Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3)

by Laurence Dahners

  “The President called to talk about your chips?” Sykes almost whispered in an awed tone.

  “Seriously guys, I’m sorry you heard parts of that conversation. It has a bearing on this China kerfuffle and you should consider it to be Top Secret, OK? Don’t tell anyone outside this room anything about it until it’s common knowledge.”

  Still wide eyed they chorused, “Yes Ma’am.”

  Ten minutes later Lieutenant Sasson stepped into the room and said, “Donsaii, I’ve been sent to relieve you on this UAV flight. You are to get your ready travel kit and report to travel operations for a flight to somewhere. Apparently, you’re supposed to brief somebody on something?” He raised his eyebrows indicating the question.

  Ell tilted her head, “No one told me, but I suspect I know what it’s about,” she looked meaningfully at Sykes and Tarrant. “I think it is on a ‘need to know’ basis at present. I’ll turn these miscreants over to you. So far the flight is routine except it appears that the PRC is loading weapon systems onto those bulk carriers off Quanzhou.”

  Ell contacted travel ops about when she was expected to report for her flight and was told, “the sooner the better.”

  She had Mary from the ready team meet her just off base with her travel kit, a box of PGR USB chips that she had in her apartment and her flight suit. “I’m not sure where they’re sending me or how long I’ll be staying, but I may want the team to follow me there. I’ll let you guys know as soon as I figure it out.” Mary nodded and resisted the impulse, instilled by her own years in the service, to salute the young officer.

  Ell walked into travel ops with her ready bag in hand and a Captain accosted her, “Are you Donsaii?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We’ve been waiting! Come on!” he started off at a fast trot, out of the building and over to the flight line.

  Ell looked around for a transport or cargo plane but the Captain took her directly to a two-seater F-35 variant with a ladder leaning up against it. They handed her a helmet which, to her surprise, fit very well. They must have looked her up on the database. They hustled her up the ladder and into the rear seat. The ground crewman leaned in to buckle her in, jack the helmet into the plane’s systems and point out the barf bag. To her astonishment, within ten minutes the plane was rolling down the runway and up into the air like a rocket. Once they were in level flight, there was a click on the intercom and a familiar sounding voice said, “Donsaii?”

  “Yes Ma’am?”

  “Lieutenant Andrews here. When I was yelling at you in basic training back at the Academy I never dreamed I’d be ferrying your ass across the country like some kind of ‘hot shot.’ Congratulations!”

  “Um, thank you Ma’am.”

  “Hah! I should thank you. I was proud to have known you when I heard you won the Medal and I have a feeling I’ll be prouder yet if I ever figure out what this is all about. Who are they shipping you over to talk to?

  “Um, I’m afraid I haven’t been told. I don’t even know where we’re flying?”

  “Well, well! The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing? I’m so surprised. I do believe, however that you have ‘need to know’ where you’re going, so I’ll reveal to you that we’re using accessory tanks to fly supersonic to Andrews AFB in DC where I’m to taxi you directly to a helicopter, so someone very important wants you somewhere in the DC area in a big hurry.”

  Ell identified the Pentagon in the dimming light outside the windows of the helicopter as it swung in to land. As it settled onto the pad she saw a first lieutenant, holding his hat and making waving motions as if he wanted her to hurry. In a couple of minutes he had her and her bag loaded onto a golf cart and heading in to the building. She asked, “Do you know who I’m here to meet or what this is about?”

  “Nope.” He grinned at her, “that’s way above my pay grade.”

  “Can we stop off at a bathroom?”

  He raised his eyebrows, still grinning, “Are you trying to get me court martialed? What have I ever done to you?”

  The golf cart pulled up at a conference room where a Major said, “Is this her?” He looked at Ell’s nametag and said, “Good! Have her wait inside.” The Major looked up as he spoke to his AI.

  The Lieutenant opened the door to the empty conference room. Ell looked at him in desperation. He shifted his eyes to the bathroom signage across the hall. Ell took the situation in hand and stepped across the hall.

  When Ell came out she heard the Major saying, “Where is she?!”

  She stepped quickly across the hall and into the conference room, “Sir, I’m here.”

  The Major had just begun to glare when the door opened and a blue dress uniform with four stars entered. Ell recognized General Ellis, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. She remained at attention. As she was indoors she resisted the impulse to salute. Ellis turned to the Major and said, “This her?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The door opened and an Army general in green and a Naval admiral in black entered. Ell suddenly realized this was a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff! She wondered if she should have tried to change into her dress uniform while she was in the bathroom?

  The door opened again and more high level officers poured in, the brass were all shaking each other’s hands and sitting down. One of the admirals, whose nametag read “Immenstall,” said, “OK, who’s running this briefing? Let’s get a move on, it’s late.”

  To Ell’s dismay, the Major pointed at her, “Lieutenant Donsaii, sir.”

  Wide eyed, Ell didn’t even get a chance to clear her throat. An Admiral, sitting behind the nameplate for USPACOM, or Pacific Command, barked, “A 2nd lieutenant? In a flight suit? We’ve got a PRC crisis in PACOM and someone sends a lieutenant to brief us on communications?! I don’t have time for this! I need to get back to my Command!” He started to stand.

  The door had just opened and a man in a suit had entered. “Sit down Joe. You need to hear from Lieutenant Donsaii more than any of the rest of us.” Ell still standing at attention on the side of the room, recognized the Secretary of Defense! Secretary Amundsen walked to the front of the room and surveyed its occupants who had all risen to their feet, including Admiral Joseph Larsson of PACOM who’d just been told to sit. “Gentlemen, you are all aware that the PRC has been increasing force levels in Fujian province near Taiwan for weeks now. You may have heard that they have begun placing weapon systems onto shipping as of this morning. What you may not be informed about, is the recent assessment that the loss of our Asian geosynchronous observation satellite likely was not due to micrometeorites but due to enemy action. It is the assessment of the CIA and NSA that the Chinese have recently put up enough ‘killer satellites’ to take out all our observational and comm satellites over the western Pacific and eastern Asia.” There had been a chorus of indrawn breaths. “Our current intelligence expectation is that they will likely take down all those satellites within the week and invade Taiwan immediately after that.” Everyone in the room blanched. He turned to Larsson, “Joe, I assume that I don’t have to tell you what a mess that will make of all your current crisis response plans?”

  Larsson swallowed, “My God! How did this happen without anyone making me aware?! In any case, that’s all the more reason I need to get back to my command and try to develop a response!”

  The Secretary smiled grimly, “Yes, but, I’ll guarantee that you won’t want to leave until after you’ve heard what the Lieutenant has prepared for us.” He turned and waved Ell toward him, “Lieutenant, show us what you’ve got.”

  Ell had come forward when he waved her up. Now she grimaced and said, “Sir, I’m afraid I was ordered to get on a plane and then flown here without knowing my destination or my assignment. I do not have anything prepared and, though I can guess, I am not certain of the expected contents of any briefing I am to deliver?” Ell could feel Larsson rolling his eyes, but she kept her attention focused on Secretary Amundsen.

  The Secretary gri
maced, then turned to the brass and said, “I believe your term for this state of affairs is SNAFU?” He turned back to Ell, “We flew you here to explain your new communication ‘chips’ to us and help us to quickly understand how they might be integrated into solving this crisis? Just give us a brief synopsis of what we should know about them and then you can answer questions.

  Before Ell could say anything Larsson barked, “Lieutenant? Who the Hell is your senior officer—the officer who should be briefing us on this?”

  The Secretary’s eyes glinted and then tracked back to Larsson. “Admiral, do I have to give you a direct order to ‘shut up and listen?’” He paused, then indicated Ell with a wave, “This is Lieutenant Ell Donsaii, whom you might remember was the winner of four Olympic gold medals in gymnastics two summers ago? You may also recall that she received the Medal of Honor for her role in stopping the terrorists at that Olympics? I believe that she deserves more respect than your usual second lieutenant and a great deal more than you’re giving her?” Eyes had widened among the officers in the audience at the Secretary’s recitation. “Finally, Joe, she is presenting, rather than any ‘senior officer,’ because she invented the technology in question.” He turned to Ell, “Lieutenant, please do your best to fill us in on the nature and capability of your chips and accept our apologies for the failure of communication that left you unable to prepare.”

  Ell had been breathing slowly and deeply to keep herself out of the zone the confrontational atmosphere threatened to put her into. She felt fairly calm but stepped slowly to her bag and pulled out a pair of PGR chips. “A little more than a year ago, while still a Cadet at the Air Force Academy, I published a paper on a new math I had developed which seems to fit well with observed quantum effects such as ‘entanglement’ in which particles seem to be ‘joined’ somehow, even though they are separated by distance. It was my postulate that the particles were joined by a connection through a “fifth dimension” which we are unable to perceive. Therefore communications from one entangled molecule in our universe, to the molecule it is entangled with, by passing through that fifth dimension appear to be instantaneous to us because the distance in that dimension is microscopic. After graduating last summer, I was temporarily detached from active duty to pursue graduate studies in experimental physics. During that time I endeavored to develop a means to use the predictions made in my paper to produce useful communication devices.” She stepped forward and handed the pair of chips to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “This pair of entangled chips can transfer data from one chip to the other at the same rate as can be achieved over the very best fiber optic connections. At present about 20,000 pairs of chips are available and can be distributed to US forces, but they all use USB 5.0 jacks and so fitting them to devices that do not have USB sockets may be problematic. I also made up a hundred paired mil spec chips that fit the BXA ports on the comm boards in our UAVs. Although I don’t know how common BXA ports are on the rest of our military comm boards, during my flight here, suspecting this need I asked the manufacturer to rush production on 10,000 more pairs with BXA jacks. The company is small but should be able to turn out about a thousand a day. Making chips with other jacks will take longer, due to the need to design those interfaces before we can begin production. Therefore, I hope that BXA jacks are as common on military comm boards as I have been led to believe.”

  This time it was the Chairman who interrupted with a frown, “Who approved an order of 10,000 chips? And how did you order them during your flight?! You aren’t supposed to use our aircraft’s comm systems to access the net!”

  Ell took another deep breath to calm herself. “No sir. My AI is hooked to the net via PGR chips so it was not necessary to use the aircraft comm. I authorized the expenditure as…”

  The Chairman interrupted again, “You authorized! A lieutenant doesn’t have authority for such expenditures!”

  Quietly Ell said, “I spent my own money.” She took another calming breath.

  He frowned, “How much are these chips?”

  “In a low production run like this the mil spec versions are about $100 a pair.”

  “That’d be… a million dollars for 10,000 of them, where did you get that kind of money?!”

  Quietly, “Sir, the royalties on this invention are quite generous.”

  The Secretary of Defense raised his eyebrows, “Might she get on with the presentation now?”

  Admiral Larsson had his hand up but without being recognized, interrupted to say, “What do these chips have to do with the fact that we won’t have any satellite observation?!”

  The secretary frowned and put a finger to his lips, then waved to Ell to proceed.

  She said, “You are correct Admiral, that they don’t solve the loss of satellite observation. However, the loss of our satellites will also hamstring our battlefield communications, and unfortunately, even our aerial observation platforms currently use satellites to transmit their imagery back to us. We already have PGR chips in a few RQ-7 UAVs, but could install them in all UAVs in order to provide uninterrupted realtime battlefield observation. PGR chips would also allow our aircraft stay in communication with command far beyond line of sight and our aircraft carriers to serve as battle direction centers because of the ability to obtain data from our aircraft and send direction to them without satellite linkage. Perhaps most importantly, if the PRC were to cut our undersea fiberoptic lines to Okinawa and to the ROC on Taiwan, PGR chips could substitute for those cables as well.”

  “What! What’s their range?!”

  “Unlimited.”

  “What do you mean ‘unlimited,’ I want a ‘range.’”

  “Theoretically, an unlimited numbers of light years. Practically, I have tested a chip pair which successfully communicated from North Carolina to Australia.”

  “With what kind of repeater stations?”

  “None.”

  “How much power does that take!?”

  “Five volts.”

  After a disbelieving silence, “How hard is it to ‘jam’ or intercept their messages?”

  “Jamming or intercepting them is not possible.”

  “Oh, come on. Everything can be jammed or intercepted somehow!”

  “These cannot be. The message passing from one quantum entangled molecule to the other member of a pair is uninterruptible, uninterceptable and undetectable. This has been tested by numerous individuals and is predicted by the math and theory that made it possible.” Ell found herself bemused to not only be standing up to, but to be lecturing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  The officers were sitting back in their chairs and looking at one another as if wondering if any of the others were being taken in by this “unbelievable line of crap.” Ell continued. “The chips will not replace satellites, but will replace satellite communications. It is important to recognize also that they improve on satellite communications in two fashions. First, satellite comm is limited in bandwidth because it is essentially radio, whereas the chips transfer data at much higher data rates that are on par with optical transmission bandwidths. Therefore, for example, the UAVs that I fly normally satellite transfer data at low rates allowing steady transfer of low resolution video with occasional high megapixel images. The high quality video and the rest of the images must await downloading of the UAV’s memory after the UAV has landed. Then that detailed imagery is transmitted by undersea fiberoptic cable. However, PGR chips allow continuous transmission of 200 megapixel video directly back to Nellis. Also, the data transmission is instantaneous, thus allowing much improved realtime control of remote aircraft such as the UAVs due to the lack of satellite transmission latency.”

  Ell saw patent disbelief on the faces in the room but didn’t really know how to convince them without a demonstration of some type which she was not set up for. After a brief pause, Admiral Larsson said, “Just how old are you Lieutenant?”

  “I’m nineteen sir.”

  She turned to the Secretary who had seen thei
r doubt as well. He grinned at her a moment then turned to the assembled officers with a grin that had turned shark-like. “Believe it. How old she is doesn’t matter. I’ve seen the data coming from her UAV and it is delivered realtime at rates over a terabyte per second. A couple of reports from her superior officers confirm that it is either instantaneous, or close enough to it that they can’t measure the delay. The PRC is going to be stunned at our ability to circumvent their strategy, but only if we get on it right away.

  “Now, we need to figure out how to implement delivery of our limited number of chips over great distances to many force elements in the face of this crisis. I expect that we need to send a few chips with Admiral Larsson back to PACOM in Hawaii. Some need to go to each aircraft carrier to be distributed to their aircraft, ship to ship comm within battle groups can continue by radio for the time being. Some chips need to be sent to Okinawa to outfit all our UAVs. And some need to be sent to Taiwan. Let’s work out a plan to divvy them up and then get about our regular business. Lieutenant, how many chips do we have to work with exactly?”

  Despite the dubious expressions on the faces of many officers they fell to arguing, each demanding large shares of the available chips for their particular commands. Ell interrupted once to suggest that each designated asset get one of a pair of the USB chips and the other member of each pair of chips be placed in a safe location with one of the “servers” that PGR Comm was developing to handle signal routing from chip to chip. This would be much more flexible than a lot of point to point connections, at least until a lot more chips were available. Thus communication could go to the central server and be routed back out to whichever chip the communications needed to be sent to, like with a telephone exchange, allowing rerouting as necessary. She also suggested that a chip be delivered to each of the submarines in the area to allow them to have high speed realtime communications while submerged for the first time in the history of submarine warfare. The Naval officers present raised their eyebrows at this striking notion.