by Colin Cook
I am Iron Man
Colin Cook
"People! I really think you're going a bit overboard about this!" Alec shouted out to the clear blue sky above the Citadel while standing in the very center of the hovering
Spider Ship's back. Surrounding him and the Replicators on all sides, filling up that clear blue sky at that very moment, were easily several dozen C-Sec patrol cars
supported by about ten to fifteen additional Mantis gunships!
"Now I know that if we all just calm down, and talk this out like sensible, rational, adults…" Alec began saying loudly like a government mediator, spreading his hands out
before him and flicking his gaze to each of the glowing hot barrels and cannons being pointed at the Ship. However as he was talking, Forsenski's glowing orange omnitool
suddenly activated and enveloped his left arm with a beeping transmission button already flashing.
Freezing with a stunned expression on his face, Alec held up one hand in a symbol of truce.
"Oh, hold on a sec, I gotta take this," he casually called back up to the fleet of vehicles before turning away.
"This is the Alec/Replicator Flight and Decoy services, how may I help you today?" Alec answered into the omni-tool, making his voice sound oddly high and cheery like a
stereotypical office receptionist. However his cheery demeanor vanished and he had to recoil away from the speakers as a loud voice blared through them.
"AHHHHHGHH!" the voice screamed. Alec's eyes were already widened as his eyebrows knit down into an awkward frown of confusion. Casting a glance over his shoulder
to Polly and Sparky, who were looking up at him just a few feet off to the side, the Guardian could only shrug with his expression still spread across his face.
"Uhhhh…I'm sorry sir but we do not service 'AHHHHHGHH!' please try again later!" Alec called back over the noise before abruptly shutting down the omni-tool.
"Damn prank-callers," he mumbled down to the two Replicator spiders. Barely a second after he said that however, Forsenski's device appeared again with another
beeping transmission awaiting. Slumping his shoulders in defeat while blowing out an annoyed breath, the Guardian lightly tapped the accept button again.
"Sir, I'm going to have to insist…"
"Alec, it's me!" Axel's voice suddenly exploded out; accompanied by an odd humming sound that seemed to be flashing from a high pitch to a low pitch over and over
again, as if the Iron Man suit were spiraling through the air.
"Ohhhh! It's you! Please remember to speak up next time," Alec joked sarcastically in mock surprise.
"I'm having trouble flying the suit right now so I gotta make this quick. The Normandy's team is safe and Shepard's finally got his hands on Tali's evidence, we can now
head back to the ship and plan our next move," Axel snapped back quickly, the humming sound increasing in frequency.
Alec froze with an obviously forced smile on his face, his eyes flicking up from the omni-tool to look around at all of the guns and missile tubes still being trained on him.
"As relieved as I am to hear that, and believe me I am very relieved, we've got a small problem of our own over here," the Guardian uttered as quietly as he could while
still glancing around at the enemy ships.
"What kind of problem?" Axel nearly shouted as a loud car horn honked within audio range of his suit.
"Well, after blowing up a radio tower, violating over twelve speeding regulations, and firing back on pursuing police officers, we finally got C-Sec to send nearly a quarter of
the station's entire Defense Fleet after us. Right now they've got us surrounded with no visible means of escape, at least non that I can see that wouldn't involve us
getting torn to shreds. And even if we were able to escape we still wouldn't be able to get back to the ship without being followed." There was a short pause after Alec
finished explaining the situation before Axel responded with the most simplest suggestion ever.
"Have you tried asking the Replicators to cloak themselves yet?"
Alec's eyes widened and a subtle sneer formed on his face, the memories of the many gunshots and injuries that he'd sustained in the last ten minutes coming back to
him in a flash. He held that expression as he slowly turned his head back over toward Polly and Sparky, eyeing both of them with a narrowed gaze that was bordering on
being capable of setting the two machines on fire.
"Cloaking you say? As in making themselves invisible? No, I don't recall ever having had the indication to ask them such a thing," the Guardian answered evenly, although
very deliberately and through gritted teeth as he continued to eye the two spiders. Polly was frantically looking back and forth between Alec and Sparky, gesturing to
himself with one of his legs before suddenly backing up a few steps and pointing over to the other spider, as if trying to shift the blame for not informing the Guardian
about this little talent sooner.
"Please hold one moment," Alec said politely but firmly as he clamped a hand over top of the omni-tool's speaker.
"I am so going to turn you two into car-batteries when this is over!" he quickly hissed over at them before bringing his attention back to the device.
"Alec I need to cut off now, just meet up with me back at the ship so we can talk about what to do next…" Axel's voice began, pausing for a moment before finishing.
"…And believe me, we've got a lot to talk about."
"Alright then, see you there if we can make it," Alec answered in mild defeat before closing down Forsenski's omni-tool. Letting out a deliberately optimistic sigh, Alec gave
one last venomous glance over to the spiders before turning back to look up at the surrounding C-Sec fleet.
"Well ladies and gentlemen, as enjoyable as this massive chase has been, I'm afraid this is where we must…" the Guardian began before suddenly being interrupted by one
of the Mantis pilots on a loudspeaker.
"If you do not surrender yourself and your ship in the next five seconds, we will destroy you!" An awkward laugh came from Alec at that statement, accompanied by an
equally awkward grin.
"Right…well it was worth a try," Alec said to himself with a half shrug.
"5…" The pilot began counting down, his ship's gun along with all the other cannons and barrels trained on the Spider tuning up to full power as he did.
"If you do have a cloaking device somewhere inside you, now would be a great time to turn it on!" Alec shot down to the back of the Spider, standing rigidly in place but
flicking his eyes tensely from one glowing weapon to the next.
"4."
"Any time now!" Alec urged down to the Ship.
"3." Turning to look back at Polly and Sparky, the Guardian gestured to them in a gentle friendly way.
"Guys, about that car-battery thing…" he began softly.
"2!" A look of anger flashed back across his face as he jabbed a threatening finger at them.
"…I meant it!"
"1!"
Alec squeezed his eyes shut as the pilot shouted the final number, silently awaiting the final painful barrage of fire that would be dealt upon them at any second now. But
surprisingly at that moment, a strange soft shuddering sound emanated from all around the Spider Ship, causing a gentle tickling sensation to travel across Alec's limbs.
What followed afterward was even more surprising. Silence, absolute utter silence. No thermal rounds, no missiles, no buzz of cannons.
For some reason the fleet wasn't firing on them!
With a deep frown, Alec snapped open one eye, looking all around the area. The Mantises and patrol cars wer
e still floating around the Ship, each with their fully armed
weapons still pointed at him and the Replicators. The confused Guardian looked down at himself and the other Replicators, still able to clearly see them and his own body
as well as nothing out of the ordinary. Had the Replicator's cloaking device activated or hadn't it?
Suddenly the Spider Ship gave a short groan as it uncurled its humongous eight legs out from under itself, cutting the power to its anti-gravity repulsors and dropping
through the air like a stone!
"AHHH!" Alec yelled out for a quick second as his body lifted up and became weightless, briefly hover/falling above the Ship before it stopped abruptly and came to a hover
in mid air again. The Guardian and the two other Replicators smashed back down onto the Spider, Polly and Sparky landing gracefully on their pincer legs while Alec
unfortunately landed with a harsh groan on his back, looking up at the swirling blue sky of the Serpent Nebula.
"Oww…" Alec wheezed out quietly as the severe pain of his landing coursed through his backside, his eyes already closed tightly again.
"We have lost visual on target! All craft open fire on its last known position!" the voice of the pilot suddenly barked out through Alec's reappeared omni-tool.
"Lost visual? We only dropped twenty feet," Alec said with a wince as he opened his eyes. Immediately however, he had to shield them to keep from going blind because
of the sudden bright flashes of light that had begun to shoot over top of him. Every Mantis and C-Sec agent leaning out of a patrol car had begun firing their weapons,
sending erratic streams of thermal rounds coupled with spiraling missiles crisscrossing over top of the Spider Ship.
"Oooooo! Pretty!" Alec awed jokingly to Polly and Sparky as they crawled over to either side of him, all three of them looking up at the red coloured blasts slicing through
the air like a bunch of wide eyed children watching the fireworks on Canada Day!
For several hectic seconds this mass chaos of crisscrossing fire continued until finally it subsided.
"Cease fire! All ship's cease-fire, the target isn't there anymore! It must have activated some kind of cloaking device and left the area," the lead pilot ordered angrily, his
words causing the rest of the fleet to quickly stop shooting. Alec had one eyebrow cocked as he looked at the entire group of ships overtop of them, noticing that none
were aiming their weapons anywhere remotely close to where the Ship was now.
"Well I'll be damned, your cloaking device must have created some kind of bubble of invisibility around us. And you guys had it this ENTIRE TIME!" Alec started saying
calmly with a smile before turning to Polly and shouting the final part of his sentence.
"I'm gonna turn you specifically into a Can-Opener!" the Guardian shouted again as he sharply poked the red and silver Replicator on its front. Polly only hissed angrily at
this and took a snap at his hand, to which Alec responded by clenching his fist and drawing it back in readiness to strike.
"All ships, activate your highest sensory equipment, look for any signs that the ship might still be around here somewhere," the pilot of the lead Mantis ordered, causing
Alec and Polly to freeze in mid-attack of each other and look back up toward the sky. All of the patrol cars and gunships had begun breaking up, each of them forming into
several search groups and beginning to sweep across different sections of the area.
"This ain't over," Alec shot back at Polly with a jab of his finger before turning his attention to the Spider Ship he was still lying on.
"Alright buddy, I don't know how good your cloaking skills are, and right now I don't wanna know. We need to turn around and head back to the Military Docks, best
possible speed!"
There was a long drawn out silence from the Ship after Alec proudly gave his order, causing the Guardian to let out a tired sigh of annoyance and rub the bridge of his
nose.
"Please get us back to the Military Docks…" Alec threw in, not knowing what else to do to actually get the Ship to listen to him.
But amazingly, being courteous seemed to do the trick. Immediately after he said the magic word, the Spider gave out a metallic groan before quickly turning itself around
and blasting away from the swarm of vehicles on a direct path back to the Docks.
For several agonizingly long and tense minutes, Alec and the Replicators skimmed across the Presidium's outer hull in silence, bracing themselves in apprehension
whenever a siren or a patrolling C-Sec vehicle flashed past them. But amazingly they were never discovered, the Spider Ship's bubble of invisibility keeping them safely
concealed from any watching eyes or sensors all the way back to the Corsica.
"Alright, now just bring us up underneath it nice and slow," Alec whispered as the Spider quietly dropped down to the lowest stretch of Docking piers that he and Axel had
been chased across not so long ago. Moving with a silence that Alec hadn't expected from a ship its size, the Spider easily glided over toward the pier the Alliance Corvette
was still firmly latched to. Glancing over the Ship's side toward an area of the main stretch farther back from the Corsica's pier, Alec winced as he managed to make out
the hundreds of Dock Soldiers, medics, and maintenance crews swarming around the site of the alleyway where the Predator had attacked the Echo 2 gunship. There
were even still a few wisps of smoke rising up from the many craters that the Mantis's sabotaged missiles had smashed into the platform and the massive wall/hull stretch
nearby.
However as bad as that damage was, Alec soon discovered that there was actually something good about the way the massive relief operation was going on in that area.
Taking a quick look around at the neighboring Alliance and Council war-ships docked next to the Corsica, he noticed that as many as a dozen piers on each side were
practically deserted, the site of the Predator's attack having taken many of the ships' personnel away from them in order to help with the clean-up effort.
"If Axel directs his approach just right, he should be able to sneak up to us without being detected," Alec stated out loud as he looked across the wide open space just off
the edge of the Docks, looking for the best way the Ring Bearer could fly the Iron Man suit to the ship without being seen. Suddenly an annoyed metallic squawk from
Polly snapped the Guardian out of his thoughts, causing him to look straight up overtop of himself.
The deep white and blue coloured hull of the Corsica's underbelly rapidly began filling up his field of vision, the Spider Ship having decided to begin flying upward to latch on
to it.
"Okay hold on, take it easy," Alec began cautioning as he and the Replicator started rising closer and closer to the hull, going up past the side of its docking pier. But even
as he began speaking in an increasingly sharper and more anxious tone, the Spider continued to move up without slowing down.
"Easy, easy. Wait, wait, WAIT!" Alec's frantic words went un-headed as the Spider Ship slammed into the Corvette, causing a sharp metallic thud to ring out as its backside
connected!
"Did you hear something?" the first Alliance marine asked to his partner, craning his neck to look back over the side of the pier the Corsica was attached to. An audible sigh
of annoyance came out of the second marine as he dropped and shook his head for a second time.
"No. I didn't hear anything."
"I'm sure I just heard something hit the bottom of the ship," the first began as he tried moving away from the docking corridor that he and the other marine were still
guarding. But immediately without even looking at him, the second reached out a hand and harshly grabbed the first by the scruff of his armoured neck, yanking him back
into the s
pot that he had originally been standing in.
"We didn't hear anything. We didn't see anything. And most important of all, there was nothing there!" the second listed off in a sharp and deliberate voice while still
looking straight ahead of himself.
The inside of the Corsica's main cargo hold was tightly packed with large crates and small containers, leaving only a small aisleway free for people to walk from the ship's
elevator down to the far end of the room. The far wall of the cargo hold itself was actually the ship's massive rear door, similar in design to the Normandy's but just
reversed to the back of the vessel, which allowed easy access of vehicles or cargo to and from the ship.
For a few still moments all was pleasantly quiet, until suddenly a small hissing sound started emanating from a section of the aisle's flooring. The hissing continued until a
roughly circular piece of the metal deck started to give off a faint smoke and quickly dissolve as if acid were eating away at it. After all of this section had dissolved into
nothing, Polly and Sparky quickly crawled up through it one after the other, a few lingering wisps of smoke trailing from the front pincers that they had used to burn their
way in. A very pained and annoyed grunt echoed out from the hole the Replicators had just created, accompanied by a few sharp curse words in an unfamiliar language.
Suddenly Axel's deep black and grey Super-rifle was tossed up unceremoniously onto the hold's floor, followed by two black-gloved hands rising up and latching on to
either side of the opening.
"What is it about the words 'easy' and 'gently' and 'HOLD ON!' that the people in this group don't understand?!" Alec growled as he hoisted himself up and rolled onto the
deck, taking an extra moment to massage his aching head after the Spider Ship's unpleasant impact had left him sandwiched in-between it and the Corsica's hull.
Back down through the hole, the sound of the Spider repositioning and attaching its eight legs to the ship's underside echoed throughout the cargo hold, followed by a few
seconds of eerie silence until the sounds of the usual mechanical movements of normal Replicators began to filter up.