Captain turned the red cushions, held one of the coins up to study it before stuffing it back and poked at every single one of the scorch marks (leaving the fire burning unchecked over night had not been completely without cosequences). Engie couldn't help feeling reminded of a mother in law running a finger through the dust on the mantlepiece.
"Why is this couch smelling of burnt rubber?" Seven finally inquired.
"For two reasons, we probably shouldn't have thrown car tires into the fire and your gasmask needs new filters." Snippy's response sounded almost cheerful.
"Nonesense Mr. Snippy! Car tires are zee kindling materials of awesomeness! Well, you are late, but your mission was a success, meine minions! So let's see what you can do for your Captain today!"
"Whatever it is I'm sure I will regret it."
Somehow Engie had the feeling that Mr. Snippy was right with this assumption and worst of all: The day had barely begun. But what choice did he have? With a sigh he followed Seven and the sniper into the building and hoped, that he'd at least get a breakfast before he was sent out to catch an uranium elemental or built a window cleaning machine or any other such nonesense.
Much later, after a day full of awful chores, the engineer remembered the battery he had scavenged. Returning to his room he carefully put it on his working desk and stared at it for several minutes.
This battery could be the core of the solution to all ... well at least some of his problems. The question was, what to build with it. It had to be something, that would impress Seven, so he would forget about the stupid battle-bathtube plan. And even more important, it had to be something that impressed the sniper as well.
-Maybe I could use it to power a car?
No!
Motors have been using gasoline since forever for a reason.-
Most electrical motors just hadn't enough power to move something as heavy as a vehicle, at least if one didn't believe in the conspiracy theories saying that the oil industry had sabotaged any efforts in that direction. Engie sighed. That totally sounded like something the Good Directorate would have done.
Anyway, he didn't have the time to build a genious new electric motor from scrap. A bunch of normal ones would be possible though. Like those he used to built Annie's body.
-No again!-
Building a robot would probably be the worst idea ever in the moment. He could as well wear a t-shirt with the slogan :
"Hey I'm Dr. Gromov, please shoot me!"
Besides one out of control AI was really enough already.
-Far too complicated, I have to think of something much simpler to construct. I don't even have the materials to built an artificial brain. I don't have enough material to built all those micro servos necessary to move a robotic body around either. I'd be lucky to even find enough material to built an outer shell for a robot... ... That's it!-
Pulling an all-nighter was far more difficult without coffee than Gromov had expected, but in the morning the construction plans were ready. He somehow stumbled through the beginning of the day until he crashed onto the couch for a few hours of sleep. He wondered briefly whether Snippy would protest about that, but it seemed like the bathtube, the couch was for all minions to use, at least during daytime. It smelled really badly of burned rubber though.
Engie's afternoon was spent with gathering metal pieces of the right size and roughly the right form for his new project. He didn't have the equipment to cut or to form them. It was hard enough even to weld them together properly. Another allnighter followed, this time it was easier. Gromov managed to work until lunchtime of the next day.
Seven probably thought, the engineer was still working on the -sigh- bathtubes, since nobody interrupted him even once.
And now it was finished! Gromov examined it critically. It looked far less elegant than his usual work. The battery pack on the backside would be able to power it for several hours, maybe even for a few days and even then he could try to reload it.
The metal plates were an adequate armoring. Motors in the arms and in the legs helped with moving it around. And it could be freely upgraded with weapons, if he ever found any. All in all this battlesuite looked promising enough, even though one couldn't compare it to the huge battlestations the Good Directorate had controlled before the apocalypse.
Now came the truly critical phase, the moment of truth: Gromov had to show his new invention to Captain.
Luckily Seven had been bored, when Engie found him. He had been sitting on the couch, a remote control in hand, zapping through the 'channels' of an old and broken tv, that Pilot had unsuccessfully tried to turn into a dog kennel a while earlier. Captain was complaining loudly about all those reiterations of old Bonanza episodes, which he had all seen already, when he was a little girl, and that all channels showed advertisements at exactly the same time.
So inspecting a new 'superweapon' was a welcome change in his eyes.
Engie climbed into the suit and showed how easy it was to move around in, while the armor plating would successfully protect him from most hazardous dangers. All the while hoping, that Captain would NOT try to find out, whether it was tea proof.
The first comment came from the sniper, though:
"An engineer building himself some super armor? Wasn't there a movie like that." he seemed not very intrerested.
Finally Captain spoke:
"Zis is really delicious! With zis, Engie will go on zee Captain's special missions."
-Delicious, indeed! With this armor I can finally... Wait! What special missions?-
"I didn't know there were ... special missions?" Snippy carefully inquired.
"I will go on special missions for you!" Pilot piped up.
"No mein Pilot, zee special missions are too complex for normal minions, zey are for zee superminions only."
"Superminions? Why is he suddenly a superminion? I bet Photoshop could eat that shoe completely with this stupid armor of his." Pilot cast Engie a gaze of pure hatred. Then he sat down in a corner pouting and drawing pictures on the wall of a crawler worm swallowing what looked like a tiny figure in an armor and another one with a small rifle in one gulp.
The sniper wasn't done with the topic, yet, either:
"You mean those special missions are more lethal than that pearl-diving exercise you forced us to do on 'Oystern'? Worse than 'Sushi day'? Or the parking garage Jenga? ... Is that even possible?" Snippy's voice carried a mixture of disbelieve and dread. "What are you gonna make him do? Juggling nukes?"
"Zat is top secret mein sniper!" Captain answered calmly, while sipping tea. "But we all should go for zee sushi again, soon, zat was superb!"
To Gromov's surprise Pilot started whimpering on that announcement and Snippy muttered something about cleaning his rifle, looking into the barrel and about an 'unfortunate accident' hopefully putting him out of his misery.
-What is so bad about sushi? I ate some on occasion before the apocalypse. Of course raw fish isn't... Oh!
Damn! Worse than that? Maybe building this armor was not as brilliant an Idea as I thought. I need to talk myself out of this, ...quickly!-
"You can't sent him out onto the suicide missions, just because he is wearing a tincan! What about the suit's obvious design flaw?" Snippy suddenly asked and Gromov felt a surprising mix of feelings.
There was the relief: -Somebody reasonable!-
A faint feeling of gratitude: -He tries to save my life!-
And... a major feeling of annoyance: -Which obvious design flaw?! What does an ex-pencil-pusher and ex-tourguide know about battlesuit designs? I made all the calculations! This armor is perfect!-
Captain once more looked the armor up and down again, trying to spot, what the sniper was talking about.
"Eet could use some refreshing paintjob, indeed!"
Mr. Snippy sighed: "Just let me demonstrate." And before the engineer was able to react, the sniper stepped forward, put a hand on the armored shoulder and pushed.
Gromov in his battlesuit went down like a felled tree, just making a lot more noise. The battery pack sizzled as the suit's energy supply short circuited.
-Ouch! Damn you, you jerk! So you think I wont be able to get back up! Is that all you got, sniper? Of course I took that into consideration! I can bend my arms backwards enough to... –
The armor was cluttering ineffectively on the ground, as the engineer tried to sit up.
He tried to roll to the side, tried again to sit up, struggled with the legs and finally came to the conclusion:
-Without the motors I ...can't... lift... that much weight!-
"Zis indeed needs some redesign it seems. Mr. Snippy, you mentioned a movie about a super-armor. Go at once and find us a copy of eet. Watching will help Engie improving zat armor of his own!
-Hey! Wait! Help me up before you leave!-
"Great this will take a while! I don't even remember the name of that movie! And we don't have anything to play it on anyway. But of course the stupid tasks always end up on my to-do list..." the sniper's voice faded in the distance as he walked off .
"So, what else do we need for a nice movie evening? We have a couch, we have zee teevees... Of course we need zee popcorns!"
"There is a microwave oven in the kitchen, Captain!" Pilot reported happy to be of help.
"Zen let's go my minion! Popped corn ees the best when eaten fresh, now we only have to solve zee question of questions: Sweet or salty?"
"Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!"
"Sweet is good indeed but even better: We'll make both! Now where did Snippy hide zem matches again?"
-Good lord! They're gonna burn the whole building down! Get back here, Charles! And help me! –
Gromov tried again to get up, the armor clattering loudly but to no avail.
In the end he was lying there on the back like a turtle for the entire evening until the sniper finally returned, just in time to take out a raging kitchen fire.
In the end Engie and Snippy were forced to reenact the whole movie plot with an improvised script provided by zee Captain, since none of them actually knew or remembered, what the film really was about. It probably had less unicorns than Captain's version, though.
After that Engie had to keep that awful tincan on for another couple of hours, while Captain and Pilot decorated it with spray paint and glitterdust, before he was finally allowed to stumble into his makeshift bed.
The first thing in the next morning, Gromov took that armor apart, burned the blueprints and informed the Captain, that the whole experiment had been a total failure. Unfortunately, at least for Mr. Snippy, Captain had always a plan B.
And in this case the 'B' was for bucket...
