Civil War Prose Novel Read Free Page B

remind them of their duties or laugh at their folly, and his gigantic mirth always brought them together. Or else he would just walk up behind and clap both men both on the back, so hard it nearly fused Tony’s armor to his skin.
    Tony had tried to reach out to Cap, but the super-soldier had been very quiet these past weeks. Tony had a terrible feeling that Thor’s death had driven some permanent wedge through the heart of the Avengers.
    Otherwise, things were going well. Stark Enterprises was flush with Homeland Security contracts, and if there was no one special woman in Tony’s life right now, there were four or five incredibly hot ones. Overall, the last few years had been a very good time to be Tony Stark.
    And yet, he couldn’t shake this dread. The feeling, deep in his metal-sheathed heart, that something profoundly horrible was about to happen.
    Another light winked on. Happy Hogan, Tony’s chauffeur.
    “Morning, Hap.”
    “Mister Stark. You need me to pick you up?”
    Something loomed up ahead, bobbing on the choppy water, barely visible through the cloud layer. Tony peered at it, briefly distracted.
    “Mister Stark?”
    “Uh, not this morning, Happy. I don’t think you could bring the car around where I am.”
    “Another hotel room? Who is she this time?”
    Tony dipped below the clouds, banked around in an arc—and spotted a small, 24-foot fishing vessel. Probably Portuguese, but a long way out from home port. It was listing, taking in water over the choppy sea. Crewmen struggled on deck, trying to bail out water with buckets, but they were losing ground.
    “Ring you later, Hap.”
    Tony swooped in toward the ship. A massive wave swelled beneath it, tipping it up on its side. The crewmen grabbed frantically for masts, supports. But the wave pushed relentlessly. The ship was about to capsize.
    As Tony dove, he called up a web listing for 24-foot ships. Weight would be somewhere between 3400 and 4200 pounds, not counting crewmen or cargo. A strain, but with the new microcontrollers on his shoulder-muscle augmenters, it should be doable. The ship’s stern rose up before him, pointing almost straight up into the air now. He grabbed hold of the stern, kicked in the microcontrollers with a mental command, and pushed.
    To his shock, the boat continued to press against him, forcing him downward toward the sea. His armor, he realized, had stalled; the controllers had failed to engage. Four thousand pounds of fishing boat pushed down now against Tony’s normal, human muscles.
    Just then a call rang through—an Avengers Tower priority number. Tony swore; he couldn’t take it now. With half a thought, he activated the auto-text reply: Will call back.
    Below him, fishermen hung from the masts, crying out in panic. They’d be underwater in seconds.
    Tony couldn’t fire repulsor rays; at this range, they’d shatter the boat to splinters. He forced himself to breathe and executed a force-reboot of the microcontrollers. Lights danced before his eyes…and then, this time, the controllers engaged. Energy flowed into his metallic exoskeleton. Tony pushed, too hard at first, and grabbed at the boat to correct its course. Then he eased it back down, settling it gently into the water.
    The sea had calmed, temporarily. Tony called up an internal translation memo, chose PORTUGUESE.
    “You’d better head back to port,” he said. The armor translated his words seamlessly, amplifying them to the fishermen below.
    A relieved, soaked captain smiled sheepishly back up at him. His mouth formed words in Portuguese, and Tony heard the armor’s metallic voice: “Thank you, Mister Anthony Stark.”
    Huh, Tony thought. They even know me in Portugal.
    He swooped upward, high enough to make out the coastlines of Portugal and Spain. The water seemed calm enough for safe passage, so he waved farewell to the ship and shot off toward the shore.
    Those microcontrollers were trouble. Tony had always had trouble with microcircuitry;