I'm looking at a two-week release cycle for Shepard's 11. This should give me time to get the schoolwork done that I have to do in the next three weeks and still stay on pace with the remaining bits of S11 (touch wood). One hopes not to create still another hanging series.

That said, there isn't much in Act II that makes for a good teaser without giving away the store, but there is this:

---

        Tony Stark was standing at the conference table when she
entered.  Before she arrived, he'd hung his suit jacket on one of the
chairs, rolled up his shirtsleeves, loosened his tie, and placed a large
black hardshell case on the table.  Now he looked up from adjusting
something inside it, smiled, and lowered the lid.
        "I heard about the Eden Prime mission," he said.  "Chief said
your armor got pretty well scrapped."
        "Yeah, and nearly me with it," Shepard admitted ruefully.
        Stark nodded.  "Well, I'm here to see if we can prevent that
from happening again."  He beckoned her around to his side of the
table and opened the case.
        Within it, nestled in the obligatory custom-trimmed shock foam,
was a suit of battle armor that looked not too different from her old
CVR-9, apart from certain details of its articulation.  It appeared to
be made from intricately interlocked metal plates rather than the
composite-reinforced carbon fiber she was used to.  The precise material
was hard to call, because the whole thing was coated a deep and lustrous
black, apart from the red-and-white N7 sigil on the right side of the
breastplate and its accompanying white-edged red stripe, which ran from
shoulder to hand down the outside of the right arm.
        "Until a couple of days ago," Stark explained, "this was the
stage-one prototype for the Cybernetic Combat Vehicle Mark X -
specifically the CCV-10B, the next-generation War Machine suit."
        Shepard reached out and ran her fingertips along the ridges of
the segmented abdominal plating.  "Is it powered?" she asked.
        "Not to the extent that it would've been if I'd finished
building it as War Machine," Stark replied.  "This is the first-phase
exoskeleton; it's basically capable of getting out of your way, but not
much more than that.
        "This suit hasn't got a lot of the bells and whistles that the
War Machine has, but what it -has- got is every conceivable life support
and safety system.  It's got inertial compensators for sudden impacts,
non-invasive automatic blood chemistry monitoring, full temperature and
breathing gas regulation, hypospray pharmaceutical injectors, automatic
medi-gel applicators, full omni-tool integration, Grade Six kinetic
barriers with cyclonic oscillation reinforcement.  It's capable of full
NBC isolation without any modifications, and it's fully rated for zero
to 400 atmospheres external pressure."  Stark tapped the chestplate.
"It's armored with a proprietary alloy called Silaris, I won't bore you
with what's in it, but it's very tough and, to a limited extent, self-
repairing."
        He stepped back, gesturing to the suit with one hand, and
concluded, "What you have here, then, is (he said modestly) simply the
most robust self-contained protective system the galaxy has ever seen.
Nothing less, and, just as importantly, nothing more.  I call it the
Extreme Environment Integrated Survival System - 'Extremis' for short."
He looked her in the eye then, becoming fully serious for the first time
in their short acquaintance, and said, "It'll keep you alive.  The rest
is up to you."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.