“Hang on. I’m GPSing you,” Mark muttered. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up. Stop with the error messages, willya...Ah, shit, Dar. You’re in bumfuck.”
“I am not,” Dar protested.
“You most certainly the heck are, boss. The nearest CO to you is freaking Marathon,” Mark replied. “I’d have to piggyback on the National Defense circuits. BellSouth’s not gonna go for it, that’s for sure. They don’t have crap anywhere in the area.” He paused. “What in the hell are you doing out there in the scrub, anyway?”
Dar felt stung; irrationally, she realized, but stung nonetheless.
“I’m on a project out at the Naval base here,” she answered slowly. “The one I grew up on.”
There was a very awkward silence on the phone. “Uh...sorry, Dar,”
Mark finally stuttered. “I didn’t mean to dis the place.”
Dar sighed. “It’s okay.” She glanced around. “It is bumfuck.”
“Well, it must be a pretty cool slice of bumfuck if you’re from there,” Mark rallied gamely. “But I gotta tell you, even if I cross my legs 86 Melissa Good and squeeze, I can’t really imagine you as a kid.”
No. Dar tossed the report onto the desk. “That’s probably a good thing,” she told her MIS chief. “When can I get my T1?”
A silence filled with clicking followed. “Best I can do is Thursday.”
Dar’s eyebrows lifted. “After all that griping? You’re a damn fraud, Mark.”
Mark chuckled softly. “Yeah, well, I was checking the commercial availability; I went back and checked the governmental. They’ve got a big POP not far from there. We can zap in a pipe there. I’ll ship you down a Cisco and a mini hub.”
“Good,” Dar responded. “When it gets a completion, I want to hook up and suck everything in their main systems out and over to the mainframes. I ran an analysis on my laptop, but there’s something not jibing, and I don’t have the CPU cycles to rip it apart.”
“Sounds good to me. Oh, hey.” Mark’s voice altered and warmed.
“I was just talking to the big kahuna.”
“The big kahuna who nearly got my ass nailed to the table in a marketing meeting? That big kahuna?” Kerry’s voice echoed through the circuit. “Gimme that phone.” There was a fumbling noise. “Paladar Katherine Roberts.”
“Uh-oh.” Dar started laughing. “You sound like my mother.”
“You are so busted.” Kerry joined her in laughter. “Oh my God, Dar...you knocked me for a such a loop in that meeting. How’s it going?”
“Eh.” Dar reviewed the report now running on the laptop’s screen.
“All right, I guess. There’s so much to do, I can’t decide where to start.”
She sent the report to print. “How’s it going there?”
“Well,” Kerry exhaled, an audible rushing sound, “I’ve got a session with Jose in about an hour. Wish me luck.” She perched on Mark’s desk and winked at him, “Other than that, it’s been fine, with the slight exception of me being rendered speechless earlier. What was that all about?”
“Someone’s initials,” Dar replied succinctly.
Kerry smiled. “Oh,” she murmured. “Yeah. I don’t know what got into me. I got to use the Leatherman you got me, though.” She’d circled the small house and tried to imagine her lover and her family living in it, succeeding only when she pictured Dar out on their little island—in her scruffy cutoffs. “Well, I’ve got to get to my meeting. Here’s Mark back. See you later at home?”
“You bet.”
Kerry handed the phone back and stood, picking up the handful of requisitions she’d come to collect. She gave Mark a pat on the back and walked through the MIS command center with its semicircular desks and racks of seriously blinking lights. Just as she hit the door an alarm went off, and she paused, looking back over her shoulder to where two techs were scrambling toward a monitor. “What is it?”
Red Sky At Morning 87
“Shit.” One tech slapped buttons, then glanced up. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Kerry returned to the desk and peered over it. “What’s going on?”
“Crap...crap...crap...we just lost the Southeast.” The other tech was furiously rattling his keyboard, and now Mark approached, leaning over them. “Mark, something big just took a dump over Georgia.” He looked at Kerry. “You know what that means.”
Kerry grinned cheerfully. “Hot darn. It means I get to cancel my meeting.” She set her papers down and rolled her sleeves up.
“Okay...Mark, you start checking the access routers; I’ll call BellSouth.”
DAR MADE HER way through the labyrinth of corridors and pushed open Commander Albert’s door without ceremony or even a knock. She found him just getting off a call, and she paused, giving him a look. “You wanted a conference?”
Albert took in a breath visibly and released it. “Okay, look.” He held out both hands. “Can I raise a truce pennant here?”
’Bout goddamned time. Dar folded her arms, but relaxed her posture at the same time. “Depends on what your terms are,” she said. “This can be just as tough as you want it to be.”
“Okay.” The man sat down and motioned her to do the same.
“Look, Ms. Roberts, I really don’t mean to be such a bastard, but...” He paused.
“But I’m stomping all over your territory with spike heels,” Dar finished for him. “You think I don’t know that? Listen, Commander, if I were in your shoes, I’d be just as pissed off as you are, believe me.”
Albert relaxed a little. “Have you ever been? In my shoes?”
Dar considered the question. “Not really, no,” she admitted. “My company was taken over by ILS, but I was just a programmer then. I remember resenting the hell out of having to explain to clueless githeads what my code was, though.” She crossed an ankle over her knee. “So I do understand, but you need to understand that I’m not your enemy.”
He watched her closely. “You were hired to do this, I know that.”
Dar nodded. “That’s right. The brass is looking for two things. One, to make themselves look good by hiring the biggest, most well-known IS firm around to come in and evaluate them; and two, they’re wanting justification to spend billions in improving infrastructure. If it comes to a question, they point to our analysis, and it’s right there, in black and white.”
Albert grunted, his brows twitching in thought.
“So, do yourself a favor, Commander, just let me do what they’re paying me a fortune for, okay?” Dar said.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk surface, clasping his hands together lightly. “All right, Ms. Roberts. I’m just going to get my butt chewed up one side and down the other if I don’t.”
88 Melissa Good He exhaled. “So, do you have everything you want? Lieutenant Perkins told me you were pulling down statistics most of the day.”
Dar got up and walked to the window, resting both hands against the sill and peering out the dusty panes. “That’s right.” She watched a squad of men carrying huge logs move past. “But I’ve got programs to analyze all that. I want to start looking at facilities, firsthand.” She turned, and faced him. “You can let me wander by myself, or give me someone who can answer questions.”
A faint grin crossed the commander’s face. “I think we can arrange for a guide, Ms. Roberts.” He hit a button on his desk. “I was anticipating the issue.” His voice got louder. “Send in Chief Daniel.”
After a moment the door opened, admitting a short, very stocky woman, her ginger hair peppered lightly with gray. She gave Dar a brief glance, then turned her attention to Albert. “Sir?”