Tropical Convergence (21 page)

"Ah." Kerry put her hands on her hips and regarded the oncoming news crew. "Well, let's see how much good press we can get today." A wry look crossed her face. "Jesus, I never in my life thought I'd hear myself say that."

Kerry started forward, making eye contact with the reporter in the lead. The man grinned, appreciating the attention, and made a beeline for her. "Here we go," she muttered under her breath. "You are the Midwestern Republican WASP face of ILS, Kerrison...now let's let them get a look at the radical gay biker chick considering a tattoo under all of it."

"Hey!" the reporter hailed her. "Can we get a quick interview with you, Ms. Stuart?"

"Absolutely." Green eyes twinkled. "Long as you don't ask me for my hacker card. I left it in my gym bag."

The reporter laughed. So did the crew. Out of the corner of her eye, Kerry spotted Michelle strolling in her direction, and she perched on the edge of the booth, the ILS logo right behind her shoulder giving a great shot to the cameramen.

"Got anything new for us?" the reporter asked first. "ILS doesn't usually come across as razor's edge, but I thought we got a different view yesterday. Want to follow up on that?"

Kerry smiled, crossing her arms. "Yes, I do," she replied. "Let me tell you what we've got planned, but you better duct tape your socks."

A crowd had gathered to listen in, and she saw Michelle on the edge of it, pretending to study a brochure from a nearby booth. "We've gotten a lot of press lately for what everyone thinks is a negative reason," Kerry said. "Let me tell you what the real story is."

Michelle turned and stared, looking her right in the eye.

Kerry's smile broadened, and her gaze turned sea ice cold. You want a fight? You got one.

DAR PROWLED THROUGH the exhibits, aware of and enjoying the attention being directed at her. After the aborted session the previous day, and her grandstanding at their booth, there weren't many in the room who didn't know who she was.

She intended to make sure that number was zero before she left. As she peered critically at a new firewall product, however, her cell phone went off. She pulled it out and glanced at it, recognizing the number immediately. "Sheesh. About time."

Walking over to a small alcove, she answered it. "Morning, Alastair."

"Holy crap, Dar!"

Dar smiled. "I love starting the day out having made you say that," she announced cheerfully. "Better than a cup of café con leche."

Her boss sighed audibly. "I didn't expect to start my morning by seeing you on MSNBC, as the technology headline."

"Was I?" Dar mused. "Didn't even see them there. I thought AP and UPI were giving us a skip this year because technology is 'out'." She glanced casually around, spotting one of their biggest competitors cornering two ILS clients.

"Well, Dar, when you go and announce we hire hackers, and dare anyone to try and hack our network to prove we only hire the best ones..." Alastair replied, in a dry tone. "It's a sound bite no one could resist."

"Got us attention."

The ILS CEO sighed again. "The only thing that offset the 'attention' was the way you handled it. The camera is fascinated by you." He cleared his throat. "With good reason. Nice suit, too."

"Uh huh." Dar leaned against the woven weave wall, feeling it's faint prickliness through the cloth of her jacket. "So let me guess. The board is freaking."

"Surprisingly, no," Alastair answered. "Actually, they asked me to give you a call and say how pleased they were."

Dar pulled the phone away from her ear and studied it with a deeply quizzical expression. Then she knocked it against the wall, making a sharp rapping sound.

"Dar?" Her boss's voice came to her tinnily. "Dar? What's going on?"

"Sorry. I think we've got a crossed line," she replied. "I know I didn't just hear that."

Alastair chuckled. "Well, you know, it surprised me too," he admitted. "But John said he'd gotten a lot of flak lately about how stodgy we are...well, most of us, anyway. He thought this was a damn good boot in the short pants for all those pundits who thought we were mummies in three piece suits."

"Eh." Dar grunted. "Glad they liked it, but it wasn't planned. Damn guy just got my goat."

"Whatever the reason." Her boss shrugged it off. "Something good'll come of it."

Dar watched Peter Quest enter and cross over to their booth, where Kerry was currently holding court. Michelle was there also, and she noted by her posture, not entirely happy. "Kerry's giving an interview right now to TechTV," she commented. "So listen, let me go see if she needs backup. We got invited into a little bid for some new cruise ship IT business."

"What?"

"Yeah. " Dar craned her neck to watch the crowd. "Could end up being a decent sized contract."

"Dar! Why didn't you tell me!"

"Because I just decided to do it. Listen, Alastair...let me get back to you. I've got people looking for me here." Dar studied Kerry's body language anxiously.

"Dar, damn it, talk to me for a minute," her boss shot back. "Kerry's perfectly capable of doing an interview, isn't she?"

The rough bark drew Dar's attention from her lover. She collected herself and re-focused on the phone. "Yes, she is" she replied. "I don't have that many details, Alastair. I was approached by some guy over at American Cruise Ventures who wants to put new tech in all their ships, especially the ones they're bringing over to the States."

"Fabulous!"

Dar sighed. "Yeah, well, we're up against three other companies, including Telegenics."

There was a small silence on the other end of the phone. "Really?"

"Yeah."

Another silence. "Well, we're gonna have to make sure we win this one,"Alastair stated positively. "No taking chances, Dar. I want you to handle this personally."

Dar examined her cell phone again, this time with a bemused look. She poked a button experimentally, then a second, making a small musical interlude.

"Dar?"

"Sorry." Dar put the phone back to her ear reluctantly. "I was checking something. You know, I do have qualified people working for me."

"Dar, this is no time for that. These bastards have been running roughshod all over us. Here's one major chance to stop their momentum. This is too important to let someone else do it," her boss argued. "I want you to handle it. In fact, take Kerry if it'll make you feel better. She's your protégé."

"Alastair?"

"What?"

"Could you arrange for an ice cream machine to be installed in my office?"

"WHAT?"

"Never mind." Dar almost laughed. "I'll take care of it. I've got a vested interest...did you know who the movers and shakers were in Telegenics? I bumped into them here."

"Ahem." Alastair cleared his throat. "Not the day to day folks. They've got some interesting backers. I know they've got deep pockets. Japanese, I believe."

"Michelle Graver, and someone from my past I hate with a passion," Dar informed him. "So yeah, I'll take this one, Alastair. I'll take it and beat them so badly they'll go running off to San Francisco to sell tie-dye shirts and tickets to Alcatraz."

It was, apparently, her boss' turn to be nonplussed. He made a sound something like a cluck, and then cleared his throat.

"Now, can I talk to you later? The person I hate with a passion is about to start bugging my wife."

Another cluck.

"Bye, Alastair."

"Uh...bye, Dar. Talk to you later, huh?"

"Sure." Dar closed the phone and clipped it to her belt. Then she straightened her jacket and headed for the booth.

"WE KNOW WHERE we hold the market lead." Kerry leaned back and crossed her ankles. "Right now, our priority isn't spending time fending off lowball services contract hawkers. We're interested in taking another step forward in providing our backbone customers with the best infrastructure in the world."

"That's bold," the Tech TV reporter remarked. "You guys put a really solid network in place, everyone knows that. But where do you go from there? Only so many bells and whistles you can add before it just becomes more frills customers have to pay for."

"Exactly," Michelle piped up, her lip twitching at the lowball comment.

Kerry met her gaze evenly. "We don't bother with frills." She turned back to the reporter. "What's the next step? The next step is making the network intelligent. Giving it the sentience to be able to react to changing conditions, and flexible enough to respond to the challenge of new bandwidth requirements dynamically."

The man stared at her, and then cocked his head. "You can't do that. The intelligence doesn't exist."

"Not yet," Kerry agreed quietly. "But it will."

"If it's not just empty promises," Shari called out. "Sounds like vaporware to me."

Kerry could have reacted, but she chose not to. She merely gave Shari a brief, dismissive look, and then turned back to one of the men in the front. "Eddie, you know what I'm talking about. You're a pilot location."

Thrust suddenly in the spotlight, her client almost melted into a pocket-protected puddle. Kerry gave him a smile though, and he blinked at the round, staring eye of the camera and managed a nod. "Uh...yeah" he stammered. "It was cool. It was like the pipes knew when the program needed more space, and like...um..." He shrugged. "Gave it to 'em. Real cool."

"Wait...I thought you said it didn't exist yet." The reporter eased closer to her. "Didn't you just say that? She just said that, right?" he asked the audience.

"Right," Michelle drawled. "That's what she said."

Kerry slipped into a nearby console chair and turned the monitor on the desk around so the audience could see it. "It's not in production," she conceded. "But we've prototyped it. Wanna see?"

They were lucky the booth was well built. Kerry suddenly found herself surrounded by curious nerds and a cameraman who seemed more interested in checking out her earlobes than seeing what she was doing on the monitor.

She flexed her fingers, and spared a glance at the part of the crowd unable to fit, giving their rivals a brief, very pleasant, wordlessly wicked smile. "Okay, here's how it works." She tapped out a quick command, fishing in her memory for the codes she'd learned from Dar.

Cryptic codes. Dar never made anything obvious or easy, at least on the back end. She permitted the applications people to put snazzy looking front ends on her stuff, but where it counted, it was all grease on the hands and you better know what you're doing time.

Basic and functional, straightforward yet elegant.

Just like Dar. "Let's say you have this allocated bandwidth..."

"So what, it bursts. Big deal," Shari commented.

"Hey, shut up." One of the men in front turned around. "You don't want to hear this? Take a hike." He glanced at Shari's badge. "Take your petty rivalry and ditch it, sister."

Ah, chivalry. "Thanks." Kerry put a hand on her unlikely champion's arm.

"Don't thank me yet, lady," the man warned her. "If this is all BS, I'll chew you next."

Bet you won't.
Kerry felt Dar's presence and knew, if she turned her head, she'd find her partner nearby. "I'm not worried," she told the man. "Now, where was I? Ah. Yes. Bandwidth. Let's use a T1 for example."

Shari started to push forward, but suddenly found herself held back firmly. She turned in annoyance, only to find herself the focus of two chips of icy fury only slightly tinted with blue. "All right, now..."

"If you know what's good for you," Dar spoke in an absolute flat voice. "You'll take the gentlemen's advice."

"Okay, you two. Break it up." Michelle gently eased between them, giving Dar a determined smile. "Time out. We'll continue the discussion later." She took hold of Shari's arm and despite their size difference, maneuvered the larger woman away from their bristling adversary.

"Like she said, it bursts." The loud man shook his head, oblivious to the drama going on behind him. "What's the big deal?"

"The big deal is how it bursts." Kerry released a breath, watching Michelle and Shari leave from her peripheral vision. "It analyzes the traffic flow, and makes decisions on how to route, what to route, and what to prioritize based on the application layer."

"What?" The man snorted. "At a network level? That's impossible to deploy large scale. Sure you can do it for one router..."

"It's not impossible." Kerry shook her head. "Dar's working with the hardware manufacturers to burn the essential code into firmware."

"No way." The man shook his head.

"Guess you'll have to wait and see." Kerry smiled. "But don't wait too long. Your competitors won't."

"Oooh. Nice sound bite," the reporter complimented her. "But...does this really work?"

"It really works." Dar judged that her body had stopped shaking enough for her to move up onto the platform and join Kerry. Her knees were still quivering a little as the adrenaline slowly drained from her bloodstream, and as she came up in back of her partner, she felt sudden warmth as Kerry's hand patted her calf. "Not bad for an old hacker, huh?"

A chuckle went around the crowd. "Can we ask you a few questions about it?" the aggressive man countered, with a visibly higher degree of respect.

"Maybe." Dar let her hands drop on Kerry's shoulder. "But if I answer, I might have to kill ya."

Another chuckle.

So far, Dar decided, so good. Roberts and Stuart several, Michelle and Shari, none.

Let's make sure it stays that way.

MICHELLE FOUND A corner, and put them both in it. "Can I ask what your damn problem is?" She fumed. "Damn it, I'm trying to build something we can use here. "

Shari glared back at her. "It's all bullshit!"she said. "Can't you see what they're trying to do? We spent how many months putting together a campaign, getting new clients, digging a wedge into them. We're going to blow it if we let them steal the spotlight!"

Michelle ran her hands through her hair. "Shari...Shari...you're not seeing straight. Look at them." She turned her companion around and pointed. "How in the hell would you like to remove them from the spotlight?"