Deploying Dragons by Dan Koboldt

Author:Dan Koboldt [Koboldt, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Genetic Engineering, Hard Science Fiction, Thrillers, Technological
ISBN: 9781625798763
Google: n595EAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0B5Y1JZSY
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2022-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Mess

I felt far too nervous to eat, but I figured I could stand to have coffee. Besides, I wanted a closer look at the mess hall of this facility. If it was anything like the conference rooms, there might be a robotic cook. Hell, with their early access to technology they probably had their own food replicators.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Some guy had beat me to the mess, though. He looked to be a fellow civilian. Husky frame but bad posture, nondescript hoodie, and headphones around his neck. Come to think of it, I knew those hunched shoulders and headphones. “Frogman?”

He flinched at the sound of my voice. He turned around, and it was him. “Oh. Hey.”

“What are you doing here?”

It was completely unexpected, and my mind raced with the implications. Frogman, here, as a civilian. What would the DOD want with a genetic engineer, anyway? Maybe they’d hired him to independently assess the animals. He had developmental expertise.

“Looking for coffee, same as you, I’m guessing,” he said.

What’s with the attitude? Maybe it was my imagination, but he didn’t seem surprised to see me, either. I stood there with my mouth open for a second, and then I put it together. “You’re working for Greaves?”

“Guess you could say that.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Not many places you can take our kind of skills.”

That was a total dodge of my question. Then again, I hadn’t asked it in full, like Why would you go work for that total asshole after what he did?

“Oh, here you are,” said another voice, this time from behind me. And I recognized him, too.

“O’Connell,” I said.

Brian O’Connell had a slight build and the same dirty-blond goatee that I remembered on him. As usual, he wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt that looked at least twenty years old. He gave me a heavy-lidded stare. “Parker.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, you both working for Greaves. You two were always a package deal.” Everything fit. With O’Connell to run the biological printer and Frogman to design the dragons, all Greaves needed was a place to work and the prototype Redwood Codex. He’d essentially duplicated the dragon manufacturing process on which the Build-A-Dragon Company was founded.

“Someone had to do it,” O’Connell said.

“You didn’t have to do anything.”

Frogman half turned back toward the back wall of the mess, looking like he wished he could be somewhere else. He never was one for confrontation.

“Better to join a winning team than stay on a sinking ship,” O’Connell said.

I made an indignant noise, but comebacks were never my strong suit. And honestly, I was still thrown with the realization that they were part of the competition. Part of the enemy.

“Come on, Frogman,” O’Connell said. “They’re starting.”

Frogman shuffled past me and mumbled something I couldn’t hear to O’Connell. The latter snickered. “The contract is practically ours anyway.”

The encounter soured me on the idea of futuristic coffee. And I wasn’t sure how long it would take them to reset before our dragons got their turn. I hurried back to the conference room so I wouldn’t miss anything.

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