The northern and western defense lines kept being overrun, and then the enemy advanced from the southwest as well. In the end, their remaining troops simply collapsed in the face of the enemy onslaught, and finally, all that was left were the two of them and three other people standing in front of where the portal beacon was, hoping like hell that the portal would open on time. The few remaining cyborg soldiers were up at the entrance of the lane, ordered to protect the portal site to the last cyborg.

Chapter 18

Portal

Andrew could see a barricade with troops manning it about a hundred meters along, and from his perch on top of the APC, Andrew could see there was a similar barricade on the far side, perhaps two hundred meters or more beyond the first barricade, that was blocking this road almost to where this road reached the main road they had advanced up earlier. There were heaps of vehicles, including proper tanks, over on that side, which was probably why the officer brought them around this way, where very few vehicles were blocking the way. There was a road off to the right that the officer’s APC pulled up across, giving Andrew’s APC room to park next to them.

“Their portal’s at the end of that alley up ahead there on the left. We can bomb the thing, but we don’t want to damage the city more than we have to,, so we were wondering if you could do something about it. There are at least two mentalists in there who refuse to surrender. We think they’re waiting for the gate to open so they can escape. We’re not sure how many other people are down there. Every drone we’ve put up gets obliterated.”

Andrew cocked his head as he considered the situation.

“You can’t get closer by going through the buildings?”

“We tried that, but they seem to be able to sense us coming, and they’ve collapsed the buildings all around the area where they are, which is making it difficult.” The officer replied.

Andrew could now see that he was a Major from the collar tabs. The man paused before continuing.

“We could just wait for them to go, but we’re worried that they’ll bring in more reinforcements or perhaps some sort of biological weapon or even nuclear.”

Andrew nodded. Now, that was a valid point he hadn’t considered before. With a portal, they could just leave a bomb, either nuclear or biological, and simply walk away through the portal. Damn! All right. Time to earn the big bucks. More likely biological, he decided. Something they had a vaccine for that they could release to decimate us locals and then waltz back in later to minimal opposition.

“Can I have permission to do a deal with them if they will surrender?”

The Major scratched his head as he considered this point.

“Shit. Yeah, if you can come up with some way of guaranteeing there are no further portals opening down there, then yes, you have permission to do a deal. Intelligence says to look for a long rectangular object, probably buried in cement, that will be the portal beacon. If you destroy that, it will make it very hard for them to find us again.”