The Debt Collectors War

by Tess Mackenzie

  Ellie thought about that. She wondered whether to believe it. It would make sense, she supposed, that Terry’s group, as the first point of contact, and so the most likely to be captured and interrogated, would know nothing. It was how any sensible security scheme would be organized.

  “All right,” she said. “I think I believe you. But why here? Why this town? This is the middle of nowhere.”

  Terry seemed puzzled. “Well, because we’re based here…”

  “No, why make you the point of contact? Why have him come here at all? Why not just send him direct to Los Angeles?”

  Terry looked almost embarrassed. He cleared his throat. “Operational security.”

  Ellie sighed again. “Of course.”

  “That was why,” Terry said, a little defensively. “We wanted to check he was sincere before he met everyone. Before he could identity any of us. We wanted to do it somewhere secure, not on the coasts or near borders, not near your people. And we’re on the railroad, here, too. We can patch him into it from here.”

  Ellie nodded. Her briefing files had mentioned the railroad. It was an underground debtor-hiding network that had spread throughout Měi-guó, which helped give debtors new identities and moved them away from areas where they were being actively sought. Of course Terry’s group was part of the railroad, and of course the militia had needed to run security checks on their new asset and make sure he wasn’t an infiltrator.

  “So there’s a plan,” she said. “But one you know nothing about?”

  Terry nodded.

  “Absolutely nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ellie wanted to sigh again.

  She looked at Terry for a moment. “So assuming I believe that, do you know when things will happen?”

  Terry hesitated. He didn’t answer. It almost seemed to Ellie as though he might be having second thoughts.

  “Co-operating, remember?” she said. She put her tablet away and took out her sidearm. She didn’t point it at him, but it was a threat.

  He looked at the gun, then said, “I was told he needed to be in Los Angeles by Friday next week. And to pass that up the line with him.”

  “The line?”

  “The railroad’s line. To pass it to my contact.”

  “You only have one?” Ellie said, surprised.

  “Well… two. One east and one west.”

  Ellie thought about that. “Oh. Because the railroad is like links in a chain and you only know one contact person each way. And you only pass messages to that one person, which they then pass on to someone else. So you each only know two other people?”

  Terry nodded.

  “Of course,” she said. “Because operational security. Again.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Ellie thought again. That structure made sense, for the railroad. Having their internal connections and command structure as a series of single links, one cell to the next, not as an overall web or top-down hierarchy, that gave them a great deal more flexibility and security. It made sense, and it might actually be useful intel to have discovered, too. She wasn’t sure if this detail was already known. It hadn’t been mentioned in her briefing files, anyway, so even if it was suspected, it was probably useful to have it confirmed.

  She thought about networks and information and links of individual contacts. It was a good, sensible system for the debt resisters to use, and fairly secure. Unfortunately, it also made her job more complicated, since she couldn’t just hit Terry until he told her the name of the overall commander, if there even was one.

  Which was entirely the point.

  “You really don’t know anything?” she said.

  Terry shook his head.

  “But you’re the leader….” she said, and then stopped, realizing. Actually, he wasn’t. Terry was just a subordinate or friend of the old leader, who was now dead, and that man might well have known more. Terry, though, he was no-one important, no-one who would be trusted with valuable intel. And as well, this group was a first-contact point, and so had to be dispensable. They couldn’t be told anything that needed to be kept secure.

  Ellie was annoyed with herself. She should have realized all this sooner.

  She tried to make the best of it.

  “You sent the kid straight to Los Angeles?” she said, hopefully. “To a contact there? Someone whose name you do know?”

  Terry nodded.

  “You didn’t pass him through a whole lot of other groups like this one?”

  “No. He went on a bus to California.”

  “With the name of a contact?”

  He looked cautious, but nodded.

  Ellie thought. She looked at Terry for a moment, and decided he was telling the truth. She felt like he was, anyway, and when she glanced back at Sameh, who was still holding a tablet with a lie-detector app, Sameh nodded.

  “Okay,” Ellie said. “I believe you. Thank you.”

  Terry seemed relieved.

  “So tell me everything you know about the contact person in Los Angeles. Or people. Locations and names and recognition signals and all the rest.”

  He hesitated again. He glanced around at the rest of the group.

  “Now,” Ellie said, and raised her gun.

  Terry swallowed, but didn’t answer. He was probably about to start being difficult, Ellie thought. She looked up at the drone, deliberately. Then she looked at the bunker building full of the militia’s families.

  He understood. He looked resigned, then said, “There’s a bar. You go in and ask for someone by name. The name is a code.”

  Ellie nodded. Just a name. That made sense too. It was effective, but simple, so simple no-one would mess it up, even if they were scared and hurt and panicking.

  “That’s all?” she asked. “There’s no double-checks, no secret signals along with it, like wearing a red shirt or having a hat or something?”

  Terry shook his head.

  “If I go there,” she said. “And it turns out you lied to me, someone will come here for you. You understand that?”

  “I understand.”

  “All right,” she 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…” he 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,” she 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,” she 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 some more.

  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 c
omm 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. It was simpler to stay on private peer-to-peer channels until they needed something from their operations controllers, and then to open a channel to 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 ops centre asked her to leave the channel open. Ellie said no, and the ops centre started to argue. This was vital intel, they 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 understand. Probably.

  *

  Terry had been watching Ellie talk with the ops centre. He seemed to be getting nervous, wondering if he’d made the right decision.

  “You said you’d help us,” he said to her, when she broke the comm connection.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You said you’d help us if I helped you.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m working out how much I can help.”

  He just looked at her. He seemed a little disappointed.

  “This is different to what I thought,” Ellie said. “An attack, involving one of our own. That’s bad.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s far worse than I thought. It’s worse than a random kidnapping.”

  “It is. That’s why we need your help.”

  “I’ll help,” she said. “I’m helping. As much as I can. I’m just working out how much that is.”

  “But…” Terry said.

  “Quiet,” Ellie said. “Let me think.”

  Behind Ellie, Sameh said, “We need to secure this area.”

  “I know,” Ellie said.

  “We need to move, to go after the kid.”

  Ellie nodded.

  “We need to go now,” Sameh said.

  “Yes,” Ellie said. She knew. They had to move, but first Ellie had to decide what to do with Terry and his friends. She couldn’t just leave them here, able to contact the rest of their organization and pass on warnings. Or to make trouble for the next debt recovery team that came along. She needed to do something with them, but she wasn’t sure what. She either had to have them all arrested, which they wouldn’t like, or she had to kill them, which they really wouldn’t like. She was stuck, though. She couldn’t see any other possibilities.

  “Here’s the problem,” she said to Terry. “You’re hostile, and I’m badly outnumbered, and I need you contained while we go after this kid. So I really need to call in backup and have you all arrested.”

  He looked at her. “You promised…”

  “I said I’d help,” Ellie said. “I didn’t promise.”

  “This isn’t helping.”

  “It’s that or kill you all,” she said. “Which would you prefer?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Seriously?” she said, a little surprised.

  “You said you’d help,” Terry said.

  “This is me helping. Arrested isn’t the same as dead.”

  “It might as well be.”

  Ellie wondered about that. Then she realized. “Oh,” she said. “Because you all have some pretty serious debt by now?”

  Terry didn’t answer, but she could see it on his face.

  Ellie sighed. She understood. Everyone in Terry’s group would have debt, either because they’d joined the group fleeing it in the first place, or because they’d incurred it after joining to make a point. They would all have debt, which meant everyone in the group would be heading to forced-labor workhouses if they were arrested.

  She understood why he was upset, and she could see it was a concern for him, but she also didn’t especially care. She needed to worry about her own operation.

  “Your debt is really your problem,” she said. “I’ll try. I’ll do my best, but there’s a limit to what I can do.”

  “You don’t have to arrest us. You could just leave us here and go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You could leave that drone to watch us.”

  “I’m going to,” she said.

  “So then leave it here, and go. Instead of bringing in the recovery corporation to arrest us.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I need longer. I need days. I need to get to Los Angeles and find the kid. The drone gives me hours, but sometime pretty soon, like in the next few hours, you’ll work out how to disable it, or how to get someone out past the sensor net to start warning your friends.”

  “Not in hours.”

  “Then in days. But eventually you will. And it doesn’t really matter how long it actually takes because I can’t take the chance, anyway.”

  Terry nodded slowly. “Is it worth saying I’ll give you my word we’ll stay here and not move?”

  “Words are just words,” Ellie said. “It doesn’t mean very much, does it?”

  “Mine does.”

  “Says you.”

  “Miss, I’m telling you I’ll keep my word, and I’ll make sure the others do too.”

  “I want to trust you,” she said.

  “You can.”

  Ellie considered it. Behind her, Sameh was probably glaring at the back of her head, but Ellie didn’t turn around to check.

  She considered it, then she shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I want to, but I can’t believe you. I need to protect my operation. It’s difficult, but this has to be better than being killed. Arrest is…”

  “Arrest and slavery.”

  “Yes. But arrest, and you live. That has to be better than dead.”

  Terry looked around at the other militia. They all looked at each other.

  “Kill us,” someone said. “And we’ll die heroes…”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Ellie said to him. “I’ll kill your families too.”

  “All the same,” the man said.

  “I’ll kill you if you really want me to,” she snapped at him. “But just you. You personally. Otherwise quiet down.”

  She looked back at Terry. She didn’t especially like this either, but she couldn’t see another way.

  “It’s up to you,” she said. “Which do you prefer? Arrested or dead?”

  Terry opened his mouth. The man who wanted to be a hero did too.

  “Actually,” she said tiredly. “Don’t answer that.” She had a nasty suspicion what they might say
.

  Terry shrugged, but stayed quiet.

  “A workhouse isn’t that bad,” she said. “You’ll be released eventually. And the debt-indenture system could change, so that’s something to hope for.”

  “It won’t,” he said. “It hasn’t in years.”

  Ellie sighed again. She was just trying to help, but she supposed he was right. This was all starting to get very complicated, and the complications were clouding everything else she needed to do.

  “I’ll kill you if you truly want me to,” she said. “I will. You just need to say. But think for a while before you go saying that, because it’s a pretty final decision.”

  Terry nodded slowly.

  “I mean it,” she said. “Say so and I will. Because believe me, it would make everything easier for me as well.”

  Terry thought about that, and Ellie watched him, thinking herself, trying to decide what to do.

  She had a plan. She had a better plan than she’d had until now, because she finally had a way to get what she actually wanted. Which wasn’t a successful retrieval operation. That was only her short-term focus. What she really wanted, what was most important, was to get her daughter back.

  Ellie wanted Naomi back, and now, finally, she might have the leverage to do it.

  If she wished to use it.

  She hadn’t actually found the missing kid yet, but now she knew where to look. And at the moment, right at that moment, she was the only one who did.

  That was why she hadn’t mentioned Los Angeles to the operations center. That was why she’d been glad the comms were silent.

  Right now, she was the only one who knew where to find the kid, or at least, the only one who wasn’t a part of a debt-resistance militia, since Terry and his group knew too.

  Ellie had thought about that. She was still thinking about that.

  Right now, for a short time, she had intel that no-one else had. She had it until the backup teams began to appear, and the interrogation of Terry’s people started.

  Then she lost her leverage, and was back to begging for Naomi’s life.

  She didn’t have to let that happen, though. She had a way out. If she killed all the militia, and burned the compound, silencing everyone else who knew and destroying every trace of evidence, then she would have a great deal more leverage, for a great deal longer.