The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 90

“All right,” Ellie said. “I believe that too. So tell me all of it. Tell me everything I need to know about the kid and where he is, and anything else you know about your organization, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like everything. Talk to me now, and make it not worth the company’s time coming after you to interrogate you again later.”

“I don’t understand…” Terry said, confused.

Ellie sighed. Sometimes it was impossible to help people. “This is for you,” she said, trying to be patient. “Just tell me everything. Tell me everything now, and then you can disappear and be left alone and no-one will bother chasing you. Hopefully.”

“You’re doing this for me?” Terry sounded skeptical.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Because we made a deal. Sort of. Because you helped me so now I’ll help you. Because I’m just nice like that. So talk, make yourself less valuable as a grab-target, and maybe you still get to walk away from this.”

“And you get intelligence from us.”

“Yep,” Ellie said. “Obviously. That too. Talk.”

Terry hesitated, but seemed to understand. He cleared his throat. Before he could say anything, Ellie pointed towards Sameh and said, “Tell her.”

Sameh would record him, and write everything down too. They would keep a proper copy of this, for the company, because Ellie had meant what she had said. This might keep Terry safe, if they got the kid back and he’d already been debriefed. It might make it not worth the trouble of hunting him down.

Terry talked, and Sameh typed, and while they did, Ellie thought.

She was beginning to have an idea.

For the first time since the operation began, she knew something useful, something which might save the kid’s life, and as yet, no-one else did.

No-one else knew because Ellie and Sameh usually worked in operational silence, without an open comm channel to the ops centre, and Ellie was very glad of that now.

The silence was relative. There were always uplink connections to the ops centre. A lot of data was constantly being exchanged, especially in combat, low-level monitoring information like their biometric life signs and ammunition expenditure and spatial movement through the sensor net. Those were monitored, but audio and comms weren’t. Like a lot of field operators, Ellie and Sameh didn’t like the feeling of being eavesdropped on through open comms, and worried that an open channel, if it was recorded, might lead to their decisions being second-guessed later on. They worried, and so it was simpler to stay on private peer-to-peer channels until they needed something from their operations controllers, and to then pass on queries or data verbally. Speaking out loud, repeating everything with voice, even though it was less efficient than just allowing audio monitoring in the first place. And then cutting comms afterwards, so the ops centre couldn’t monitor their conversations with each other.

It wasn’t the best fieldcraft practice, but it was what field teams did, and the ops staff usually accepted it. At least until they decided the information being gathered in the field was critical.

Like they were probably about to now.

When Terry had finished talking, and Sameh seemed finished too, Ellie tapped her comm earpiece, and passed on what she’d learned to the operations centre. She told them the railroad wasn’t a web and was decentralized, and a few other things Terry had mentioned too. Everyday things, little details that were part of the pattern of good intelligence gathering, about supply dumps and sympathizers and leave-alone deals made with recovery teams. She passed on that intelligence, but she didn’t say anything more.

She very deliberately didn’t mention Los Angeles.

Once she had finished, and was about to disconnect her comm, the operations centre asked her to leave the channel open. Ellie said no, and the operations centre started to argue. This was vital intel, the ops centre said. It was critical they know everything.

Ellie needed secrecy, right now. “No,” she said, and closed the channel.

They would be annoyed, but it was done. She had a very good reason, and they would understand soon enough.

They wouldn’t like it, but they would probably understand.