Adelie

The speed with which success had transformed Tenebrae’s setup in the racing stables put Adelie on edge. A month ago they’d been three girls alone in a room almost large enough to echo, with just Soot and a small table for Petunia’s laptop. Now there was Stefan’s eight-foot workstation with its attendant computer cabinet on one side of the stable, three monitors frothing with data, projections, estimates. Over by the race-side opening was the new nutrition station, which somehow also had two screens, though Tamra, the chatty, round-faced veterinary nutritionist who Phoebe had recruited from one of her old junior teams, was sat off to the side with their legs crossed at the moment; there wasn’t much for them to do while Soot was out in flight.

It still wasn’t much compared to the other stables, apparently; from what Petunia had said of her visits to other teams, elbow room was typically at a premium, and Tenebrae still had welcome acres of open floor-space. But it felt different nevertheless, distinctly less private. There was a Lipton rep who came by to check in with Tamra every few hours, and Stefan was the vanguard of a multi-person metrics team Phoebe was trying to put together. It had been so long since there was a competitive lunar dragon in the IL that McCaffreys didn’t even have ready-made data models for tracking Soot’s in-flight condition.

Adelie could see that lack in Stefan’s screens as she watched past his shoulder. They’d started from the smallest stellar dragon preset in the system and almost every number on screen looked wonky relative to estimates. Soot was doing long-haul pace laps, six-lap stints simulating the high end of race pace, and from the times and Phoebe’s feedback, was completely comfortable. But on the screen his wings were in the high yellows for overheating while a few spots along the muscles of his back were showing sensor check warnings because the computer couldn’t believe how cool he was running.

“Adelie, do you have a minute?” Petunia’s voice caught Adelie off-guard, the more so because of the worry in her tone.

She turned to see her friend holding a notepad, the same one she’d left at the farm for a couple of weeks. Adelie really didn’t want to think about that notepad. Still, she glanced back at the screens. Phoebe and Soot would be on this stint for another few minutes, and they didn’t really have the resources to fix the models yet anyway. To Petunia, she said, “Sure, what’s up?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I just wanted to know, um, if you used my notepad for anything?”

Damn. Adelie had been hoping Petunia wouldn’t notice how much thinner the pad was than it had been when she’d left it. She caught herself wringing her hands, thinking about all the pages she’d ended up tearing out to hide the writing that had been appearing in there. Forcing her arms still, she managed, “Oh, um, I’m sorry, I spilled a, um, drink on it and kinda, um, panicked. Um, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, ok.” Petunia shrugged, face momentarily unreadable. Then she brightened. “Anything useful on the modelling?”

“I don’t think so, yet. We’re getting good data, but I don’t know how useful it will be on Sunday.”

Stefan spoke up, without taking his attention away from the screens. His voice was deep but very gentle; he reminded Adelie of one of the professors at her vet school. “I think you’ve been very conservative to date, you know.”

“Really?” Petunia stepped closer, and Adelie leaned back a little way in reflex.

“Yes, I think Soot might have a lot more stamina than you’ve credited him with.” The big man pointed to the centre screen, where a diagram of top-down and side views of a dragon were swarmed with readouts. “The model is useless, ignore the warnings. Soot has four sprints now and I just don’t see tiring in the numbers. It’s all very stable.”

“Well, we had to be careful,” Adelie said, more sharply than she meant to. “We can’t take any risks with Soot.”

“I understand,” Stefan nodded. “I am only thinking about what I’m seeing. We should talk to Phoebe about this later.”

“Don’t forget we’ve got the executive party from General Realty Auction Financial Trades visiting at half past twelve,” Petunia said, before Adelie could respond.

That was the other thing that was crowding the stable. Every new sponsor and stakeholder in the team seemed to want to meet Soot in person, spend a few minutes prodding Phoebe and generally rubbing their faces in the excitement surrounding Tenebrae. At least they mostly left Adelie alone.

She tried and failed not to think about tomorrow’s visit. She still wasn’t sure what the relationship was between Phoebe and Mynah Darling, or maybe Mynah’s management? Anyway, the idol was going to be here, right here in the stable. A chill ran down Adelie’s spine at the thought. Reflexively, she looked over at the wall where her bag hung. It had been a huge chore to make time to go back to her parents’ house and dig her copy of Mynah’s first album out of the attic, and she’d been terrified it would get damaged in transit, but it was here safely now.

There might not even be a chance to ask Mynah for an autograph. Would that make the visit weird for Phoebe? But when else was Adelie ever going to have an opportunity like this? She had to at least try.