Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3)

by Laurence Dahners

  ***

  Ell knocked on the doorframe of Chief Milton’s office. He stood, saying, “Yes Ma’am?”

  “Hey, Chief, I just dropped by to tell you I’ve been reassigned back to flight operations tomorrow. I’d like to thank you for having your guys teach me about the insides of the birds.”

  Milton grinned, “El Tee, anytime you want to come back and pretend to learn from my team, while you actually whip them into shape for me, you’ll be very welcome to do so.”

  Ell gave him her trademark crooked smile and said, “Thanks! You might suspect that I have an ulterior motive in dropping by?”

  Milton sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes Ma’am. Nuñez already told me your chips were in Okinawa and that I could expect you to be dragging me down to watch the testing sometime soon.”

  “Aw, Chief, you sound like someone who doesn’t want to go see what happens!”

  Milton’s eyes crinkled as he got up and came around his desk, “True, but someone’s got to keep an eye on the leprechaun. It seems I’ve been given that dread responsibility.”

  They walked over to the maintenance section’s test console where Nuñez waved Ell into the remote pilot’s seat. She sat and keyed open the microphone, saying, “Sergeant Davis? Do you read me?”

  After a momentary pause, Davis’ voice came back from Okinawa, “Yes Ma’am, we read you five by five.”

  “And the bird you have there, RQ-7, five eight niner, is engines and weapons disabled, but otherwise pre-flighted and checked out ready?”

  Pause, “Yes Ma’am.”

  “OK, I’m going to test the control surfaces—ailerons right, left—flaps down, up—rudder right, left—elevator down, up.”

  Pause, “All checks, Ma’am.”

  “Fuel reads full…” Ell went on to confirm all gauges and electronic controls per a standard preflight.

  After another brief satellite transmission pause, the sergeant said, “All confirmed, Ma’am.”

  “OK, Sergeant, now I’m asking you to jack that new chip into the tertiary radio jack on the comm board.”

  “Done, Ma’am.” the sergeant said but his voice was distorted with a “chorus” effect as if he and a friend were saying the same line.

  Nuñez frowned, “What happened to that ‘five by’ signal we were getting?”

  Ell grinned up at him, “We’re getting two signals now. One of them is immediate and the other is delayed a few hundred milliseconds by satellite transmission.” She turned back to the microphone, “Sergeant, please un-jack the primary radio from the comm board.”

  “Are you sure Ma’am?” He was obviously wondering how they would communicate with the comm board unhooked from the radio system.

  “Yes, go ahead. If you can’t contact us after it’s un-jacked, just plug it back in.”

  His answer, “Done, Ma’am.” came back clearly and immediately, without the momentary pause that had been present before. Nuñez and Milton looked at one another with eyebrows raised.

  Meanwhile Ell began repeating the preflight checks she had just performed, again getting positive responses. Finally, Ell “pinged” the bird to determine transmission delay. The digital readout said “0 milliseconds.” She turned and smiled up at the two sergeants, then said to the microphone, “Sergeant, I’m going to turn the bird’s camera onto something interesting. Make sure everyone’s clear of the mechanism?”

  “Clear, Ma’am.”

  The screens on the console had been showing the pavement below the RQ-7. Now the views swung up to show the airfield at Okinawa in color, UV and IR. Ell rolled her chair back from the console and looked up, “Chief, would you like to wiggle the joystick for the camera control to get a feel for the latency?”

  Bemusedly, Chief Milton leaned over and moved the joystick, noting that the image of Okinawa moved instantly as he moved it, rather than with the momentary delay he’d experienced with distant craft in the past. He motioned, and Nuñez wiggled the stick. He and Nuñez looked at one another again. Finally Ell reached out and rolled a scroll wheel, zooming the color image in on a man across the runway until his face filled the screen. “Please note I’ve just used the console’s digital zoom to confirm that we are looking at a full digital download of the camera’s 200 megapixel video images rather than the compressed, low res 2 megapixel images that we’d get from the standard comm link.” She bounced enthusiastically up out of her chair, “Think we’re ready to talk to Captain Danson?”

  The two NCOs looked at the grinning lieutenant, then at each other, then shrugged as one. “Might as well,” Milton rumbled.

  ***

  Stimson looked up at a knock on his doorframe. Varnet stood there, as rumpled as always. He said, “Our geosynchronous Asian observation satellite just went down.”

  Stimson grimaced, “What happened to it?”

  Varnet rolled his eyes, “Space debris or meteorite is the assumption. I think the debris consisted of steel shot placed on an intersecting path by the Chinese.”

  “Do you have any evidence?”

  “Just a gut feel. They needed to test their weapon on our equipment close to the time of their attack on Taiwan so they could be sure it worked but we wouldn’t have time to analyze what happened, much less develop a response.”

  “Great!” Stimson moaned. “Have you figured out what we can do about it?”

  “I still think we should find out how this new communications technology company PGR Comm is coming along. The one that’s based on the Donsaii theory.”

  “Come on, Varnet! We need something now! Not your pie in the sky, futuristic, wishful thinking! I’m going to set a meeting with the Secretary tomorrow or the next day. I want you to have something concrete by the time we talk to him.”

  ***

  Ell finished assembling the energizing circuit for the second chamber which had what she thought of as the “receiving ring” inside it, even though either ring should be able to both send and receive. The pressure gauge attached to it read one atmosphere. She went over to the other chamber on her main lab table. The gauge on that chamber also measured one atmosphere but she opened the valve and pressurized it to five atmospheres, sealed the valve and watched the gauge a moment to make sure it was holding stable. She flipped the switches to energize the ring in the chamber and walked back across the room to power up the second chamber too. As she watched the pressure rose a little! Could the flow through the new, bigger ring be that fast? Then she remembered that the pressure always rose a little because energizing the ring heated the chamber some. Although… her calculations suggested that the amount of energy required to successfully energize a port from one ring pair to another was much smaller than the energy to required to open a port without a ring at the other end. Since she wasn’t running as much current, the chamber might not be heating as much? She’d just have to wait and see after she’d de-energized them and they had cooled down tomorrow.

  ***

  The diver snapped the ring shut around the cable and ascended to the surface, trailing an antenna wire. Before heaving himself into the boat he nodded sharply once at his officer. As the boat silently headed back to its tender an encoded signal went out indicating that the last of Okinawa’s and Taiwan’s submarine fiberoptic cables had a detonator attached to it.

  ***

  Amy and “Raquel” walked into Tres Locos again. Ell hadn’t gotten off base until nearly 8PM. She and some of the guys from her maintenance crew had run a mile and then Ell had showered, put on her new Western blouse and jeans and driven over to meet Amy at the bar. She’d put on “Raquel” on the way. With their later arrival this time, the place was crowded. Ell’s growling stomach had her hustling over to the taqueria on the west wall for a Grande burrito.

  Amy watched Ell wolf down the burrito in amazement. “My God, the way you eat!” A worried glint came in her eye, “Are you purging when I’m not looking?”

  Ell wiped her lips in embarrassment, “Sorry, no, I just have a fast metabolism.” She too
k a swallow of her Coke. “It’ll probably slow down when I’m older and I’ll have to watch my weight like everyone else.”

  Amy laughed, “At least you didn’t say, ‘when I’m as old as you.’”

  Ell grinned, “You’re not old! I’m gonna get some nachos, do you want anything?”

  “A Grande burrito and nachos?! My God girl, are you just trying to put me in my place?!”

  Ell shrugged and grinned, “If I’m gonna dance, I’m gonna need some energy,” she said as she headed back to the taqueria.

  Amy had found a table near the dance floor although all the ones next to the floor were taken. Ell plopped down with her Coke and nachos and began wolfing most of the nachos as well, though Amy had a few. While she ate, Ell watched the dancers. There were many more out on the floor this time of night, some swing dancing around the edges with freestylers and line dancers out in the middle. This night some of the freestylers had amazing routines going—as she watched a guy dropped to the floor and began whirling around break-dance style, then leapt back up, did a back flip and dropped into the splits. She wanted to watch him more but her line of sight was blocked by swing dancers much of the time. Ell leaned over to Amy and said, “Sorry to say, but I like this band a lot better than your favorite. That one that was playing last time?”

  Amy punched her gently on the shoulder, “This is my favorite band you doofus. Last time you made us leave while the warm up band was still playing!”

  Ell put her hand over her mouth and raised her shoulders, “Oops!”

  “Yeah, you’re such a party pooper.”

  “Well do you think anyone will ask us to dance?”

  “Let’s get out there so they’ll know we want to.” Amy got up and grabbed Ell’s hand.

  They walked out into the middle and Ell thought Amy was going to join the line dancers again but she stopped where the freestyle dancers were and just started moving to the rhythm. Ell found herself near the guy who’d been breakdancing earlier and watched him with great interest, fascinated by the spinning he did on the ground and the way he kept time to the beat even while doing semi-gymnastic maneuvers like flips.

  Dan noticed the tall slender brunette watching him. She was “wow” pretty though she was only shuffling her feet to the rhythm. Well he didn’t actually care if she could dance; his chances were better, the more impressed she was with what he could do. He winked at her. To his amusement she blushed! She looked away, then shrugged and turned back to watch him. He upped his game a little with a back flip-front flip combo then moved over in front of her. He started imitating the simple shuffle she was doing, even the little hip shake she put in on the four beat, though he emphasized his hip move so it didn’t look effeminate.

  She emphasized hers too.

  Dan threw in an arm pump on the two beat.

  She imitated it.

  He circled his finger, then spun around starting on the one.

  When he faced her direction again, she was completing a turn too! Usually he had to play this game quite a while before a girl got the idea of following him, some never did. She had a huge grin on her face, as if she loved the game he was playing. He made a three quarter turn and she did too so that they finished side by side and quite close. He gently bumped his hip against hers a couple of times then twirled away. To his amazement she twirled a reciprocal to his—it was like she either knew what he was about to do, or was able to duplicate his movements so quickly that it appeared that they were doing them together! He raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of surprise then winked at her again.

  Ell had been embarrassed when the dancer winked at her, showing that he was aware of how intently she’d been watching him. At first she turned away as if to pretend she hadn’t been watching, then decided to just go with it. When he started leading her in little moves, she was even more surprised but really enjoyed matching what he did. After the twirl she saw him crouch forward in obvious preparation to throwing himself up into a backflip so she did too. As soon as he committed to the backflip and she felt completely sure that he was doing one she flipped with him.

  In astonishment, Dan saw the brunette landing from a backflip in synch with him! He did an immediate front flip but, holy crap, she matched him on that too! He’d helped girls do backflips but he’d had to work with them a lot to get them to do it. He’d never danced with a girl who could actually do one unassisted! He’d been so sure this girl couldn’t dance. Now he was determined to prove to her that he could do things she couldn’t. He dropped to the floor to do a “windmill” and this time he felt some relief that she kept dancing upright and simply watched in apparent fascination while he spun. But when he leapt back to his feet, she dropped to the floor where he’d been and windmilled in the exact same fashion as he had!

  She leapt back to her feet with an exhilarated smile plastered across her face. She looked like she was just having a great time rather than trying to embarrass him by showing how easily she replicated his moves. The crowd had noticed them and formed a ring around them, clapping and watching. Dan saw the girl dart her eyes around the crowd. She seemed a little distressed and he briefly wondered why. Excited about the attention Dan started doing even more complex elements. To his great sadness, the brunette resumed her simple shuffle, slowly backing away into the crowd around him and clapping along with the rest. It was as if she thought he was what attracted the crowd’s attention, when he knew damned well it was the simple perfection with which she had performed such astoundingly athletic moves for a girl. Wearing boots no less!

  Ell had greatly enjoyed dancing with the guy, but then a crowd gathered around and she realized that, once again, she was exceeding what other women could usually do and attracting unwanted attention. She successfully drew back into the crowd and out of the sudden spotlight.

  Dan, alarmed at the loss of his sudden dance partner yelled, “Hey girl! Show us what you can do.” She shook her head at him and turned to walk off the dance floor. He found her at a table a little ways from the floor gulping down a drink. “Hey, what happened? You were great out there, why’d you quit?”

  She wiped her lip and grinned, “Shy.”

  “Shy?! You’ve got to be kidding! You dance better than any girl I’ve ever seen and you’re going to try to tell me you’re shy?”

  She shrugged, “Yup.” She took another sip of her drink.

  “Dan,” he said, putting his hand out for a shake.

  She took it and gave it a firm shake, “Raquel.”

  “Only one word at a time?” He quirked an eyebrow.

  She grinned and shook her head.

  “None sometimes?”

  She nodded, still grinning.

  He held out his left hand, “Swing dance?”

  She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, “Fancy?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “OK.” She let him lead her back out to the floor where she proved to be an impeccable follower at swing also. When he tried to initiate a lindy flip or a jump she just ignored him, but even doing standard turns, cuddles and pretzels, her elegant coordination and grace attracted eyes from all over the dance floor. When the song finished, she thanked him and went back to her table despite his request for another dance.

  Back at the table Ell frowned at Amy, “Even dancing simple swing everyone keeps staring at me. Is my wig crooked?”

  Amy laughed, “No, it’s just that even doing a simple dance, you do it so gracefully that the eye just sticks to you.”

  Ell frowned in disbelief. “I’m going to the bathroom to check.”

  Amy followed her and watched her check her image from all sides. “There isn’t anything wrong with your wig. You’re pretty and soooo damned graceful, believe me, graceful will always attract the crowd’s eyes.”

  Ell rolled her eyes and they went back out into the bar.

  They danced on and off for another hour before heading home. As they walked out of the bar Ell noticed a man in a ball cap lean up a
way from the wall and trail after them. She glanced up at her HUD, “Allan, who’s the man behind us?”

  In her earphone Allan said, “Unable to identify. He kept his face in the shadow of his cap and has hair across his eyes. Infrared imagery is not identifying him either because of some infrared defects. These may be silicone. I suspect he is actively trying to avoid being identified. Caution advised.”

  Ell suddenly turned to face the man, “What do you want?”

  Amy took a few more steps before she realized that something was happening, then she stopped, turning as well.

  The man made a dismissive wave at Ell, “Just wanna talk to your friend there.”

  Ell looked hard at him. He didn’t have any evident AI equipment and was wearing some kind of facial disguise with grossly exaggerated features to derail video identification. The fact that he wasn’t making an audio-video record himself and was trying to block his recognition on anyone else’s video record was a strong sign of criminal intent. She glanced around. They were alone in the parking lot so Ell didn’t have to worry about bystanders like the past few incidents, though her stomach still clenched. She wondered briefly why her life had so much drama? Watching his hands carefully, Ell stepped between the man and Amy, again saying, “What do you want?” She put her left hand inside her little purse and freed the strap off her shoulder, falling into her zone.