Storm Surge - Part 2 (38 page)

"Wow."

"Yeah, wow." Dar closed the PDA. "Guess I'll wait until he lands then call him."

"Ouch." Mark murmured. "That's gonna suck." He glanced at his boss. "You didn't think they'd do it."

"I didn't think they'd do it," Dar confirmed, nodding. "Not only that, I didn't bother to tell them to stop trying once we did." She sighed again. "So I suck twice."

"You were kinda busy. I know if it had been my wife who'd broken a rib I wouldn't have thought a half second about work crap. So how's Kerry feeling, anyway?"

"Right now, hopefully she's not feeling anything since she was asleep when I came out here," Dar said. "Probably a good thing, since I know she'd be as freaked as I am about this note."

Mark remained silent sipping his soda. Then he cleared his throat a little and watched his boss out of the corner of his eye. "We could go do it, if you want."

Dar looked at him.

He shrugged.

"Alastair pulled us out. I respect that decision."

"Yeah," Mark agreed. "But we can do it. I know he had heartburn with the governor and all that stuff, but man, if those guys went to the wall for us, it sucks if we can't get it done. And it's really gonna suck for him tomorrow when that bell goes off and nothing happens."

"He knows that."

Mark shrugged again. "He's pretty cool. He's been all right to have with us here. I wasn't sure about it at first, but he's a good guy." He considered. "So we could make his morning, if you catch my drift."

Dar thought about that. It put the question into a different light than she'd been looking at, and she felt herself becoming attracted to the idea. "Alastair is good people," she finally said, in a quiet tone.

"He really likes you. He was talking to me and your pop yesterday and he was telling your pop how lucky he was to have a kid like you."

Dar blushed mildly. "I'm sure my father loved hearing that."

Mark laughed. "Yeah he did. He's a great guy."

"My father?"

"Yeah."

Dar took a sip of her milk. "We're surrounded by good people. You know that?" She mused, and then fell silent for a long moment. "You want to go do this?"

"Yeah," Mark said, without hesitation.

They both half turned at a sound at the door to find Andrew entering. He was dressed for the outside, unlike the two of them, and he slid the hood down on his hoodie as he crossed the carpeted floor. "Lo,there. You people never heard of sleeping?"

"Hi, Dad." Dar watched as he went to the refrigerator, retrieved a milk, then came over and sat down across from them. She lifted her own milk and toasted him with it. "Mark and I were just going to grab our tools and go fix the damn cables. Wanna come?"

Andrew paused in mid sip and lowered the milk. "Excuse me?"

Dar stretched her bare legs out and crossed her ankles. "Our vendor and his friends came through. They duct taped something together that's going to work."

Her father blinked. "I thought you all said you weren't doing this no more?"

"Me too,"Dar acknowledged. "But they did it, and I don't want to waste that. Those guys wore their asses to the bone for us."

Andrew studied his daughter's profile--despite the difference of age and gender--very much like his own. "So you all going to go do this thing, no matter what that flannel feller says?"

"Mm hm."

"What about all them gov'mint people? They were some pissed off at you all."

"I don't care." Dar was now at peace with her decision. "These people have been shoving us around since we got here. Maybe they have a good reason, maybe they don't, but I'm just going to take my team, and go do what we do, and at the end of it someone else can decide if it was the right or wrong choice."

Her father produced a wry grin. "Paladar, do you know ah once said something just like that. Turned out all right, I suppose, so ah will surely be going along with you to do this crazy thing."

"Thanks, Dad." Dar smiled at him "Sorry to make your retirement so contentious."

Andrew studied her and then burst into laughter, genuine and real,a happy sound the echoed off the walls of the lounge.

"Well, I'm gonna go wake the troops up." Mark got out of his seat, taking his coke can over and disposing of it. "Meet you back here,boss?"

"I'm going too." Dar got up. "Let me let Kerry in on what's going on and see if I can talk her in to staying here."

Andrew snorted. Mark shook his head. "Good luck with that, boss." He escaped out the door ahead of Dar's reach.

Dar tossed her milk chug and tucked her PDA in her pocket. "Don't tell Alastair if you happen to see him, Dad." She paused at the doorway. "He's setting himself up to take a fall for us, and damned if we're going to let him."

Andrew smiled at her. "G'wan, rugrat." He stretched his legs out. "Ah couldn't sleep fer nothing no how. Too noisy in this here place."

Dar waved briefly. She ducked out of the room and crossed the corridor, spotting Mark down the hall knocking on a door. She keyed her own open, and slipped inside, closing the door behind her and walking over to the bed.

Kerry was still sleeping. Her breathing was slow and deep, and Dar lowered herself to perch carefully on the edge of the mattress, reluctant to disturb her. She knew in the long run that it would be better for her partner to stay here, comfortably resting.

However. Dar reached over and took Kerry's hand, squeezing it gently. "Ker?"

After a moment, Kerry's fair lashes fluttered open, and her fingers returned the pressure. She blinked a few times, and then focused on Dar, taking in the darkness of the room with some alarm. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Dar leaned over and let her head rest against Kerry's thighs. "But something unexpected happened."

Kerry blinked a few more times, clearing the sleep from her eyes. "Like what? Are you okay? Did something happen to one of the staff?"

"No." Dar squeezed her fingers gently. "Those guys who were trying to help us? They did it."

"Huh?" Kerry's brows creased. "What guys?"

"Our network vendor."

Kerry was momentarily silent, and then her eyebrows lifted sharply. "They did it? They came up with something that works?"

"That's what they say." Dar nodded. "So they're on their way here."

"B..." Kerry started to sit up then bit off a curse, her eyes going wide. "Oh shit."

"Easy." Dar got up and reversed her position, putting her arm around Kerry's shoulders and supporting her until she could get upright again. "Forgot about that, didn't you?"

"Ooof. Yes." Kerry recovered her breath. "Stiffened up I guess. So--but Dar, why are they coming here? We didn't do the runs. They're going to do that for no reason." She paused, and then looked up at her partner, seeing the grave look in the pale eyes. "Uh oh."

"I told Mark about it. He wants to go for it. He's waking the guys up." She put her hand against Kerry's cheek. "You do not have to get out of this bed. I just wanted you to know what's going on."

There was a curious mixture of emotions on Kerry's face. "That's not fair letting you guys do all the work. I don't want to just sit here wondering what's going on."

"Honey." Dar stroked her cheek. "Please don't be an idiot."

"I'm not." Kerry frowned. "Give me those drugs. Let's see if they do anything useful."

"Ker."

"Don't Ker me. I've been through this whole thing with you. Don't ask me to sit out now." She took a cautious breath. "At least I can just go and be with you. I won't pick anything up."

"You're going to make it impossible for me to concentrate." Dar objected."C'mon, Kerry. This isn't anything to joke about. You could get really hurt."

"Don't give me that." Kerry reached up and took hold of Dar's jaw."Please don't even try that after what I've seen you go through in some of the crap we get into."

Dar sighed. "Now we're back into that if I'm an idiot realm again,huh?"

"Dar."

"Kerry, we're going to be crawling on the floor splicing cable. Is that something you really want to be a part of?" Dar asked, practically. "Tell you what."

"You're right." Kerry interrupted her. "I don't want to be on the floor splicing cable."

"Okay." Dar regrouped. "Well then--"

"I want to be with you." Kerry cut her off again. "Can I just go and watch?"

Dar sighed again.

"Besides, you never know. You may need someone to make a phone call, or type a message, or call a relative who happens to be in Congress." Kerry negotiated skillfully. "Besides, now that you woke me up, there's no damn way I can get back to sleep again."

Having known beforehand the argument was going to be moot, Dar was relatively satisfied with the compromise. "Okay." She kissed Kerry's shoulder. "Can't blame me for trying."

"I don't." Kerry responded with a smile. "Dar, I'm glad."

Dar rested her cheek against Kerry's arm. "Glad? That we're doing this?"

"That we're not just walking away. Even if it was for the very best of reasons." She patted Dar's cheek, and then kissed her on the nose. "Thanks for waking me up."

Dar gave in, nuzzling her and exhaling and enjoying a last moment of peace before the craziness started up again. "I'm glad too. Which makes us all nuts."

"Cashews."

"Gesundheit."

KERRY CLIMBED UP the steps to the bus, its engine idling in the quiet of early morning. She paused inside, spotting a familiar figure behind the wheel. "Hi Dad. You driving?"

"Yeap," Andrew said. "No sense getting that feller up out of his bunk. I know where that place is right well by now." He pushed a button, jerking a little as the windshield wipers turned on. "Whoops."

"Have you ever driven a bus before?" Kerry asked.

"Naw." Andrew pushed another button, resulting in the bus's hazard lights coming on with an orange blare. "Drove me a tank a few times though. Can't be that different."

Kerry studied him. Then she walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, straightening carefully and retreating to the midsection of the bus before he started experimenting with anything else. Kannan and Shaun were already there, the two of them dressed in dark jeans and navy blue goodies with equipment belts buckled over the top of them filled to the brim with nerdish jewelry.

"Hello, ma'am." Kannan looked up from stuffing cable ties in a pocket."How are you feeling?"

"Not too bad, really." Kerry went over to the far side of the bus and opened the door to the small office in the back. Her laptop was already inside and set up. She walked around behind it to find a handful of chocolate kisses on the keyboard, along with two bottles of green tea and her bottle of drugs resting nearby. "Aw."

"Something wrong, ma'am?" Shaun called in.

"Not a thing." Kerry sat down slowly in the chair, testing her rib's reaction to the motion. The chair had nice, padded arms just like herbed cushions had, and she rested her elbows on them in relative comfort. "This'll work."

The door opened again, and she heard Dar's voice trickle back into her little haven. With that as a reminder, she unwrapped one of the kisses and put it in her mouth, humming softly under her breath as she booted up the laptop and waited for her login screen.

On the desk she also had a radio, and her PDA, and she grabbed for both as the bus lurched unexpectedly into motion. "Whoa."

"Everyone hang on," Dar said. "Dad's driving."

"Is that a bad thing?" Mark's voice cut in.

"Let's put it this way," Dar said. "If my mother were here, she'd be calling in an air strike on the bus to stop us from getting hurt.

Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose and tried not to laugh. She made a note to relate the conversation to Ceci when she saw her, as she knew her mother-in-law would find it worth a chuckle knowing well her husband's method of driving.

Such as it was. "Glad you didn't inherit that part, Paladar." Kerry remarked in a voice loud enough for her to hear.

"So's my mother," Dar responded. "She threw a party when I got my driver's license."

"Wow," Mark said. "All righty then. Everyone got all their gear?Shaun, you concentrate on that Ethernet rat's nest and I'll help Kannan finish the fiber uplink."

"What about the stuff on this end?" Shaun asked. "Those guys weren't finished running the cable, were they?"

"First thing's first, since we're done on this end with the connectivity," Mark said. "That rat's nest'll take us longer than our end will."

"Not only that, the later it gets on that end the more people we have to contend with." Dar said. "I want to get in and get out and then we can deal with the rest of it."

"What if they just quit and left it there?" Shaun asked. "Under the ground in that tunnel?"

Kerry wondered the same thing herself. She had no idea if the workers had been told to stop what they were doing, or if, like their vendor, they'd just kept working in ignorance.

"We'll deal with that when it comes to it," Dar answered, her voice coming closer to Kerry's little den. "I don't want to split up at this point. It's dark and we don't know what we're going to run into." She appeared in the doorway, studying Kerry intently. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." Kerry held up a kiss. "Thank you Dr. Dar."

Dar grinned unexpectedly. Then she shrugged and turned back to the rest of the team, presenting Kerry with an attractive view of her bare shoulders emerging from her tank top as she lounged in the doorway, resting a hand on either side of it.

The bus lurched into motion again, rocking back and forth alarmingly as its tires apparently climbed up onto the sidewalk as Andrew got them underway. "Dar, do we have insurance on this bus?"

"Not my area." Dar glanced over her shoulder. "Should I rig seat-belts in there?"

Kerry settled back in her padded chair for the ride, the motion making her a little seasick when she looked down at her keyboard. She rested her elbows on the chair arms and looked past Dar, seeing the first hint of gray tingeing the windows of the bus.

No sense in looking at the laptop anyway. There was either too much or too little for her to do, especially at this hour of the morning, so she abandoned any pretense of work and simply relaxed as best as she was able for the ride.