Adelie

Soot snuffled sleepily as Adelie gave the ridge of his snout a gentle parting rub. The heated floor was warm enough to be felt even through her boot soles. She stood and let Soot drift sleepward. He'd done a long day, well over two hundred miles of flying, some of it at very hard pace.

Turning, she found Elice hovering a few feet away. For once, the coder looked actually happy, even without her hands anywhere near a computer keyboard. Adelie gave her a tired smile and a guess. "How's the model looking?"

"Good!" Elice's voice sounded a full tone higher than her usual drawl. "I just ran the readouts back against the trace of the projection, we have correlation up to ninety-two percent."

"Nice, that's really good work." Adelie raised a slightly awkward thumbs-up. Correlation, she'd learnt recently, was everything for the model. It was the most basic measurement of how accurate their modelling was, it was supposed to be at least ninety-five percent and, when they'd had the team meeting about fixing Soot’s model, their correlation had been barely better than sixty. "Can we trust it on Sunday?"

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Elice nodded. "Should be good, yeah. Give us the winter and we'll have it up over ninety-five."

"Great." Then Adelie frowned slightly. "Next year, huh."

A shadow flickered over the tech's face. "Sorry, I didn't mean… I've been trying not to think about… that." She took a step closer, bending forward and lowering her voice. "Can I ask a question?"

"Well, I don't know if I'll be able to help, but sure."

"I know Phoebe and Ms Platt have been starting to plan for next year, uh, do you know whether they're planning to bring another dragon into the team?"

"They have to, right? It's in the sponsorship deals." Adelie shut her mouth, pressing her lips thinly together. Should she have said that? The team knew the deals had been signed.

Elice lowered her voice further. "Are they gonna get another black dragon from somewhere? Or a gold or silver, do you know?"

"I don't think it's got that far yet." Adelie shrugged. "I don't think they'll keep it secret when they decide."

"Oh." The coder looked up the room. Most of her coders were still at their stations, but the rest of the team's personnel were drifting away for the day. "I wanna get started on the new drake as soon as poss. We came up with some new optimisers for Soot’s model and I really want to see if they'll adapt to other dragons."

Adelie smiled. It was unusual to see Elice so clearly enthusiastic about anything, she'd been all grim concentration since joining the team. "I'll try to push them along. If I hear anything I'll let you know."