Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3) (17 page)

She felt the power supply, it was only warm. She leaned down and sniffed. No burning smell. Frustrated, she stared at it a minute, then disconnected it, hooking up her multi-meter to determine whether the power supply was in fact delivering the correct power. It was, but it was only about 20% of the expected current! Her “current smoothing” circuit must be consuming a lot of the power output from the power supply?

A smile crossed her face as she had Allan turn the lights off again and began slowly turning up the control knob on the main power supply, peering under the table. Sure enough the sparks appeared and slowly drifted down, farther and farther from the chamber as she increased the power. But, they were much more tightly clustered than they were before she’d installed her “smoothing” circuit. “Yes!” she murmured. Then she sighed in frustration. If her “smoothing circuit” consumed this much power, would she need an even bigger power supply?

***

Milton’s AI spoke in his earphone. “Master Sergeant Nuñez relays a message that they are about to begin testing transmission rates on the El Tee’s new chips if you want to ‘mosey on by.’”

Milton pulled his head back from where he’d been watching tests on the airframe of one of the UAV’s that had made a rough landing. “Carry on, Sarge.”

He wandered outside and looked around for a RQ-7 parked outside where it could get “line of sight” to a satellite. Sure enough there was one “out” a couple hangars down. Whistling tunelessly, he started that way.

When Milton walked up to the little group he saluted Ell. She hid a smile. She had been able to tell that Nuñez was very nervous about installing her chips and suspected he’d ‘go up the chain’ somewhere. She appreciated that he’d respected her wish not to go to Danson until she was sure the chips worked.

Nuñez looked up and said brightly, “Chief, Lieutenant Donsaii has provided us with some improved communication chips for the birds and we’re testing them out.”

Ell kept a poker face at this transparent attempt to make it seem like Nuñez hadn’t already let the Chief Master Sergeant in on the whole thing.

For his part the Chief raised his eyebrows and said, “How are they working?”

Nuñez shrugged, “Well they’ve reduced the satellite transmission latency to zero.” He raised an eyebrow. “Of course if the chips were to simply transmit data from the one here in the bird to the one in the control console over there, directly, instead of sending it up to the satellite and back, we’d get the same measurement.”

The Chief cleared his throat, thinking that had to be what was happening. If the chips were radiating directly to one another that would hardly be useful when the bird was on the other side of the world. “What about data transmission rates?”

“Pretty amazing Chief. With the equipment we’ve got, we can only test transmission rates up to a hundred terabytes per second but it does that flawlessly. The bird doesn’t come close to producing that much data so there isn’t any reason to try to test any higher rates. How it’s doing that over a satellite link, or even direct transmission from one chip to another, I have no idea.”

Milton frowned, sure he must have misheard. “A hundred terabytes per second?”

Nuñez raised and eyebrow and nodded.

Milton turned to Ell. “That’s pretty amazing Lieutenant. What does Captain Danson plan to do with this tech?”

Ell grinned crookedly at the two senior NCOs, looking back and forth from one to the other. “Chief, I feel sure in my bones that the Master Sergeant has already told you I didn’t want to tell Captain Danson about it until I was sure it worked.”

The chief grunted, “That’s as may be Ma’am. But we’re not sure we should be installing unapproved electronics on Uncle Sam’s birds without higher authorization than yours?”

“Good, and you shouldn’t. But we haven’t proved much yet. I’d like you to help me do a better test, still without putting one of Uncle Sam’s birds in the air. I can hear the reasonable doubt in your voices about the results we’re getting with this test. But, if we can ship a chip to Okinawa and do a test around the world, then you’d have to believe the latency test right?”

“Uh, yes Ma’am.” The Chief’s brow crinkled. “But how would we measure latency?”

“Oh, there’s an algorithm in the console to send round trip ‘pings’ to a bird and measure latency. The AI needs it to determine how far ahead it has to plan during landings.”

“How do we know the ping went there and back?”

Ell laughed, “Good point. The outgoing signal is supposed to be modified by the bird before it’s returned to confirm it went there and back. If I wanted to cheat, I’d have to reprogram the console software so that it modified the signal all by itself. When we get to doing the test, you and the Captain might just have to trust that I’m not so devious as to trick you that way. It would be pointless to fake the test anyway because flight control sucks with latency. Any pilot can tell you when they’re flying a bird with latency. So once we tried to fly a bird it would be obvious whether there was latency or not.”

The chief frowned, “But there’d
still
be latency. I doubt even the hottest pilot could tell for sure the difference between some latency and a little less latency.”

Ell grinned back and forth at the two NCOs again. “Sergeant Nuñez thought I was crazy when I told him there wouldn’t be
any
latency so he didn’t relay that part of the story to you, did he?”

“Um, he might have said it, but I might not have believed it. No one would really believe that, I don’t think.”

“Good for you Chief. So let’s find out for sure. What I want to do is repeat this test with a bird on the ground in Okinawa so we’ll be able to prove for sure whether I’m crazy or not.” She shrugged, “In a few months no one will have trouble believing. I have a paper coming out in Nature documenting the phenomenon. Also a company based on my patent for this technology will start selling product shortly after that. Right now the company is still keeping it under wraps so they’re having me hold publication.”

Milton and Nuñez looked at each other a moment. It was obvious to Ell that they were wondering just how far off her hinges she’d fallen. Finally Nuñez spoke, “I say let’s give this crazy notion the benefit of the doubt and send a chip over. I’ve got a buddy in Okinawa UAV maintenance; I can get him to plug it in. If it works, we can tell the Captain and congratulate each other on our wisdom. If it doesn’t, we can have the Captain call the guys with the straight jackets.”

Milton raised his eyes to the heavens, then nodded.

Ell grinned and clapped her hands together, “Thanks guys. If it works, you owe me a beer and I’ll owe you a car.” She handed Nuñez a box, “Just in case it works,” she winked, “here’s enough chips for all the UAVs in Okinawa so we don’t have to send another shipment.” She grinned at him and walked back into the hangar.

The two noncommissioned officers looked at each other a moment. Finally Nuñez said, “She’s either crazy or amazing. So far the evidence points at ‘amazing.’ Did you understand that wager about a ‘beer and a car?’”

“Nope, but Martha ain’t gonna let me buy the young lady a car, so I hope it only put me on the hook for a beer.”

***

Amy raised her eyebrows as she watched Ell consume her hamburger. She said, “I don’t think I’m
ever
gonna be able to come to grips with the way you eat so much without getting fat! I’d be a blimp!”

After dinner Ell showed Amy the sparks she’d been producing with the current setup. Then Amy had her examine the ring of entangled molecules that she’d completed aligning that afternoon. Despite the many days and evenings Ell and Amy had spent aligning the molecules in the two rings, the circles they had created were still microscopic. Ell sighed, but you had to start somewhere and they were bigger than the single ring that was producing the sparks. She’d hoped that a single ring could send something through the 5th dimension to reappear somewhere and so far it seemed that she could do it but the material sent through—just gas so far—seemed to be reappearing in this universe over a pretty broad range of locations. This dashed her hope that she could send something, herself perhaps, somewhere in an instant. If she were to try to transmit herself up to a satellite in orbit, some 300 kilometers up, with a 10 percent or 30 kilometer margin of error, she could wind up a long way away from the station and in some pretty serious trouble. However, if there was a receiving ring at the space station and she could step instantly from one to the other that would still be pretty cool. Who knew what she’d learn from activating this newly built pair of rings? Tonight she’d work on assembling the equipment to energize the receiving ring.

***

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.”