AIM

Army Brigadier-General Everett Buckler

"What the fuck am I walking into here, Talbot?" Buckler asked the man across from him. Army Brigadier-General Everett Buckler was not a man to mince words. He'd long since learned from his first battle that messing around and trying to pretty your language was a fuckin waste of time. Say what you had to say, make it quick.

The man was tall and muscular, his head and face shaved smooth except for a simple goatee. His skin was black under the clean black army officers uniform he was wearing with the single star signaling his rank to the world. Buckler was staring out the window at the passing forest with some distaste. Sitting in the back of an SUV with a fellow soldier next to him while driving through the woods was far too close times he'd done similar trips in war zones. Somehow he couldn't help but feel the same combination of trepidation and excitement.

"Believe me, Buck, I felt the same way the first time I went to visit these Eggheads," Air Force Brigadier-General Glenn Talbot said. The other man was wearing a dark blue military dress. He was a white man, with a close-cut haircut and a neatly trimmed mustache. Though slightly shorter than Buckler, Talbot carried himself with a similar sense of authority.

"For one thing, it's plain stupid they have us drive all the way out here. Their lab is on the border of Canada for crying out loud!" Talbot said in disgust. "Granted, the wife does like when I pick up some syrup on the way…"

Buckler scoffed. "That ain't the problem, Talbot. The problem is the fuckin 'Mandarin'! This whole bunch of nerds was involved in a plot against the President of the United States. Not to mention the damn Vice President was in on it."

Talbot scowled. "I know that Buck, but these eggheads have a lot of tech they can give us. We got those damn Commies making their own superteam, BRIDGE gets another enhanced every few weeks it feels like. The US Military needs an edge of its own. And it's up to us to make sure it isn't going to turn on us."

"What have they got so far?" Buckler asked.

"A big gun sound good to ya?" Talbot said with a smirk.

A smile grew on Buckler's face.

Inside AIM's facility, Buckler eyed the security guard leading Talbot and him through the hallways. After a moment, Buckler spoke to the woman.

"You ex-military?"

The guard looked back at him in surprise. "Uh, yes sir. Master Sergeant."

"Impressive," Talbot noted. "What are you doing working for these nerds?"

"My wife had a baby," the guard shrugged. "I wanted to stay in the States and make enough money to support her. This job lets me do it."

Buckler hummed to himself while eyeing the woman.

Ex-military. Every single guard was ex-military as far as he could tell. Made sense, since AIM was a military Think Tank, but the fact that there were so many was disturbing. The place had to have as many guards as scientists. Last he knew, AIM was about to get shut down. Where were they getting all the money for this?

The guard led them into a room with a big window looking out at a group of three scientists surrounding a large weapon that had been set on a pole. A man standing in front of the window turned to look at him as the guard took a position next to the door.

Buckler blinked at the man's outfit. He looked like he was wearing a big yellow beekeeper-looking outfit, with a cylinder-shaped helmet covered in some sort of canvas on his head that had a window revealing his face on the front.

"Getz, you look ridiculous," Talbot said bluntly.

The man in the outfit rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm sure. It's much more svelte than the hazmat suits we were dependant on before. Considering the precision necessary for our work-"

"Just take the helmet off and talk to us, will ya?" Talbot said impatiently.

Getz's face soured, something Buckler found amusing to watch. The older man removed the helmet. "Well, let me tell you we were quite happy we had these during the last few weeks. Now, I believe you're here for today's test?"

"That's right. This is Brigadier-General Everett Buckler by the way," Talbot gestured to his counterpart. "He's Army, but don't hold it against him."

Buckler scoffed while taking Getz's hand to shake. The feel of the hazmat suit against his palm was rather strange. "I've been told I'll be assessing your technology from now on."

"Ahh, then you've come at a great time," Getz's enthusiasm seemed to return in an instant. "Take a look at this! A weapon we've developed very recently! We're just about to test it."

Getz tapped the glass. The scientists within looked up at the head scientist, who waved at them. Moving quickly, they started to prepare as Getz spoke.

"This is one of our energy weapons, already prepared for mass-reproduction. As of now, we still haven't developed plans for it to be used by infantry, but it's perfect to mount on a vehicle. It fires bursts of concentrated microwave radiation capable of melting steel and killing a man in a single shot. It's made to kill even the most durable of beings. Oh, you'll need these," Getz gestured to a nearby scientist wearing a lab coat, who passed Talbot and Buckler a pair of tinted safety glasses.

"Trust me, put 'em on," Talbot grumbled to Buckler. "Tried to be stubborn about it the first time. Spots in my eyes for two days."

Buckler smirked. Leave it to Talbot to have his bullheaded nature bite him in the ass.

The scientists around the large cannon-like weapon rushed away from it, exiting through a door behind it. As they did, a ten-foot-tall slab of solid concrete was wheeled into the room. Then a wall of steel of the same size. Both were a foot thick.

"Let's do 80 percent power," Getz said. "Commence demonstration!"

The cannon lit up and fired in the blink of an eye. That alone would have impressed Buckler. Of the many problems with energy weapons that kept them from being used in modern combat, among them was the fact that nothing was really powerful enough to charge them fast enough to let them be used against anything that could dodge. Granted, there was more, but Buckler had yet to see a laser weapon that was better than a simple kinetic weapon.

The cannon in front of him made a hell of a first impression, however. It fired a single blast of yellow energy, the bolt smashing into the steel wall and melting its way through before digging a hole into the concrete behind it.

"Impressive," Buckler said softly. "How long till it can do it again?"

"Ah," Getz smirked. "That is the fun part. Commence rapid-fire!"

The cannon lit up, then unleashed hell. Dozens of bolts of light flew into the steel wall like it didn't exist, tearing apart the concrete wall in moments. Buckler stared in shock as the metal was turned to molten slag with horrific ease while concrete exploded apart.

'Insane,' Buckler thought to himself. This wasn't just advancement to current weapons technology, this was decades ahead of anyone else that wasn't named Stark. Even after studying the alien technology left behind in the New York invasion, Buckler had yet to see anything this potent ready for mass-production.

Buckler kept his thoughts to himself as Getz chuckled. "Impressive, yes?"

"It is. What's it called?"

"The Microwave Emitting Beam System, or MEBS for short," Getz said. Buckler carefully kept from rolling his eyes at the stupid name. "We've made a lot of headway recently! In fact, come this way!"

Getz turned and started walking, forcing Talbot and Buckler to follow. As they tossed the safety glasses they'd been given to a scientist who was left to fumble with them frantically.

"Talbot," Buckler hissed. "What the fuck is this? You gonna tell me these muthafuckas have this kind of gear now? They were getting shut down. Now they can make rapid-fire fuckin' laser turrets?"

Talbot nodded. "I know it's crazy but that's what they're offering us. Can you imagine our tanks and planes getting outfitted with those bad boys? I'd be a lot less worried about Russkies sending monkeys to kill us all in our sleep."

Getz led them into the next room. "We've developed this for superhuman containment. After several failures, we managed to find a way to contain any enhanced short of energy absorbers."

The second they entered the next room, Buckler knew what he was talking about.

In the center of the next room stood a cylinder of greenish-yellow light. It was being created by a pair of rings on the top and bottom that made the whole thing look like a giant jar.

"The Energy Containment Cell!" Getz waved at it proudly as more scientists worked around the cell. "Transportable in moments, capable of holding even the Hulk! The energy is held within a magnetic field and can be used with just a little training."

Buckler internally shut down.

Too much. Too fast. Something was very, very wrong here. Of course, there had to be some drawbacks anyways. As fancy as these weapons was, fancy only took you so far. One only needed to remember the AK-47. A gun whose popularity came to one point. Reliability. It worked. Even if hadn't been maintained in days, had been shoved in mud, had been taken apart and put together as roughly as possible, and used by small children who had never even learned how to read, it would fire. And while not every weapon had to survive to the extremes that the AK-47 did, there was something to be said for weapons that wouldn't jam up or stop the instant you needed them.

Buckler was worried these new weapons would have similar issues. But worse. He was worried if they didn't.

Because if all these worked perfectly, he would need to make inquiries as soon as possible.

There was a saying about looking a gift horse in the mouth. That was bullshit. You look, and you look, and you look. Make damn sure what you have is a gift and not a swift kick in the rear.

As Buckler thought about that, he never noticed a screen flicker with red symbols.