"Thank you for your patience and attention." Michelle surrendered the lectern at last, taking her notes and retreating around the side of it before she headed back to her seat to a smattering of applause.

"Ah. Yes." Peter Quest scratched his cheek, then stood up. "Ah, thank you, Ms. Graver. Now, ah, before we break for lunch, we have one final presentation." He half turned toward Kerry and raised his brows. "Ms...ah, Stuart?"

Kerry stood up and gently pushed her chair in, then walked around to the lectern and rested her elbows on it, leaning forward and waiting until the room's pre-lunch restlessness stilled and she had their attention.

She somehow doubted the scheduling order had been by chance, in any sense.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen." She allowed a faint, self-deprecating smile to appear on her face, and took the time to make eye contact with those interested enough to be looking at her. "When I was asked to present a basic infrastructure outline here, I wasn't notified of the three ring circus."

A number of faces twitched, not expecting the gentle attack.

"If I had been, I'd have brought my performing SEAL and dancing hamster to liven this all up." Kerry straightened up, to a sudden, surprised round of laughter. "Unfortunately for you all, I only have an IT infrastructure presentation, so I vote to plow through it at record speed so we can all have lunch, how's that?"

Another round of laughter, and some applause. "You buying?" one of her competitors shouted.

"How about I cook?" Kerry shot back, with an engaging grin. "I'm told I make a killer PB and J."

The crowd loosened up and perked up at the same time, exactly the response Kerry was going for. She waited for the laughter to peter out, and sorted her brief notes.

"Oh, sorry." Michelle half stood, a sour sweet expression on her face. "Did you need the projector? I'm afraid we're pretty connected to it."

"Nah." Kerry removed a small remote from her pocket. "What's the point in being the richest kids on the block, if you don't have the neatest toys?" She pressed a button. "We don't need no stinking projector." She waited for the thin laser wand to emerge from the back of her laptop, and raise up, opening the aperture and shooting a thin blue beam just over her shoulder. Kerry glanced back and adjusted the beam slightly, then triggered her presentation to start. "As I was saying..."

Behind her, a neatly drawn and notated network diagram appeared, starting with a core, and spreading out to the edge devices, all neatly encapsulated inside the outline of a ship.

Kerry turned and peered at it, then swiveled back around to the room. "We have a saying in the IT biz," she said. "Parts is parts." With a laser pointer she indicated first the core, then the remote devices. "Like in any network, best case practices dictate we treat this ship's infrastructure like we would any sound network. The biggest differences we see are the need for solid, absolute redundancy and the need to bolt every darn thing to the floor to keep it from pitching overboard."

"And pay a premium for it," Shari remarked.

"Well, that's true," Kerry agreed cheerfully. "We don't generally give our clients blue light specials." She smiled at Shari. "But I can see the incentive for that for companies with fewer resources than ours and clients who either don't know or don't care about business continuity."

Her finger clicked on the button, and she waited for the screen to paint with Dar's next drawing, an intricate schematic of the primary pieces of equipment she intended to use for the bid. "The design allows for all the functionality Mr. Quest specified. Our complete schematics will be put into his hands for review, and frankly, that's really all I have to say regarding our intentions."

She clicked through two more screens showing some general dimensions of the equipment Dar had chosen, then stopped on the last one, which showed a pretty graphic in several colors that illustrated the interconnected types of communication, which would flow through the system.

"The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen." Kerry made eye contact again, pinning Quest last of all. "Is not who can do this the cheapest and easiest. Anyone can do that."

Shari snorted.

"Economy is a strong motive, Ms. Stuart," Quest reminded her.

Kerry lightly shrugged both shoulders at him. "In the end, Mr. Quest, you're the one who has to stand behind whatever decision you make," she said. "So you have to decide how much you're willing to risk in terms of reliability and protection. Because that's what this is going to come down to."

"B..."

"Parts is parts," Kerry reminded him. "We all use the same equipment. This isn't rocket science. No one's doing anything revolutionary."

"Speak for yourself," Shari spoke up.

"Hey," one of Quest's men stood up and faced her. "You people were allowed to say your piece without getting interrupted. So please be quiet and give others the same courtesy."

Michelle didn't even so much as look at her partner. Shari appeared to consider responding, then she settled for a rare bit of good sense and merely nodded.

Kerry waited, a mildly amused look on her face. "We all know how to do this. Just because it's on a ship doesn't change anything." She looked at Quest. "But you're the one who has to face the rest of your company and your customers if what you buy doesn't hold up. I'll tell you right now, neither I, nor our network architect shops at Wal-Mart."

Quest fiddled with his pencil, clearly uncomfortable. "Yes, well, that's all fine. Are you done?"

Kerry clicked off her projector, and watched it fold neatly back against the spine of her laptop. "Yep, I sure am." She tucked the remote in her pocket and took her notes, which basically consisted of the words 'kiss my ass.' "Let's take a break, shall we?"

Everyone stirred, and started to rise. Kerry circled back around to her seat and pulled her laptop case up onto the chair, opening the top so she could slip her machine inside it's padded bay. The speech had been a trifle more aggressive than she'd planned, but after Michelle's pandering, she knew she had to make a mark and distinguish their plan as something different.

So she had. Kerry was very aware of the eyes on her as she put her gear up, and she carefully and deliberately slid the leather strap into its buckle and fastened it before she looked up. "Okay." She half turned to face Mark. "Ready?"

"Whatever you say, boss," Mark responded, already shouldering his own briefcase. His face showed that he was out of his depth and he knew it. "Lead on."

Kerry only wished she could lead them both right on out of the hotel and down the street to a little sandwich shop Dar favored with little ambiance and great food. Instead, she knew they'd have to suffer through lunch at the hotel, which would likely be robust with carefully shaped lettuce leaves and relatively tasteless.

Ah well.

They all filed out, and she and Mark politely waited as several of the other bidders hurried to follow Michelle and Shari and their reporter guest. After the last had gone on, she fell in step at the end, giving Quest a half nod as he picked up his notepad and prepared to join them.

"You know, Ms. Stuart." Quest kept his voice down as they left the room. "I didn't really appreciate your attitude up there."

Kerry hooked her thumb through her laptop case strap. "Well, you know, Mr. Quest, you asked for competitive bids. I think you got what you asked for." She regarded him briefly. "I'm not here to blow smoke up your tail. I think you know that."

He didn't answer for a few steps as they watched the other bidders cluster around the reporter. "Where's Ms. Roberts?" he asked. "I thought for sure she'd be here for this. She has some very significant competitors here."

Kerry resisted the urge to pull out her PDA. "Dar? She's working with a client of ours who has a major application issue they came to her to solve," she replied. "A strategic partner of ours."

"So that's more important than signing new business?"

A dry chuckle. "If you were the other client, how would you want me to answer that?" Kerry said, as she started down the steps toward the fountain bedecked luncheon restaurant.

Quest was briefly silent. "Well."

"It's not all about getting new business, Mr. Quest," Kerry added, in a mild tone. "If you don't retain your existing customers and help them grow, it's just a shell game."

He looked at her hard. "Are you inferring something, Ms. Stuart?"

Kerry's brows contracted. "Excuse me?"

"Never mind." He glanced around. "I expect you to be competitive. I don't want to be handed an expensive bag of tricks, from anyone here. I have to cut the best deal for my company possible."

"We'll give you the best deal we're capable of," Kerry said. "But we may give you what you need, not what you want."

Quest snorted. "They said you were arrogant. That's why I'm surprised Ms. Robert's isn't here. She's got that down pat."

Kerry felt a growl start deep in her throat. She cleared it just before it became audible. "Dar put time in on the design for your account. Now she's left it in my hands. We're both comfortable with that, I'm sorry if you aren't."

Slightly taken aback, Quest drew in a breath and edged slightly away from her. "Ms. Stuart..."

Kerry pointed suddenly at the reporter. "I thought you said you wanted to keep this quiet, Mr. Quest. How does that impact your plans?"

Quest fell pensively silent. "It was unexpected," he admitted finally, as they reached the bottom of the steps. "But it's all that geek talk. No one I care about will see it or give a damn." He shrugged. "So if you want to spend all your time pissing on each other, Ms. Stuart, and giving them ratings--go for it. I've got more important things to do."

Kerry watched him walk off, glad of the few moments quiet respite before they joined the others. "Know what?" she remarked to her silent companion.

"What?" Mark made a vague clucking noise.

"You know that look Dar gets, the one where she sort of squints, and you think she's going to bite someone?"

"Oh, yeah."

"I'm so understanding that look right now."

Mark sighed. "Man, you guys do this all the time? I don't think I could handle that. These guys suck."

Kerry patted him on the back and had to silently, if ruefully, agree as they reached the group and joined the rest of the nattily suited men and women in sitting down at two large, round tables. "You know what Dar would do?" she whispered behind her hand as they took chairs next to each other.

"Cheeseburger, fries and a shake," Mark whispered back. "Somewhere else."

Kerry took her napkin and popped it open, laying it across her lap with an easy grace as she reviewed the menu card placed on her plate. "Yeah." She exhaled, finding herself directly across from Shari, who took pleasure in smiling fiercely at her. "Or she'd order a pizza." She found herself smiling for a different reason. "Delivered to the table. But we can't, so let's just make the best of it." She lifted her glass and sipped some cold water from it.

It was going to be a very, very long day.



Chapter Twelve



DAR EMERGED INTO the sunlight once again, after her sixty-second subway ride had drawn itself out to twenty minutes. She had, however, apparently made a friend, since Scuzzy showed no signs of continuing on her way as they exited the subway station together.

Subway station? Dar glanced behind her at one of the many stairwells burping people up out of the ground. More like a nightmare from some science fiction writer's imagination.

The heat had gotten a little worse, or maybe she'd just gotten used to the cooler confines of the underground world.

"So, like, Dar. Where ya goin?" Scuzzy interrupted her thoughts. "Just coming down to see the Square?"

"No. Here." Dar pulled the brochure out of her pocket and displayed it, turning slightly as she tried to orient herself in the busy street. Buildings rose on all sides, and the roads seemed to run together from all directions.

What the hell?

After a moment of blinking, she realized why the place looked so damn familiar. She'd never been here before that she could remember, and now she took a moment to just stand and look around.

Times Square. Dar cocked her head to one side, realizing she'd always considered the place to be more of a stage set than a real city street. Her gaze shifted.