Alternate Iron #300: The Legion of Iron Men

by Matthew Malek

Chapter One: A Look Back At Armor

12:59 AM

James "Rhodey" Rhodes walked into Tony Stark's office on the top floor of the Stark Enterprises tower. He was clad entirely in his War Machine body armor, except for the helmet, which was tucked under his right arm. Rhodey's body tensed noticeably as he entered the room. Atop the office desk was a portable SE television set. For the first time since he had resigned as CEO of Stark Enterprises, Rhodey sat down at that desk. Then, searching for an update on the Ultimo situation, he switched the television on.

"This is Gabe Dickenson, reporting from the KPFA News One helicopter. Though both air and ground units of the National Guard have engaged the towering creature for more than an hour now, nothing seems able to turn it away from a path that leads directly to the city of Futura."

"This is useless," Rhodey thought. "Listening to the headlines won't help. What I need is more detailed information. Maybe I'd better hear what the National Guard has to say."

With that thought, Rhodey picked up the helmet from his War Machine armor, which he had placed on the desk, and tuned the helmet radio to military frequencies. "Let's see if this yields anything more useful."

"Tac 2, this is Tac 10. I'm going in, over."

"Roger, Tac 10. Break a leg."

"I've fired a round of missiles at him and even made direct hits... but it doesn't seem to have done any noticeable damage," the pilot announced with obvious amazement in his voice. Rhodey had once been a marine, and he knew that this pilot was encountering something that they did not train you for in the military. Military training prepared you for fighting human enemies, not alien machine-monsters standing over a hundred feet tall. A gasp interrupted Rhodey's musing and directed his attention back to the helmet receiver.

"This is Tac 10, he's bending over to grab me, but I think I can evade by moving to eye level. Wait! There's some sort of energy coming out of his eyes and..."

The pilot would never finish his sentence, and a loud explosion came across the airwaves instead.

"Tac 2, this is Tac 6. That's our third plane down. And he's getting closer to Futura! I don't think we can stop him, sir!"

"Tac 6, there are twenty thousand men, women, and children in Futura. The evacuation is going on as we speak, but they need time. You come around at the back of his head and I'll go for behind the knees and we'll see if we can topple this creature! Remember, 'the bigger they come, the harder they fall.'"

Rhodey turned off the receiver and lay his helmet back on the desk, convinced the pilots were both as good as dead. Ultimo was built to take more punishment than they could give and he could dish it out as well as he could take it. The television was still on and the news reporter was making her commentary. Rhodey wished he could be out there already, so those pilots wouldn't need to sacrifice themselves. Yet he knew that even he wasn't adequately equipped to stop Ultimo alone.

"Agencies across the state are preparing for what may be a disaster of unimaginable proportions."

"Typical newstrash. Hype the tragedies; it's interesting when people die," thought Jim snidely, as he switched off the television. On the other hand, he knew that nothing short of such a disaster would have brought him back to Stark Enterprises. For months now, Rhodey has been feeling extremely angry at Tony Stark, the man who was once his best friend. Not long ago, Rhodey would have taken a bullet for Stark, and smiled while doing it. There had been no one on Earth that he trusted more, not even his own parents. That changed when Tony's health waned and Stark had put himself into cryogenic suspension. It was one thing for Tony to let the world believe he was dead, but the fact that he couldn't even trust his best friend with the truth was unforgivable. "You just don't pull that with a friend," Rhodey thought angrily. "You don't jerk a friend around like that, letting him grieve and mourn for you! Egotistical, manipulative jerk!!" As Rhodey's brooding became more intense, a sharp stab of pain shot through his head. Not quite a migraine, it was certainly an impressive headache, nonetheless.

"Serves me right, for stewing at a time like this," mumbled Rhodey to himself, "The tension must be getting to me." Rhodey tried to ignore the headache and concentrate. He tried to review what he knew of the current situation, in order to regain his focus. He remembered his harsh reactions when Tony's secretary, Mrs. Arbogast, had called him less than half an hour ago. Yet, she had reminded him that the current problems weren't about him and Stark; they were about the 20,000 people in Futura who were now at risk. Furthermore, they were about the six billion others who were in ultimately in danger as well. There was a reason Ultimo's creators had referred to it as "The Doomsday Machine." Rhodey needed to be clearheaded right now.

Unfortunately, simply ignoring the pain wasn't working. Rhodey presumed it was some sort of tension headache, so he decided to take a few deep breaths and try to clear his thoughts, just for a moment. After a few minutes of this, most of the headache had subsided, and Rhodey actually felt much calmer. Calmer, in fact, than he had been in a long time.

Ignoring what residual pain remained, Rhodey leaned over the desk and pressed the button on the intercom to page Mrs. Arbogast. "Are they here yet?"

"Not yet, no," she replied. Her voice, as usual, was steady and strong, even in the height of crisis.

Of course they hadn't arrived yet. It was the middle of the night. They'd just been called thirty minutes earlier and, unlike him, they didn't have state-of-the-art electronic armor to fly across town in. Not yet, anyway. It was unreasonable to expect them to be there so quickly. That was regrettable, since every moment counted, but it was also unavoidable. In the meanwhile, though, there were more productive things that Rhodey could do than simply sit around this office waiting.

"I'm heading down to storage vault one to check in with Zimmer and his crew, Mrs. A. When they arrive, please send them down to the vaults, okay?"

"Will do." replied Mrs. Arbogast.

Rhodey lifted up his helmet and put it on, completing his change into War Machine. None of the staff at SE knew that James Rhodes and War Machine were the same person. It probably wasn't too difficult to surmise, if one tried to put the pieces of that puzzle together. Keeping such secrets about himself was something he knew how to do, but it didn't come naturally to him. He was far too blunt and straightforward a person for a dual identity to be second nature. Nevertheless, he preferred to keep that secret from most people for a while longer. He knew that he would have to share it with some folks this very night, but only on a "need to know" basis.

War Machine made his way to storage vault one, and found Abe Zimmer, SE's chief computer and electronics whiz, working on the electronic lock. Normally, picking a lock should be an easy matter. However, the locks on these vaults were designed by none other than Tony Stark. Abe was definitely a "whiz", but Tony Stark was a true genius.

"Nice timing!" remarked Abe amiably when he saw War Machine approaching. "We've just finished hacking the lock's circuit a minute ago. Care to have a look inside?" Abe pushed open the large double door of the vault and War Machine entered.

The walls of the storage vault were divided into ten niches. Each niche had a stasis field surrounding it and half of the niches contained a suit of Iron Man armor. The stasis fields caused the light reflecting off the armor to twinkle, resulting in a very impressive visual effect. One of Abe's engineers drew his breath in sharply with surprise. Abe himself whistled.

"So that's what Tony was keeping in here, eh?" said Abe. "This is where Iron Man's spare armors are."

"No, not spares," commented War Machine, as he looked around this little armory. "Apparently this is now where the outdated armors are stored. My mistake. Stark must have rearranged things after he was done being dead." Rhodey noted the lack of aggression in his voice when mentioning Stark, and was more than a little surprised by it. He was still feeling uncharacteristically mellow from his brief meditation upstairs. "The spares suits of Iron Man's current armor used to be kept here. These are antique suits which, while impressive in their day, are not anywhere near the power levels we need now. I'm guessing that the spare armors are in one of the other two vaults. How long would it take you to open storage vaults two and three?"

"Now that we know how Tony designed these computerized locks, it should be a lot quicker to break through them," answered Abe. "Perhaps only five or ten minutes apiece. The first one was tough; the rest should be a lot simpler."

"Okay, then. Go to it, please. Meanwhile, I'll wait here."

As Abe and his crew left, Rhodey stood for a moment, just looking at the different armors. There were five of them stored here, the other niches were empty. First, on the far left, there was a copy of the original gray armor that Tony had built so long ago in Vietnam. Looking at it brought Rhodey back in time, to his years as a Marine and to his first encounter with Tony, as Iron Man, in those distant jungles. Next to the gray suit was a replica of the golden armor, complete with its prominent external antenna. Under his helmet, Rhodey cracked a small smile as he considered the difference in power between the War Machine armor he now wore and these old dinosaurs. It was simply amazing how clunky these old suits now looked.

The third armor was the one that Tony had once referred to as the "proto-classic" design. It was the first armor to be colored red and gold. It was also considerably slimmer than the bulky all-gold model which had preceded it. The mouth slit was still segmented, though, and the faceplate ended in two horns which protruded upwards. Although this armor had been the pinnacle of technology when it had been built, Rhodey doubted that it would be much use in combating Ultimo. It lacked much of the more sophisticated Iron Man equipment; even its repulsors were a primitive "first-generation" design.

Fourth was a more refined looking "pre-classic" armor. It was really quite similar to the "proto-classic" model, but the horned faceplate had been replaced by a more rounded version which was sealed with visible rivets. Stored in a case next to this armor was an Iron Man helmet that had a nose on the front. In spite of himself, Rhodey almost laughed when he saw this. "Tony even rebuilt that hideous nose? Wow!"

Finally, storage vault one contained the so-called "classic" armor design that Tony had worn for so many years before falling victim to the machinations of Obediah Stane and to his own alcoholism. Back then, Rhodey recalled, Tony's most sophisticated armor had been melted by strong acid. Tony had been forced to rely upon what was then the second most powerful armor, which had the same "classic" appearance. Shortly thereafter, Tony's return to heavy drinking had prevented him from being Iron Man, and that is when Rhodey first donned this armor.

Rhodey knew that the first four armors in the vault were not originals. He had once destroyed all Iron Man armors other than his own in order to keep them out of Stane's greedy hands. Still, Rhodey had no doubt that the rebuilt armors were precise duplicates of the originals. Tony was always meticulous about that level of detail. The stray thought, "Control freak," flashed through Rhodey's mind, as he began to tense up a little. Turning back to the classic armor, Rhodey knew that this was no replica; this was an original. He recognized small scuffs and nearly imperceptible scratches from fights he had been in long ago. Lost in nostalgia for a moment, he replayed those moments in his mind.

"That mark came from the Flying Tiger. Those scuffs from the Brothers Grimm. That scratch from Vibro."

Suddenly, Rhodey's thoughts turned less pleasant. He recalled the very last time he had worn this armor, when he and Tony were flying back to Earth from the old Stark Space Station. The classic armor had been damaged when Advanced Idea Mechanics, or A.I.M. triggered an explosion on the station. Due to this damage, the armor had begun burning up from the heat of re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Rhodey winced at this memory, as he still felt some "phantom pains" in his chest upon remembering how badly he had been burned. After that incident, he never wore the classic armor again; it had even been a considerable amount of time before he had been willing to put on any armored suit.

It hadn't taken long for Tony to repair the classic armor, and he had even improved it to the level of the suit that had been melted away by the Rook's acid. Still, the memories of being on fire were vivid that, to this day, Rhodey did not want to get back into that suit. Ironically, an aversion to the classic armor was one of the few things he still had in common with Stark. Tony regarded the classic armor as symbolic of the times he had succumbed to alcoholism and had vowed never to wear it again, except in the case of a life-or-death situation.

Wryly, Rhodey realized that one armor was missing from this little museum: the so-called Silver Centurion armor. Stark had built that unique armor in the days when he was recovering from his alcoholism. Tony had lost his old company, Stark International, to Obediah Stane, and he had not yet built SE, so his resources were limited back then. Nevertheless, Tony's brilliance overcame these limitations, and he built the most powerful suit ever constructed to date. Even by today's standards, the Silver Centurion armor was formidable. It had possessed a wide range of capabilities and could likely even give his own War Machine armor the proverbial "run for its money." Yet Tony had only ever built one red and silver armor, due to the financial constraints of that time. Before it had been thoroughly devastated by Firepower, that armor had taken on some very negative connotations to the world at large. So Tony had never rebuilt it. Rhodey imagined that seeing the Silver Centurion armor again might even give Tony some phantom pains of his own. After all, Tony had been seriously beaten in the battle against Firepower. He had even been punched through a mountain!

Finished with his reminiscing, and beginning to feel restless, Rhodey left storage vault one and waited while Abe Zimmer and crew finished cracking the lock to the second vault. Rhodey hoped that inside they would find the reserve copies of Tony's most modern suit, the red and gold armor he had designed after his beating from Firepower. Those extra armors were essential to Rhodey's plan to bring down Ultimo, as he was fairly certain he could not do it himself (not after he heard about how Ultimo had literally ripped Iron Man apart just an hour ago) and he had no faith in the antiquated armors' ability to accomplish the task. Rhodey uttered a silent curse under his breath when he saw that this was not the right vault, either.

"Abe?" the mechanized voice of War Machine said.

"Yes?" replied Zimmer, questioningly.

"Storage vault three..." sighed War Machine.

"You've got it!" said Zimmer.

Instead of being filled with Iron Man's primary armor, storage vault two was apparently the new home of the specialized armors that Tony had created over the years. This vault was packed more tightly than the previous one; all ten niches were filled.

Rhodey recognized most of the armors, but not all. There was a copy of the old space armor, with a bright gold pentagon on the front. Although a powerful armor with nuclear propulsion, it had never worked quite right. The control systems had been buggy. Still, this armor was noteworthy for being the first specialized suit Tony had designed. Next was the jet black stealth armor and a reconstructed version of the two-layered undersea suit. Also, there was the second generation space armor. Rhodey knew that this space armor was free of the bugs from the first design and that it had functioned well when Tony wore it during something that he had called "Operation: Galactic Storm" (a Avengers mission which Tony preferred not to talk much about). In the sixth niche was a familiar-looking black and white suit. It was the original Variable Threat Response armor that Tony had built for himself shortly before his "death" and it was the template for Rhodey's War Machine armor. Next to it was one of Tony's specialized telepresence suits, just like the one Ultimo had ripped in half. This wasn't an actual armor; there was no space inside for a person. But as long as Tony was confined to his wheelchair, this was the best he could do.

Some of these suits, such as the stealth armor, possessed minimal armament. Others, like the undersea armor or the original War Machine, were quite powerful. Rhodey preferred to use the regular armors, though, and hoped they were in storage vault three. After all, while an armor capable of emulating an electric eel might be handy under the ocean, he doubted it would be terribly effective against Ultimo!

The final three niches held armors that Rhodey had never seen before. At the base of each niche was a small placard. One of these was a dusty blue-gray color and had a placard that read "Arctic Armor". Another was a fiery red, with gold near the extremities. This one was described as "Inferno Armor." The last niche had the oddest looking suit of all. It looked like it was made of a semi-clear blue plastic material. He looked down and the card did indeed label it as "Plastic Armor."

"Plastic armor??" thought Rhodey incredulously. "For what? Fighting Magneto? Weird..."