“OK, eventually we need to talk about how we’re going to run this team, but for now I want to watch this flight and ask you questions, both to be sure you know your jobs and so I understand the job and my role in it better.”
Apert and Jones had been confident that they knew their jobs before that flight. Donsaii, however, peppered them constantly with questions, undermining their assumptions about the flight, their UAVs, their skills and the entire nature of their job. Instead of just flying to the waypoints set by command, to photograph the items specified, she constantly watched the terrain, asking them what the various structures were and having them zoom in on the structures to confirm or determine their nature. They’d never run a flight this intense before and weren’t sure whether to hate it or take pride in it. When their replacement shift arrived, Donsaii looked Apert and Jones up and down, then said, “Looks like this team could use a little PT. Let’s take a run everyday at end of shift. Today I’d like you to run me over and introduce me to the maintenance crew.”
Apert restrained himself from rolling his eyes and shortly found himself huffing along with Jones and Donsaii on the way over to the hangars. It was only about a mile and a quarter but Donsaii appeared to be completely exhausted by the time they got there. This surprised Jones since she was supposed to be such an athlete. After a period with her bent over holding her knees and Apert wondering if she was gonna puke, she took a deep breath, stood up, smiled and said. “Let’s meet the maintenance guys.”
Apert thought that, hard as that little run had been on her, she probably wouldn’t take them on any more. He turned out to be wrong on that count.
Jones knew Chief Master Sgt. Milton and introduced Ell to him. By the time they found him she was beaming and full of energy. It was as if she hadn’t just looked like death warmed over when she finished the run. “Chief! Thanks for meeting with us. As you can tell, I’m so brand spanking new my ‘paint’s not even dry,’” she waggled her eyebrows, “and I’d really like to understand the machines we’re flying from inside those boxes across the field. Can someone show us around the guts some?”
Milton’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t they bring you over here to look at the birds during your training Ma’am?”
“Yes they did,” Ell said cheerfully, “but they really only showed us the outsides. I’m hoping you’ve got one opened up so we can see what’s inside? Or maybe we could come back tomorrow?”
Milton had never had this happen. On the other hand, in maintenance they always bitched that the geeks flying their machines didn’t understand or even care what they were flying. He quirked a lip, “No problem Ma’am, we have an RQ-7 opened up over there.” He began to walk that way and started the superficial spiel that he usually gave on tours. When they got to the actual machine though, she interrupted him with a series of questions. Tough questions that were far more perceptive than any he’d ever had before. After going over the airframe, to Milton’s bemusement she was soon head down and ass up, deep into the command and control section of the bird. When she had asked him her fifth question about the comm section that he didn’t know the answer to, he began to get frustrated.
In a chipper voice from down inside the canopy, Donsaii’s voice said, “I can tell you’re getting aggravated with all my questions, Chief. Can you just have one of the guys who works on the comm section drop by to fill me in? That way you and my men, Apert and Jones, can just get on about your own business.”
Milton assigned one of the comm guys to her and walked away, shaking his head. She may be gorgeous but, just like all the rest of the El Tees in the world, this one is a pain in the ass.
***
Ell came in the door and swept past Amy sitting at the dinner table waiting for their daily report. She stepped into her “office” and looked. Her heart leapt as she looked at the pressure gauge for her chamber. It was definitely lower! Her port must be allowing some gas molecules to escape. Presumably their exit was heralded by the energy leakage that created the sparks that she could see still visible beneath the table. The continued presence of the sparks suggested that she finally had a power supply that would hold up to the demand. Amy had to call her three times to get Ell to come to dinner, and even after she was there her eyes kept defocusing while she ate.
Amy finally gave up trying to talk to Ell about the day’s issues, none of which were all that important anyway. Ell sat at the dinner table for almost an hour, then had Allan order parts for an improved power supply that she hoped would deliver a highly filtered and stabilized, fluctuation free current with which to energize her port and thereby narrow the range of distances over which the ports opened. It hardly seemed useful to send something through a port and have it return to this universe much nearer or farther than intended! Then she fell back to thinking again. What if I define both the entry and exit points for entry into the fifth dimension with quantum entangled pairs. One member of the pair at the entry and the other member at the exit? The paired entanglements would then define the exact points in this universe that the “ports” would join. Actually, she realized, it would take many quantum pairs, distributed around the entrance and exit of the port. She wanted a bigger port than the one she had made so far so that flow through the port would be fast enough that she wouldn’t have to leave it run for a day to detect a pressure drop. She ran the math. It should require a lot less power to make two defined ports connect than to make material travel through a port when she’d only defined one end of the connection. Then her shoulders sagged, contemplating how long it would take to create enough quantum entangled pairs and micro-manipulate them into position to make a significantly bigger port.
***
Millie looked over her class and said, “Today we spar. I not teach you something new. Instead, we see how you do with what you have learned so far.”
Gary looked at “Raquel” out the corner of his eye. After the attack in the pizza parlor he’d realized that she must normally hold back from what she could actually do when she was in their classes. But, he’d actually been holding back some too, as a guy, not wanting to hurt a girl he had a crush on. He wondered how he might do against her in a sparring match where the moves weren’t scripted by Millie? Besides he couldn’t just let a girl whup up on him in a sparring match in front of the whole class, could he?
Millie laid out rules for the sparring that were intended to keep anyone from getting seriously hurt. She held up a finger “A real fight over quick. Serious throw or strike end it quickly—so today we all take turns in the center of the ring. Each match will only last as long as it takes one of you to score what I think a solid strike or throw, then the next pair will be up.” She pointed, Cheryl, you and…” Millie’s eyes swept along, “Robert. You two will go first.”
Cheryl’s eye’s opened wide, “But, I’ve never worked with him… he’s too big!”
Millie put her hands on her hips, “So if you attacked by a big man, that what you going say? ‘Excuse me, but you too big?’”
A nervous laugh rippled around, then Millie said, “I little, and old. Robert, you come and attack me!”
Moments later Robert was uncomfortably circling around the tiny Millie. She promptly began taunting him, “Come on, you afraid of little ol’ me? You waiting for me get even older?”
Eventually Robert stepped forward, reaching out for Millie. She grabbed his wrist and spun in under him. He flew over her to land heavily on his back, slapping down as taught. Despite making a pretty good landing, when he got back up he looked like he was having a little trouble drawing a deep breath.
Millie said, “Now, you thinking that this only happened because I have a black belt? Let us have someone else try,” her eyes lit on Ell, “Raquel, let us have you and Alexander spar next.”
Gary’s eye’s widened. Alexander had to weigh well over two hundred pounds! How in the world did Millie expect Raquel/Ell to deal with him? Alexander looked pretty uncomfortable with it too. He stepped out on the mat across from Ell who s
tood with her head tilted slightly, considering him as if he were an interesting specimen. Nothing happened until Millie sighed, “Raquel, you must attack Alexander. He is timid because he fears he might hurt…” Millie’s voice halted as Ell spun in under Alexander’s arm and sent him flying through the air over her back. He landed badly, flat on his back with a loud whoosh of air, then lay there gasping, obviously with his wind knocked out of him.
Ell calmly stepped over him to kneel at his head. Saying, “Sorry Al.” she pulled up on his shoulders, then let go. A moment later she lifted his shoulders again.
Millie raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Raquel, what you do there?”
Ell looked up, “He got the ‘wind knocked out of him.’ When that happens, you can’t pull in a breath. Pulling up on his shoulders fills his lungs for him and should make him feel better.” She looked down at Alexander, “Is it helping you Al?”
Al nodded. After a few more breaths he stood back up, glancing at Ell repeatedly with a mixture of awe, respect and embarrassment.
Millie exclaimed, “I not know I could help person with no wind!” She shrugged, “I try that next time it happen.” She turned back to her class, “Cheryl, you ready to try now?
The class went on, each of them getting turns in the ring. When it was over Gary found Ell next to him. She quirked an eyebrow, “Feel like some pizza?”
“Sure!” Actually Gary had spent much of the past week looking forward to the possibility of pizza with Ell. “But, I think you should let me buy. I’m feeling like a ‘kept man’ with you buying my pizza for me.”
“You can buy if you want, but trust me, I’ve got more money than I can spend. You shouldn’t waste yours. Actually, you can buy your way into my heart and my pizza fund with some nanotech.’ She raised her eyebrows, “I’d really like some nanotori. You know, the nanotubes bent in a circle to make a hula hoop type structure?”
“Sure I know what a nanotorus is. Nanotubes are my life. But you can buy nanotori commercially, why do you want one from me?”
“Well, actually because I want big ones where the torus has at least a 2mm inner diameter, and I need them in pairs that are exactly the same diameter.”
Gary frowned. “Oh, now that’s something significantly more difficult all right. I can make you big tori by the thousands but you’d have to sort through them to find pairs that are the same diameter. Would that do?”
She smiled at him, “That’d be very cool. I’ll buy your pizza then?”
He grinned back, “Deal.”
***
Though Ell had already graduated, when the graduation was held for the rest of her UAV training class she was invited back for the ceremony and to pick up her diploma and ribbon. After the ceremony the class decided to go out for a celebration and gathered with exuberance at “The Flight Risk,” a civilian bar near the base where mixing of enlisted and officers wouldn’t be frowned upon.
Even though she would be with a military group, Ell had Allan let Steve know she was leaving base, and she saw him sitting at the bar when she entered. Randy and Barrett had a table near the door.
Ell had barely told Allan to arrange to pick up everyone’s tab when Axen said, “All right now, as congratulations I’ll buy all you monkeys your first beer!”
As the group jostled around the bar putting in drink orders, Axen shouted to the group, “Hey, some anonymous patron bought all the drinks for you fools, even the first one that I was going to get! Drink up! But, remember some of you have duty tomorrow.”
The exuberance increased with the announcement, along with wonderment that anyone would give them an open tab. There was speculation that someone had wealthy parents or that some wealthy veteran in the bar had sponsored them. Fortunately, no one considered Ell as she had very carefully suppressed knowledge of her newfound wealth.
Axen grinned at Ell, “I hear you’ve completely intimidated your crew already?”
“Oh no Sir. I am making them run with me after every shift but I don’t have enough endurance to actually intimidate them.”
“But, I heard that your introduction to them did involve catching a couple of experienced UAV pilots with their audible radar detect alarm turned off?”
“Well yes sir.” Ell was surprised. She hadn’t told anyone, so the guys must have commiserated with friends and let the story out on themselves.
“And being painted by PRC radar.”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“Well they think you’re ‘Hell on wheels’ over there, congratulations.”
Sasson, dropped by, “Hey, Donsaii, just wanted you to know that I’ve forgiven you for wrecking my takeoff on your first day.” He winked at Ell.
Axen said, “You know Sasson, if you hadn’t pissed her off when you first met her I think she might have been content to let you graduate first in the class,.”
Sasson grinned, “Sir, I now know that, in your wisdom, you put her in the class with me just to prove to me that I wasn’t as shit hot as I thought I was.”
Ell looked back and forth between the two of them with an amused expression. “All about you, eh, Sasson?”
Sasson said, “Of course. Anyway, I’m here to challenge you to a game of pool in hopes of redeeming my lost honor?”
Axen said, “I’ll get in on that action. I want to be able to tell my grandkids I beat an Olympic athlete.” He looked around the crowd, “We just need a fourth.”
Ell glanced around and saw Amy come in the door. Amy came directly over to Ell. “Hey, congratulations!”
Ell introduced Amy to Sasson and Axen as her “friend.” “Do you want to play pool with us? I need a partner.”
“Sure.”
Sasson said, “All right, we have a girl for each team!”
Ell grinned at him, “’Fraid you’ll lose to a couple of girls?”
“Oh my goodness, Major, looks like we’re going to have to put these ladies in their places.”
While the guys were getting a pool table, Ell turned to Amy and asked quietly, “Is there a problem that you came out here?”
Amy grinned, “Nope. I could say I just didn’t want to miss our regular evening ‘debrief,’ but actually I felt like an evening out, and your grad celebration seemed made to order.” She looked around the room and raised an eyebrow, “There’s some hunky guys here, just like I hoped.”
“Great! But remember, with this group, you’re a friend, not an employee. Also, remember that as ‘Ell Donsaii’ I don’t even know Steve or the guys.” Ell really liked Amy. She was pleasant, smart and fun to talk to. She genuinely liked what she was doing to make Ell’s life easier and had worked hard to understand the lab equipment Ell had in the “office,” often running Ell’s physics experiments for her while Ell was at work on base. Their relationship had become more like a couple of partners on a project than employer-employee. Ell hoped she could teach Amy how to use the micro manipulator to position entangled molecules for Ell’s quantum entangled pair portals she’d begun work on.
Claiming “rank hath its privileges” Axen broke but didn’t get anything in.
Ell was surprised when Amy put in three balls in a row. She whispered, “Hey! You didn’t tell me you could play.”
Amy gave Ell a gentle nudge with her elbow, “A girl’s gotta have some secrets.”
Sasson turned out to be very good, putting in five balls before getting stymied.
Ell wondered what to do. She didn’t want to use her physical skills at or even near their limit and appear freakish. She settled for putting in a couple of balls and purposely left Axen a good leave. Axen proceeded to put in the guys’ last two balls and then the eight to win the game. Ell realized the two officers were both pretty good at pool. Sasson good naturedly crowed about the win. “You ladies want to split up onto different teams now?”
“Hah! You think we’d split up just because you fellas got lucky in one game?”
Part way through racking the balls, Ell saw Amy tense up. She looked where Amy was gaze was
focused and saw a big man with slicked back hair. He was wearing a suit and standing just inside the door. Not typical attire for bars near the base and the man was staring at Amy. Ell lifted the rack off the balls and quietly asked, “Is that Felton Bonapute?”
Stiffly Amy said, “Yeah, I wonder how the SOB knew I’d be here. This is not a place he’d ever show up by accident…” She shrugged, “I’ll go talk to him.”
“No! You do not want to meet him over near the door. Make him come into ‘friendly territory.’ As to how he knew you’d be here, he probably has a tracker on your car.”
Ell heard Steve’s voice in her earphone. “That’s Felton Bonapute. Do you want us to take care of him?”
Ell quietly said, “No, I hired you guys to defend me. If I need to go on the offensive, I should do that without dragging you into it. Please stand by in case I do need defending.” Then Ell asked Allan, “What have you learned about Felton Bonapute so far?”
Allan responded in her earphone, “He lives a life hundreds of thousands of dollars more expensive than his salary from Casino Real would finance. He has been arrested twice on suspicion of trafficking in narcotics and three times for complaints of violence against women. None of those arrests have led to convictions, all of them being overturned on technicalities. One of those women was later murdered. I’ve run an evaluation of the status of his previous employees and determined that three women who have resigned from employment under his supervision at Casino Real have been murdered. No one else seems to have noticed this connection but I would advise against going anywhere with him. On his income tax he has underreported his income, declared dependents he doesn’t have and taken deductions for charities that he doesn’t actually support. He has…”
Ell said, “Thanks, that’s enough.”
Sasson broke the rack and put in a stripe. Bonapute started shouldering through the crowd in their direction. Ell brightly said, “You’re up next Amy.”
Amy shook herself and started nervously chalking her cue.
Lieutenant Page 11
