A bit late – sorry

“Bloody hell,” Simpson said, looking over his shoulder. “Is it still working?”

“I’m not sure. You want to go and tell the Captain we found another one while I look around and see if there are any others?”

That attracted the attention of some other soldiers who had come over to see what they were doing.

“What you’re looking at, bro?” One of them asked.

“Japanese beacon for their portal. We destroyed one around the corner up there, which was the one they were using, so I’m not sure that this one is still working.”

“Shit!”

The men began backing away, and then a fellow who had lieutenant’s tabs on his collar came up.

“Did you say that was a Japanese beacon?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know whether it’s working or not.”

“Right. We’ll assume it’s still operable, and I’ll get some serve defensive situations set up.”

He turned away and began organizing the men that were present. They began setting up barricades at each end of the section of the road and then calling for heavy weapons. Andrew looked at Simpson and shrugged.

“Personally, I’d rather they didn’t have a working beacon to home in on,” Andrew said quietly.

She grinned and nodded. He looked down at the beacon and used a slice to cut the plastic device in half. There was a bit of a spark and a puff of smoke, and that was it. They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed back toward her Captain. They found him at the head of the alley sitting on a bench having a drink of water. He gave them a nod as they came up.

“We found another beacon down there in the next section of this road, sir. I couldn’t tell whether it was working or not, but it still seemed to be at least partly functional, so I made sure it wasn’t working anymore.”

The Captain nodded. He looked tired. Glancing at Simpson, she looked tired as well, and he guessed that he probably looked that way too. It had been a busy few days. He felt like he had stretched his magic every which way fighting the enemy mentalists. And he still preferred to call it magic rather than calling it mentalist abilities. From that point on, all that was left was mopping up a few pockets of resistance. A few diehards kept fighting till the end, but most of the mentalists had been killed, and without their control, the Japanese civilians began surrendering en masse when it was obvious the war was over, and they had lost but weren’t going to be mistreated. Most of the survivors were women and children as the men had been used in the front lines and taken huge casualties, particularly in the last weeks as the Ostrayans, with help from the Nuzeelanders and even the Indonesians, had got their act together and counter-attacked.