Red Sky At Morning - DK4 (30 page)

Her body contracted, shivers moving up and down her spine as she felt Dar grip her fiercely. Their limbs coiled together as Dar let out a heartfelt groan and slid belly to belly again. They rocked together, stroking each other gently as the contractions eased, exchanging the light coating of sweat they’d worked up.

Kerry closed her eyes, enjoying the comfortable lassitude. For all the stress of the day, ending it like this made her look back on her problems and just laugh at them.

Made it all worth it, really—this being in love thing.

Dar slid her arms around Kerry and pulled her closer, fitting their bodies together like a living puzzle. They fell asleep like that as the moonlight painted stripes across their bodies, making them seem more one creature than two.

DAR LEANED BACK in the leather seat and rested her knee against the wheel as the Lexus made its way down the long stretch of road. She had a soothing New Age CD playing, a new one Kerry had bought her on a recent trip to the mall. Dar pulled out the cover and glanced at it.

“Huh.” It was an all-instrumental healing CD, with natural background noises worked into it, and she liked it very much.

It was soothing, and Dar felt very calm. She took a sip of the milk she’d put in her travel mug and felt its cool thickness slide down her throat.
Funny.
Her eyes dropped briefly to the cup, then lifted. She’d been staying away from coffee lately, and she was starting to notice a real difference. Instead of her usual five or six cups, she’d been having maybe two, and even her breathing seemed to have slowed down a little.

On the seat next to her rested the laptop, full of data and reports she’d downloaded from Mark’s mainframe just before she’d left. Time enough when she got there, Dar reasoned, to take a quick look at them, before she headed off to see the new recruits.

Part of her was looking forward to that, in an odd way. “There but for having a brain cell, go I,” she murmured to herself with a smile.

“Seaman Roberts, the second.” She sighed. “Oh, Dar. Was that ever so not for you.”

But then, it had hurt. That one last day, when she’d waited in the driveway for her father to come home; waited, and known, the moment she saw his face, what the answer was.

No.

Andrew had indulged in a rare bit of physical affection, putting his arms
around her and hugging her. “Sweetheart, you ain’t got to do this. There’s lots
of damn things you can do in there.”

Dar had leaned against him, utterly miserable. “Why couldn’t I have been
a boy?” she’d whispered. A hand had come and gripped her chin, lifting her
head up.

“’Cause God didn’t want you that way,” her father had told her. “You
ain’t gonna argue with God, Paladar. What he made you is what he made you.”

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Dar smiled faintly.
Yeah, I guess he did
. She took another long swallow of milk, then set the cup down as she prepared to turn into the base. The guard opened the gate without her even pausing and she entered, finding a spot under a large tree to park.

Shouldering her laptop, she got out and walked across the lot, pausing as a group of children dashed in front of her, heading for the bus stop. A harried-looking woman chased after them, dressed in a pair of cotton pants and a haphazardly buttoned shirt.

“Nora! Wait! Slow down!” the woman yelled.

One of the smaller girls, a cute tyke with soft, dark-brown hair and a mischievous grin, turned and made a face at her. “Go now, Mom!” she scolded, then turned and dashed after her friends.

“Oh, my God,” the woman sighed, pushing her hair back as she ran past Dar. “Kids. Nora!”

Dar chuckled softly and continued on her way, trying to recall ever being that small. Could she? Being here helped, she acknowledged, as she walked through the lower corridor and up the curved stairway. As her hand touched the banister, she had a sudden flash of memory that almost made her stop short.

She did remember, just a little. It had been a very rainy day, so bad that they’d gotten all the kids and the parents from the housing area and put them up in the admin building. Here, in fact. Dar stopped at the landing and turned to look down. Yes. She remembered the blankets spread out.

Maybe it had even been a hurricane. Her dad had been gone, away at sea, and she and Ceci had joined about ten other kids and fifteen or so adults in taking shelter here in the hall. She remembered sliding down the banister, thrilled at the access to the normally closed and guarded building.

“Paladar!” Her mother had looked up to see a small form hurtling toward
her at frightening speed.

“Whee!” Dar had leaped off the end of the wood and crashed into her
mother, knocking the diminutive Ceci right down on her behind. “Wow! I liked
that!” She’d gotten up, intending to race back up the stairs.

But her mother had grabbed her and spanked her, right there in the middle
of the hall, and all the other kids had laughed.

Dar hadn’t laughed. She didn’t now, as she felt again that hot sting of shame.

“Hey, Roberts.”

Dar turned at the voice and gave Chief Daniel a cool look. “Yes?”

The stocky chief came down the rest of the stairs, but stayed one up from the landing, to bring her eyes level with Dar’s. “Got something you might want to see.”

“Like what?”

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A faint smile edged the chief’s lips. “C’mon. I’ll show you.” She turned and walked back up the stairs. After a moment of watching her, Dar followed.

“MORNING, EVERYONE.” KERRY put her PDA down on the conference room table. The extended operations group looked back at her, waiting for her to sit down. Familiar faces all, including the newest, Clarice. Kerry opened her notes and cleared her throat, lacing her fingers together as she reviewed the page. “Okay, Mark, you start. Tell me about those router projections?”

“Well,” the MIS chief twirled his pad around the pencil he had stuck in one of its holes, “I don’t know, Kerry. I extended out the contracts we have pending to the end of the year, and we ain’t got enough hardware for them.” He lifted one shoulder slightly. “Not sure what happened.”

Everyone shifted uneasily.

“Okay.” Kerry tapped her thumbs together. “Either sales oversold, or we underbought. It’s not like it’s rocket science, Mark. Which was it?”

Clarice spoke up. “I’m sure you could probably tell us right off, right?”

Kerry’s hackles invisibly rose. However, she didn’t answer; instead, she eyed Mark. “Well?”

“Um...”

“Mark, just spill it.” Kerry said. “Someone counted wrong, it’s not a crime.” She rested her chin against her fist.

“Well, that’s the problem.” Mark said. “If I use our invoices, and use our contracts, we’re not short.”

Kerry cocked her head at him. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“Are you saying we lost a bunch of routers?”

“That’s pretty funny, for the operations machine,” Clarice chuckled, getting a few people to chuckle with her. “I guess humans work here, too.”

“Considering it means either someone’s been incompetent, or someone’s been thieving, I wouldn’t really call it funny,” Kerry stated, overriding the noise.

“Oh, c’mon, Kerry,” Clarice said. “They’re probably in a closet somewhere, or under a cabinet.” She smiled. “It happens.”

Kerry waited for the murmuring to stop, which it did when she remained silent. “No, it doesn’t, not with our inventory system,” she said quietly. “Mark, open an investigation. Track every asset we have by bar code. I want to know the last known location of anything we can’t find.”

“Well, in my experience, even computers can make mistakes,”

Clarice said, undaunted.

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“Not these computers,” Kerry stated with finality. “Not this program. The coder made sure of that.” She looked at Mark. “By tonight?”

Mark nodded.

“Thanks.” Kerry dismissed the subject. “Carol, give me the rundown on the new VOIP system for the central help desk?”

She was beginning to regret, she realized, a thoughtless moment of kindness.

DAR STARED AT the empty space. “What happened?”

Daniel shrugged. “Beats the heck out of me. Came in here to adjust some packet sizing, and found the damn thing gone. I called Security, but I got told to keep my mouth shut and take off.” She rocked on her heels. “Y’know? I don’t like your ass, Roberts, but I don’t like being told to shut up worse.”

Dar felt a grin tugging at her lips. “Yeah.” She put her hands on her hips and took a breath, eyeing the area that had held the mysterious T3

and its router. “I know the feeling.” One finger rubbed the strap on her laptop idly, then she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Mark?”

“Uh?” The MIS chief’s voice sounded distant. “Hang on...I’m under my desk.”

Dar’s eyebrows rose. “We having bad weather again?”

The voice came much closer. “No.” Mark exhaled audibly. “My goddamned friggin’ NIC cable came loose again. I gotta replace it.

What’s up, boss?”

“Remember that T3 I was having you chase down?”

Mark paused for an instant. “Yeah. I was getting install data for you. It’s almost all here.”

“Good. Now get the disco order for it, because someone pulled it out of here yesterday,” Dar told him. “Did we get anything back on the serial number of that router?”

A long, long beat. “Not that we wanna talk about over the cell,”

Mark stated firmly. “Can I e-mail the info to you?”

A soft warning bell rang in Dar’s head. “Sure,” she murmured.

“Send me what you have. I’ll go pull it down.” She closed the phone and looked at the chief. “Something doesn’t smell right.”

Daniel sniffed. “Must be that weird-ass soap you civvies are always using.” She shook her head and turned toward the door to the small telecommunications closet. “But, yeah, I figured. I don’t like my stuff going AWOL, then being told it ain’t my business.”

They walked down the hall to the small office that had been assigned to Dar. It was empty, as always, since Dar brought everything with her she needed and took it home with her at the end of the day. A pencil, left behind on her prior visit, rolled idly in the breeze from the open windows.

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Dar put her briefcase down on the desk and unzipped it. “Let me get that mail, and maybe it’ll make some sense.” She glanced out the window. “Too early for the recruits?”

Daniel snorted. “Bus broke down up near the split to Card Sound.”

She perched on a corner of the worn wooden desk and watched Dar unpack her laptop. “Nice box.”

Dar flashed a quick grin. “Thanks. It’s a new generation chip we’re testing for Intel.” She flipped the screen open and pressed the rapid on, watching the fifteen-inch display light crisply.

“Yeah?” Daniel sounded interested. She edged closer. “Shit, that’s fast.”

“Mm.” Dar reached down, picked up the Ethernet cable lying limply on the floor, and started to plug it into the jack on the computer.

An odd sensation under her thumb made her stop, however, and bring the end of the cable up for a better look.

No, it seemed fine. Dar rubbed her thumb over the plastic again while the chief watched her in fascination.
Hmm
. Unable to figure out why she didn’t like the damn thing, she shrugged and put the cable down, unzipping the top part of her laptop case and retrieving a second cable, with which she replaced the first. “Here.” She tossed the discarded coil to the chief. “I don’t like that one.”

“Picky.” Daniel caught the cable and examined it. “Looks fine to me.”

Dar sat down and watched her desktop come up, her mind mulling over the last few minutes. Then she suddenly hit the pause key and stopped the machine’s progress. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Mark’s number again. “Hey.”

“Yeah? Didn’t come through?” Mark asked.

“Put a filter on that T1 from here.” Dar’s voice became clipped.

“One way. Everything. Fast.”

“What are you doing?” Chief Daniel eased around the desk and peered at the computer.

“Wh—okay.” Mark’s keyboard rattled hard for a long moment.

“Okay, got it. What’s up?”

Dar released the pause button and watched the computer continue to boot. “Read me the talk back.”

There was a pause. “Nego,” Mark said.

“Go on.”

“Protocol’s up.”

“Okay.”

“IP request to the DHCP. You were issued 194.156.168.131.”

“Got it.”

“RAS coming up...you should get your validation in a second.”

The computer beeped softly, requesting input. Dar typed her network login and password and hit enter. “Okay, it’s got it.”

“You’re validated. Services starting.” Long pause. “Looks okay, boss wh—holy shit!”

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Dar smiled grimly. “Invasion barrage?”

“Son of a bitch! Jesus, what the hell is in that hub?” Mark squeaked.

“Shit, let me get a more macho filter on that before it sends my security program running for the hills. Brent! Get me box ten online, wouldja!”

Long fingers drummed on the wood surface. “Let me know when you get something in place to trap it. Then disable it so I can get my goddamn mail.” Dar gave Chief Daniel a look. “I don’t mind the bullshit, but if this was you trying to bust into my network, I’m gonna hang you out that damn window.”

Chief Daniel was staring at the laptop. She looked at Dar with an astonished expression. “Me? Shit, if I could do that, you think I’d be working in a half-assed, sun-baked sand pit down at the ass end of the Navy?”

No
. Dar’s eyes narrowed. But someone else here was.

KERRY STIFF-ARMED HER way into Operations, tossing her folder down on the console as she circled the big desk. “Okay. Let me see the inventory screens.”

Mark had walked in behind her, and he paused, leaning against the other side of the desk as he watched her scroll through the program.

“Probably ended up being coded to some other account, Kerry. I’m sure they weren’t scarfed.”