Meanwhile outside the Parliament building
Iron Man is fighting
Black Brigade and his robot
Drones. Wanda reports that they have witnessed the Targoth in action, and
Tony Stark now feels justified in not holding back against
BB.
On board Force Works'
hex-ship Pegasus high above the robot
Recorder RE-404 is revelling in the sights that the camera drones are sending him. He was built to record stuff, and he has decided to record heroism - in particular that of
FW. But before launching the drones last issue he KO'd
Century to stop him interfering. And the enigmatic alien is beginning to recover.
Spider-Woman is also recovering from being slugged during her reconnaissance of the deep basement below the Parliament. Her attacker introduces himself as
Volkvhy, eternal champion of the Slorenes.
Julia Carpenter is shackled in a pod, as are many Dudaks. Volkvhy explains that this machine is the
Program which will drain their life energy to feed him. It also gives him the power to transform other Dudaks into the Targoth, who are used to attack their own people. It will also give him the power to defeat his opposite number Ember.
Volkvhy turns on the juice, and Spider-Woman screams along with the Dudaks. But Ember smashes through the wall, and the 2 mythic heroes clash.
ScW and
USA follow on to deal with any Targoth and scientists. Wanda frees
SpW and then she and Dr Renko free the Dudak prisoners. Renko and USA take SpW and Dudaks to the surface while ScW stays to destroy the Program.
On Pegasus Century awakes and asks Recorder why he knocked him out. The robot says it was to prevent him going to help the others. Worse odds = more danger = more heroism. And then he hits him again. But Century shrugs it off this time and warns him to say his orisons/votive offerings/prayers [typical alien Century-speak].
Iron Man has Black Brigade down and asks for his surrender. Brigade refuses with bluster/bravado. [Help, I've been infected by Century!] So
IM rips the central processor out of BB's armour. However it turns out Brigade's Soviet creators had made him dependent on his armour for life-support, and now he's dying. [We saw a similar thing recently with
Cold Warrior in
War Machine #7.] So Tony Stark tries desperately to reconnect his system and save his foe.
Ember and Volkvhy are offering each other no such quarter. USA and Renko seem to have returned from their mission and are trying to help Wanda figure out the Program's controls. Irena can only recognise the On switch. But Ember now has Volkvhy on the ropes. He grasps his foe's skull and drains all the energy out of his body. But Dr Renko says this kind of thing has happened many times over the centuries of Slorene/Dudak conflict. Last time Volkvhy won and since then the Slorenes have ruled the Dudaks with an iron fist. Now the Dudaks will be the oppressors until Vokvhy wins again.
Wanda tries to contact the man
Pavel Chenklo inside Ember, who sacrificed himself in
#5 to end the champion's rampage. But Ember says there is no-one here but himself, and blasts all 3 (and Spider-Woman who seems to have returned too).
Century and Recorder are fighting in the hex-ship. Recorder claims the alien is making him miss all the best bits. Century uses the axe-blade on his staff
Parallax to chop the robot's head off. Then he uses Parallax to transport himself to the ground.
Ember plans to feed off the energy of his 4 victims. Iron Man smashes in only to become victim #5. But then Century ports in behind him and hurls him into the Program's pod-bank. SpW holds him there with her
psi-web. USA directs his shield's photon energy to hit the On button. The Program absorbs all the accumulated energy from Ember, and then blows its top. Our heroes hurriedly escape.
News reports claim that an earthquake destroyed the Slorenian Parliament building, and much of the city centre. Force Works is helping with the rescue work. Both sides of the Civil War have laid down their arms. Dr Renko is leading an interim government.
Force Works are on their way home in Pegasus. Tony apologises to Wanda for overruling her when she wanted the team to stay in Slorenia last time (
#5) because she thought the trouble wasn't over. He says Black Brigade is in hospital and he's going to provide assistance in freeing the guy from his armour. He also hopes to find out why Recorder did what he did. But meanwhile Wanda suggests they put the robot's parts in the
Vault.
In the Vault prison, in the BEM wing where they incarcerate aliens, we find the
Kree Starstealth members
Kalum Lo and
Stug Bar. Major Lo tells his Bo'sun that he has a plan.
Story 2:- Vicious circle part 1: Into the shadows
Writer Dan Abnett. Pencils Fred Haynes. Inks Johnny Greene. Letters Jack Morelli. Colours Ben Sean.
Flip cover pencils Fred Haynes. Inks Johnny Greene.
War Machine flies under the radar in to
San Revilla in Central America, but still runs into some government troops and tanks. Their advanced weaponry suggests that rumoured US backing might be true. He temporarily blinds the men with his uni-beam and destroys the tanks before continuing onwards to a field hospital to locate
Rebecca Bergier's brother Luke, a freelance photo-journalist.
Luke Bergier relates to
James Rhodes how he and his fiancée
Cindy were waiting at a government airstrip for a Red Cross flight to take them out of the country when a ghost-like group called the
Shadows appeared out of nowhere and attacked everyone. Luke was injured and Cindy is dead. He gives Jim his camera which has photos of the attack.
Rhodey takes them to his makeshift base in an abandoned motel and studies the photos. The attackers are only semi-visible as Luke described them, but he thinks he recognises 1 of them.
And in California U.S. Agent gets a call from his old bosses the
Commission On Superhuman Activities appealing to his patriotic duty to go on a mission.
Rhodes monitors radio traffic and hears that the next Shadows attack is happening at a government fuel dump at
Vitidos. War Machine gets there to find some standard Shadows troopers plus 2 guys called
Striker and
Sundance.
Meanwhile in the capital
Ciudad Revilla the
Advisor (see
War Machine #1-4) introduces to the assembled Generals costumed
Hazzerd and
Troubleshooter, freelancers recommended by the US Government. And an extra body US Agent.
In Vitidos (super?) tough guy Striker can't stand up to
WM's armoured fists. Sundance has a bit more luck with solid light that Rhodey deduces is generated by an apparatus on his chest. Jim also deduces that it is Sundance who provides the Shadows with their partial invisibility. He tries to punch the mechanism but is blocked by a solid light shield. So he just blasts his foe backwards with
repulsor rays.
Sundance's control fails and the Shadows become visible. And Rhodey gets confirmation of what he feared from the photos - 1 of them is
Hawkeye.
Continued in the back of
WAR MACHINE #15.