The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 16

The meeting wasn’t especially useful, and could probably have been more easily handed by email, but it was polite to let the local staff think they were involved, so Ellie resigned herself to sitting through it.

Mostly, it was being told that no-one knew anything useful, without anyone being so brave as to actually say so in that many words. Mostly it was a waste of time, but Ellie listened politely anyway, and nodded when she seemed to be expected to, and kicked Sameh under the table to make her sit still.

Then, once everyone seemed to have had a turn speaking, she cleared her throat and asked about the actual plan.

“The plan?” someone said. “Don’t you…”

“For infil,” Ellie said, and wanted to add, obviously.

Jackson stepped in again. He was thinking quickly now. He started to talk, speaking to Ellie, explaining their usual practice, which they would use if she had no objections. Ellie and Sameh would be flown over late that night, he said, when watchers on the other side of the wall were most likely to be asleep or inattentive.

“There’s watchers?” Ellie said, surprised.

“There can be. Smugglers, or anti-debt activists. Either try to monitor us.”

“Oh,” Ellie said. It was more like Afghanistan than she’d expected. “Okay,” she said quickly, before Jackson mentioned anything about air defence and missiles and got Sameh upset. “Go on.”

Once they were past the main wall sensor net, Jackson said, they would be covered visually by drones operating out of this base at first, but those had a limited range, so the cover would switch to satellites, probably after a day or so. That meant longer response times, and delays if they needed fire support, but there would be extraction teams on standby at the base, and comms gear was sat-linked, so retrieval would only ever be as long as the flight time from this base, even though that might still be longer than was ideal.

Ellie listened, and nodded, and said she understood.

Jackson stopped talking, and looked relieved.

“And our equipment?” Ellie said.

Anything she needed, Jackson said. And anything that wasn’t already here, they could easily get.

Ellie looked at him for a moment, and wanted to sigh. That would also have been better said in an email hours ago, too, she thought. Just in case she did need an armoured attack drone shipped in, or a dirty nuke or something. She didn’t say so, though. She just nodded, and went on.

“I need briefings on the region of Měi-guó opposite us,” Ellie said. “Groups and players and who hates who. All the usual.”

“We have a lot…”

“So send it all,” Ellie said. “Everything. Any intel you have. Send it to a tablet and I’ll read it when I can. And make sure one of the local analysts is always around too. Here, in the op centre. Someone I can ask questions if I need to.”

Jackson nodded, and said he would organize it.

Ellie looked around, and waited for anyone else to speak, but that seemed to be all, so she stood up and said thank you for their time, and then she and Sameh went and got their gear.