone opened the door and got blown up by a couple of canisters with compressed air.
"Oh, god… It actually worked!" Ho exclaimed.
"Help me up, we don't have much time!" I snapped.
Yinsen frantically nodded and helped me get on the rest of the armor. Now we had to wait for the bare bones operation system to load and initialize. Hope that it would work too, because it wasn't kike we had time for testing everything properly.
That's why the grenades and mines were for – good luck charging through them.
I was stuck waiting and listening to a lot of fanatical screaming cut short by sharp explosions. Even more screaming followed when Ho kriffed up and threw one of the rocket fuel specials – a loud fooosh, then hows as people burned alive.
What a nice start for the evening.
"Come on!" I snapped at the old laptop uploading the suit's OS.
The status bar was at 90% and going up slowly. Too slowly, because I could hear more of the bastards approaching.
"I'm halfway through the grenades!" Yinsen shouted.
"Throw a few and go get yourself a gun. Use them to suppress them!" I shouted back.
It wasn't exactly a rocket science!
More explosions. Was that chanting coming from the tunnel? One more detonation complete with dying screams and Ho was back. He stumbled next to me covered in sooth and hefting a machine gun that looked more or less intact.
"I think it worked!" Yinsen gave me a manic grin.
The laptop pinged. My exo-skeleton came to life with whine under different circumstances I would find concerning.
"Now, you remember the last part, right?" I carefully lifted a hand and pointed at the fusion generator. Those babies usually couldn't go make boom. There were safety precautions to avoid it, which I didn't bother putting in, not to mention they were generally safe designs which couldn't go boom.
I had to modify this one to have the option.
Ho nodded and went to put in the ignition sequence. Now we had twenty minutes to get away before this cave network was kriffed up by an angry sun.
I made my way to the door and grinned at the Doc's handiwork. He blew up at least twenty of the bastards if all the bits and pieces I could see were anything to go by. Good man. I might just have a job offer for him once we're out and back somewhere civilized.
"Ho, don't forget your part of the plan! I'll keep them focused on me, you keep low and grab some provisions!" I ordered and strode out in the tunnels. It was time to put this armor to the test.
My first two victims were carefully sneaking toward us. Once they saw me they froze for a moment whispering something about a Jinn. Before they could recover from seeing an armored giant coming from the smoke, I raised my arms and shot them with the coil-guns. Thoom. Thoom. The shots echoed through the tunnel. They were effective enough against unarmored people – a single hit in the torso put the terrorists out of commission.
The next client came in charging, probably hoping to surprise me. I backhanded him in the wall with enough force to cave in his chest. I think his head cracked too but couldn't see in the twilight.
So far so good. Now I needed to hope that no one wielding heavy weaponry could hit me or I was a goner.
There was only one last unfortunate soul waiting for me next to an open set of doors. He was turned to scream down the tunnel and got shot for his lack of attention. Ah, it was good when the people who were trying to off me weren't professionals for once!
Reaching the exit was underwhelming. I expected more resistance, but Yinsen saw to that. Only at the entrance I faced trouble. A kriffing bastard with a grenade thrower almost nailed me but missed. The grenade blew up down the tunnel behind me, hopefully missing Ho who should be scavenging supplies.
I didn't miss and two slugs tore through the bald man. His buddies lit me up, but the armor held. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Four more were cut down in as many shots and the last two ran out.
Now it was going to get tricky. There were two fifty cal emplacements outside, though only one could bear on the exit. At least that was the case the last time we were allowed out.
I switched on the flamethrowers and sent jets of fire to provide some cover and terrorize the locals. A hail of fire met my exit, then I sent the only two smoke grenades we could cook up safely. Technically we could have made more though those would be quite bit toxic. The smoke from the rocket fuel was bad enough.
Fire and coil-gun fire saw to those near the exit. Hitting the HMG emplacement with a micro rocket turned out as hard as I feared – it was more luck than anything else that saw the last blow it up. That left at least one more emplacement with an unknown number of the bastard skulking through the valley.
This was going to suck.
Fire, smoke and screams. Bullets glancing off my armor or embedding in the Kevlar – that kriffing hurt. My flamethrowers ran dry and I released the tanks, then kicked one of them at a bastard trying to blow us both with an RPG from point blank range, then hosed him with both guns for good measure.
Two terrorists popped from my left and emptied their magazines in my side. For a change they didn't spray and pray but aimed. That saw my left arm lock up and the leg on that side began acting up. I shot them with my right gun before they could reload but I was crippled.
Shit. That wasn't good. On the bright side it was night and the only real light came from the fires I lit up, which were behind me so I got some concealment to work with. On the other hand the primitive exo-skeleton I wore wasn't exactly stealthy…
A deadly game of cat and mouse followed and a few of these mice packed RPGs too. Fortunately apparently everyone who could shoot straight got killed earlier or I wold have died before I ran out of terrorists to maul.
The last HMG emplacement turned out to be tricky. I had to scavenge for a grenade thrower, then ammo for it. Reloading with one properly working arm was a pain too, however, actually hitting close enough to the gunner to send him tumbling out of his little nest happened on the first try.
God must be looking out for fools, madmen, ships called the Enterprise and Tony Stark. Either that or whoever stuck me in this body didn't want to see me get myself killed just yet. I'm sure otherwise I would have been dead.
I took a deep breath. The scent of of death and battle – it was quite nice. Now it was time to pick up Yinsen if he was still alive and run before my farewell package ignited.
I looked over the valley. Huh, I don't remember setting up that many fires…
"Stark! Let's get out of here!" Ho shambled up to me loaded with two large bags and flamethrower. He was grinning like a loon too.
Damn it, I'm good! I got the man corrupted by accident and I didn't even have the Force anymore!