Groups

Insurgency of New Sidney

"Liberating Mankind"

Description

Personality

- General: The Lord of Liberty is cold and unforgiving. He does what he must to his own ends, expects his orders followed, and is swift to combat insubordination as well as the enemy. He shows no fear, weakness, or moral inclination. His justice is equality, and any who defy his justice will feel his wrath. Such is the basis of his rebellion.

Some have questioned whether there is really a man inside the suit. None have seen him rest, eat, relieve himself, or remove any part of the suit in living memory. The common proposal is that the Lord of Liberty is truly a robot controlled by Abram the AI, but none dare suggest it in his presence. They fear his retribution and are awed by his power.

- Likes: Justice, order, obedience, power
- Dislikes: The Federation, insubordination, corruption
- Fears: ugly surprises
- Idiosyncrasies: None. The Lord has trained himself to remove quirks, and has Abram to monitor him in case he loses his calm and acts more like a human than a deity. He is peculiar only in that he lacks the element that makes people appear human.

Equipment

He is known by his trademark mask. His clothing covers every shred of skin at all times, and the mask that covers his face disguises his voice. He wears a sword at one hip, a heavy pistol at the other, an automatic rifle on his back, and whatever explosive devices his mission demands. His only other pieces of equipment are his wit and his loyal followers.

Mask- The Icon's mask. It serves plenty of purposes- A. Hiding his face. Nobody must know his identity and nobody will. B. Protection. The mask covers his head and neck. It is sturdy (same as his armor), airtight, and automated. C. Assistant. It provides many sensors, a heads up display, communications links, micro/megaphones, bodily coordination, and other utilities.

Suit- The Icon's suit. It is always the same outfit to maintain the disguise, and it has been outfitted with quite a few augments. It connects to the mask and is also airtight- the Lord of Liberty can be active in space. The fabric of the suit* is sewn onto polycrystalline armor plating, durable and difficult to manufacture. It is not standard issue anywhere, and so unmatched by any known organization. Inside the armor is a mechanized muscle system to enhance the strength and agility of the user, a battery pack to power the suits functions, an automated mechanism for reloading weapons, magnetic boots for walking in zero gravity, Abram, and some other minor utilities (may edit later). The added bulk makes the Lord seem a little larger than life, but maintains proportions. Seen from a distance, one would not notice his superior size.

Special Equipment- Under development- portable gravity field generator. Ready for basic testing.
Note: Also to be equipped in greater force on wraiths when ready.
*The suit is sewn from Sirinum thread. Lightweight, extremely durable, and chosen specifically for its dangerous byproduct. The waste from Sirinum is a component of venom (see the Scorpion, under Guns-), and the thread is the common armor choice of Libertas Mundi as it is already being produced for the manufacture of venom.

Sword- The Lord of Liberty's weapons (and the weapons of his cell) are designed to damage things rather than people. As such, they are lethal to robots, buildings, and ESPECIALLY people. From the crosspiece, his sword tapers to a point. It is built of the same material as his armor, and has yet to receive a dent. Along the operational end of the device are five blades spaced thinly apart. The two edges that encase a chainsaw, with thousands of tiny teeth that move at extremely high speeds. Of the three chainsaw belts, one is made of the nearly invulnerable polycrystalline of the rest of the sword, and two are made of a lesser alloy. The lesser blades spin in the opposite direction to increase cutting power, and are prone to overheating. When these lesser blades become so hot that they glow, they can be discharged along with the rest of the energy in the sword's power cell in what is basically a ranged sword slash. All of the tiny blazing teeth explode out along the shape of the blade and cut into anything they hit. Ammunition for the sword includes a power cell and two more lesser belts in one package. It is possible to run just the center chain using power from the main suit.
The Lord's chainsword has been known to cleave through the sides of vehicles with little resistance when activated, and flesh when not.

Guns- The most notable part of the guns are the bullets they fire. The bullets are homemade, built with a sharp point to penetrate, packed with powerful explosive inside to explode on impact (and also drive the point in deeper or completely through), and intentionally poorly constructed to give off shrapnel after exploding. The pistol is for killing people in a single shot while ignoring most armor. The machine gun is for destroying larger things like vehicles and walls.

The Scorpion- A homemade biological canon- In appearance the scorpion is a bit like an over-sized sniper rifle. What makes it special is again the bullets that it fires.
Around the black markets, a substance has been developed called "venom". Venom is extremely volatile and corrosive. It's shelf life is less than a week. In that time, the containers usually disintegrate. The escaped gas loses its potency in a few hours, but in that time the damage it can do is immense.
Scorpions can also fire rounds containing high explosive for destroying armored doors and walls, as well as solid heavy rounds for piercing vehicle armor.

A stinger round is a jagged piece of metal and a pressurized container of liquid venom. When fired, the casing for the venom is damaged and the destructive gas is released into the air for ten to thirty seconds depending on how badly damaged the container was. The venom flays flesh from bone upon exposure to flesh. Once it touches a person, its usually too late. The venom eats away until there is no more food or it loses its potency as a corrosive agent. As such, all of the members of the cell wear gear that keeps as much air away from them as possible, even if the suit isn't quite space worthy.

Wit- The most powerful aspect of Deem Jahum's wit is not his experience, his creativity, or his knowledge. It is his heart. The thing that makes people human. He shows blatant disregard for the value of human life, treating people with inequality based on their performance as tools. He throws them away at a glance- and takes many more down with them. To see him appear in battle is to witness death striding onto the field, for ally and enemy.

Wraiths- A wraith is one of Deem's favorite tools, around since the beginning of his career. It is a person who has thrown away their own ambitions and desires. A wraith is devoted entirely to his master. They have three standing orders that define their job. 1. Protect the master from all harm. 2. Remove all obstacles from the master's path. 3. Follow all of the master's orders immediately and without hesitation (This includes such things as "die for me" and "betray everything that defines you"). To falter in the line of duty is the worst treason a wraith can commit. Worse even than blatant opposition. What use is a tool that cannot complete its job? Wraiths who fail to follow orders are subject to immediate termination.

A wraith's place is standing within thirty feet of his master, unless on assignment or leave elsewhere. They will walk behind him or, if deployed in force, in formation around him.

Wraiths are equipped much like Lord Liberty himself- but their suits aren't for decoration. Their suits are bigger, stronger, bulkier, and all black. Built for battle and intimidation.
Instead of a decorative sword, the Wraith blades are of a much more simple design. One powerful chain, flat on the sides rounded on the end of the blade. And each Wraith carries two. They also tote extra ammunition and explosives.
They do have time off on occasion. It's stressful being a heavily used tool. In time off, wraiths usually retain their quiet demeanor, propensity to follow orders, and habit of kicking ass. They have been known to appear in service of some of Deem Jahum's closest allies, but nobody has ever trained one but him.

Abram- Abram is Lord Liberty's personal suit AI. More information about him will appear with story developments.

History

In the early days of space exploration, a boy was born by the name of Deem Jahum. When he was young, his friends called him DJ. He was from a large poor family. They got by, and he was happy back then. Life was good. Meanwhile, the situation on Earth grew worse and worse. Tensions between the nations on exploration of new territory in space grew. War broke out, and peace on Earth was shattered for the next several decades. DJ watched his life fall apart as the streets fell into chaos. It was the entire world at war with itself. Nowhere was safe, and Deem grew up very quickly into a desensitized cutthroat vigilante just trying to survive. His friends and family died around him every day, and he was powerless to stop it. Deem gathered up all his remaining friends (who by necessity developed similar talents to him) and joined the military. He was sick of living suppressed by the guns of cruel foreigners and corrupt locals.

He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised by the next turn of events, but he was. He and his friends' roles would be in space. Boot camp became pressure suit camp, and Deem was out of orbit within two years. He served for four years as a space marine before the day of judgement came for him. His fleet was going into the battle that would decide the fate of all the space battles to come. It would be three nations all in one great melee to the last fighter.

Deem couldn't believe his ears. A three way melee? What was this nonsense? Battles had to have strategy. There should never be some mindless blasting of canons to see who has the bigger gun! The fleet commander directed them into a simple formation and commanded everyone to fly into the fray. Deem only could look on as the orders were given. He could see it from the windows looking out into space: theirs was the smallest fleet, and they were going to arrive and be sandwiched between the enemy forces. It was a suicide rush!

Deem was done listening to orders. Forever.

He gathered his friends from the street, told them they were from that moment forward deserters, and walked. They followed him without question. They knew that it was over as well as he did. But they could barely contain their surprise when Deem led them to the bridge and decapitated the fleet commander. They masked their shock and aimed their guns at the bridge crew as Deem opened a communications link to every ship in the fleet.

"My name is Admiral Jahum. You will obey my orders or you will die."

There was some resistance, but when the resistance was shot full of holes there was general begrudging acknowledgement that the old fleet commander wasn't very good at his job. The first thing the new admiral did was stop all of the ships and wait. Once the other two nations had engaged each other, he led his fleet to attack from behind another fleet, sandwiching them. He himself took a fighter and all his friends on a special mission. They flew far out of range of their allies, completely through the middle fleet, and crashed their ships into the flagship of what would later become the Federation. Once on board, they rushed through the ship corridors indiscriminately killing everyone on the way. At the bridge, Deem tortured the commander until he issued new orders to scramble the fleet, supposedly to surprise the enemy. When they regrouped however, they found that Deem had used the AI (still a primitive invention) to change the IFF on every single ship. Every ship was an enemy, and every AI controlled weapon in the fleet fired on its own ships. There was significant damage to every ship, but Jahum's own fleet, which had stayed as far out of range as possible, championed the day. It remains to this day the most humiliating defeat in Federation history.

Jahum flew back home to Earth then, and in the inevitable confrontation with command, told them that they were not to speak. They would surrender the highest military command to him, and not another word would be had. Command capitulated. Commander Jahum snapped a single salute and went to his office. Once there he completely reorganized the military setup all over the world. He won a number of spectacular victories from his desk, and slowly came to the realization that the war was over. The war had been over before he enlisted in the military. It was all hopeless, because in the end there were simply too many men on the enemy sides. It would end sooner or later. Jahum could stall them for years, but eventually he and his country would be ground into dust.

Jahum issued a surrender for the entire country, the only recorded loss in his career. But even that wasn't truly a surrender. It was a threat. Jahum promised the other nations that it would be the most costly victory of their careers. They agreed to his conditions, and his country was split down the middle, joining both sides. Jahum himself was taken into the Federation military. His official rank was "Auxiliary Commander of the Armed Forces", but that didn't fool anybody. Deem Jahum was never given command of a paperclip until the battle was lost. Every mission he ran during his service in the Federation was a suicide mission. Every mission he ran during his service in the Federation was a victory. He would be sent in from headquarters on Earth with his personal special forces (They were called "wraiths" and they were known for silence and blind loyalty, dying at a whim from Jahum if necessary (most of them were his old friends from the street)) and he would turn the entire situation around.

Eventually the Federation had to acknowledge that Jahum was instrumental in their progress, and he was promoted to Fleet Admiral. By this time, his name was infamous across the universe. He would always begin his conquests with demands that the enemy throw down their arms in surrender, and it became commonplace that they would. Jahum grew old working for the Federation. His record states that he retired at age sixty eight.

This is not the case. At age sixty eight, the Federation decided that an unstoppable commander had outlived his use. He was placed at the top of the Most Wanted list. He remained there for three days, after which Jahum personally recalled the bounty on his own head. Faced with the fact that the people of the Federation would never kill Jahum, they elected to court marshal him. He was to be exiled for war crimes. War crimes from the beginning of his service, when he defeated the Federation fleet more than thirty years before. There was an uproar, but Jahum went peacefully. He had been told frankly by the head of the Federation that they had been trying to kill him since day one (in private, of course). Deem Jahum was locked in an insane asylum on a fringe planet in the Arcturus system. He had his own special room- it was explained to the staff that Jahum had lost his mind and lived perpetually in a flashback of his old battles. He remains there to this day.

This also is not the case. Deem left the prison, though the staff swears the man in his cell is him. The warden let him out, but not before giving him a tour of the facility. It was on this tour that Deem decided on his new course of action. He learned about the situation on this planet. The entire thing was a testing environment for government projects that were not to reach the public eye. There were a few cities on the planet, but everything else was slum, testing fields, and facilities like the one he was locked in. Inside the facility that Deem was locked in, the insane were used as test subjects for surgeries, biological weapons, and robotic integration. The warden explained to Deem that the Federation was so large that it couldn't be managed by command from Earth. Some of them tried, but a corrupt official here and there... Law and crime became synonymous. The warden was an upstanding man, but he did much of his work with wanted criminals. That was life where the public didn't see.

Deem Jahum could forgive everything the Federation had done to him. All of it. After all, the very thing that made him famous was treason. But he found how corrupt the Federation was. It was corrupt everywhere, but the corruption was hidden under all the protocol and shiny weapons. That corruption had to be cleared out, and he wasn't the first to know. All across the galaxy bloomed the Insurgency. Deem knew what he would do then. He would fight for justice like he did when he was young in the slums of Earth. He would tear the whole government down and build it anew if that was what was necessary, but first he had to make sure "Deem Jahum" never left prison. If Federation Command so much as heard his name whispered, there would be fifty fleets in the system before he could bat an eyelash. He needed a disguise. The warden would continue to report his presence. That was well and good, but if anyone recognized him... He was going to have a bad time.

Deem Jahum wears three disguises. The first is that his record states he is rotting in prison. The second is the mask that conceals his face. The third is that he decided to get some of the experimental surgery from the asylum. It had a high success rate among the invalids... There was a reasonable chance he would live. Nanobots were dispersed through his bloodstream to deliver stem cells to all his tissues. Deem Jahum walked out of his prison a free man, a revolutionary, and a youth, barely twenty five. His new identity would be the Lord of Liberty. Just as Lady Liberty symbolized a free land back on Earth, so Lord Liberty would symbolize a land that would become free somewhere in the galaxy.

So begins...

Lord Liberty's Story

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Setting

New Sidney

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#2012-12-26 19:30:50, as written by Uncertainly

The Foundry- B6
Three weeks before the Salient's arrival in the Arcturus System

The command center was the first thing to be found on Basement Six. It was a hub of information- all of the computer banks were housed nearby and all intel gathered from anyone in the field came directly there. The room was circular, and it had computer monitors covering the half of the room facing the entrance. There were ten terminals lining the outside, one set back from those in the center of the room where Arthur McNare sat, and a short distance from the entrance was a semicircular desk where the Lord of Liberty stood when it was time to give orders. The room was suffused in a dull blue glow and filled with the hum of machinery loud enough to drown out any small sounds. There were five doors, two leading to stairwells that led to other parts of Basement Six, two leading to hallways, and one to an elevator shaft, which was the main entrance to the floor.

The elevator doors slid open to admit The Lord of Liberty and his four wraiths with a long tone. They walked in and took their usual positions in the command center, footsteps making heavy thuds as quarter-ton men stepped across steel plating. Not one of the ten men sitting at terminals in a semicircle looked up at their entrance. The Lord of Liberty arrived exactly on schedule, and had a known disdain for people who shirked their duties in the slightest. McNare began to rattle off significant developments and intel that had been gathered since the Lord's last visit.

The improvements he had requested for B10 were being implemented, Thirty six new recruits had arrived and were beginning training, a series of all-quiets from a number of posts about the surface, reports of the FSPC movements, and the men were in place. All was going according to plan.

The Lord of Liberty placed his hands on the desk and looked out at the wall of monitors. With everything going according to plan, it was time to begin the raid. Without any command from him, much of the wall switched over to a large field map containing marks of all his men, a layout of the Federation complex they were to attack (provided by a man on the inside), and some other details in smaller print like weather conditions, time, et cetera.
His men had the complex surrounded, but the majority of the force was ready to swarm in through the main gate. Primitive perhaps, but when storming a fortress primitive tactics were sometimes necessary.

The complex was large and roughly square shaped. It stood in the desert on a concrete foundation they had built. To keep the dunes from swallowing them, the walls contained giant fans for blowing the piles of sand away. As such, the area immediately around the complex was flat, but the dunes rose again when out of the fans' range. It was upon these dunes that the insurgents waited, poised to fire their scorpion stingers into the building from all angles.

The Lord of Liberty gave the command to begin- as one all the stingers soared, leaving sickly green trails of toxic smoke behind them as they flew. Up to the main gate drove a stolen tank, the federation logo spray painted over with the logo of Libertas Mundi. The tank fired a shot and the gates caved in on themselves. After the gates were down, vans drove in carrying insurgent strike teams. They leapt from the vehicles and took their separate paths through the halls, shooting down anyone in their way. It was at this time that the Lord of Liberty began to give orders. With the building schematics laid out before him, he commanded the teams in their battles. The teams took prescribed routes through the halls, sweeping for defenders. Whenever knots of defenders came to block the normal path of the sweep, the Lord of Liberty had his men take out walls or floors or ceilings, crushing the enemy or removing their strategic advantage. Within twelve minutes, the facility was captured and swept for resistance. Then it was time to visit the labs, to take or destroy the research inside.

An officer's voice came over the loudspeaker. "I've entered the labs... There appear to be holding cells here for large specimens." A pause. "This one almost... looks... human." There was a dim sound of vomiting, though not from the speaker. "Almost." There was a sound of a keyboard, then data began to come up on the monitors. "Looks like this was another immortality research station."

The Lord of Liberty gave another order. "Kill the poor wretches, then overload the generator. We have everything we need."

"Yes, my Lord," came the officer's answer.

The Lord of Liberty cut communications. The mission was over.
It was the third raid this week... Things were heating up. The FSPC was growing more cautious. More of the soldiers were being outfitted with airtight suits to prevent the horrible effects of Venom. And wherever possible, more men were being placed to defend. They held all of the world's cities, and propaganda was high to recruit more soldiers from every last crevasse. They were almost on the border of hiring mercenaries. Despite their efforts, it had grown impossible to keep things under wraps. Word always seemed to leak out about the raids, in no small part due to the insurgency itself. The FSPC was beginning to stop hiding their movements from the people- there was no point to it anymore. Everything they did was watched, and managed to find its way out anyway. Tanks rode through the streets and soldiers made themselves conspicuous, showing power if they could. Because they had begun to ignore secrecy, their movements had sped up and their actions had grown more bold. New Sidney was on its way to war, and nobody could deny it any longer. They could not deny it and not look foolish, anyway.
In addition to the public propaganda for joining the FSPC, the voice of Libertas Mundi was also growing louder. On one side of the street there could be posters for the army, while on the other posters for the insurgency. Insurgency posters were torn down and graffiti whitewashed as soon as a soldier saw them, but they appeared. Public tensions, and insurgent power, were growing.

The Lord of Liberty turned to go. As he walked away from the desk, McNare spoke up. "A word, my Lord?" The Lord stopped, and turned to face him.
"Speak."
"It's about... The weapon," he said, a touch of nervousness creeping into his voice. He glanced behind him and up at where the generator was located. Where the weapon was housed.
"How is development going?"
McNare shook his head. "Whoever wrote the original coding must have been some kind of deity. Or at least some of those super geniuses with asbergers. I bet Durant would crap himself if he saw it. We can barely read the stuff, let alone repurpose it. We're trying, but... It's madness. With as many weeks as we've been working, we've barely made a dent."
"And? That was your report last time." Durant? Why was that familiar?
"I know my lord... It's just... I am harboring doubts. Right now, you are the only being in the known universe with this power... Are you sure you want to put it into such hands as mankind?" Normally such doubts would have resulted in immediate termination. The Lord of Liberty had no use for such doubts. But... People in his upper echelons were difficult to replace. They earn a bit of leeway in discussion, for no ruler can have absolutely no advisors. Arthur McNare was his longest standing ally- more than eight years in service. Everyone the Lord of Liberty worked with beforehand was gone now- he could not allow people who knew his face to continue on. All men have their breaking points, and he could not risk them breaking to the Federation's interrogators.
"Arthur... You are not the first man to bear this weight, nor will you be the last. But as all men who bear the fates of countless brave, noble souls, you must press on to the future. We need to have this edge. Just remember that in the end, the result is better than the alternative."
McNare looked down at his lap. "It will change the face of war. We will live in infamy for the ruin we bring."
"So it shall be. Can you finish the task you have been assigned?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Then see that it is done. And remember time is running short. The war will begin in earnest soon enough." With that, the Lord of Liberty retired to his chambers at the top of B6.

---

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#2013-01-09 04:40:06, as written by Uncertainly

The Foundry - B5
Two weeks before the Salient's arrival

Arthur McNare sat before a sizable array of monitors trying to keep an eye on the data coming into each of them at the same time. In other words, an average day. What was not average was what was being monitored. Through a rocket-proof glass wall, McNare could look out into the battle training room, a massive area the size of four driftball fields with a lot of debris and cover. The room's main purpose was battlefield training for the soldiers, but today the Lord of Liberty was putting it to different use.

Yesterday
The Lord of Liberty walks towards McNare's desk. "How is the weapon?" he asks.
Arthur begins to sweat. "I'm sorry my Lord, we just... We're only human." The Lord of Liberty stands motionless for so long, Arthur fears he is about to meet his end.
"... I understand," he says at last.
Arthur struggles to maintain his surprise. "You understand?"
"Yes. This is a job beyond any normal man's capabilities. Unfortunately, we no longer have the time to allow you and your team to continue this study as you have been. Is it the original ready for use?"
Arthur looks dejected- he has failed. "We can hook it up within the hour."
"Good. I will begin battle training with it tomorrow."

Arthur watched through the glass at the spectacle below. The weapon was a gravity generator. Not a normal one, a massive hunk of metal that has to be secured in a ship, a personal gravity generator. It was wired into the Lord of Liberty's suit, and the fields were emitted from his hands. With the generators, the Lord of Liberty was able to change the way mass behaved around him. Projectiles slowed down or missed completely. He could reduce his weight to nothing and leap across any distance. He could increase his weight and decrease his target's so a physical blow would throw them as far as he could throw himself.
In the field below, the Lord of Liberty was doing all of these things. Any piece of debris from a rock to a tank became his weapon, the wraiths were thrown about like rag dolls, and the bullets they fired never connected. It was complete combat superiority.
The Lord of Liberty stands surrounded on all sides by the wraiths, hulking metallic men all with different weapons. Pistols, machine guns, chain swords, and the last was wielding a sand speeder. As one they charge, and Lord Liberty leaps immediately for the one with the vehicle. As the wraith swings, Lord Liberty throws extra weight into the swing, throwing the wraith off balance and the vehicle crashing into the floor. Lord Liberty delivers a punch along with the gravity fields required to turn his simple swing into an overwhelming force. The wraith is thrown the length of the field and leaves an indent in the stone wall before he crashes to the ground.
Lord Liberty turns to face the other three, who, having learned that guns are useless, have drawn their blades. The first recieves a sturdy kick to the ribs and is blasted through a wall. The second finds himself doing a graceful aerial cartwheel past Lord Liberty, though he isn't sure why or how. The third jumps and raises his blades high. The Lord of Liberty steps into a horse stance and give a punch with the full power of his generators.
There is a flash of light, and six objects clatter to the ground.

Nothing moved. The wraiths stared in stunned silence. The six objects were as follows: The last punched wraith, his two chain swords, a piece of the Lord of Liberty's mask, and two halves of the wraith who was kicked through a wall.
hovering a short distance from the Lord of Liberty's fists were two matching shifting fields of energy. The fields faded as he powered his hands down and straightened.
"McNare... What the -hell- was that?"
In the observation room, McNare snapped himself out of his stupor and stammered into the mic, "r... ripfields, my Lord."
The Lord of Liberty turned his masked head slowly to the window. "And why... are there -ripfields-? I was told these generators would not produce ripfields even at the maximum setting."
McNare flinched as though struck, and stammered once more. "I-I-I don't kn-know. I..." Then it dawned on him, as he listened to the hum that pervades the central floors of the Foundry. In B6, Libertas Mundi held a large gravity generator that was used to cancel out gravity in the floor above so the men could train in "space". "The main generator. The main generator is interfering with your hands," McNare announced.
The Lord of Liberty looked down at the floor. "Hm. So it is." He held his arms out from him and fired the generators as high as they would go. To oblige his whim, the ripfields appear over his hands.
"My Lord, I would not---"
"Be silent." McNare was silent. The Lord of Liberty began to create fields of seemingly random shapes and strengths. The ripfields shifted rapidly in response as debris drifted through the altered gravity. A few times, they almost scrape the Lord of Liberty's armor. Almost. "Is there any way to generate these when I'm -not- in a spaceship?"
McNare was quiet for a moment. "You -want- to make those? You could kill yourself!"
"I am not so inept as to destroy myself with ripfields... when I know they will form." At the end of his retort, he turned his head sharply towards the window, and McNare flinched again.
"W... Well, my lord," Arthur said nervously, "Your generators are not at full strength right now."
"... What?"
McNare refrained from flinching this time. He knew he was resigned to some later punishment. It would not come right away. "The original came with four power cells. If you had activated them at their full strength, you would have died immediately. Right now, the full power is coming from one cell. The others are backups in case the first one dies. I can fix our alteration quickly."
The Lord of Liberty stood still, ideas crashing into his head faster than a strobe light can flash. "Four. You're the new Three. Take old Three's armor down to be repaired and throw his body in The Pit. One and Two, with me. McNare, fix the suit. I'm going up top to figure this out."

Up in the observation room, McNare grimaced. The Lord of Liberty was never supposed to find out he had so much more power at his disposal. One quarter of the weapon's power was all he needed to make defeating the four most dangerous fighters in the galaxy child's play. Everyone would be in terrible, terrible danger once he mastered the weapon, and there was no longer any way to stop it.
"God save us all," he muttered to himself.

---

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