The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 66

Ellie looked at the battlefield map the sensor net was displaying on Sameh’s tablet.

There were about forty people in the compound, and about half of them were in a single large building, all at the end of it furthest from the door, and all but two were unarmed. Unarmed, at least as far as the millimetre radar and magnetism-detector sensors could tell from outside, anyway.

Ellie looked at that building, and said to Sameh, “There’s some kind of bunker. Where all the non-combatants go in an attack.”

Sameh nodded, still looking around them. They had both seen bunkers like that before. The same kind of thing happened in the MidEast.

There were twenty people in the bunker, and another twenty scattered through the compound. Four or five others were down by the front gate, too, who must either be fleeing, or guarding the gate, or were a medical team trying to help the first two people Ellie and Sameh had shot. The rest of the people were moving around the compound erratically, spread out in ones in twos and fours. Ellie and Sameh would have to incapacitate quite a few more, Ellie thought, so they weren’t so badly outnumbered. That probably meant killing them, because that was simplest, but they might be able to gas or stun some, and spare them, but she wasn’t sure how easy that would be. She would try, if it worked out that way, but she got a lot less concerned about sparing other people’s lives in the middle of combat.

She looked up and glanced around, despite that the map was showing no militia were nearby, making certain with her eyes. She glanced around, then tapped an icon at the edge of the tablet’s display so it would show movement vectors as well as people’s current fixed positions. The map flickered, resetting itself, and then Ellie saw lines trailing behind each data point, lines marking where each person had moved over the past thirty seconds. They all seemed moving randomly, moving cautiously, either searching for her and Sameh, or just wandering around, unsure what to do.

They were moving, all except a group of four near the central bunker building.

Ellie tapped again, and blue circles appeared around each data point. The blue marked failed communications attempts the sensor net had intercepted, and the blue was a deeper shade the more attempts that had been made. Most of the people on the map were only faintly hazed with blue. Some of those walking around were coloured slightly deeper, the nervous ones, who kept retrying their failed comms. The four at the bunker were a deep, thick, rich shade of blue that had to be failed data links as well as actual voice calls.

Ellie was pleased. Those would be the decision makers, she thought. The leaders or commanders. They were staying put, assessing the situation, guarding the non-combatants, and trying to work out what to do next.

Ellie was happy she’d found the decision makers so quickly. Now, she had a plan. She and Sameh needed to incapacitate a few more of the rank-and-file, and then they would go and point guns at those four people. Those four would know where the kid was, if anyone did, and those four were also probably the ones who could decide when the militia was ready to surrender, and who could tell all the others to do so.

First though, Ellie thought, she and Sameh had to move. They had been in the same place too long, now. She didn’t want the militia working out where they were.

“We’ll circle around to the halfway point of the fence, opposite the gate,” Ellie said. “Then work out way inwards to that bunker. We probably need to deal with another ten or fifteen.”

“Yep,” Sameh said. “Okay. But cover me for a sec.”

Ellie hesitated, still worried about how long they’d been in one place. She hesitated, then decided Sameh knew they’d been stationary too, and Ellie ought to trust her judgement.

“Okay,” Ellie said. “I am.” She began to look both directions, looking past Sameh as well as ahead of herself.

Sameh took her tablet back, and bent over it. She began tapping at it. She tapped, then took a slim, stubby tube out of the flat-pack bag on her back, and laid it on the ground beside herself.

Ellie didn’t ask what it was. She didn’t want to distract either of them. She had half-expected something like this though. Sameh had a way of finding exciting equipment to play with, even when Ellie had been standing right beside her for hours, and was certain Sameh hadn’t picked up anything.

Ellie glanced, and was fairly sure it was some kind of drone-based anti-vehicle weapon platform. As it turned out, she was right. Sameh tapped her tablet, and four propeller pods folded out the side of the tube. They began to spin, and Sameh tapped again, and the drone rose into the air, and began turning as it climbed.

“It’s not a grenade,” Sameh said.

“I see that.”

“It drops grenades,” Sameh said. “But it isn’t one.”

“I know.”

“I did what you asked,” Sameh said, just as a small rocket dropped from the bottom of the drone and shot off towards the middle of the compound.

There was a soggy thud, a dull explosion. Whatever the drone had just shot at, it sounded like it had used a penetrating anti-armour charge, which would probably be extremely unpleasant for whatever it had hit.

“It’s self targeting?” Ellie said.

Sameh grinned.

“You’re completely sure it won’t target us?” Ellie said, a little nervously. She didn’t entirely trust smart weapons platforms.

“Yep.”

“Or that bunker building?”

Sameh nodded, and held up her tablet. The drone’s control app was still on the screen. “I just put that in too.”

“Completely sure?”

“Completely.”

Ellie nodded. She wanted to sigh, but she didn’t.

“I love you,” she said instead.

“I know,” Sameh said, still grinning, still overly excited, hyped by her battle meds, and hyped by combat too. “I’m useful.”

“Yep,” Ellie said. “That. Of course.”