The portals worked by honing in on a beacon that was embedded in the ground where the portal was supposed to open. He was almost certainly looking at an accidentally revealed part of the beacon. He sliced the concrete into long lines at an angle each and heaved the bits of concrete out of the small trench he had made, revealing a glassy rod thing. He had no idea whether it was still working on not, but a couple of quick slices made sure that it wasn’t working now. He looked around a bit, but there was nothing else to see, so he turned to find Simpson standing right behind him, taking her by surprise a little.

She was so close and so tempting he threw caution to the wind and leaned forward and kissed her. Her initial reaction was to pull away, but then she stopped herself and returned the kiss. Yes! They didn’t get to kiss for very long because they could both hear the sound of boots coming down the alley behind them. They broke apart and turned to see her Captain and a bunch of Nuzeeland troops spreading out to study the area.

“Jesus!” The Captain said, looking at all the little bits and pieces and some not-so-little bits and pieces of metal lying around. “What happened here?”

“I found out that when an armored personnel carrier hits the side of one of their portals, it explodes and shreds. Very energetically. There is no other way to describe it. It’s a very energetic process, as you can see by the scorch marks and the holes in the wall over there.”

He pointed to where some of the bits of shrapnel had punched straight through a brick wall. The Captain walked over and had a look.

“Damn!.”

“If you want to wander over here, Captain. This is the beacon the portal uses to lock onto. I’ve disabled this one, but we need to find out if they have any others in the city.”

“Right. Good point. I’ll get some techies in here to have a look at that and see what they can do. It would be good to know what signal it sent out.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” Andrew said, thinking about it for a moment.

He closed his eyes and looked into the blue, something he avoided doing normally. There was a spark not too far away. He orientated himself to face the direction it was and then opened his eyes again. He noted the direction he was facing in relation to the alley and turned back to the Captain.

“I think I might be able to tell where there’s another one. There’s something I feel anyway. Shall I go and have a look?”

“Yes. Certainly. You get on with that while I get my tech people in here to study the remains of this beacon.”

“Sir,” Andrew said, saluting the Captain, which the Nuzeeland officer returned, but not before frowning at Andrew. As far as Andrew was concerned, this was no longer a combat zone, just a debris field. He turned and headed up the alley with Simpson right behind him. When they emerged onto the road, he stopped to take a bearing on the sparky thing he could somehow detect. Straight ahead. He moved back to the main road they had come up just a short while before and took another bearing on the spark. It was just over there. This looked like it had been a wide road that had been narrowed down in this section, and part of it turned into a park. There was a disturbed strip of dirt and grass just off the street. He bent down, pulled out his knife, and started digging in the dirt. Then he hit something that sounded almost plastic, cleared away more of the dirt, and revealed the shape of another beacon.