Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3) (16 page)

Nuñez looked a little glazed. He turned and started out of the office.

Milton called after him, “Before you get in any real fights with her, you also might want to look up and see just how she won that Medal.”

***

Amy grinned, “Felton Bonapute was denied bail again. Seems that they’ve found some DNA evidence implicating him from one of the murder scenes.”

Ell swallowed and said, “Great, we don’t want him getting out again.” She held her hand up for a “high five.”

Amy grinned, “I think I might have the hang of how to move your entangled molecules? You want to show me how you want me to position them? I should be able to do some tomorrow.”

“Yes! Come on in and let me take you through it. I’d love it if I didn’t have to do them all myself!”

Ell spent about 20 minutes showing Amy exactly how she wanted the positioning of the entangled molecules to be carried out. After Amy had successfully positioned one she pushed back from the table, “Whew! I can see why you don’t want to do all of them yourself!”

“It
is
a huge pain, but you’ll get better at it, they won’t all take this long.”

Amy said, “Now, about dinner.”

“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten. I am hungry so I would have remembered pretty soon! What do we have tonight?”

“Sorry, I didn’t get time to make dinner, and it’s Friday night, so I made a reservation at this new little restaurant about three blocks from here.”

Ell frowned, “I really don’t want to take the time. Can’t you order in so I can work on this,” she waved at the micromanipulator, “a little more?”

Amy put her hands on her hips. “Absolutely not! You put me in charge of ensuring that you had
some
social life remember?” She glared impressively, “That means going out occasionally on the weekends, even if it’s just for dinner.”

Ell raised an eyebrow and tried to frown again, “I put you in charge of my social life?” A little grin broke through, “I don’t remember tasking you with that.”

Amy looked up as if studying her HUD, “It’s right there, a sub-clause to the overall directive to do whatever it takes to make you happy. I take you to Tres Locos. I take you to Martial Arts. I make sure you meet young men—now I’m taking you to dinner.”

Ell gave her a resigned smirk, “OK, OK,” she waved her hands in submission, “We’ll go out. I’ll have a social life. It’ll be good for me, right? Just let me put ‘Raquel’ on a little better.”

Once Ell had put her wig back on and applied the prosthesis on her nose, she added to her makeup and met Amy back out in the front room. They walked the three blocks to the newly opened “Sal’s.” It appeared to be an upper scale Italian eatery. Amy stepped up to the hostess station, “Reston reservation?”

The hostess glanced at her slate and said, “Yes, Ms. Reston, the rest of your party is already here.”

As the hostess led them toward the back Ell raised an eyebrow at Amy, “Rest of your party?”

“
Social
life, remember?”

As they walked deeper into the restaurant, Ell saw Barrett and Roger from her security team sitting at one of the tables, then she saw Gary sitting at a table across from two women and a man? Gary looked up at her and smiled, then Ell’s mother and Gram turned in their seats to look at her!

Ell gave a little shriek and ran to her mother, giving her a big hug. As they did so her mother whispered in her ear, “Happy birthday Kiddo.”

Ell drew back and stared at her Mom. “Arggh, is it October 23rd? I hadn’t been paying attention!” She shook her head, “Dang, I’m getting old.” She grinned, “Nineteen! Next thing you know I won’t even be a teenager anymore.” She turned to her Gram and gave her a hug too. “You’re looking good Gram!”

Gram winked at her, “Yeah, well someone done went and took the stress out of my life, so I’ve been taking better care of myself.” She whispered to Ell. “I just need to find myself a man like your mother has and I’ll be all set.”

Ell turned to look at the man at the table. It was Miles Duncan, the policeman who helped the night Ell was kidnapped. He’d progressed further and further into his “mother’s new boyfriend” status. They shook hands. He said, “Not that I’d wish a kidnapping on you, but meeting your mother the night you were kidnapped was the best thing that’s ever happened to me, El… Raquel.”

Ell grinned at him and said quietly, “Thanks for remembering to use that name.”

Gary had waited patiently through the family reunion, now she turned to him, “Gar’! Thanks for coming out!” She gave him a hug too, tight and fierce.

He thought,
Wow, she feels…
so
great!

They sat and ate an enthusiastic dinner, talking about old times and new adventures. From meeting Amy, to flying UAVs, to Felton Bonapute. When they got around to the Chinese, Gary described that encounter in a low but intense voice. They even managed to get through the meal having only failed to call Ell “Raquel” one time when Gram slipped in her enthusiasm. Though everyone else was full, Ell ordered tiramisu and the restaurant brought it out with and candle and a cheery rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

Ell’s mother reached under the table, “It’s hard to get a present for a girl who can buy anything she wants, but Amy tells me you’ve been enjoying dancing at a Western type bar so I figured I could at least dress you in style.”

Ell opened the gift bag enthusiastically and pulled out a red silk western shirt with piping, embroidery and mother of pearl snaps. “This’ll be fun!”

Gram got out a small box which proved to contain her Grandmother’s prized opal necklace. Her Gramps had given it to her Gram and, as a child, Ell had often mooned over it when looking through her Gram’s jewelry. Ell’s eyes quickly misted over and by the time Gram had fastened it around Ell’s neck she had to dab her eyes and blow her nose.

Amy said, “Now that’s a hard act to follow!” She held out an envelope. When Ell opened it she found a set of tickets to take the family to Cirque del Soleil there in Las Vegas the next night.

Suddenly Ell was embarrassed to realize that Gary would feel he owed her a present too. Her impulse was to try to get everyone up and moving, thus showing she didn’t expect a gift from him but he pulled out a small glass bottle and handed it to her saying, “My gift is the ashes of my heart.”

Ell held it up and saw that it had a faint dusting of black ashy material in it. She turned to him excitedly, “Tori?!”

He nodded, they aren’t all exactly the same size, but I worked out a way to make them all very close to the same size, so a lot of them should be the same size.”

Ell gave him another hug, “Thanks Gar’!”

Ell’s mother said curiously, “What is it?”

“Carbon nanotube tori, or toruses. I’ve been wanting some for my research and so I tracked Gary down because he makes nanotubes.” She said grinning at Gary, “He thinks we accidentally ran into each other at 4MA, but actually I had relentlessly pursued him, hoping he’d agree to make me some tori. Now he’s probably wondering if it’s really even my birthday.”

Gary raised an eyebrow, “Hah, it was well worth it, just for that one kiss you gave me at Tres Locos.”

Chapter Seven

Felton Bonapute’s eye fixed the man on the other side of the glass. “Not just her, but that red headed Air Force bitch that broke my wrist too. You’ll get the rest of your money when I hear what I want to hear about them.” He held up his good hand with a finger extended like it was a gun, then pulled an imaginary trigger.

***

Nuñez rapped on Milton’s doorframe. “Come in.” Milton said, leaning back in his chair, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“Looks like we need to issue you some refurbished Mark 1 eyeballs, Chief.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna be old someday too, Nuñez. Or,” he growled with a fake glare, “maybe not!” Then he grinned, “What’s your shit hot El Tee doing this week?”

Nuñez rolled his eyes, “The boys are wearing gloves. I checked, you were right about the oils and acid pH being bad for several of the components. I also looked her up; she’s just as impressive as you said.”

Milton said, “Here watch this.” He threw the video record from The Flight Risk up on his big screen and they watched it together.

“Holy crap boss man! What just happened there?”

“Here it is in slo-mo.” The video ran again.

The two men looked at each other. Nuñez said, “Remind me again about how much I
don’t
want to piss her off, huh?”

Milton rubbed his head, “You’re tellin’ me, that dude’s wrist ain’t never gonna be right.” He leaned back in his chair again. “So, why’re you invading my sanctum today?

“Well it’s the El Tee again.”

Milton rolled his eyes. “I sure hope it’s not more places where she’s caught your boys not following the book?”

“Naw. She knows the manuals better than anyone I’ve ever met and she keeps teaching people who think they know their job how to do said job better—which can be pretty annoying when you think you know your job. But I’ll admit, she doesn’t slavishly follow the book. When it says to do something the long way and we have a shorter, better way, she pats the guys on the shoulder. She’s shown us how to do several things better and faster than the manual herself. Nowadays, when she tells us to do something different, I ask why. She always has a good reason.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Well, she’s brought in a chip she says she had fabbed just for the RQ-7 comm system.”

“A what?”

“A chip. Plugs into one of the spare BXA ports on the comm board just like it was made to go there.”

“What the Hell’s it do?”

“Improves comm, she says.” Nuñez shrugged. “She says she had it fabbed to mil-spec just for our UAVs.”

“Why’s she talking to you instead of the Captain?”

“Says she wants to be sure it ‘works right’ before she shows it to any brass.”

Milton rubbed his head. After a bit he said, “And you’re thinkin’... what?”

“Damned if I know Chief. I
want
to trust her. But someone wanting to put home made chips in our birds?—Chips that I don’t really know what they do? What if she’s a spy... or something...  Hell I don’t know. Just thinkin’ about it makes my head hurt.”

Milton didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he asked, “Did she say how it’s supposed to work?”

Nuñez chuckled, “Yeah. ‘Quantum technology’ she calls ‘photon gluon resonance.’ Says she has a patent for it but because she’s in the Air Force, the Air Force has a ‘royalty free right’ to the technology.”

“Cripes Nuñez! That sounds great, but I
still
don’t know how it works or how we’d use it!”

“She’s got a matching chip that she says plugs into the control station. She says, with those chips in place data transmission won’t have any satellite transmission latency and that transmission rates will be so much faster that we can send
all
the imagery at full quality, not have to select the images we want to send right away and store the rest for transmission when the bird gets back to base.”

“
Won’t
have satellite transmission latency?” Milton’s brow furrowed. “That latency is from how long it takes for a light speed signal to get to the satellite, get sent around the world to another satellite and back down to the control station. How in the Hell would a chip make satellite transmission faster?”

Nuñez threw his hands up. “You wanna ask her yourself Chief?”

“No. You install her chips. Use one of the birds that’re in for maintenance. Put her other chip on your testing control station. Then check out the maximum data transmission rate and measure the satellite transmission latency and tell me what you find out. Then we’ll go talk to Captain Danson about this.”

Nuñez shrugged, “OK.” He got up to leave.

“Nuñez?”

“Yeah Chief?”

“Slip an RF detector into your testing setup. Measure any radio transmission from the setup before and then after her chips are in there working. Then we’ll have an idea whether she could be diverting any information. I’d trust that woman with my life, but I’ve always heard that the best spies seem… too good to be true.”

Nuñez’ head tilted as he considered, then he said, “Can do,” and headed on back down to his shop.

***

Ell finished wolfing down her lasagna while Amy went over some changes in her investment portfolio that Ell’s advisor had suggested. She said, “OK, tell them to go ahead with the investments in mining and industrial manufacturing. Pull out of orbital launch and ask them to
please
stop suggesting communication stocks.”

Ell looked down from her HUD at Amy, “Are you ready to look at your micromanipulations?”

Amy shrugged as she made some notes. “Sure.” She wondered how Ell made decisions about how to invest millions of dollars in a heartbeat like this?  Was she making wise decisions? Or was she just making quick decisions so she could get back to her beloved research? “Why do you hate communication stocks so badly?”

Ell looked at her pensively, “You’ve got a PGR chip on your headband and you know what they do right?”

Amy’s eyes widened and she covered her mouth, “Oh! You think comm stocks are gonna tank when your chips hit the market?”

Ell tilted her head and shrugged, “Yep. I feel kinda bad about it but not bad enough to ride ‘em down.”

They went back to Ell’s office/lab where they carefully examined Amy’s positioning of the entangled molecules around the upper member of the pair of connected portals Ell was trying to construct.

After Amy left to go back to her apartment, Ell began assembling the new components that she hoped would filter and smooth the current output of her big power supply. It actually didn’t take all that long to place the components in series between the power supply and her port chamber.

She switched it on and had Allan turn off the room light. She slowly leaned back to look for the telltale sparks.

“Damn,” Ell muttered.
There aren’t any sparks!