I thought it was strange too when I read it that their seats werent so great so I changed them to box seats I thought... so I changed them again thanks Scotty Happy New Year.

Twenty Seven

Jade poured herself a glass of juice, then returned to her desk and settled back into her leather chair. A thick printout in white was already in her inbox, and she lifted it out and plopped it down in front of her as her desktop hummed in the background, collecting her mail.

Security reports. Jade winced slightly as she started reading. "Damn, what a mucking little troublemaker I am." She shook her head ruefully. "Aye, yi yi yi yah… Sinjin I owe you dinner at least for this one." Her fingertip traced one intrusion attempt that had come perilously close to finding a crack, being turned aside at the very last second by the random roaming parser that dipped continually into the datastream and examined the traffic it found there. "Wow."

The parser had been around since a twenty something year old bored ops manager had put it in place years back, and recently had to defend having it around taking up router cpu cycles. Jade hadn't really expected to have her stubborn insistence in leaving her code in place vindicated so explicitly, but she was never one to look a gift goat in the ass either.

She opened a new mail window and typed rapidly. Next time someone tells me we don't need any of my old programs, they're fired. She reviewed it, then hit send and it went on it's way to Sinjin's inbox. With a satisfied grunt, she went back to reviewing the report.

A soft knock interrupted her a few minutes later, however. Jade put the page down and leaned on her elbows. "C'mon in."

The door opened and Mariela poked her head in. "Good morning, Jade."

Jade leaned back in her chair and studied her assistant. "Morning." She lifted a hand and curled a finger, beckoning Mariela inside the office. "Siddown."

Looking slightly apprehensive, Mariela did so, taking a seat across from Jade in one of her comfortable visitors chairs. "Sim?"

Jade steepled her fingers. "I have a meeting with Cat in about an hour over your little incident last week."

Mariela sighed. "Jade, I am so sorry.."

"Shh." Jade waved her off. "Don't apologize. I only wish you'd gotten some pictures. The two of them were up to no good, and I'm happy Tori didn't end up there with them."

"They were very nasty women, chefa."

"I know." Jade said. "The problem is, they're also a huge honking pain in the ass, and it's to their advantage to make us look as bad as possible."

Mariela sighed. "We should not have gone to that place. It was a wrong thing to do, Jade. Even if you do not say so."

Her boss shrugged. "And I shouldn't have challenged every hacker on the planet. But I did, and here we are." Jade nudged the stack of papers. "So, what I want you to do is just let me handle it okay?"

"chefa?" Mariela looked confused.

Jade got up and paced around to the front of the desk, perching on the corner of it. "I'll meet with Cat, and take care of whatever bullshit she got handed. Tori's up to her ears in this damn bid, and I don't want her bothered with it."

"Okay, Jade, if you say so." Mariela still looked unsure. "But the policeman came to us on Friday, and I spoke with him. I think it is fine." She said. "He said to me that what they were was some nuisance?"

Nuisance. Jade chuckled inwardly. "All right. Listen, I'm going to need to schedule a security meeting after lunch. Book the big conference room, and get all the ops department heads in there."

"One o'clock?"

"That's fine." Jade nodded.

Mariela started to get up, but then she paused. "Jade, I did not get to ask you – did this thing you were in New York for go all right?"

"It did." Her boss answered.

"Was Vitoria a good help for you?"

Jade's blue eyes twinkled warmly. "Couldn't have done it without her."

Satisfied, Mariela stood up and headed for the door. "Is good. Mayte will be very glad as well. She was very concerned that everything would go nicely."

Jade went back to her seat and dropped into it, pulling her report back over to her. A motion on her screen caught her attention and she looked over, studying the security alert flashing.

Damn.

Tori came around the corner of her office entrance and almost plowed into her administrative assistant. "Whoa!" She hauled up short and put a hand out to steady Mayte, who had fairly bounced off her. "Hey, Mayte."

Mayte's eyes widened. "Oh, Ms…" She hesitated. "Tori. Hello. Good morning." Her expression was a cross between apprehension and concern. "You are here so early."

"C'mon inside. I want to hear all about our rock em sock em staff." Tori grinned, indicating her office door. "I've got a staff briefing at ten, but we've got some time to talk."

Mayte followed her inside and closed the door, then came to stand a little awkwardly beside Tori's desk. "Tori, my mother is very upset with us. She said for me to come to you and to apologize."

Tori put her tea mug down on her desk and came over to face her assistant. "Why?"

"Because we should not have confronted those ladies."

"Ah." Tori folded her arms. "Well… I'd agree with you, except that.. .remember the story Jade said for you to ask me about?"

"Yes." Mayte fastened her eyes on Tori's face.

"Once upon a time, back when Jade and I first started seeing each other…" Tori turned and wandered over to the window, peering out. "and we were still keeping it secret from everyone… "

"Excepting my mama."

Tori chuckled. "Uher… yeah. Except for her. From everyone else, though." She amended. "Cat and Robbie asked us out to dinner. We knew Cat suspected what was going on, so we were trying really hard to pretend we were just friends at the restaurant."

Mayte merely watched her, fascinated.

"Now that I look back, I doubt we were fooling anyone, but we were trying hard, and we thought we were doing pretty good." Tori turned and leaned against the glass. "Until one of Jade's old girlfriends showed up and started needling her in front of all of us."

"Oh, that is terrible!"

"Uh huh. It was." Tori agreed dryly. "Until I got up and pushed her in front of a tray full of Thai food and she ended up with eel guts up her nose while she swam on the floor in a puddle of peanut sauce. Rob still has a picture of that."

"Oh." Mayte covered her mouth with one hand and tried not to laugh.

Tori came back over to her. "So, they're probably pretty lucky." She admitted. "Because if I'd have been there, and they'd have started talking trash about Jade, I would have done a lot worse to them than dump chili down their shirts."

"Really?"

Tori's face turned suddenly serious. "Yes." She drew in a breath. "Jade means everything to me. If I wasn't there to watch her back, I'm glad you two were."

Mayte looked a touch overwhelmed at that. "Then… no matter what my mama says, I am glad too." She replied softly. "It did not feel like a bad thing to me."

"It wasn't." Tori stepped closer, then impulsively held her arms out. "C'mere." She enfolded Mayte in a hug, giving her a gentle pat on the back. "Don't worry about anything. If they cause more trouble, Jade will take care of them." She released the girl, but clasped her shoulders. "You guys have nothing to worry about."

Mayte was blushing furiously. "T.. thank you."

"Okay." Tori gave her a pat on the arm, then let her go and perched on the edge of her desk. "Now, we've got a lot of work to do to get ready for this ship bid. I'm going to need some rush orders on equipment, I'll need you to get ahold of Elaine and see what we can do to pressure the vendors."

"I will call her right away." Mayte replied softly. "Did… did the jefa's thing in New York come out.. did you fix the problem there?"

Tori smiled inwardly at the half nervous stutter. "Oh yeah." She reassured Mayte. "Jade had it pretty much resolved before I even got there. I just added some moral support for a couple hours and then we spent some time out in the city."

Mayte's brow puckered a little. "You left so quickly I thought…"

"That I was going to save the day?" Tori went to her chair and sat down, giving her trackball a roll. "Nah. I just went to be with Jade. Sappily romantic, but true." She propped her chin on her fist and gazed at her assistant. "Occupational hazard with us."

Mayte recovered her composure, and smiled. "I hope I get to feel that someday also." She said, as she escaped towards the door. "I will set up the meeting with accounting for this afternoon."

"Thanks." Tori watched in mild bemusement as her assistant disappeared, then she shook her head and took a sip of her tea. She turned to her mail, and studied the newest ones, having cleared most of the weekend's backlog from home the prior day. "Ah."

She clicked on the one from the Port of San Francisco's agent and leaned on her elbow, studying the schematics the man had provided. There were four possible places for the four ships to come in at, and she had no idea which spot would be filled with the ship they'd be assigned.

And yet, waiting for that information before she ordered a working circuit was just idiotic. Tori gazed at the scattered buildings, and pondered her choices. Four docks, four dock buildings, four choices of places to drop a line into. The agent did not know which dock would be assigned to which ship.

Well, shit. Tori sent a note off to Quest, asking him which ship they'd be working on. If she had that, maybe she could gently nudge the port agent into assigning it a pier, and if that worked, then she could call Verizon and drop the circuit.

And, they'd need a satellite. Tori sent a note off to Sinjin. They had a regular provider, but she didn't think they knew anything about marine satellites. However, they might know someone who did.

At least it was a start. They had their work cut out for them, though.

Something chittered at her elbow, making her jerk and look up to see Gopher Jade peeking out from behind her mail window. "Hey!" She chased it with her pointer, and caught it by the tail. "Aha! Gotcha!"

"Ooooooo." The Gopher Jade flopped on it's back and squiggled, making her release the mouse button as she started laughing. Immediately, the creature bounced to it's feet and scurried away, wagging it's finger at her. "Oh, you are so damn twisted." She leaned closer, peering at the thing. "Hey. .what t-shirt is that?"

Gopher Jade sashayed across the screen now that he wasn't being molested. It had a tiny white t-shirt on, which bore the words 'Hackerz suck!' Tori sighed, and watched it as it pulled out a magnifying glass from it's non-existent shorts and started peering around her desktop.

Apparently Jade had her work cut out for her, too.

Tori removed her sunglasses as she came to stand near the pier wall, gazing thoughtfully at the concrete structures around her. It was so hot, the pavement was giving off heat waves, and the place was pretty much deserted here in the noon time sun.

She walked to the edge of the fence and peered through it, spotting a maintenance man or two walking slowly down the empty docks. One was kneeling beside an iron tie cleat painting something on the concrete surface, another drove a forklift towards a stack of pallets with a low rumble.

"Hm." Tori turned and walked to the front of the pier building, which consisted of a few glass doors, and a series of garage type roll entrances that went off into the distance. She checked her watch, then blew her already sweaty bangs off her head with a long breath and leaned against the wall to wait.

The heat was almost overpowering. Tori debated waiting in the Volvo, then spotted a county truck trundling slowly her way and decided to give it a chance to be her port agent inside.

The truck creaked to a halt and the door opened, disgorging a tall, gray haired woman with a clipboard. She came around the end of the truck and approached Tori. "Ms. Vega?"

"That's me." Tori agreed. "Are you Agnes?"

"Yes… thanks for coming over." The woman gestured towards the glass doors. "Let's go inside." She led the way over, opening the doors with a set of keys on her large ring. They went from the muggy heat to a frigid interior as she closed the doors behind them, locking the locks again before she went on. "Sorry – we get so many vagrants out here I've got to keep the doors closed or we'd find them under the floorboards."

"Ah." Tori murmured, as they crossed a large open space, and went through two sliding glass doors into a larger room in the back.

"Okay, this is pretty typical of all four piers." The port agent said. "These are four older buildings we've decided to renovate for the next cruise season, so no one's using them. It'll be better than using the cargo piers anyway. There's no space back there, and we'd be moving you every other day."

"Okay." Tori nodded agreeably. "So this is where they put cruise liners normally? The passengers? Because one of the things we're supposed to do is make it so they can check the passengers onboard while they're in the waiting area, before they get on."

The agent brightened. "Well, that'll work great then. Yeah." She led the way over to one side of the room. "Over here is where we usually put the boarding agents, and in here's a small office I guess you guys could use. Otherwise, it's pretty open."

Tori peered into the tiny room, which bore the scars of many years of administrative use. It was grungy, but it had a lockable door, and.. She peered under an overturned table. Wall jacks. "Okay." She sighed. "Is there a telco closet?"

"Around the back here." Agnes led her through two sliding doors she had to shove open by hand, and they emerged into a stifling hot interior garage. "This is where they put the luggage." She explained. "So customs can get at it."

"Ah." Tori grunted.

Agnes opened a closet at the back of the garage, and they peered in. On the back wall was a punch down block, and the rest of the room was ringed with power panels. There was one black case on the wall near the door, however, that looked a little familiar. Tori unlatched it and folded the door open, spotting the mounting hardware inside for a network switch. "Ah."

"That's for the wiring in the building, but you'd have to put your own equipment in there." Agnes said. "Now, the problem is, as I told you, we won't know which ship is going into which pier until they get here."

Tori closed the switch case. "Why?" She asked. "I mean, you know they're coming.. why not just assign them?"

"Wish we could." Agnes waited for Tori to leave the closet, then she closed the door. They walked back towards the main building. "But the port won't, since they've never seen these, and they don't trust the specs we were given. The drafts are really important, because the piers vary."

"Uh huh." Tori could understand that, since she knew what a draft was, and knew there were places in some of the smaller islands she and Jade visited that the Dixieland Yankee had trouble getting into because of hers. "So that'll be…"

"The day they get here. First one that shows up, will be assigned, and so on."

Drat, drat, drat. Tori sighed as she edged through the non-working doors and back into the air conditioning. "Okay." She put her hands on her hips and studied the space again. "I can't wait until then to drop circuits."

"Yeah." Agnes seemed sympathetic. "I know, the other people that are doing this thing called, and they said the same thing."

"Really? So what are they going to do?" Tori asked casually.

"Use cellular." The port agent replied. "Some kind of new process."

Some kind of untested, barely adequate process. Hm. "Well, I'd use that for one pc, but not for an office." Tori decided. "Okay, I know what I need to do. Thanks for meeting me down here, Agnes. It's greatly appreciated."

The woman smiled at her. "Absolutely no problem – having four ships in here in the summer is a big windfall for the port – we'd be glad to do anything we can to make it good for you."

"Except pre-assign the piers." Tori said wryly.

"Well…"

"It's okay." Tori started for the front doors. "We'll manage it somehow."

She bid Agnes goodbye at the sidewalk, and crossed behind the port agents truck towards the small parking lot in front of the pier. Her Volvo huddled there in the heat, looking very blue and lonely, and she slid behind the wheel with a grimace as the hot leather hit the back of her legs. "Ugh."

She started the engine and got the air going, then leaned back and pulled out her phone. She opened a new message and tapped out a directive, then paused, tapping her fingers on the edge of the device as she thought about what she was doing.

It wasn't really a risk, per se. It was an expense. The question was, should she incur the expense, and accept the cost in order to ensure she had the environment she needed to do the job? Tori nibbled her lip, counting the days and knowing even if she put the order in today, assuring the delivery by the time the ships arrived was taking a chance.

But. She had leverage with Verizon. With a slight nod, she hit send on the message. Then she put the phone down and shifted the car into reverse, backing out of her spot, then driving carefully out of the parking lot into the stream of eighteen wheel trucks delivering containers to the container loader docks at the far end of the port island.

She checked her watch again, then opened her cell phone and hit the speed dial. "Hey, sweetie."

"Hey." Jade's voice sounded relaxed. "Just got out of my meeting with Cat."

"Ahah. How'd it go?" Tori asked.

"I don't think Telegenics lawyer likes me."

Tori chuckled low in her throat. "There's a shocker. Listen, before you tell me more – I'm heading to the Bread Factory.. you want a sandwich?"

"Mm.. chicken curry." Jade responded instantly. "And that spicy soup if they've got it."

"Okay. Now.. what did the lawyer say?" Tori navigated carefully through the traffic. "Are they really serious about pressing charges?"

"Not anymore."

"Ah.. that's good."

"I basically told them since it was off company property, and off company hours, it wasn't a company problem."

Tori blinked. "Um…"

"And if they wanted to pursue it on a personal basis, I'd welcome a suit that explained why his clients were trying to entice my partner out to convince her what a scumbag I was."

"Ugh." Tori winced. "Hon, I don't' think that's exactly what they were up to."

A shrug could be heard distinctly through the phone. "Doesn't matter. It was enough to scare him off. Besides, that was the subject matter that made our battling assistants dump the chili bowl, so…" Jade chuckled a little. "Anyway, one less thing to worry about. But listen.. "

Uh oh. "Yeah?"

"Mariela just told me Mayte just told her that you got an invitation from Quest to a kick off reception at the port this Saturday."

"Just me?" Tori pulled into the small strip mall that held one of their favorite sandwich shops.

"You and a guest."

"You and me, then." Tori sat back. "Okay, so here we go again. Can I hope maybe that Telegenics will send someone else to do the bid now that it's on?" She got out of the car and headed for the restaurant. "I've just scoped out the port, Jade. It's going to be a pain in the ass working here."

"Uh huh. I figured."

"I'm dropping lines into all four possible spots we could be. I'll just cancel the ones that we don't need." Tori said, holding her breath a little as she waited for her bosses reaction. Jade hated.. HATED wasting provisioning, and she knew it.

"Hm."

"Two chicken curry on croissants, provolone, nothing else, two spicy soups, one coffee." Tori told the order taker, still listening to the pensive silence on the other end of the cell. "Hon, I had to. I couldn't risk not having it, and they won't tell us where they're putting the damn things until the last minute."

Jade sighed into the phone. "Yeah. I know. I just.."

"Hate wasting the money." Tori handed over some cash. "I know."

Jade clucked her tongue a few times. "But you know what, this is your project." She finally, somewhat surprisingly, said. "So go for it. I've got hacker bees flying around my head like gnats, so that's what I'm going to concentrate on."

Tori felt uncertain all of a sudden. "Okay." She said, slowly. "Are you sure you don't want to.."

"I'm sure." Jade sounded confident. "Tori, my being involved is only going to make it tough on you, we both know it. In fact, why not take Sinjin to the reception?"

"Sinjin?"

"I'm the problem." Her partner said, in a reasonable tone.

Tori frowned. "Can we talk about this later?" She asked. "I need to think about it."

A bit of silence. "Okay." Jade said. "Sure."

"It's not that I don't think you're right…" Tori said in a rush. "I just… I want to talk to you about it."

"You don't want to take Sinjin?" Jade hazarded a guess. "If you want, I'll go with you, Tor, I was just trying to make things a little smoother."

"I know." Tori relaxed a little. "It surprised me, that's all."

"Okay. See you in a bit?"

"Be right there." Tori nodded. "Just getting the sandwiches. See you in a few minutes." She folded the phone and tucked it into her belt, waiting for her order while she tried to reassemble her thoughts.

Jade was right – she knew that. The core of their problem with Telegenics was the personal issue Shari had with her partner. But now, it might even be more than that given what had happened last week, so would Jade's stepping out really solve anything?

Or just make it worse? Tori gazed off into the distance, facing her own insecurity with a grimace. The truth was, now she didn't want to face Shari and Michelle alone, and the reasons had nothing to do with business. She wanted Jade there, antagonist or not.

Despite her big ideas before she'd gone to New York, about how she was protecting Jade from having to be involved. Despite her confidence.

Damn.

"Here's your order, ma'am." The boy behind the counter handed her the bag courteously. "Have a nice day."

"Thanks." Tori took the bag and headed out the door. "For the thought, anyway."

Damn, damn damn.

Jade edged past the rows of switches, ignoring the apprehensive looks of the on duty techs in the ops center. She dropped into a seat in the back row, at the master console that wasn't generally manned and keyed up some views, wrapping her hands together and resting her chin against them as she studied the results.

"Ma'am?" One of the techs got up and faced her. "Can we do something for you?"

"No." Jade gave him a baleful look. "Just siddown and leave me alone."

He did so quickly, burying his nose in the console without a backwards glance.

As though she could feel Tori's wry look on her, Jade sighed. "Listen up, all of you."

Four heads turned timidly towards her.

"I'm not trying to be rude, okay?" Jade said. "I'm just working on something, and I know this place better than any of you do. So don't worry about it."

The techs relaxed. "Yes, ma'am." The one who'd approached her said. "We know that…we just wanted to help you if we could."

"Thanks." Jade said. "Now siddown, and leave me alone."

This time, the man grinned a little. "Yes ma'am." He went back to his reports, and the rest of the techs did as well, but the atmosphere was definitely a little lighter.

Jade shook her head, and went back to her own display. She called up the network topology, and studied it intently. The main part of the attack had hit them in specific places. Not their external websites – those were bypassed entirely. This had hit them in their tier one interfaces, where the big circuits connected them both to the Internet, and to their global network.

That meant, Jade reasoned, someone had some pretty solid information on their infrastructure. She didn't like the idea, but knew that it was almost impossible to prevent some information to leak out, and after all, the telcos were big companies with lots of people making generic wages who could be paid to punch up their provider account and read off circuits and patch points.

So.

If she was going to design a global threat solution, where would she put it? At the network core? Jade's finger traced a few lines. No, because if the threat got that far, she was screwed. Her fingertip stopped over the exterior access ports. No, it would have to go between their infrastructure, and the outside circuits, and that meant a secure appliance.

However, she couldn't put a bottleneck in the network. That would negate all the hard work she'd done over the last few years to remove the damn things. That meant that anything she put in place had to be able to parse all the data traffic, and yet, not impede its performance.

It was a huge puzzle. Jade gave the diagram a fond grin. She loved puzzles, and if she could solve this one, not only would she be in a position to solidify their network offering.. she'd also be off the hook for being the idiot who'd made them a target the size of Antarctica.

She pulled out her phone and tapped a message open, addressing it to their hardware provider. She scribbled a note, then sent it off, her mind running over the possible approaches she could take on the thing's programming.

It was exciting, thinking about something brand new. Designing the network had been fun too, but she really hadn't created anything that hadn't already been there, just designed the best possible one she could. This was something quite different.

"Ms. West?"

The voice brought her out of her musing with a start. "Yes?" She glanced up sharply at the console tech.

"Sorry ma'am.." The man gave her an apologetic grin. "But you're being looked for." He pointed at the door.

Jade looked up to find Tori in the doorway, holding a bag and grinning impishly. With a slightly sheepish look, she got up and circled the consoles, heading for her partner. "Ah.. thanks." She joined Tori at the door. "I'll be back."

As she left, she sent one last look back at the master console, then she grinned and let the door close.

Yeah. She'd be back.