Emily was curious. Something was going on. The top brass on the island seemed to be scrambling. She had been told to make sure her fleet was ready at a moment's notice. There was nothing on the nets that seemed out of the ordinary. She would just have to wait until they believed she had a need to know.
In the meantime, she was arranging for the squadron to fly an evaluation mission. The objective would be to scout and find a target ship five hundred miles out from the base. The mission would depend heavily on Looker and Booker for real-time on-site target and threat determination. The other hypersonics would be evaluated on their flight performance over target as directed by the reconnaissance hypersonics.
Emily and her team had worked overtime since the readiness command to get the hypersonics in shape. Maintenance was always a concern, but this mission had a profile that would stress the hypersonics far beyond any previous evaluation. Emily was particularly concerned with losing any telemetry data. She absolutely wanted to be aware of the hypersonics' flight status at all times. She drove her team to finish all the preventive maintenance possible that might ensure nothing would go wrong.
The day of the evaluation Emily was up at zero three hundred having only slept fitfully for some four hours. According to schedule, the flight would take off a half-hour after dawn. Looker and Booker would quickly accelerate to Mach 7, or over five-thousand miles-per-hour, arriving at the target site some six minutes later. The rest of the flight would boost to Mach 4, over three-thousand miles-per-hour, arriving at the target a few minutes after Looker and Booker. This would give the strike hypersonics the needed margin to adjust course if the reconnaissance hypersonics deemed it necessary.
Exactly at a half-hour after dawn, the flight began to take off. Because of their highly networked and autonomous operation, the entire flight of some thirty hypersonics was in the air in just over a minute. After watching the takeoff Emily headed for her monitoring post.
Thirty streams of telemetry were coming into Emily and the other monitors. Emily herself was monitoring Looker, Booker and Supersonic. The data showed smooth acceleration as the jet engines took the flight up to almost Mach 4. Then the scramjets took over. For most of the hypersonics, their velocity settled at just over Mach 4. But for Looker and Booker, the velocity climbed almost exponentially to Mach 7 before settling. The scramjets were working flawlessly.
Because of the speed, it wasn't long until Looker and Booker were within sight of the target, an old navy ship that had been towed to the site and set adrift. Immediately telemetry from Looker increased.
Emily's Annie began to speak. “Looker to Sg, Looker to Sg”.
Surprised, Emily could only answer as she had many times before, “Sg here.”
“Sg we have found the target. Threat level is low. We are broadcasting location and speed data of target to flight. They should be making needed course corrections now.”
Emily saw this in Supersonic's telemetry as he corrected his preflight track. But Emily was more worried about the extra telemetry that Looker was sending, the audio link.
“Looker this is Sg,” she said into her Annie. “Please advise need for extra telemetry.”
“Looker to Sg, determination was made that this was most efficient comm link.”
Emily now remembered her conversation with Lieutenant Warner when he caught her talking to Looker. She had insisted that a direct audio link was most efficient. Looker had been listening and reached that conclusion also.
But that was not under combat conditions, thought Emily.
“Understand Looker. But telemetry data may be compromised by added burden of . . .”
Just then the door to the monitoring room burst open. Lieutenant Warner was in the lead and behind him was the General and the rest of the brass.
“Sergeant Rosen!” Warner yelled. “What is the meaning of this additional telemetry from the reconnaissance craft?”
Before Emily could answer Looker said, “Sg this is Looker, flight has made its pass at the target. I estimate that there is one-hundred percent annihilation of target. Over.”
Emily turned from Warner and said to her Annie, “Looker this is Sg, that is affirmative, well done. Make course for home and return to base.”
“Understood.”
Emily turned to Warner. “Well?” he said.
“Sir, it was the determination of flight ops that this would enhance the mission. As the Lieutenant has just heard mission goals have been achieved thus far.”
“That is not the answer I was hoping for. Who was responsible for this 'enhancement'?”
Emily thought, she realized that an ANI making such a judgment could cost the whole squadron its readiness designation. It would be immediately taken offline until the brass understood how it could happen.
“I made the decision. But only because I thought it would be more efficient than the current procedure.”
The General spoke up, “Sergeant Rosen, you are not an engineer are you?”
“No sir.”
“You did not develop the software or hardware that, by the way, the military has spent billions of dollars on, did you?”
“No sir.”
“It's my understanding that your job is to keep the squadron in flight condition. Any changes or improvements to procedures should be made by authorized personnel only, don't you agree?”
Emily knew what was coming. “Yes sir.”
“Sergeant Rosen for your unauthorized change in procedures you are now on report. An inquiry will be made into this matter. You are relieved of duty.”
“Yes sir.” Emily saluted smartly and left the monitoring room.
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