Chapter 18

Before I launch into the next action scene, I wanted to let the readers know how Bernice is fitting in at her new job.

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Chapter 18

"No, no, no, no!" Doctor Nyi said. "More … rounder … like this." He grabbed a mangled chunk of metal he'd pulled off the strange-looking hovercraft called a 'glider' and held it in front of him, as though it were an airplane. "See. Whoosh. It has to be smooth so the air flows over it."

"Got it," Bernice said. She digitally erased the rear of the transport vehicle which looked like a cross between a chariot from Ben Hur and a jet ski and drew a gently curved line between two twisted objects they prognosticated were running boards. The image was drawn on a smart pad with graph paper overlaid over a line image created by a three-dimensional scan which had taken intricate measurements of the vehicle. The computers could accurately recreate what existed, but many areas were so badly damaged they were using conjecture to figure out what it had looked like before the Avengers had smashed it all to hell.

"Aha!" Dr. Nyi stared at what she had drawn so far, his eyes sparkling as though he were a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. "Yes. Very good. Very good. Bring that to Production and see if they can't fabricate a replacement."

"Right away," Bernice said.

She noted where the known measurements ended and her concept drawing began, then made her way out through multiple layers of security to the Production Department, where a second team of engineers converted blueprints into real objects. Mathematics had never been her forte, but she found herself wishing she'd packed a few more classes under her belt so she could translate the quadratic equations the engineers spewed when describing how they wished a concept drawing to look instead of simply saying, 'it's curved.'

"Could you please bring this down on your way back, Bernice?" the Production technician said, handing her an object not much bigger than a golf ball. She signed for the object and carried it into the bowels of Stark Industries where they joked Pepper Potts only let the engineers come up to see the sun once per week.

Doctor Nyi clucked like a broody hen sitting on an egg as he fit the object into the damaged transport vehicle. Bernice went over to where a different piece of alien technology had just been brought in. Before they took it apart, it had to be photographed, scanned, measured, and then drawn every step of the way to ensure no design element was missed. Retro-engineering, the science of taking something apart, figuring out how it worked, and creating a new model for yourself. Usually photographs and scans sufficed, but the Chitauri technology had been heavily damaged or rigged to self-destruct.

"Aha!" Doctor Nyi clucked, moving about the glider like a short, plump hen who had just found a nice, fat grub to eat. "Bernice! You're a genius!"

She was no such thing. All she had done was point out the shattered fragments surrounding the delicate electronics appeared to indent in, not out as the engineers assumed it should. A low hum went through the lab, causing a sensation akin to standing next to a high tension power line. Yes. This version of the golf-ball-thingy worked. The damaged glider hovered two feet off the ground, wobbling as the mangled rear-end threw off its balance. Other engineers drifted over from other parts of the lab, oohing and ahhing.

"I think something is missing," Bernice said, pointing to the imbalance. "Something besides the exhaust portal between the running boards."

The engineers began to argue, devolving into calling each other 'idiot.' She'd been witness to many heated arguments since she'd started here. What amazed her was not that they argued. With this level of alien technology, one educated guess was as valid as another. What amazed her was that, at the end of the argument, they all slapped each other on the back and went back to being the best of friends.

"I think you're right," Dr. Nyi said, examining the mangled rear of the glider. The engineers tried to puzzle out what was missing. "Bernice … why don't you pour through images of gliders in action and see if you can't locate what should be here."

"On it," Bernice said. Dr. Nyi made an elated phone call upstairs to inform them the glider had finally powered up.

Bernice's talents were most useful when she listened to the engineers brainstorm and then compared those thoughts to images downloaded from satellites, security cameras, cell phone snapshots, and news channels. It was not the blurry images of the technology itself which led Bernice to the leaps of insight which made her a valuable member of the team, but the way the aliens had moved as they reached for a gun or banked a glider towards an opponent. The engineers had been trained to design weapons for people, but Bernice had spent her entire life studying the way the human form moved and daydreaming about magical weapons wielded by mythological creatures.

Bernice queued up her laptop and started scrolling through the images keyworded as 'glider.' As advanced as the Stark Industries super-computers were at crunching data, no computer could make the leaps of assumption the human mind was capable of and fill in information that did not exist.

Bernice's finger paused. Frozen for all eternity was a shot some civilian had taken of a lizard-man swooping in on a glider to shoot a New York City policeman. She wondered if the policeman's family would ever see the image of the brave policeman, gun drawn, facing down an alien invasion? She stared at the invaders posture and imagined what it would have been like to be that alien at that moment, swooping in for the kill, balanced on a machine that gave no protection to the soldier using it. She imagined how her body, no longer human, but possessing the increased height and elongated limbs of a Chitauri, six-fingered hands and enormous flat feet would move on the glider now floating in their laboratory.

"It's a kick-plate," Bernice called to Dr. Nyi. "Kind of like the back of a skateboard. To rest their heel and give them better balance."

"That would increase the drag coefficient," one of the engineers said.

"But the curved edge of the front of the craft would reduce that factor," a second engineer contradicted.

"It's a gigantic jet ski some alien surfer-dude rides upon like a wave," a third engineer said. "Aerodynamics is only of peripheral concern to stability."

"Even a jet ski is aerodynamic, nimwit," the first engineer said. "It just moves through the water. Not the air."

"When was the last time you saw a jet ski with a kick plate?" the third engineer retorted.

"Well that's what I think it is," Bernice interrupted, ignoring their bickering. She pulled out her smart pad and made a few adjustments. She then added what she saw in the snapshot … an alien leg going down, heel slightly raised. "See? It slopes upward."

Dr. Nyi examined the mangled back of the glider. "Get me that ruler!"

Within ten minutes a bunch of rulers had been carefully balanced along the two running boards near the back of the glider. The wobble evened out.

"I think she's onto something," the first engineer said.

For the next forty-five minutes, the team removed mangled metal and replaced it with a variety of weighted objects until they were satisfied they had the correct weight for the 'kick plate.' As they worked, Bernice continued flipping through the images, looking for confirmation of what she suspected. She came to an image that was familiar.

"Steve," she whispered. She enlarged the image to fill her entire screen. He was poised, arm cocked back to throw his shield at an incoming glider. What struck her most wasn't how very heroic he looked. The internet was filled with images of the mystery man in the red-white-and-blue suit, all neatly censored, of course, so that none of them showed his face. This picture was uncensored. His helmet was off. His suit was torn. He was bleeding. And he stood alone. Steve looked … scared.

How much did she know about the mystery man who'd suddenly begun visiting her grandmother after she'd rattled a few cages and then disappeared as soon as her grandmother had died? She'd asked Doctor Nyi, but he'd said the information was so highly classified that even he didn't have security clearance to view it.

She downloaded the image to her laptop. With her grandmother gone, she had no way to contact him. She'd hoped he'd contact her on his own, or she'd run across him here at Stark Industries, but he'd vanished just as mysteriously as he'd appeared. Why would he contact her? She was nobody to him. She hadn't even known how to get in touch with him to tell him her grandmother had died, although somehow he'd found out because he'd appeared at the funeral. She'd been so wrapped up in her own grief that it hadn't occurred to her it would be her last chance to find out where he lived. She was so used to Googling telephone numbers that she'd been shocked none of the 'Steve Rogers' listed in the New York City phone book were him.

A commotion came from the entrance to the lab, an entourage coming through the security checkpoint. Bernice looked up and was surprised to see a dark-haired man strut in like a maestro conducting an orchestra. He redirected every engineer in the room to do different tasks, laughing as Dr. Nyi ran up with a smart board and briefed him on the progress they'd made on the glider. The man glanced in her direction, stopped mid-sentence, and headed her way as though she were the quarry in a hunt. Dark hair. Goatee. Black eyes filled with more mischief than Puck himself in a Midsummer Night's Dream.

Oh … shit.

"M-M-Mr. Stark!" Bernice stammered as she recognized her boss.

"If it isn't the granddaughter of Peggy Carter," Tony Stark said, holding out one hand to guide her down from the stool where she sat awkwardly perched, her laptop precariously balanced upon her lap. He gave her an appraising stare, then glanced at the picture she'd foolishly left plastered on her screen. "And a friend of Steve Rogers."

Bernice almost choked.

"S-s-sorry … Sir," Bernice said, hastily clicking the minimize button on her screen. That was a mistake. Instead of the usual Stark Industries corporate logo, she'd uploaded her own digital artwork with an idealized depiction of the Avengers posed to defend New York, Steve prominently displayed as the central character. She noted Mr. Stark's raised eyebrow and slammed shut her laptop.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Mr. Stark said. He guided her over to stand in front of the alien glider. "Dr. Nyi said you were the one who solved the stability problem?"

"N-n-no-yes!" Bernice stammered. Breathe. Just breathe. All she had to do was breathe … and stop stammering like some pathetic fangirl over-awed by the presence of her superhero-slash-boss. Besides … he wasn't the mystery man she spent far too much of her spare time daydreaming about…

NO! She shoved the unwanted thought out of her mind. It didn't matter. Tony Stark had moved on to question one of the assistant engineers and grabbed a screwdriver, pulling apart the delicate patch-job Dr. Nyi had just done to get the golf-ball thingy to fit.

"This is good," Mr. Stark said, totally focused on his task and ignoring the fact there were other people in the room. "JARVIS? What are you reading on this?"

A mechanical voice with a British accent came out of the PA system.

"I'm reading excess electrostatic discharge," JARVIS said. "I estimate the patch is 30% less efficient than whatever part was in there originally. Based on the concept design produced by Miss Rosenthal, I believe the micro-conductors inside need to be increased three-one-thousandths of a millimeter."

"Do it," Tony Stark said. "Have Production synthesize an updated version stat. I want this thing operational before we fly out of here tonight."

"What about the tail, Sir?" Dr. Nyi asked, pointing to the jury-rigged stack of rulers. "We haven't submitted this improvement to Production yet."

Tony Stark walked back to Bernice's workbench, grabbed her smart pad, and began flipping through the images she had super-imposed over the engineers design specifications.

"This is wrong … wrong … wrong," Mr. Stark said, punching in a bunch of numbers. "How are you getting such accurate scale drawings with such sloppy math?"

"I'm sorry … Sir," Bernice said. "I'm … this was just a concept design."

Mr. Stark punched in a few more numbers and uploaded the image to the main Stark Industries server. He handed back the smart pad to her with a mischievous smile.

"JARVIS," Mr. Stark called. "Tell them to get me the tail piece and kick plate as well. Can't very well send my teammates crashing into the South Pacific now, can we?"

"As you wish, Mr. Stark," JARVIS said.

"But Sir," Dr. Nyi protested. "We haven't flight tested this thing yet. We have no idea how it's going to react with a human pilot."

"No better way to find out than testing it in the field," Mr. Stark said, strutting back to the glider and pulling up a stool. "JARVIS … where's my power supply?"

"I'm in the process of re-tooling the Production Department robotics to produce the requested parts right now," JARVIS said. "It should take … two hours."

Bernice stood there, her mouth opening and shutting as though she were a fish out of water. Two hours? Usually it took days! She'd heard the engineers joke about what happened whenever Tony Stark came breezing through their labs and turned everything on its head, but she hadn't believed it. He had just done in minutes what it had taken an entire team of engineers weeks to retro-engineer.

"Miss Rosenthal," Mr. Stark called, not even looking up from the work he was now engrossed in. "Grab your smart pad and pull up a stool. I need someone to jot down ideas while I work without telling me it can't be done."

"Yes, Sir," Bernice said.

For the next several hours, Tony Stark rebuilt the alien glider and rattled off ideas, some of which had absolutely nothing to do with the glider. . Weapons. Defensive shields. Alien worlds and Nazi soldiers, which for some reason Mr. Stark was fixated upon. And a quick sketch of a cake he wished to design for Miss Potts upcoming birthday. He rattled off ideas so fast that many of the concept sketches were little more than stick figures with a few details added to memorialize his wild ideas. Slipping the retro-engineered tailpiece of the glider into place as soon as a technician from Production came running down, out of breath, Mr. Stark wiped grease on his horrifically expensive designer slacks and turned to Bernice with a devilish grin.

"Steve may be a prudish pain in my ass," Mr. Stark said, waggling his eyebrows at her. "But he's a pain in the ass with an eye for talent. JARVIS! Please upload everything on Miss Rosenthal's smart pad to my personal server."

"Yes, Mr. Stark," JARVIS said.

"I want that glider delivered to the Triskelion by eighteen hundred hours!" Mr. Stark ordered the engineers. "It's getting field tested tonight."

Before Bernice could say goodbye, the man who was the talent behind Stark Industries strutted out of the laboratory like the owner of the place he really was. The moment the door closed behind him, the engineers all burst out laughing and slapped her upon the back.

"You're not a member of the team," Dr. Nyi laughed. "Until Tony Stark has turned your pet project on its head."

Leaving the glider in the hands of some lower-level technicians charged with boxing it up and delivering it to whatever address Mr. Stark had rattled off, Dr. Nyi and the engineers and dragged Bernice to the cafeteria to have a rousing lunch.

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Note: confession time … I'm a Pepperony. For those of you who keep complaining my Captain America fanfic keeps highlighting the tension from Steve's point-of-view of Tony's less admirable qualities, I thought I'd give you a little Iron Man candy of Tony doing that genius-met-tech thing that gives us geek girls a woodie. Yeah … I can fly!

Thanks for reading! If you've got a moment, hit that gold happy star to the right of the story and tell me your thoughts!