Chapter 56
Special thanks toBoothnatandeuphoric, who together have saved you from more bad chapters than you know.
Mr. S sat patiently as Zama checked him over.
Perhaps it was because she was a robot, but he didn't feel at all self conscious sitting shirtless in his bed as the girl observed his wound with all the interest of a disinterested clinician.
"It's healing," Zama stepped back from where she'd knelt beside his bed.
"Really?" Mr. S brought his arms back down, having trouble believing the diagnosis as the motion pulled a wince from him.
"It's only a rib fracture." Zama tapped the rib for emphasis.
"Ow."
"It's healing."
"Well, when will it stop healing?" Mr. S asked, rolling his shirt back into place and buttoning his jacket.
"A week," Zama answered, moving to a desk and packing away her things with a casual hurry that told Mr. S any follow-up attempts at conversation would be futile.
Still, another pang of injury prompted him to ask. "By the way, Zama. When can we expect that dust suit you're working on to be ready? You know, to prevent stuff like this from happening again?" He asked agitatedly.
"One week," Zama answered, already on her way out the door.
Zama made her way to her room. Stepping in without pause.
Inside was nothing. Or, at least, the appearance of it.
Closing the door behind herself, Zama felt the incredible chill of the room, making the air feel sluggish and watery as she made her way through it.
She didn't bother turning her head to face the rack ofUP-Dustvials that had been mounted to the wall. She wouldn't have been able to see it, in any case. UP-Dust was very compact, by it's nature; still, Zama could appreciate, there was hardly enough room in any room for it and anything else.
So, here Zama was, standing in a room containing three objects. Her dust, herself, and-
In front of her, a suit jacket was splayed out on a metal table, seeming too much like a surgical patient with its flaps opened up.
Zama, of course, couldn't see the object. She had, however, memorized it's initial state, and every subsequent change she'd made to it in infallible detail. Moving precisely to stand at her work station, Zama did allow herself to move her eyes to where the Jacket should have been. Despite the pointlessness of the action, she hardly saw the point in doing anything different. She 'saw' the jacket, with it's every ripple and crevice lying in front of her. Its interior glittering with a holographic sheen which - in this light - Zama imagined took on a sinewy-red appearance that almost seemed to move and twitch in time with any disturbance.
Of course, that last prognostication had been a guess, and Zama lightly wondered what brought that idea to mind.
Reaching a hand to the side, she drew out a bottle of milky liquid. The liquid, Zama knew, was actually quite clear, its purity obstructed by the cloud-like bundle of microfine dust threads that lay suspended in the solution.
Around her, several needles hovered, their position bright in her mind for how they disturbed the field around her, rippling it with their slight weight.
Slowly, several needles descended into the solution, swam back out carrying an invisible thread.
Blindly, Zama glided them through the jacket interior, leaving behind them intricate patterns within patterns within patterns, leaving in their wake a glossy sheen of dust threads that blended together into an ever shifting pattern of dancing images.
It would take two hundred hours to finish this project. However, as Zama had had the foresight too start early - she drew another dozen stitches… only one-hundred and twelve hours to go.
The work could have been described as boring, if one discounted how much energy was contained in a gram of ultra-pure dust.
Zama glanced again at the bottle held carefully in her grip.
She would need several thousand such bottles for her project, yet she restricted herself to only keeping a dozen at a time in her workspace, mounted on a wall above her desk.
Because, even a little too much energy could…
Well, it wouldn't go off, Zama assured herself, as she continued her work.
Boom!
This would definitely take off! Mr. S was sure.
Because, you see, he'd spentall nightdesigning their new rocket.
And didn't have much trouble doing it, either. Because designing rockets was, to be frank, not that difficult. And designingthisrocket? Well, it was easy like IP theft.
Buildingthe rocket on the other hand… well, that was a challenge.
And, convincing other people to build your rocket for you? Well, that was rocket science.
"That… won't work, will it?" Delta asked, pointing to the white board and feeling uncomfortable for how uncertain she sounded.
A two stage design. And an underpowered chemical second stage. They could actually just use a preexisting design for the dust stage, cutting out ninety percent of their work right there. All the chemical rocket would have to do would be to circularize the orbit. It was so… simple… too simple, Delta thought. And the worst part was...
"Why wouldn't it?" Mr. S asked.
The worst part was how she couldn't immediately see what waswrongwith the design, considering they'd spent the past two hours scrutinizing it.
"..."
Mr. S, looking up from his scroll, finally reinvested himself in the conversation.
"Good, then the first order of business will be to create a test site. Is anyone here familiar with how to build one?" Mr. S asked, preparing himself from the avalanche of enthusiastic "yes sir's" and tense hand raising he expected from the team.
Crickets.
"Really, none of you?" Mr. S said, disappointed that these so-called rocket engineers didn't even know how to build a rocket construction site.
He elected, in this opinion, to ignore the fact that he himself was asking becausehedidn't know how to make one. Why would he? That wasn't his department.
"Are you serious?" Mr. S dug forward. "You worked for years building a rocket and notoneof you knows how to design a rocket test facility?"
Jon spoke up. "Mr. Schnee, we worked on the rocket itself. Where it came up from… well, that wasn't really our department."
"Excuses," Mr. S spat, disgusted to hear such words from an engineer. He swung his head, turning to pace away from the group. "Well, we're going to have to-"
"I can," a shy voice spoke up, tailing several decibels below his own and sounding almost as if it hoped to go unheard.
Mr. S, was not willing to let it go unheard. "What?" he said, perhaps too sternly to tell by the way Vee shrunk in on herself.
"Well… I interned with the construction team and I… learned a lot about manufacturing. I also know a lot of the people that worked there so maybe I can give you their numbers-"
"Ok, then you're in charge of designing the test camp. How long until we can have a place to start working in?"
Everyone remembered that Vee was a faunus, but, then again, so was Blake.
On the other hand, this probably would be the first anything with a faunus as a lead engineer.
On the other, other hand, Mr. Schnee currently seemed somewhat… results oriented. And itwasa secret project, they couldn't exactly go around hiring new people for everything.
Further thought on the matter was interrupted by Mr. Schnee's scarily impatient voice.
"How long?" He asked.
"Oh!" Vee jumped. "Well, regulations don't allow high power tests within a mile of city limits, but, as long as we're willing to build a trench site, we can get a permit easy-"
"How long!" Mr. S implored.
"If we rush it, we can get something running in... two months." Vee estimated.
"You have one month," Mr. S said.
"But, sir."
"Trust me, things move a lot quicker at the Schnee Manor. If anything gets in your way, just refer it to me, and it won't anymore. Besides, we have a shuttered mine about a mile and a half from here, you won't need to apply for a permit."
"The rest of you," he continued, "make sure the site fits your needs. And start making calls! We're going to need more people soon. Dismissed!"
Vee, all but hopping in place at this point, rushed out to start designing in her room.
The rest of them looked dazed, looking at one another and at Mr. S.
"Go!" Mr. S said, pointing to the door.
And, shrugging, they all did just that.
Underlying all intrigue was mundanity in its greatest form.
Several floors up, Schwarz was acclimating to her new responsibilities as CEO of the largest company in the world.
One wall away, Zama was working with high explosives
Mr. S, meanwhile, found himself with a dearth of things to do.
He'd severely underestimated, it seemed, how much of his daily routine had been taken up by things Schwarz told him to do.
Because, now that she was busy with other things, he woke up this morning with two things on his checklist: get checked up on by Zama and "do rocket stuff", as he'd scribbled onto his calendar.
And now those two things were checked off, done, completed.
And Mr. S had nothing to do.
They'd already designed the rocket, and now Mr. S had to wait for the building facility to be completed and that, according to his overly optimistic timelines, would take a month!
So, it wasn't just that Mr. S had nothing to do, it was that hereallyhad nothing to do, for the next month. His schedule was clear! His options were open! He was dying of boredom!
Really, it had completely passed him by how unrelentingly hectic his life had been this past week. Every hour and every minute hadsomethingeither urgent or life threatening to occupy it. His schedule was filled with talks and meeting with business magnates and assassins and police. It had been, well, not good, but certainly he was missing it now.
He looked at his watch again. Three minutes had passed since the last time he looked. And he felt he was going in circles, as he passed the same section of hallway for the second time.
Only two more hours until dinner.
Normally, of course, the design of the rocket would take a long time - more than enough to occupy him until the construction of the test facility - but what Mr. S was doing wasn't design, it was plagiarism. He knew the stupid engine would work, he'd copied it from memory, and he definitely wasn't about to let the Atlas team touch it!
Thesuggestionsthey'd made: Mr. S cringed as he remembered them - geez.
Never let people who grew up snorting dust make changes to a chemical engine, that was his take away.
This wasn't to say he believed his engine was flawless, either. There was a chance that they would have to change it. But theycouldn'tfind areas of improvement until they started making the engine, and tested it, and saw what changes needed to be made. And they couldn't test the engine until they got a test facility a month from now!
And so, until then, Mr. S had nothing to do.
He looked at his watch again.