The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 69

Ellie went forward, watching carefully. Sameh’s drone had changed things. There was less movement and noise in the compound now, less shooting and shouting. The surviving militia were probably trying not to draw attention, Ellie thought. They were probably worried the drone was tracking them by sound, or running some kind of counter-fire protocol, shooting back at anyone who shot at it.

In fact, Ellie thought, the drone probably was doing exactly that. It was tied into the sensor net, and so could easily scan for the heat trace of fired weapons, or use a counter-sniper algorithm to triangulate the source of incoming gunshots by sound, and then return fire to those points with rockets. The more Ellie thought, the more it seemed likely the drone was. Sameh had given the drone its tactical parameters, so the drone was probably hunting the militia as aggressively as it was able. It was probably running a counter-fire protocol, and also simply shooting at anything metallic or with the chemical trace of ammunition, too.

Ellie didn’t bother asking. She just assumed and kept moving.

She moved forward two buildings, to the last corner before the open space at the middle of the compound. Across that open space was the bunker building, and the four people outside it.

Ellie wanted to look at them.

She didn’t throw smoke grenades, she didn’t do anything to draw their attention. She just wanted to see, with her eyes, how they looked. Whether they seemed scared, or nervous, or grim. Whether they looked like they would give up if she asked them to, or whether they would fight.

The sensor net would have tried to tell her, if she had asked it to. It would tell her about their heartbeats and the rapidity of their movements, about their levels of agitation and facial skin temperatures. The sensor net would try, but that wasn’t the same thing as looking for herself. It didn’t feel certain the same, not to Ellie.

Ellie waited for a moment. She could watch the sensor-net overlay of the four people while still being hidden behind her wall. She could see clearly enough to know which direction they were facing, and how alert each was. All four were crouching or lying down, in cover, armed, and facing different directions. They were ready to fight, expecting to be attacked, and they probably also knew by what had happened already that they didn’t have much chance when they were.

They were ready to fight, but they also obviously didn’t know where Ellie and Sameh were, or which direction to expect an attack from.

That was good, Ellie thought.

She waited until all four were looking away from her, and then leaned out past her corner slowly, and looked with her eyes. None of the militia members noticed her. There was smoke blowing across the open area, and she was hundred meters or so away.

She looked, and decided they looked fairly resigned. She wasn’t sure quite why she thought that, but they had the look of people expecting not to survive whatever happened next.

Ellie shifted back behind her corner, out of sight, and thought.

“Send the drone over,” Ellie said to Sameh, after a moment. “Send it over really obviously. Park it right above them so it’s all threatening.”

“Yep,” Sameh said, and started tapping her tablet.

Ellie looked around, covering them both. She had a sudden thought. “Can you make it so I can talk to them through the drone?” she said.

“Sorry,” Sameh said. “It doesn’t have speakers.”

Ellie nodded. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I can just shout.”

“They won’t hear you.”

“I’ll shout loud.”

“Over this?” Sameh said. There was still some shooting, and infrequent explosions. There were also alarms going off inside buildings, and what might be some kind of siren in the distance, too.

“Everyone’ll stop shooting in a minute,” Ellie said.

“Will they?”

“Yep. Once they get scared by the drone. Hovering over them. Remember?”

Sameh just looked doubtful.

“It’ll work,” Ellie said.

“Now?” Sameh said. “I should go and bother them with it now?”

Ellie grinned. “Yep, now.”

Sameh tapped her tablet, and said, “It’s on the way.”

“How long?” Ellie said.

Sameh pointed.

“I can’t…” Ellie said, trying to see.

“Wait a sec.”

Sameh kept pointing. A moment later the drone appeared through smoke, moving along the length of the bunker building.

“Creeping up behind them,” Sameh said, sounding quite pleased with herself. “Watch.”

Ellie watched. And in a way, she supposed, the drone did actually creep up. It approached along the bunker building’s roof, just above it, and out of sight of the four militia beneath. It flew along the roof, then suddenly darted out past the end of the building, into the clear sky, so the four militia underneath saw it then, without warning, and panicked, and began shooting up at it a little desperately.

Their shooting wasn’t going to do very much, Ellie thought. The drone was a ceramic tube made of the same material as the high-impact plates and gels in tactical armour. People had been designing combat drones for a long time now, and had got fairly good at keeping them from harm. The drone was little more than an armoured ceramic tube. It’s casing was too strong to be damaged by small arms fire, and didn’t have any exterior parts to shoot off, or which could break. There weren’t cameras or other external sensors because it relied on an uplink to a friendly sensor net to navigate and see. It had internal aerials, too, and the firing ports it launched rockets through snapped closed after each was fired, and even the propellers were made of strengthened and hardened ceramics.

The militia shot upwards, but the drone just hung there, floating above them, menacing and impervious.