“Yep.”
“Do that. Hopefully that’ll calm them down a bit.”
Sameh raised her tablet.
“But not at them,” Ellie said quickly. “Not near them. Just into the ground.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Sameh touched her tablet, and there was a thud from over beside the bunker building. A thud, and then silence, as if everyone over there had ducked when the drone launched its rocket.
“Now stop shooting for a second,” Ellie shouted at them. “Please.”
They did. This time no-one shot back at her.
“Good,” Ellie shouted. “Thank you.”
There was a silence.
“Okay,” she shouted. “We’re switching the drone back to anti-personnel mode now.” But as she shouted that, she looked at Sameh and deliberately shook her head, and then added quietly, making certain Sameh understood, “Don’t, not yet.”
Sameh nodded.
“If anyone else shoots anything again,” Ellie shouted to the militia. “Anything at all, aimed anywhere, the drone will counter-fire. Clear?”
No-one answered, but also, no-one shot.
Ellie waited a few seconds. She didn’t want any accidents, not now that talking was getting somewhere. She wanted to be sure that everyone over there had heard her, and no-one would shoot at the drone without warning. At the same time, though, there was a risk that if she waited too long, then one of the militia might decide to deliberately test it, to see whether the drone was live, and then, when they realized it wasn’t, they wouldn’t believe any other threats Ellie made.
It was a difficult situation, and she waited a little anxiously.
Nothing happened. There was no more shooting. The drone kept hovering.
“Okay,” Ellie said quietly to Sameh. “Make the drone dangerous again.”
Sameh tapped her tablet. “It’s done.”
“Okay,” Ellie shouted, to the militia. “Put down your weapons. And tell everyone else to as well.”
Another silence.
“Can you hear me?” she shouted. “Put your guns down.”
“I don’t think so,” someone over by the bunker building shouted back. It was a man’s voice, Ellie thought, although she couldn’t tell very much more than that through her comm earpieces. It sounded like a middle-aged man, which was an age that would fit with this being the person who was in charge.
“Do it,” she shouted.
“Or what?”
“Or we’ll kill all of you, and then everyone inside that building, and then every single other person we find in this property too.”
Silence.
“We could,” Ellie shouted. “Easily.”
“We know,” the same militia voice shouted. “Yeah, we know. What is it you want?”
“I’m looking for someone, that’s all. Put your guns down and we can talk about it.”
There was a silence, Ellie assumed while they thought about that. She waited, wondering if they would do as she asked.
Suddenly, Sameh’s sidearm went off beside Ellie’s ear, making her jump. She glanced around, surprised, as Sameh fired again.
Someone had tried to sneak up behind them, while Ellie was talking. They had tried, even though it wasn’t really possible to sneak up on someone through a sensor net, not with the net still operating and no friendly countermeasure drones in place, and not without a lot more heat-shielding and stealth clothing than this kind of militia would have access to. It wasn’t possible, not if either Ellie or Sameh was paying even the slightest attention, but one of the militia had tried, anyway.
They had tried, while Ellie was distracted, but Sameh hadn’t been. Now the militia member was lying on his back twenty meters away.
“And don’t do that,” Ellie shouted, trying to make her voice sound calm, disinterested. “It’s a complete waste of time.”
“Do what?”
“There’s some kid dead over here now. A skinny kid with a red tee shirt on.”
The voice by the bunker didn’t answer for a moment, then said, equally calmly, “Yeah, it won’t happen again.”
“I’d make really fucking sure. You’re just getting your people killed.”
“It won’t,” the voice shouted back, then added, “Did everyone hear that? Stay put. Stay where you are. Let’s just talk for now.”
“Thank you,” Ellie shouted.
“So talk.”
“This would be easier without all the shouting.”
“So come on over.”
“Put down your guns and I will,” she shouted.
There was no answer.
“What difference does holding a gun make?” she shouted. “It doesn’t, with the drone there. Just put down your weapons and we’ll talk.”
“We’d need some guarantees,” the militia voice shouted.
“You aren’t getting any,” Ellie shouted. “Talk to me or that drone kills everyone.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Talk to me face to face, with your hands empty, and my gun pointed at you.” She wanted to be clear, to make it obvious how dire this situation was for the militia.
They seemed to understand. They didn’t argue. There was a silence.
“Talk to me now,” she shouted. “Or we’ll kill everyone here and start over somewhere else.”
She was pushing, being demanding, and asking too much. She was doing it on purpose, hoping to stop the person she was talking to getting the mistaken idea that this was some kind of a negotiation. She hoped that by making too many demands, and saying very plainly that she didn’t mind just killing them all, she would make it completely clear that no-one here was indispensable and they had nothing to bargain with. And once they realized that, she hoped they would give up.
It might be working. No-one answered. They were thinking, Ellie assumed.
“That drone is armed,” she shouted. “I said that, didn’t I?”
Still no answer.
“It’s armed, and I’m getting impatient,” she shouted.
“Are you debt authority?” the voice shouted.
“Nope,” she shouted. “A security team.” She thought for a moment, then decided being upfront and honest was probably a good idea. “But we work for someone who works for someone who owns a recovery corporation, if you care.”
“We care.”
“I thought you might. But do you care as much as if we were actually authority ourselves?”
“Not really.”
“So put the guns down and stand up.”
There was another pause, and then the voice said, “Yeah, all right.”
“Okay,” Ellie shouted. “Thank you. It’s the right thing to do.”
“We’ll see.”
“It is,” she shouted. “But we’re still going to watch you disarm first, before we come out. And scan you too. Obviously. So don’t be assholes.”
“Okay.”
“And tell everyone else to go over and stand with you.”
The voice did. He shouted for everyone to put down their guns, and come on out. And people put down their guns. As far as Ellie could tell, they all disarmed themselves completely. Ellie looked around, through the nearby walls, and saw all the red outlines on people turning green. She saw people stand up and move towards the middle of the compound, everyone except those few who had already run off, out the gate, and were now faint, blurry markers at the edge of the sensor net’s coverage area.
She reached over, and tipped Sameh’s tablet so she could see the screen.
“The map?” Sameh asked.
Ellie nodded.
Sameh tapped, and brought the map up. All the dots on it were green.
“Okay,” Ellie shouted to the militia. “I’m coming over there. Don’t do anything stupid. I’m armed and that drone is too.”
“We won’t,” the voice shouted back.
Ellie looked at Sameh. “Say it,” she said quietly.
“Say what?”
“That
you told me so. With the drone.”
Sameh grinned.
“The drone helped,” Ellie said, because it ought to be said. “It helped a lot, and made things much easier. You were right to bring it.”
Sameh shrugged, but smiled.
Ellie kissed her, then checked again that the tablet was still full of green dots, and then said, “Okay, let’s go.”
*
Ellie stepped out from behind her building, and Sameh followed her, staying close, watching the tablet as well as watching around them, keeping her submachine gun on the group of people gathering beside the bunker building.
Ellie walked forward warily, placing her feet carefully, taking care that she didn’t trip. She kept her submachine gun leveled as she moved, watching the militia over it, covering them all as best she could. Behind her, she knew without looking, Sameh would be following and moving the same way, although she would be watching her tablet, and the sensor net’s imaging, as much as she would the actual militia in front of her.
It seemed to be safe though, Ellie thought. The militia seemed to have given up, at least for now. None of them were moving, not at all.
They were completely still.
Almost too still.
Ellie thought about that stillness. The militia had probably in this situation before, she decided, and often enough that they knew to be extremely careful during these first few minutes, so no-one got hurt by mistake. They were standing still, not moving their hands, not even sneezing or coughing. They were keeping very still, and that was good, but there was also something a little odd going on.
She glanced downwards as she got closer and saw that the militia’s weapons, mostly guns and knives, were on the ground as she’d asked, but that each was about a meter from its owner’s feet. A meter almost exactly, Ellie saw. Enough distance for the sensor net to consider the person unarmed, and show them as such on its displays, but very little more than that.
It was interesting the militia seemed to know that exact distance, she thought. It was interesting they seemed to know how a sensor net worked.
She wondered if she should be worried. She tried to reassure herself. The militia had probably dealt with debt recovery officials before, and everyone working for a debt recovery corporation probably used the same brand of sensors, and probably had the sensor management software set to its defaults for things like safe distances between a weapon and a hostile. That was probably all it was, she decided, but even so, the odd precision with which the militia had all put down their weapons made her a little suspicious.
“Step back a bit from the weapons,” she said. “You’re too close.”
They all looked at her, but no-one moved.
Ellie needed them to move. The more she thought about it, the more that precision bothered her, and she wanted them to step back. They were still too near their guns, and too close to one another as well. She didn’t want them surrounding her, with their guns at their feet. She didn’t want them getting the idea they were a mob, and that they had some kind of chance if they decided to attack her.
She needed to move them back a little further.
Ellie pointed at one of the militia mostly at random, a younger man who seemed nervous, and said, “Step back or I’ll kill you.”
He looked at her, surprised.
“Step back,” she said, loudly, and took a step closer, threateningly, insistently, pointing her submachine gun directly at his face. She was right there, confronting him, as aggressive as she could be. “Do it,” she said, still in a loud voice. “Do it now, or you die right here.”
The kid swallowed, and took a step backwards. Of course he took a step backwards. This wasn’t worth dying over.
“Another,” Ellie said, without lowering her submachine gun.
He did that too, and then a third, even before she told him to.
Ellie swiveled slightly and pointed her submachine gun at the next person in the crowd. “You as well,” she said.
That man went backwards without arguing.
“All of you,” Ellie said. “Backwards.”
Now, they all moved. Now that someone else had gone first, the rest were happy to do as they were told. It was something Ellie had learned in the MidEast. When you had to control a crowd, you didn’t try to deal with it as a crowd, because a whole crowd, to the crowd, felt brave and strong and immovable in their numbers. They felt they could talk back, and argue, and so they did, and then eventually you ended up with a bloodbath, having to kill half of them just to convince the other half to do as you wished. Instead, a better way was to shift them as individuals, one person at a time, picking each out one by one, and isolating them from the rest. Isolating them, because in a situation like this, nobody spoke out for other people. As soon as a weapon was pointed at someone, everyone else just felt a guilty little shiver of relief that it wasn’t aimed at them, and so as each person had a gun pointed at their face, they stopped being part of a crowd, and became simply a scared person on their own being told to do something. Suddenly it was them who was going to be hurt, not just some abstract someone in the crowd, and once they realized that, then they would do exactly as they were told.
That was the best way to shift an angry crowd without having to kill anyone, and that was what Ellie had done. She had made one militia member move, and then another, so then, when she told them all to move together, as a group, the crowd moved backwards without making a fuss.
“And make a line,” she said. “Don’t stand behind each other. I want to be able to see you all.”
They did that too, without being difficult. The situation was coming under control.
Once Ellie had the militia moved back from their weapons, and spread out so she could cover them properly, she looked at them for a moment, thinking. There were a lot of men in the group. It was mostly men, she noticed. She wondered if that meant something. She hadn’t especially noticed a demographic skew in the data readouts on the map earlier, which she thought she would have seen if it was there. And if she hadn’t noticed, then the intel-analysis software ought to have drawn her attention to it. The software was usually smart enough to find patterns like that, because homogeneity in gender or ethnicity tended to imply terrorism. That neither Ellie nor the software had noticed an imbalance of men in the group implied there were actually both men and women in the compound, but that the women were all somewhere else, like inside the bunker building. The women were inside the bunker building, keeping safe, and the men were out here fighting.
That was odd, Ellie thought. It was a very strange, old-fashioned idea. It must reduce their combat effectiveness, and she wondered if they knew. It was like the MidEast all over again, she thought, but she wasn’t especially surprised. Now she was in Měi-guó, and getting used to its ways, she was starting to see that there was a lot that was like the hajjis in these people, even though she didn’t quite know why.
She glanced along the row of militia members in front of her, noticing their appearance. They didn’t look the same as the people in the nearby town. There was more hair, longer hair, and a lot of beards, and their clothes were different to those worn by the people in the town, and different to the loaner clothes in Joe’s bag, too. There was a lot more leather, Ellie thought, and old denim, and a lot of nano-printed icons as well. It looked to her as though the militia’s clothes were meant to mark them as being apart from everyone else.
She thought about that, looking at the nano-prints, studying the icons they were using. Icons usually explained who people thought they were. She saw eagles and flags and a symbolic outline of a woman with an odd hat. Ellie didn’t recognize any of it, but she was more familiar with MidEast terrorist iconography than the Měi-guó variations.
She was about to use her comm and ask the ops centre for more information when she realized, to her surprise, that she did recognize something after all. She recognized the flag, from old films she had seen. It was the old American flag which had been used before Měi-guó was
Měi-guó.
In fact, now she thought about it, Ellie recognized this whole situation from old films. She had pretty much seen this moment happen in old movies a dozen times before, brave groups of the undebted holding out against the tyranny of debtor governments. At least, in the films Ellie had seen, it had been debt-free heroes standing up against corrupt governments in the last days before the liberation of Měi-guó by the recovery corporations. Here, she assumed, the meanings would be reversed, and the militia would be appropriating the same icons but making them their own.
It was an odd idea, about the movies, but Ellie quite liked it. She considered it for a moment, wondering whether that made her or the militia the side which was doing good. She stood there, looking at the flags, almost curious which she was.
“Hey,” a man in the militia group suddenly said, interrupting her thoughts.
She looked at him.
“You can’t just come in here like this,” he said.
Ellie looked at him, surprised. Of course she could, she wanted to say, because she had, and if they hadn’t wanted her to then they should have fortified their compound more effectively. She almost said that, but then she realized what he meant. She realized, because she’d just been thinking about terrorist icons and their meanings. One of the briefing files she’d read had said the debt-resistance militias were very passionate about the old-style American legal rights, and imagined those laws still existed, somehow, and still mattered, even though they didn’t and barely ever had. Those beliefs were dangerous, the file had warned. Discussion of American rights was best suppressed quickly, because it inflamed the militias, and often bystanders too, in the way that accusations of religious impropriety did in the MidEast.
“You can’t,” the man said.
“Quiet,” Ellie said to him.
“You can’t just walk in here,” he said, beginning to make himself angry.
“Stop it,” she said, firmly. “Quiet down.”
The briefing file had been right, she realized, a little surprised. This was a very familiar situation. This man was like dozens she’d met in Afghanistan, scared, but hiding it with anger, working himself up, making himself outraged the way a hajji might if Ellie had been searching women or had bumped a tablet containing a religious book onto the floor. He was just talking big, making himself feel better, but if Ellie let him keep talking, he’d talk himself into angry, and then trouble would start.
The Debt Collectors War Page 20
