The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 14

Jackson had organized a meeting to brief Ellie and Sameh on the local tactical situation, but there was some kind of delay getting started. Jackson was terribly sorry. He said they would start very soon, and apologised for the wait. He was just gathering up the last of the people he needed, he said, and then they would begin.

Ellie was tempted to tell him to brief her anyway, or ask why he hadn’t had his team ready when she and Sameh landed, if the team was that important. She was tempted, just to make trouble, but she didn’t actually do either. She wanted him operationally effective, not having a meltdown about how he’d ruined his career underperforming for the head office visitors, and she still felt a little bad for Jackson, too, after his embarrassment over his manners. She felt bad, and didn’t want to upset him any more than she had, especially when she wasn’t entirely sure the delay was all his fault. In fairness to Jackson, an overly security-conscious Shanghai office might not have given him very much warning Ellie and Sameh were on their way. Not much warning, like none at all, until Ellie and Sameh were actually on the ground. They had done things like that Ellie before, and she suspected they had again. Jackson had seemed quite rushed when he had come out to meet them at the plane.

Ellie didn’t make trouble. She didn’t lay blame. Instead, she just told Jackson not to worry, and that they weren’t in that much of a rush.

Sameh opened her mouth at that, probably just to be difficult, but Ellie glared, and Sameh closed it again.

Ellie smiled at her, grateful.

Ellie was feeling generous. She was feeling good about herself. She was enjoying suddenly feeling important, and having everyone running around after her. She was also fairly sure that after this mission it was never going to happen again, so she wanted to make the most of it, and take pleasure in it, and not to be awful to her apparent subordinates just because she could.

Ellie stood there for a moment, then asked Jackson where they were meeting. There was a wired conference room inside the operations centre, Jackson said, and showed her and Sameh to it. It was a room, with chairs and screens and a large table filling most of the center. Ellie sat down at the table. It was powered, and had an corporate promo video playing while it waited for interaction. Ellie waved her hand above the screen until it noticed her, and then found a map of the local area.

It was an interactive map, with data overlays from drones and the sensor net. Ellie found the wall, and found marked data points along it. She tapped, and live video feeds opened, floating above the part of the map the camera was pointed towards. There were high-res cameras on towers at the base and on the wall, Ellie realized, and here, in the operations centre, she could control them remotely and see over the wall. There were moving cameras marked too, what must be airborne drones. Moving cameras, with a much higher viewpoint, and much poorer resolution.

Ellie looked at the video feeds, curious, wondering what they were going into, but she couldn’t actually tell very much from looking. The Měi-guó side looked mostly the same as the Canadian side did. The same kinds of scenery and mountains and trees.

Ellie fiddled with the map, working out where she was, and where roads went, and what the largest nearby towns seemed to be.

There were a few people in the room, now, waiting around the walls, respectfully. Not interrupting Ellie while she did her important-person things, Ellie thought, and not distracting the table while she worked on it, either. Their caution made her want to smile. She liked having that respect. She’d never been an important visitor before, so she fiddled, and looked, and pretended to be doing something terribly important, and tried not to smile while she carefully ignore the people around the walls.