Duty (An Armorer/Paladin Story)

Time to go to work

Steve insists on lunch before the meeting, and he and Tony bully me into actually eating it. Tony teases me about my fan club and the efforts to develop my brand. I hate it when he's feeling  playful and he has limited targets. Steve gets some of the snark, but it's mostly for me today. The problem is that Marketing wants to use my new weapons in their branding efforts, and I don't want anybody to know I have them until I have to use them and there's somebody who will tell the internet watching it. 

Branding. Pah. I feel like a cow with a big ol' branding iron aiming for her rump.

"Why not use your helmet?" Steve says practically, and I consider that, perking up.

"Marketing suggested it, but what they showed me looks like clip art," I say, slouching a bit.

"Sit up straight," Tony directed me. "They can always jazz it up a little. They work for you, remember."

"So I can tell them to bugger off?" I say, perking up.

"No. Eat your cheesecake."

I didn't realize that I wanted it until Tony stabbed his fork at it.

After lunch, the five of us went up to the conference room and the dogs stretched out in front of the windows. Although there's not assigned seating, it's just like school where everybody has a favorite seat. It looks weird with just the three of us, but Nick joins us just as we start to bicker over nothing in particular, then the others take their seats and Peter joins us by Skype.

Nick starts off by recapping what we know about Night Terror, which is pretty much what I heard the night before, with the added bonus that it was thought that the team was mobile, with no fixed lair. I frowned; making a lab with the complexity that the two scientists would need mobile would be difficult and time consuming to set up each time they moved. I looked over at Bruce who was evidently thinking the same thing. He speaks up and voices these concerns to the team.

"Maybe that's why we haven't heard of them or their weapons before," Sam says practically. "Maybe their research is slow because it gets interrupted."

"Our doctors are of the opinion that Sess's work is achievable. I think he's probably sitting on it until Namitar is ready with his part of the evil plot. The docs don't know if what he wants to achieve--keying disease to a specific individual by use of DNA-- is even possible," Nick informs us.

"I think we need to act as if it is achievable," Steve says. "Find them and shut them down."

"I don't disagree," Nick said. He lets the group talk about it for awhile, then we get our assignments, mostly concerned with locating the team and gathering intelligence about them. Bruce and I are tasked to work with the medical staff (Bruce) and Research (me) to figure out responses to the venom Sess is said to be working with and getting R&D to work on protective clothing, air filters, the like.

"This isn't really my area of expertise," Bruce fidgeted. "I'm not into toxins."

"But you can talk to the doctors, you speak their language," Nick pointed out. "Harrington, what do you know about venom?"

I suppressed a snort; Nick knew I'd do homework. "There are three types of venomous snakes," I said, sorting the memories of what I'd read into a context. "Opisthoglyphs, which are rear-fanged snakes--their venom flows down grooves in the fangs while they eat and most aren't really dangerous, with the exception of the boomslang and the twig snake. Then there are the proteroglyphs, the fixed-front fang snakes, also known as elapines. This class contains some of the most dangerous snakes in the world--cobras, kraits, mambas, coral snakes. They hang onto you and chew to envenomate." I ignored the 'ew's' from the table. "Solenoglyphs or viperines are the final class. It contains rattlesnakes, vipers, cottonmouths. Their fangs fold to the top of their mouths when not in use, so they can both chew like the proteroglyphs but also open their mouths almost 180 degrees and strike with a stabbing motion.