It had been a few weeks since Kane and Carrie had their conversation in the hospital and she wasted no time in enacting what she spoke about. As soon as she was able she was discharged from hospital and had resigned her office and moved away. She didn't tell Kane where she was going and out of respect he didn't follow her movements for the time being. It would be simple enough to track her down later.
Kane kept thinking about her words of having too many enemies and the words just kept bouncing around his brain. As a soldier that was trained from birth he was trained to use all and every possible way to eliminate his enemies. The problem was there just wasn't any official enemies to eliminate as in business you can be enemies one minute and allies to cooperate on a project the next. Plus his means of eliminate is a more fatal, direct kind and it just wouldn't do to have the heads of various companies die in a homicidal spree of violence. Buying businesses out can leave nasty feelings from those who had their company taken out from under them and drive them to do crazy, desperate things so sometimes arranged accidents where the way to go. More efficient and less messy that way. Looking at it objectively Stark could also be considered an enemy or rather business rival as they both dealt in technology primarily and had a host of other things that they had their fingers in.
With that in mind Kane came to the resolution to do nothing. That is to say, live and let live but if they crossed him by going too far over the line, it would be a mistake they wouldn't get the chance to repeat. He wouldn't actively set out to destroy a company unless they asked for it or the deal was just too good to refuse but that might also be a trap. Of course he would still take over businesses and buy out things but he would try to do it above board. This would greatly hamper him in a business sense, but he didn't really care for the money as it was a means to an end and he was already exploring and exploiting space so how many of his so called rivals can say the same?
With his genetic experiments having reached a breakthrough and it would be a while until another one occurred, Kane turned his attention to building a new battle suit. He wanted a versatile one that would be of use in any situation and cover any of his glaring weaknesses, the most obvious one was his lack of a ranged attack other then his pulse rifle. To do that he thought about all of the races that he had to fight in his dimension and their tactics as well as technologies and biological traits. There was no telling if those races even existed here in this dimension but it wouldn't hurt to prepare for all eventualities.
The onyx battle armour he had was a decent enough mainstay to the Terran Space Empire's basic troops true, but it was several centuries out of date. The Empire had grown a bit complacent as the spaced bases technology on their ships was more then enough to handle alien threats and when conducting landing operations, rarely were they able to find worthy opponents. When they had to engage in a war on the surface there were lots of ways to whittle down resistance before sending the troops in to mop us such as the nanite bomb which could infect technology and people. This resulted in only the elite units getting upgrades and more space based technology being developed and deployed as the current thinking was that the battle armour was good enough but what need of it when you can just obliterate the opposition in space before they had time to deploy or from a safe position in orbit. Therefore shields, weapons and engines for ships were very advanced. This could be scaled down to fit into armour at a reduced output but nobody had taken the time to do so.
Kane used the materials he had mined to make a little bit more quintanium as he would use that in his new battle armour. This would make the armour far more durable then the older one even if nothing else was added this would enhance his combat effectiveness. He still kept the rough base design and all of the capabilities of the previous armour but added more weapons and a mini Stellar Furnace to power it. He took out the single jet pack to add thrusters on every limb that were also capable of firing off energy blasts and each capable of propelling him on their own if need be. For good measure he also upgraded all of the systems, most importantly was the targeting system. The cloaking device was upgraded as was the shield and the armour was now able to morph itself into whatever shape was needed, which should have been part of the first design as they were both nanite based. This suit now had a high powered precision beam armament for sniping, energy based missiles with a variable yield ranging from an antitank missile to a nuclear weapon but without any of the radiation effects as they were energy based, a plasma based mortar to launch a super heated blob at entrenched enemies to vaporize them, a shock wave generator that sent damaged everything in the nearby vicinity flying and should a person be standing within range it could easily pulverize their bones and topping it all off last but not least to round off the weapon complement was the old faithful, a personal favourite of Kane's; an energy based minigun.
Over the years the design and usage for that weapon had remained largely unchanged just having energy instead of ammunition and other refinements to accommodate that as well as allowing the energy blasts to ricochet. The old adage of 'if it ain't broke don't fit it' was the prevailing thought here. All the weapons could be set to stun an opponent in several ways but the most effective way was by lowering the yield to minimal damage and causing the target great pain rendering them unconscious. This was effective to most races out there, however those with cybernetic enhancements or the ability to block pain and in one race they had come across the ability to just not feel pain or just plain great willpower were able to overcome this method.
There was also a holster for his pulse rifle and energy blade. These two were the only obvious weapons that were on display, as everything else came out of the armour on command when it was needed depending on the situation.
The other thing he added was a simple device that more for a cosmetic design that allowed him to change the colours and design of the uniform. The fact that it was more for cosmetic purposes the practical didn't change the fact that it could have other uses, like when the cloaking device should fail for whatever reason, then it allows the option to change the armour to all black which would be useful for a clandestine night operation. Currently it was crimson and black rather then pure black as it was before and he still kept the cloak as he technically still held the rank of commander as he hadn't actually been discharged from service. Despite the fact that there was almost certainly no Terran Space Empire left but it also served to remind him of his fallen comrades and their honourable sacrifice in the line of duty for their home world. So long as he lived, then so too did his friends and the Terran Space Empire even if it was currently only in his memory.
Crimson or red and black had always gone together extremely well and Kane admitted to himself that the armour was even more intimidating then the last one he wore. That was already plenty intimidating, as surely plenty of their vanquished foes could attest to, after seeing legions of such armoured personnel invading their world.
Their was one more thing that he was debating putting into the armour an after a lengthy internal struggle he decided to add it in. It was an AI core. As an officer of an elite special warfare unit, he was meant to have an AI in his armour to help him with command and control as well as any other tasks that he needed but he had so far manager to doge this issue and not have one up until now. This was mostly due to the paranoia of the rank and file soldiers regarding what happened some centuries ago.
They were never clear on the particulars of the incident due to lack of anything to analyse but a soldier had his suit go out of his control and begun slaughtering the nearby technicians and other bystanders before self destructing. It was never clear whether it was bad programming, a hacking attempt or just that the accompanying AI went out of control and or became corrupt and it tried to seize the suit but since then there were several superstitions and urban myths surrounding having additional software and Al's in particular in a suit. This probably had something to do with having to share your suit, which is the thing that protects you and keeps you alive in the heat of battle with something else that thinks and could be vulnerable to outside influences while simultaneously not being fully under your control.
The deciding factor was that Kane was no longer in the Terran Space Empire and had no other comrades in arms to rely on or back him up so if he was alone he needed every advantage he could muster. Also it could take control of the suit if he was ever incapacitated and administer medical treatment in the form of nanites and try to escape so as to protect the wearer.
Kane decided to call this battle armour variant Hades. Named so because Hades was the god of the dead in Greek mythology and one look at it will probably be the first and last look an opponent gets, before Kane sent them on their way to meet the god himself in person.