Moving Target

by Melissa Good

  "Um...okay." Mark handed her the sheaf of papers. "Here are all the packing slips. I guess the bean counters need them." He trotted off, leaving Kerry in relative solitude.

  She looked down at the papers. "Yeah." She tucked them carefully into her folio. "They will, when I get done with them." With a sigh, she walked over to the windows and peered out at the ship, noting the heavy clouds gathering over it.

  "KERRY?"

  "YEAH?" KERRY turned from where she was seated on a box, watching the rain come down.

  Mark took the box next to her. "Crappy weather."

  Kerry kicked her heels lightly against the cardboard. "You came all the way across the room to say that?" She gave him a curious look.

  "No. I was gonna say, I've still got those tarps we used over at Bellsouth. You think we could put them up between here and that ramp and not get soaked?"

  Kerry observed the downpour, which suddenly seemed to be driving sideways instead of up and down. "Nope." She pulled one knee up and circled it with both arms. "I think we're going to get soaked no matter what. Got a change of clothes?"

  "Everyone does." Mark replied succinctly. "After yesterday."

  Kerry chuckled softly. "Yeah, I sure was glad I did." She admitted.

  "That was about the yuckiest situation I've ever been in."

  Mark was quiet for a few moments, his eyes following the rain. "Those guys you were with yesterday are really rocking high on you."

  Kerry rested her chin on her knee. "That's a good thing, right?"

  "Yeah." Mark agreed. "I mean, like...I tell all kinds of BS stories about the old days, and DR and all that, you know? But these guys, most of the young ones, they just don't get it."

  One of Kerry's eyebrows hiked up. "Hm. So us ancient types have to teach them?" She guessed. "Oo...I can hear my joints creaking now."

  Mark laughed. "No, that's not what I meant."

  Kerry rested her cheek on her knee, watching him and waiting for the explanation.

  "It's--I can tell people until I'm green in the face how cool you guys are and all that, but they don't really get it until they get like, ah." Mark paused.

  "Up close and personal?" Kerry suggested.

  "Something like that, yeah."

  Kerry reflected on her experience the prior day. She hadn't intended on providing a quality work moment for her staff, but she wasn't stupid enough to disregard a good result when it happened. "I didn't do that much," she commented.

  "Not what I heard," Mark said. "Carlos told me you climbed up inside that rack and hauled the switch and all that."

  "Hm."

  "And everybody cracked the hell up when you yelled at DR through that door," Mark said.

  "Well!" Kerry got up, and checked her watch, seeing it was near to 1:00 p.m. "The woman has open cuts in her foot! She scared the bejesus out of me!"

  Mark also got up, joining her at the window. "I know...it's just like...well, like Carlos came back and you know what he said? He said you sounded just like his brother and sister in law. Or just like me and Barbara."

  "We are." Kerry glanced at him.

  "Well, yeah, I know that. But he didn't." Mark explained carefully. "That guy was really not into gay people, you know? He wasn't really a 'phobe or whatever, but his family's really conservative."

  "So's mine." But Kerry smiled at him. "Thanks. I'm glad to hear that. Usually what I've discovered is when folks realize gay people are just as stupid and goofy as straight people, they chill out." She leaned against the glass. "Just about time for us to get moving."

  Mark turned and put his fingers between his teeth letting out a shrill, piercing whistle. "All right, people! Let's get ready to move out!" He waved a hand. "Two guys to every box and somebody get over here with an umbrella for the boss!"

  Kerry turned. "Hey!"

  A crowd of techs moved toward them, but behind them Kerry caught sight of Cruickshank and her filming team. Just as she was about to cut through the stream of people and intercept them, she saw Dar neatly slip in from the side corridor and stop them cold.

  Satisfied, she turned and pushed the doors open, allowing the thundering roar of the storm to enter the building along with a huge gust of warm, wet air. She could see the guards drawing aside on the gangway, and already some of the workers were starting to trickle warily back on board. Chief among them, she noted, was Andrew.

  "You guys ready?" Kerry called back over her shoulder. "If we run fast enough, we'll get there before the damn rain soaks through those cardboard boxes."

  Techs were hoisting the heavy switch cartons between them and gathering at the door behind her. An air of excitement seemed to be building, as the techs not carrying boxes slung tool belts on their shoulders and others carried smaller boxes of patch cables.

  Carlos came up behind Kerry, holding a handful of plastic. "Hey, um..." He held it out. "I don't have an umbrella, but I got an extra one of these, if you want it."

  Kerry took the bright red rain slicker. "Thanks, Carlos." She gave him a warm smile in return. "You'd think after living here a few years I'd know to carry one of these in the summer."

  "How's your hand doing?" He glanced behind him, as though to judge how close they were to moving out of the building. "I did that once, cut my hand on that crossbeam. Hurt like crazy."

  Kerry held up her hand, neatly wrapped in a symmetrically perfect crisscross of gauze bandage, taped into place by two evenly spaced strips of bright orange tape. "It stung a lot yesterday, but as you can see, I can't move it a lot today so it's been fine." She curled her hand into a fist and punched the air. "I feel like a boxer."

  Carlos grinned, and held up his own hands. "You box?" he asked, making a few passes. "Someone said you did."

  "Kickbox." Kerry said.

  "Me too."

  Hm. Kerry judged they were about ready to go. She pondered asking Carlos what his views were on gorgeous brunettes with blue eyes, just to see if they had that in common too, then decided the freak out factor was about six points too high for the occasion. "Hey, we can compare technique later," she said instead. "Okay, everyone ready?"

  "Ready." Mark said. "You want to put that jacket on?"

  "Yeah, in a..." Kerry blinked as the jacket was taken from her hands and shaken open, then held for her to climb into. "Um..."

  "Um?" Dar's voice sounded amused. "Put it on, or you can't go out to play, Kerrison."

  "Wench." Kerry muttered, getting into the jacket. "Did you--ah."

  She spotted the reporters right behind Dar. "Are we the sound bite today?"

  Cruikshank poked her head forward. "Matter of fact, you are." She agreed cheerfully. "We're gonna stick with you guys today, since you're the ones behind the gun. Mind?"

  Kerry accepted the unobtrusive pat on the butt from her partner as she fastened the rain slicker. "Nope." She turned to the door. "Okay, let's go, guys!" She headed out into the rain, followed by a veritable cavalcade of nerds, lugging nearly a thousand pounds of gear out into the deluge.

  Dar held the door for them waving Cruickshank and her crew out after them with a flourish. "G'wan. That's where all the action is."

  "Oh, you bet." The reporter pulled her rain hood up and trotted outside happily. "You know, Ms. Roberts, this is turning out to be just a humdinger of a tale, isn't it?" She smiled back at Dar. "You coming too?"

  Dar cocked her head to one side. "Wouldn't miss it for anything," she said, watching as the reporters turned and hurried after her crew, who were running as fast as they could toward the gangway. There were a few other contractors straggling that way, but a big group of them were under the overhang on the building side, unwilling to get wet.

  "Hey!" Dar yelled at them. "What's the matter with you? You a bunch of girls or something?"'

  The contractors whirled to stare at her.

  "Get your ass over there and start working!" Dar barked. "Move it!"

  "Hey! Fuck you!" One of the men yelled back.

  "You don't have anything I'd even want to
take a picture of, much less touch," Dar retorted. "C'mon, you pansy ass"“move it!"

  The man started in her direction, but someone, apparently his supervisor, hauled him back and shoved him toward the ship instead. "I'm gonna kick your ass for that, bitch!" The man threatened.

  Dar recognized his voice as one of the men she'd passed in the stairwell the previous day, threatening the same thing only with someone else. She just laughed. "Bet you don't." She remarked. "Cause either my dad or my girlfriend will knock you silly."

  She waited for the crowd at the gangway to clear--the last of their group gaining entrance and the contractors following--before she let the door shut and strolled out into the rain, tilting her head up and enjoying the warm blast of water. She opened her mouth and caught some on her tongue, convinced she could almost taste the clouds on it.

  "Paladar!"

  Whoops. "Yeah, Dad?" Dar shook her head, now completely drenched with rain.

  "What in the hell are you doing?" Her father was standing inside the ship with his hands on his hips.

  Dar held her arms out as she approached the gangway and started up it. "Enjoying the sunshine?"

  "Lord, you have lost your mind." Her father pulled her inside. "Did them drugs Steve gave you make your head turn over?"

  Dar just chuckled, and shook her head. She gave her father a pat on the back and headed for the steps, shaking her body like a dog to scatter the raindrops everywhere as she followed the sound of many stomping feet ahead of her.

  Chapter Two

  IT STILL SMELLED. Kerry strolled conspicuously closer to the big open doors on the main deck, braving the rain splatter to clear her lungs. It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been the previous day, though, and she could see carpet cleaners working very hard on the central staircase to remove the lingering stench.

  She stayed near the door anyway. It gave her the best perspective of the activity going on around the main part of the ship, and she could direct the various teams of her technicians as they crisscrossed the hallways. "Mark, did you check the server room?"

  Mark paused in mid step. "Was it doing tricks, boss?"

  "I meant for AC and power." Kerry gave him a droll look.

  "Oh. Right." Mark reversed his course. "Hang on."

  Kerry intercepted him. "Nah, go on. I'll check it." She regretfully gave up her spot near the door and crossed the round atrium, going to the far side of the steps and trotting up them to the next landing. She turned into the hallway and glanced at the cabin numbers as she walked, then stopped in front of the inside cabin she'd taken over for their new systems.

  The door was open. She unlatched it and pushed it inward, reaching in and flipping on the lights inside. What had once been a small, inside stateroom had been stripped out entirely to its bare walls and rebuilt as a miniature, but functional, IT space.

  One side was lined with floor to ceiling racks that were bolted to the deck. In the first one, a switch was mounted, already spilling brightly colored cables from its front to several jacks. Opposite the racks were two long worktables with chairs that sported rubber leg bumpers instead of wheels. Awkward to move around, Kerry had learned, but necessary so that they didn't roll and crash into things when the ship was in rough waters.

  She had experience with that on the Dixie. There, everything inside could be locked down, or tied up so nothing went flying during those infrequent times they were out in bad weather. Even the bed had--what she'd joked to Dar--seatbelts.

  In here, there were no seat belts. But corners were padded, and the racks all had locking sides and doors, and felt quite sturdy as she tugged on them.

  However, there was no AC in the room. The overhead lights were on, but that was it. Kerry felt sweat starting to run under her shirt after being inside for a few minutes, and she knew the servers would survive for a shorter time than she would in the heat.

  Well, muskrats. Kerry put her hands on her hips. She really didn't want to have to haul the big portable units in, but it was looking like she wasn't going to have much of a choice.

  "Oh, hello there Ms. Stuart."

  Kerry turned to find their reporter friend behind her. "Hi."

  The Herald reporter slipped inside and stood next to her. "Is this profound?" She queried. "The way you're looking at it makes me think so."

  Kerry took a step back and leaned on the worktable. "No. Well, I mean...it's where our system servers are going to be, so I guess it's profound in that sense. But actually it's just giving me a hive at the moment because the AC's not on in here."

  The reporter looked around. "That's true," she agreed. "Does that matter?"

  "Sure," Kerry said. "We can't run the servers like this. They'll overheat."

  "Ahhh," the woman murmured. "The other ships are pretty far ahead of you," she told Kerry. "They've mostly got the, whatever those are, up and running."

  "Ah well." Kerry produced a mild grin. "We'll get there."

  "Without AC?"

  "We'll bring in our own." Kerry unclipped a walkie-talkie from her belt. "Dar? You there?"

  "Yeeees." Dar's voice came back after a brief pause.

  "Can you send the ice boxes up to the server room? It's hotter than melted cheese whiz up here." Kerry spoke into the device crisply." The switch is mounted, so I'm going to tell Barry to get moving."

  "On the way." Dar signed off with a click.

  "Barry?" Kerry switched channels on the radio. "This is Kerry, you on?"

  "Right here, Kerry," Barry replied. "You ready for us?'

  Kerry sighed, looking around. "Well, you can mount them in here, anyway. I'm having the portable air units brought up."

  "Okay, be right there."

  Kerry clicked off, and returned the radio to her belt. Between the radio, her cell, and her PDA, she'd briefly contemplated finding a tool belt to wear, but one look at the devilish expression on Dar's face when she suggested it put visions of bright pink leather in her mind. So she dropped the idea. "Okay."

  The reporter leaned back against the worktable. "So, you bring in your own air conditioning units. I take it these aren't the window things you see on old houses in these parts, right?"

  Kerry nodded. "They're rolling portable units that vent the hot air back up into the plenum." She tapped the ceiling, pushing up a panel. "And, since we used to have a bathroom in here, we can stick the drain hose...let me see..." She investigated a capped pipe in the corner, removing a pair of pliers from her back pocket and wrestling it off.

  "Yep. There."

  "Hm."

  Kerry turned. "We do have an advantage being local," she said. "We have all the resources of our office here to work with, and of course, we know the area."

  "And the weather." The reporter chuckled.

  "And the weather," Kerry agreed. She went behind the racks, squeezing between them and the wall, inspecting the railings that connected them.

  "Not much space back there."

  "No." Kerry agreed. "I compromised between needing air circulation space and needing to be able to extend the servers out on their rails. It's pretty tight in here."

  "Let me ask you something, Ms. Stuart," the reporter said. "What exactly are the ramifications for you if you don't succeed here?"

  Kerry leaned on the back rails, peering through the smoky gray door at her. "Me personally?"

  The reporter walked over and peered through the door back leaning a hand on either side of the opening. "You personally," she said. "The rest of these companies, they've got technical people here, or people with a vested interest in this prospective contract. You could have sent someone else in here. Why didn't you?"

  Everyone seemed to be asking that. Kerry wondered if she and Dar shouldn't have been asking that a little more strongly themselves.

  "Is it that you didn't feel like you could trust anyone to do it?" The reporter persisted.

  "No." Kerry answered. "That's not it at all. I send teams all over the country to do this."

  "Exactly." The woman nodded
.

  What could she say, really? That they'd promised Alastair they'd do it? That would just make him look bad. That they wanted to beat Michelle and Shari? That would just make them look bad. Having no really coherent response, Kerry fell back on nerdiness instead. "You know, the fact of the matter is that both Dar and I happen to buy into to a certain theory of management that sort of requires both of us to keep our hands in and really know the nuts and bolts of what we do."

  "Really?"

  "Really." Kerry smiled. "It's not like I really do enjoy kneeling here on questionably clean floors getting iron filing dust up my nose. Honest."

  "Interesting." The reporter smiled back. "I think that might explain a lot about the things I've heard from many of your clients."

  Kerry finished her inspection, and squeezed back around the edge of the rack, dusting her hands off on her jeans. "Maybe that's why we've been as successful as we have." She suggested. "When you get to the management level of Dar and me, you tend to lose touch with the day to day. It's a real tough thing to not let that happen. Because we're so busy it's hard to put aside the time to read the tech journals, and preview the new gear, and think outside the box. But we do."

  The reporter clapped. "Beautiful quote." She complimented Kerry. "Ever think of going into politics?"

  Kerry was saved from having to answer by the arrival of Barry, walking backwards and bumping the doorframe with his shoulders. "Hang on a second, let me prop that open." She got to the door and pushed it as far as it would go, then pressed her back against the wall. "C'mon in."

  "Thanks." Barry backed cautiously inside, wincing as he scraped the backs of his hands on the doorway. "Whoa. They don't do wide loads in here, huh?"

  Kerry sucked in a breath as the server skimmed by her right at button fly level. Very different from a desktop PC, the server was all stainless steel and weighed a ton.

  "Put 'em on that desk." Barry grunted. "We gotta install the rails."

  A second pair of techs followed them in, with a second server, and there was a third set who waited patiently outside the door. Kerry stood back and merely watched, unable to do much to either help or hinder the process at the moment.