Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3) (3 page)

Steve shrugged and blew the whistle. Jamieson stalked toward Ell then lunged out, thrusting the pugil stick like a lance. Ell moved like a bullfighter, arching her body to let the thrust pass by on her left, then she struck Jamieson lightly on the back of the head with the pad on her stick. Steve blew the whistle again, “Second strike, eighteen seconds off the clock.”

Jamieson shook his head like a bull in the arena, snorted once and hissed, “This is bullshit!” He stared fiercely at Ell.

With a concerned look on her face she asked, “You still OK?” Jamieson nodded vehemently. Ell turned to Steve “Whistle please?”

This time when the whistle sounded Jamieson stood in place, evidently having decided to take a defensive posture. He held his stick horizontally across his lower chest. Ell walked to him and stopped near the edge of his reach, watching his eyes. Suddenly, he swung the right end of his stick out at her.

This time instead of dodging she blocked the padded end of his stick with the central bar of her own. He swapped ends and punched out with the left which she blocked as well. A flurry of blows shot out with Ell blocking each of them precisely in the center of her stick as she began backing away. Feeling he had the upper hand, he pursued her but she led him around the ring so that he couldn’t propel her out of it. Even in the superb condition Jamieson was in, the pace of his strikes slowed after a circuit of the ring --then there was a sudden thump. His headgear was on sideways so that the earpiece covered his eyes.

Steve blew the whistle, “Three strikes, game over. 43 seconds off the clock.”

Jamieson ripped the crooked head gear off and threw it to the mat, “This is bullshit!” he practically screamed it this time, stalking toward Steve, rage on his face. “I hit her a million times and you didn’t blow the whistle. She grazes my headgear and you do?”

Ell stepped between Jamieson and Steve. Her face glacially still, she said, “You never hit
me
, Mr. Jamieson, only my pugil stick.” She didn’t mention how careful she’d been to “only” hit his headgear after what she’d done to one of her trainers at the Academy. “Review the video record from your AI if you’d like.”

Jamieson glared at Ell, “I could have blown you off the mat any time if I hadn’t been afraid I’d break you in two! And if your boyfriend hadn’t been blowing the whistle every time I got near you.”

Ell put her hands up, “OK, Mr. Jamieson. I’ll accept your word for it. Now, if you’d leave us?” She raised her eyebrows politely.

“Not until I kick your boyfriend’s ass,” he roared, lunging around Ell, toward Steve.

There was a loud “crack” as Ell slapped him in the mid-face. Jamieson dropped to the mat, then rolled over and sat up holding his nose and blinking rapidly. Blood seeped from beneath his hand and began dripping off his fingers.

Ell dropped to her knees in front of Jamieson. “I’m so sorry, I should never have let you goad me into this.” She looked up, “Randy, please get the first aid kit.” She turned back to Jamieson, “Do you know where you are?

Jamieson nodded blearily. “Da gym.”

She held up three fingers, “How many?”

“Ffree,” he said, a stunned look in his eyes.

Ell nodded, “Again, I apologize.” May we look beneath your hand?” He lifted it for a moment. Ell said, “All the bleeding seems to be coming from your nose, there aren’t any lacerations on the outside.” She turned back to her team, “Barrett, can you take him to the ED to get patched up and checked over on my account?” Barrett nodded, eyes wide. “Thanks.”

After Jamieson had been taken away and Ell had left for her apartment, the rest of the team sat and watched what had happened from all the different viewpoints of each of their AI’s video records. Even in slow motion it was hard to catch all the events. Randy turned to Steve, “Holy cripes Steve, what the Hell does she need us for? The girl’s a one woman demolition derby!”

Steve shrugged. “The Chinese have successfully kidnapped her twice in the past year. Once they drugged her, once they Tasered her. She escaped both times, the first time without any help. Presumably they’ll up their game next time. Their objective seems to be to get her out of the country. It’s our job to be sure that they don’t succeed.

“Why?! Surely they don’t think she’ll do gymnastics for them?”

“She’s some kind of genius at physics too. All the money she’s using to hire us comes from an invention she made in November; she was dirt poor before that. The Chinese apparently want her to do physics research for them.”

Mary said, “But Steve, she’s spending money like it was water. Are you sure she’s not going to run out and leave us in the lurch? What if this ‘invention’ of hers doesn’t pan out?”

Steve smiled, then lifted his shirt and turned around, saying, “Look Ma, no backpack for my AI.” They all looked at him blankly. He tilted his head with a wry grin, “So, she’s invented a chip, she calls it a PGR chip, that communicates wirelessly, without radio, over unlimited distances. The CPU of my AI is sitting at home on my desk and she’s upgraded it to ‘near supercomputer’ status. So I have tremendous processing capability but I’m not carrying anything but my headband with a chip that ties me to this high powered computer back in my house!”

“But what if someone blocks the signal?”

“Can’t be blocked, intercepted, read or detected.” Eyebrows rose. “That’s why she has so much money. She mentioned that she donated a hundred and five million dollars to North Carolina State University and she
never even went to school there!
If she can
donate
that kind of money, I think she can probably afford our services for the foreseeable future.”

He looked around at the group. “Next on our agenda, she’s been assigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. We’ll be moving to Las Vegas, so I hope none of you have gambling problems. First though, at least some of us will need to follow her temporarily to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio where she’s going to have an abbreviated officer training course.”

Chapter Two

Ell pulled off her brunette wig and fluffed her reddish blond hair as she drove up to the gate at Nellis. She was looking forward to this assignment with some anticipation, wondering what the Air Force had in store for her. She assumed that they wanted to take advantage of their special access to her and upgrade their communications systems to PGR, especially their UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) fleet, much of which was based here at Nellis. Communicating with UAVs on the other side of the world through satellite radio transmissions would be crazy now that PGR was available. Even before she’d had the idea for PGRs, Ell had often worried about the possibility that opposing forces might find a way to interfere with, or worse, suborn communication with American UAVs. It only made sense that the Air Force would want to take advantage of its royalty free right to use her PGR technology, something that enemies couldn’t interfere with.

The Nellis gate AI queried hers and captured an image of her face, then lighted green. The guard waved her through and the AI in her Ford Focus drove her to a “Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems” office. In a few minutes she began cooling her heels outside the exec’s office.

With nothing else to do she looked up at her HUD (Heads Up Display) and began re-examining some of her quantum dimensional equations, searching for her holy grail, a method to achieve interstellar communications. Ell had become convinced that the fact that no radio signals had been detected from other stars did not mean that there weren’t any advanced civilizations on the worlds surrounding them. Instead she believed that it meant that they didn’t use radio for communication. They simply used PGR or something like it and therefore didn’t radiate in the radio band. She hoped that she would be able to find a method to communicate with such civilizations across interstellar distances. According to her theory, it would be possible if entities at the two stars both had one member of a pair of “entangled” molecules in which Photon-Gluon Resonance could be elicited. Ell’s equations did not predict any limit to the distance over which PGR could communicate instantly. There was however, the minor problem of delivering one member of such a pair of entangled molecules across the light years to the other star! Ell had a gut feeling that such a molecule could be delivered somehow through the same tiny 5th dimension that the entangled molecules in her PGR devices used to communicate with one another instantly. But for the life of her, she couldn’t see how that might actually be accomplished.

Deep in thought, her eyes had lost focus on her HUD when she heard her name.

“Lieutenant Donsaii?” said A1C Jobst, marveling at how pretty the new “El Tee” was. “Colonel Ennis is ready to see you now.” When she stood, Jobst was surprised to see that she was as tall as he was. “Right this way Ma’am.” He motioned down the hall. As he walked beside her he kept glancing over at her. She walked confidently and her uniform seemed to fit unusually well. He shrugged, her slender shape no doubt made her an easy fit.

Jobst stopped at a door labeled, “Lt. Colonel Ennis, Executive Officer.” Jobst knocked on the frame of the open door and said, “Colonel Ennis, I have Lieutenant Donsaii here.”

“Send her in.”

Ell stepped into the office and came to attention. “Lieutenant Donsaii, reporting as ordered sir.” She said, staring at the wall over the Colonel’s head, expecting him to call her to “at ease.”

He didn’t. He turned to the airman and said, “Dismissed, Jobst.” Then he turned back to Ell and looked her up and down. She was astonishingly attractive but looked like a teenager. Ennis had never seen a woman look this good in uniform. Suddenly he realized what must be making up a significant part of her “look.” “What is the maximum regulation height for women’s heels for the Air Force uniform, Lieutenant?”

Ell’s heart sank. Sounded like the Exec was a real ball buster. Oh well, she’d had a lot of experience with that type of attitude as a Cadet. Ell continued to focus on the wall over Ennis’ head. “Sir, the maximum height has been reduced to one and one half inches.”

“How high are yours?”

“Sir, one inch.”

“Bullshit!” He stood, “Let me see.”

Ell made a right face and lifted her left foot up behind her so that the low heel of the shoe would be evident.

“Do you have lifts inside those shoes?” he asked dangerously.

“No sir. I
do
have unusually long legs.”

He grunted and sat back down. “At ease.”

Ell assumed parade rest and looked Ennis’ in the face but didn’t say anything.

“How old are you anyway?”

Ell was a little surprised. Surely he would have her record readily available if she was being assigned to his squadron? “Sir, I am eighteen years old.”

“My God! I assumed you just looked young! How the Hell did you get those gold bars?”

“Sir, I graduated from the Academy at an unusually young age.”

“What! The Air Force Academy?”

“Yes sir.”

“When did the Academy start turning out children?”

“Sir, typically the youngest is aged twenty one. I am an unusual exception.” She decided against mentioning that she’d actually been seventeen when she got her diploma. She was torn between a sense of relief to be somewhere that her reputation had not preceded her and an irrational irritation that he didn’t know who she was. Inwardly she sighed. It seemed unlikely that the Air Force had made her assignment with an eye to using her to outfit the UAV fleet with PGR after all. Seemed more like the usual, “left hand not knowing what the right is doing” that happens so often in large organizations.

Ennis threw his hands up, “What the Hell am I supposed to do with you?”

Assuming the question was rhetorical, Ell said nothing.

Ennis eyes went to her ribbons, seeing her Air Force service ribbon that everyone got and a Marksmanship ribbon. His eye’s narrowed again. “What’s the light blue ribbon?”

“Um, Sir, that’s the Medal of Honor.”

Ennis rocked back in his chair feeling like someone had punched him in the gut. “What?” He said weakly.

“It’s the Medal of Honor, Sir.”

“I heard you the first time Lieutenant.” His brow lowered. “Did you order that as a joke?” He said dangerously.

“No Sir.” Ell said quietly. She was surprised, hers had been the first Air Force Medal of Honor in fifteen years. It had been quite the buzz in the Air Force Newsletter. She would have thought that he would at least have heard about it.

Suddenly recognition spread across his face. “Oh! You’re that ‘Olympic Cadet’ that stopped the terror attack?”

“Yes sir.” Ell again said quietly, not at all sure how he was going to take this.

Conflicting emotions raced across Ennis’ face, then he rose to his feet, came to attention and saluted.

With some surprise, because salutes are not normally rendered indoors nor while “uncovered,” Ell returned the salute. A salute is a gesture of respect, so she took it as such... she hoped?

“Pleased to have you on our team, Lieutenant. Please be seated.” He gestured at one of the two chairs.

Ell sat, using the posture of seated attention that she had learned at the Academy.

Ennis looked up at the ceiling. Then he said, “Obviously I should have looked through your record prior to interviewing you Lieutenant. If I remember right, you’re some kind of math whiz too?”

“I am pretty good at math Sir.”

“And I suppose you must have pretty good reactions to be a gymnast?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Is your vision bad? Not that fighter pilots aren’t dinosaurs, but they still try to shoehorn the best physical specimens into that mold.”

“Uh, No Sir. I have 20/20 vision. I suspect they didn’t want to expend the resources training me as a pilot because I only have a two and a half year commitment.”

“I thought you went to the Academy?”

“Yes Sir. But I only attended for two years, so I only accrued a two and a half year obligation.”

“What? How did you wind up a Lieutenant if you didn’t graduate?”

“Sir, I did graduate. I achieved advanced placement in most of my classes when I arrived and completed the remaining requirements for graduation in two years.”