“I’ll remember that, sir, while I’m cleaning the toilet.”
* * *“I’ve been here since the beginning, and Bussard hasn’t seen fit to tell me anything,” Lt. Gerritson told Maddy over a cafeteria pot roast filled with more salt than meat. The cafeteria, like the plant itself, was a dinosaur that never saw the light of day. It was designed to seat about 100 employees of Michigan Power, but now there were never more than ten military personnel at peak hours. By Maddy’s second week, a meal with Lt. Vince Gerritson was a welcome relief to the oppressiveness of a large table and a solitary dinner. Maddy was quick to discover that Gerritson was the only person bold enough to discuss what little he knew about their shadowy purpose there.
“It’s the lack of oversight that scares me,” Gerritson said. “They let Bussard run this place any way he sees fit. Tessic’s the only one Bussard doesn’t control.”
“They let civilians from Tessitech in this place?”
“No,” Gerritson said. “I mean Tessic, himself.”
“No shit!”
“He had something to do with the design of the vault. But now I think he pops in every once in a while just to piss off Bussard.”
Tessic was a name well known in the military ever since Tessitech beat out every competitor for a dozen military contracts over the past five years. His name was synonymous with cutting-edge technology; a former wunderkind who, now in his fifties, was on his way to being the richest man in the world. Maddy judged that his presence here was an exception to protocol and not to be taken lightly.
“When did this whole operation start?” Maddy asked.
Before answering, Gerritson glanced around to scan their present company. A few tables away were three men in lab coats discussing sports scores. Maddy didn’t know them, but had seen them at meals. The plant had a contingent of about ten Coats, as Gerritson had called them. Scientists, or technicians, or physicians—no one seemed to have a clue what their profession actually was. They didn’t associate with military personnel, undoubtedly by Bussard’s order.