Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3) (6 page)

Ell turned to Amy, “Actually, I’m the one who needs an assistant.”

Startled, Amy thought to herself that Ell almost looked young enough to need a babysitter. She’d been in the Olympics a year and a half ago—wasn’t she in college now? “What do you need assistance with?”
And who’s paying me to assist you? And who’s in charge?

“Well, there are a surprising number of things I need help with. I’m actually serving a military obligation as a second lieutenant in the Air Force which requires a lot of my time. I have a problem in that Chinese nationals have been trying to kidnap me which has led to the hiring of Steve here and his security team for protection. I have some research endeavors I’d like to undertake in my spare time. Essentially, I don’t want to spend my time on doing the payroll for my security team, shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, ordering and receiving supplies for my research… I want to be able to focus on the things that
I
want to do and leave the rest of my life to someone else.”

Amy tilted her head, “As a business executive assistant, I’ve done some of those things and,” she lifted an eyebrow, “as a mother I’ve done some of the others.” She paused, “I believe that I could adapt to learn others like payroll, though I would think that your AI could do that kind of number crunching?”

Ell said, “I don’t even want to have to remember to
talk to
my AI about handling the payroll.” Ell asked many questions then, posing “what if” and “if this happened would you be willing to…” situations. Obliquely she determined Amy’s capabilities from her responses. Finally she said, “I’d like to offer you the job if you don’t have concerns. You should at least be worried about the danger the Chinese pose. They appear only to want to capture, not harm me. They apparently hope to have me work for them, but they may be willing to accept some collateral damage to you or perhaps even your children. I sincerely hope that they’ve given up and that, if they haven’t, Steve’s security team will be able to protect us, but I can’t be sure.”

Amy studied Ell’s face, “Pardon me for asking, but how can you afford this? I
know
Lieutenants aren’t paid all that much. I don’t want to quit the job I’ve got and then find out that you
can’t
actually pay me.”

“You’re right to be concerned. I have some royalties from an invention…”

Steve snorted at this statement. “’Some’ royalties!” he chuckled.

Ell continued, “and I will put two hundred fifty thousand dollars in an escrow account that you can check the balance of yourself. It would be payable to you if something were to happen to me and hopefully would tide you over until you found another job. As one of your benefits I will provide a place to live for you and your children at the same apartment complex I live in. I will double the salary that you are currently paid as a dealer and as my executive assistant you will be in charge of establishing an excellent benefits package for my staff, yourself and your family included.”

Amy rocked back in her chair, staring at Ell. “How… How old are you?” she asked, certain that Ell’s young appearance just didn’t jibe with the maturity of her words.

Ell’s pale green eyes were steady, “Eighteen.”

Amy swallowed, then blinked. After a long pause, “When would you want me to start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“But… I have to give two weeks notice.”

“I’m pleased that you have a desire to comply with any agreement you have with your previous employer. I’ll reimburse him for four weeks of your salary. Thus he can pay overtime to have other dealers fill in for his unexpected loss of your services and still come out ahead.”

A tear ran down Amy’s cheek. “Thank you.” she said in a small voice.

Janey had been carefully watching her mother and at sight of the tear she jumped up, ran around the table and slipped under her mother’s arm, placing her arms around Amy’s waist, “Mommy?”

“It’s OK, honey. I’m happy, not sad.”

Chapter Three

The officer strode up to the group and came to attention. “General Wang?”

The general turned to him, “Well?”

“Sir, the launch was successful.”

The General turned back to the civilians he had been speaking with. “Two more launches and we will be ready, in one stroke, to destroy all of the Americans’ surveillance and military communication satellites over our part of the world.”

The entire group turned to look at one man. He raised an eyebrow, “And when the satellite strike is ready, you will also have readied your tactical plan to recover our wayward province from across the Straight of Taiwan?”

The general nodded sharply, once.

***

Ell opened the door to her apartment. Steve and Amy sat at the dining room table with a pizza and a salad. Amy said, “Sorry I don’t have a home cooked meal for you today, I’ve been trying to catch up with everything else and didn’t get to the store.”

Ell said, “An occasional home cooked meal would be nice, but I don’t care where you get it, as long as it’s good.” She picked up a slice, “I love pizza. Did you make any progress?”

“Oh yes, with a lot of things. I found some heavy, vibration isolated tables for your ‘lab’ and got them delivered. I’ve found some of the lab equipment you said you wanted and sent the specs to your AI for approval before ordering. I took an online payroll refresher course and bought a payroll module for my AI. The kids and I moved into the apartment you rented for us, thank you very much.”

Ell’s eyes narrowed. “You seem tense. Is there a problem?” She dished up some salad.

Amy took a deep breath. “Yes, but I’ll take care of it.”

“Good. But I want to know about it. If it might impinge on me, I don’t want to be ignorant.”

Amy’s eyes dropped to the table. She shrugged, “It’s my old boss. I think I mentioned that he’s a jerk?”

Ell nodded.

“He used to touch me and say rude things and it had been escalating. But when I told him I was quitting, he got angry and started making threats.”

Ell’s eyes frosted, “What kind of threats?”

“That I would regret doing this. He implied that I owed him some ‘favors’ for hiring me and that he still intended to collect them.”

Ell’s gaze tracked over to Steve, “Can you protect her? I assume someone from the ready team can go with her whenever I’m on base and otherwise protected?”

Steve nodded.

“Make sure her AI is upgraded to match everyone else’s so she can call on you immediately if she needs it?”

“Ahead of you there Ma’am. We already had a spare AI setup which we gave her and I’ve had her order a few more.”

Amy quietly said, “I’m afraid he might have ‘connections.’ It might be better if I just gave in to his sick little game to get him off my case.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed, “You mean ‘criminal’ connections?”

Without looking up Amy nodded, afraid that revealing this might lose her the job but feeling that she had to be honest.

Ell said, “I don’t believe that we should let loathsome scum destroy our lives. Steve, when you’re not protecting me or Amy, I’d like you and the team to consider how we can take this guy down, legally, if he gives us trouble. Allan?” Ells eyes flicked up like many people’s did when talking to their AI, “Begin an investigation into this man’s financial and other net accessible data.” She turned to Amy, “What’s his name?” No one really wanted a computational engine with the power of the supercomputer currently powering Ell’s AI to sift through their life looking for “irregularities.”

“Felton Bonapute,” Amy whispered as a mixture of relief and new anxiety flooded over her.

They discussed plans and possible responses to this new problem for a while, then Ell retired to her office/lab. She’d read extensively beyond the current UAV curriculum and spent a lot of time on the software simulator she’d been provided. Currently she was quite a ways ahead of the rest of her UAV class so she again had some time to spend on her physics experiments. The last of the equipment had arrived for the first one she had planned out.

Her new research related to the connection that quantum entangled particles had through the tiny fifth dimension for which she’d worked out a new math. According to a new solution she’d run using her math, a group of entangled particles, arranged in a circle and ‘energized’ properly, might “hold open” a passage between them that entered into that fifth dimension. She hoped that she could push some molecules through such an opening and have them reappear back through the fifth dimension some distance away in our universe. Her calculations said that the new location could be a
long
way away from the location where she had pushed the molecules into it.

She’d ordered newer and more powerful versions of the same equipment she’d used as a grad student at NCSU to entangle molecules as well as a micromanipulator setup to allow her to position the entangled molecules. Working on setting it all up kept her happily occupied until 3 AM when she forced herself to get some sleep. She had to get up at 6:15 the next morning to get out to Nellis on time.

***

Axen knocked on Colonel Ennis door. Ennis sat back at his desk, “Come in Major, but don’t bring me any problems!”

Axen grinned, “I have a combination ‘Golly gee whiz wonderful’ and ‘Uh-oh, what do we do about that.”

Ennis rolled his eyes, “OK, I’ll bite, what is it this time.”

“Your favorite El Tee.”

Ennis just raised his eyebrows and motioned for Axen to go on.

“She’s gone from starting three weeks behind the rest of the class, to so far ahead that she must be bored, though she hides it well. Honestly, I feel sure that she could pass the final exam today, even though we aren’t even to the halfway point in the curriculum. Probably get a record breaking score on it too.”

“So? Graduate her and send her back to me.”

“I’m worried about the demoralizing effect that will have on everyone else in the course. I think, for their sake, I should keep her at least a little bit longer.”

Ennis pursed his lips. “Okaaay, but try to keep her challenged somehow. Maybe she could rewrite some of the more obtuse course material? Or, remember she’s a math genius, could she do some reprogramming of any of the software?”

Axen tilted his head in consideration, “Those are some good ideas. I’ll talk to her about them.”

***

As Ell ate her hamburger, Amy brought her up to date. “I’ve arranged for the rest of your hundred and five million dollar ‘donation’ to be sent to North Carolina State, you just have to tell Allan to approve the transfer.”

Ell nodded as she chewed, then swallowed and, looking up, said, “Approved.”

“The NCSU Physics department sent you some one page applications for funding from some of their physics professors and grad students like you requested. You were going to approve or disapprove them? I’ve forwarded them to Allan.”

“OK.”

“Your ‘portal’ experiment ran OK for 8 hours today, but there wasn’t any increase in pressure in the recipient chamber.”

Ell’s shoulders slumped. She’d been so sure that this experiment would move a few molecules… Hmm, she thought,
maybe a few molecules had moved, just not enough to detect by measuring a pressure change?
She realized she needed a different method to detect movement of the molecules.

Amy watched Ell’s eyes glaze over. Oh well, she’d learned to save any news about Ell’s research for last. Once Ell got to thinking about physics, she seldom heard anything else Amy said. She put the dishes in the dishwasher and went through the inter-apartment doors that Steve had had installed. They let her get back to the one she shared with her kids without being seen doing so. As she walked into her own apartment her AI gave her a list of the eight physics projects from NCSU that Ell had approved and two that she’d disapproved. To Amy’s surprise Ell had approved an application from Ell’s old professor, Albert Johnson, the one that Ell had hated. Amy noted, however, it was marked “pending completion of relationship counseling.” For a moment Amy wondered if she’d even read them—in the short time she’d had them it didn’t seem likely—then Amy noticed that there were brief notes on the two rejections specifying the issues that kept them from being approved. Amy shook her head,
my God, that girl reads fast!

***

On Saturday Ell headed out to Master Mark Moody’s Martial Arts, or “4MA” as it was known. Several of her security team were already there for their weekly training sessions and three were outside in a car “on call.” 4MA was located a block from Ell’s apartment complex and she’d committed to sessions once a week. Ell had insisted that Amy take lessons and Amy had claimed it didn’t make sense for Ell not to take them too. Amy’s kids were taking a class for little ones on Saturday afternoons. This Saturday morning would be Ell’s first session and she looked forward to the exercise. She hadn’t been getting in a lot of physical activity lately. To keep her brunette wig from getting displaced Ell wore a tight stocking cap over it. She’d arranged the hat and wig so some strands of brown hair stuck out to match her “Raquel” identity which she’d done up completely with skin bronzers and dark pencil on her light eyebrows.  Steve looked at her. “I thought you were doing this as “Ell Donsaii?”

“No, I don’t want to be seen in that identity near here. Besides, if I’m in that identity they’ll all act weird.”

“The first time you get thrown, it’ll knock that prosthetic off of your nose.”

“I just won’t let anything hit my nose.”

“What? You’re going to be getting thrown around!”

Ell stared at him a moment, “Steve, I can keep things from hitting my nose.”

Steve stared back for a moment, then shrugged, “I guess you probably can.”

Their instructor in the beginning class was Moody’s wife Millie, a tiny Asian lady. Crinkles appeared around her eyes as she looked around the group. “So. This class for people who have had some jujutsu, but not much, yes?” Nods came back to her and she said, “OK, we begin with falls. If you are to learn martial arts, you must learn to fall down without getting hurt, yes?” Ell carefully positioned herself on the other side of the group from Amy to maintain the fiction that they didn’t know each other. It was very helpful to the security team for both of them to attend the same class so the team didn’t have to cover each of them at different times. However, she didn’t want it to appear that they had any relationship besides their assignment to the same class.