Captain Kara Plummer broke her leading regiment into squads and had them fan out for any injured or to count the remains of the dead which littered the sidewalks after curfew had been broken by the Resistance.
“You see anyone with a magical aura on them—shoot to kill.” She said coldly. “Let none stand in our way towards supreme dominance.”
Nobody questioned the woman’s approach or orders. They all did what they were trained to do in the waning hours of the Regency Council’s decree—passed down from the Supreme Chancellor.
The woman watched as her people comb the streets while she kept a radio uplink on for any news of signs of the Resistance. But by all accounts, the army got lucky in the days ahead of the declaration and most were either wiped out by force or captured, detained, and interrogated and then brutally killed in one fashion or another.
What was left couldn’t possibly be a nuisance to the Merrick’s overall plans to return the nation back to the Pre-War days of old and rid the country of all magical kinsfolk.
But she recalled from her duty station in Boston, it only took one to make themselves a pain for everyone which would require more lethal force in the end.
Touching the fresh jagged scar on the right side of her face, she winced in memory of that moment when a spell shock caught her unawares and she paid for that folly in spades.
But the perpetrator she was chasing was finally cornered, then captured, and then killed by her personally for causing so much pain and aggravation. And what was worse…?
The idiot wasn’t even part of the Resistance. Just a wannabe “hero” who thought that striking out at random would earn him street cred.
She made sure he died screaming her name. That was the only satisfaction she was going to get—even though the scar of her humiliation would remain as a poignant reminder for the remainder of her days.
“Chariot Leader 2-37. Checking in. Nothing yet so far.” She reported in.
“Chariot Leader 2-37. Copy and logged in. Report back anything suspicious before midnight. Then we’ll move you to the west side of the city and conduct patrol sweeps there.”
“Affirmative, Base One. Over and out.” The woman acknowledged—while keeping her eyes open and peeled for any probable suspects. But all she could see was destroyed ground cars, burning piles of refuse and some structural damage along the way, and of course—bodies of tonight’s attack.
The woman pegged them as civilian and did a spot check with her Sweeper’s onboard scanner and confirmed them as such. Not a hint of magical aura on them at all. Not even an inkling.
Pursing her lips in quiet distaste, the captain started to wonder how they were going to pin this one on the Resistance—knowing that the hover control bots were the primary aggressor’s in tonight’s little incursion.
All to chase down the last stray members of the Witch’s Guild still residing in Lower Tam.
But orders were orders. And the woman didn’t give a damn who was going to be blamed for this fuck up. But she could always imagine the sanctioned scapegoat at large though.
There would always be one with the Supreme Chancellor in charge of things.
Casting off any further thoughts of her supreme leader, Kara kept watch on top of the Sweeper’s modular pillbox while her second lieutenant used a portable scanner to filter out any possible distortions given off by magical kinsfolk.
His device beeped a couple of times as he recorded a thermal energy imprint of a human body—but one that radiated some pretty intense magical aura.
He quickly reported his findings to his commanding officer.
Kara was in a state of disbelief. “That can’t be right. Your scanner must be malfunctioning, Lieutenant Barnes.”
“No, ma’am. The equipment checks out perfectly. I oversaw the inspection myself before we shipped out.”
“But this person—this individual—is way too young to be holding that much magical energy. What would you guess their age?”
“Between fifteen and nineteen years old. Possibly a juvenile. A teenager.” Barnes answered back without hesitation.
Kara shook her head, still not buying the recorded data.
“I want you to check the equipment again. Run a level one diagnostic.” She said right then and there.
“That will make this scanner unusable for the duration of our patrol. I’ll have to use the Sweeper Engine’s main scanners and those don’t always pick up on individual thermal energy imprints—to say nothing of anyone with a magical aura.”
“I know that, mister. But do it anyways. From the looks of things, I would say our quarry managed to make a clean get away.”
“So we’re not going to…investigate the matter?” The man said hesitantly.
“You’re more than welcome to grab a man off the line—if only to explain to Commandant Peterson why you had to leave your post in such a hurry. And Sheri is more of a ball breaker than I am.”
Barnes weighed his immediate options—none of them really good—then he asked: “Can I get a handicap?”
“That’s not what will happen to you, Richie. But since I’m in a good mood, I’ll cover for you—this time. Grab a spare scanner from the trunk space below and get First Sergeant Jeffrey Gaines to go with you and start sweeping the streets. Stay in touch by radio link and report anything off or at the least…suspicious. Do not fucking engage for any reason. You spot a magical familiar, you haul ass back here. Use a remote locator drone to mark the position. We’ll regroup and sweep in. You got me?”
“Loud and clear,” the man said with a smart salute of his own—before opening the forward hatch of the Sweeper Engine and went below to grab his friend and another scanner.
Kara directed the machine on a more northerly route—passed the broken wrecks of more burned out cars and thought for a second that she spotted some movement in the burning firelight and smoky shadows.
“Halt Engine.” She called into her pick up and the thing came to a complete stop in the next minute or so. These lumbering beasts of burden weren’t known for their agility and quickness. Just their heavy armor, tank treads, and a fearsome growling noise which came out of the rear engine compartment when the fucker was at full speed.
Grabbing her light rifle and scope, Kara climbed out from the open pillbox and down the access ladder until she was able to hit the step mount and then jumped down on her own.
Landing in a crouch, she picked herself up and went over to one of the wrecks that she had spotted earlier in the smoke and haze—her rebreather mask and light goggles attuned to the night landscape.
She walked roughly eighteen yards from her assigned Engine before her built-in eye piece alerted her to some definite movement from one of the shadow-covered wrecks which had gotten partially crushed by some falling debris from a destroyed storefront.
“Halt and stay where you are!” She called out harshly. “Do not move! If you do…I will fire!”
Whatever was in the shadows blurred with movement—before she could see the telltale sign of a magical incantation being lit up briefly in the night and the woman quickly took a bead on her intended target and pumped two shots into whatever was being partially cloaked by the darkness.
No noise, no sound, no nothing emanated from that spot and the woman was certain that she got what she detected only moments earlier.
There was no way in hell she was taking another chance with her life again. Not with what happened last time she crossed paths with one of these…people.
If you could call them that.
They weren’t even human. Not even those witches that used to reside in Lower Tam. They were filth. Subhuman. Vermin. Monsters. Things that needed to be wiped out for the good of humanity.
Nobody asked them to come and share the same land, breathe the same air, or…?
(The woman shuddered at the thought)
Married into a human family. Had their children. Spawned half-lings. Produced generations of undesirables that made being a pure human all that m
ore difficult to excel and succeed in life.
Kara believed the last Great War had taught these things a valuable lesson. But apparently, their human sympathizers thought to show mercy and forgiveness—rather than do the right thing and preserve the sanctity of the human race.
The valued children of Earth’s future.
So it fell to her and those like her to enact a terrible retribution on society as a whole and now she was simply carrying out the Gosling Directive.
Approaching the burned out wreck, the woman could immediately pick up the fading thermo print of a dying body of someone who wished to defy her until the very last possible second.
Casting a light on the scene, the army captain so that it was a woman in her middle thirties. Fair skinned, russet brown hair, exemplary facial featured of someone who both bred and commanded strength and wisdom, and pearly whitish-blue eyes—a dead give away to someone who was a fucking witch.
The mortally wounded woman coughed up some lingering blood from the wound that had been punched into her midsection. It was a fatal wound. Not worth treating under the current circumstances—even if she wanted to.
“My…death…will avail you nothing in the end.” The woman rasped in quiet defiance.
Kara spat at the ground in front of the witch. A clear and present sign of disrespect and dishonor towards the dying. But she didn’t give a shit.
“And you thought that you could win by running away from me? Hiding out in plain sight?”
“If that was…my intent. I wouldn’t be here, now would I?” The nameless woman fired back.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re dead. And so is the last vestiges of the Resistance. Your kind is finished. You will no longer be able to prowl the streets late at night like your kind did so many generations ago under the guise of the former federal government and the Regency Council. No more freedom or liberties for you, my dear. When you’re dead, I will burn your body to ashes. And you would never know the joys of Enlightenment. Your spirit will be trapped here—to wander as a forgotten ghost of memories past. That will be your damnation. Your own personal hell.” Kara recited for her in passing—while covering for a most painful truth.
But the dying woman caught onto her hidden words and nodded.
“So you’re one of us. But not…one of us. You are a half-ling. Like so many others. But you…chose servitude over salvation and chained yourself to a miserable existence for mankind’s reborn lust for power, purity, and control.”
Kara unhooked a “Fire Bat” Type II demolition charge from her weapons harness. And she purposely primed it in a show of who was in real control of the situation.
“For your dying wish, I will grant you this small boon: Yes…I was one of you. My mother was a magical familiar and my father was human to a set degree—but descended from a powerful dragon dynasty. And I was born from their loins into a world which hated people like me—sold out for humanity’s sake. Taunted. Tormented. Bullied. And such things hardened me. Chained my heart for retribution and blood of the defilers. I joined the army in secret, passed myself as one of their own. Scored just enough on the proficiency tests so not to rouse suspicion—but earned me a spot in the ranks.
“From there, I rose up in the chain of command. Made my mark. Bade my way up to my coveted spot as captain of the Regency Council’s Third Watch Armies. And that’s where I started planning your kind’s demise. From the shadows. In secret. I helped lay the groundwork for your eventual extermination. Because you are nothing but vermin to me. Rats. And for what you are. What you did to me, I will make sure that all you suffer the same fate as I did growing up.”
There came almost no answer from the dying woman until Kara heard the following words:
“…then you condemn yourself and all others like you…to cold oblivion.”
The captain didn’t hesitate the activate the device—setting it to a thirty second countdown. Then she pulled the trigger switch out from its contact guard and the thing started to beep—a subtle hum building ever so upwards as it went.
“You don’t know me.” Kara said—taking her leave of her victim. “No more than I know you.”
A short explosive report sounded twenty seconds later. But the woman was far enough from the scene that she no longer cared what happened next.
To them. Or to herself.
She had a job to do and she was going to do it—even if it cost her her own soul in the process.
“Report.” A crystalline voice cut in.
Kara stopped for a moment in her tracks and tapped her inner microphone link.
“Plummer here. Nothing to report. Just a wounded animal. I put the thing out of its misery. Going to Sector Sixteen.”
“Affirmative. No action required at this time. Proceed at your own discretion, Captain Plummer. You have four hours to contain the situation, then mop up. The Council‘s orders.”
“Copy that. Moving on.” Kara said, shouldering her weapon and making her way back to the Sweeper Engine in tow. The night was going to be proven to be definitely disappointing in her book.
But there wasn’t much else she could do. The hover control bots pretty much took care of everything not nailed down. That was both their function and design.
And as much as the woman hated progress, she couldn’t pass on how deadly and efficient the Regency Council’s newest toys performed out in the battlefield.
It was worth spending another boring night—save one unfortunate soul—on lookout duty.
Just to see the look on that woman’s face as she saw her own future go up in flames…
CHAPTER THREE
The Warm Bed
Tillie’s feet started hurting about a half hour ago as she kept pace with the nameless messenger boy that had rescued her from her plight only a couple of hours earlier—according to her time glyphs.
Neither one had said much since leaving the platform—except to point out which direction they were heading towards—but the girl’s mind was slowly becoming numb to the reality in which she was now facing.
None of it very pleasant.
But there was nothing that she could do about her current situation. In this sense, she had no home to go to anymore—not even a city that she once called her own for much of her youth.
It had now become a battleground for all things bad or terrible. And in that split second, Tillie felt like she was responsible for all the death and carnage which had befallen Old New York for the past couple of weeks now—as the Regency Council and its armies swept through every street and borough like an avenging demon coughed up from the depths of hell.
But still…she followed the boy through a back alley was lit with old screen adverts and actual printed posters of boxing or wrestling matches from the days of old. (Way older than she cared to remember.)
Hell, she even spotted a newsprint of that old Casablanca classic that managed to worm its way through the annals of history since its release in early 1941.
But she couldn’t spend a whole lot of time ruminating on its historical implications as Messenger Boy led her to the end of the street. And what she found waiting for her was a…run down hotel?
Okay, maybe there was some nostalgic irony, but the sign above her head said The Hotel followed by the word Ram, but the rest had been rubbed off by both time and the elements.
Not too mention someone’s uncanny accuracy with either a baseball bat or a pail full of rocks.
The thing was absolutely pockmarked all over and dented in places because of it.
“Hmph.” The girl said, unimpressed. “Does this place have rats? Or am I going to meet up with Thing?”
Her rescuer smiled broadly at her words.
“It’s perfectly safe. And clean. Has a few spare rooms as well. That’s where you’ll be spending the night.”
“I can’t have a vote?”
“Not at this time. You are—for a lack of a better word—an exile. And not by choice either. So you may have to follow our rules of the road if you
plan staying here.”
“I suppose returning to the surface would be…unadvisable?”
The older boy nodded out of sympathy for her plight.
“Unfortunately. But Old Man Felix will take care of you—since this is where he lives and also where we call our improvised base of operations.”
“Because no one would suspect an old run down hotel?”
“Travel lodge—actually. What you’re seeing is the front face of the building. It actually makes a complete ’L’-shape on one end and a long “I” on the other. It’s for magical kinsfolk such as yourself. No humans allowed.”
“Except Felix and—?” Tillie wanted to know.
“A small staff. Plus a guard detail—which you won’t see.”
“Hmph.” The girl snorted softly. “Invisible ninjas. I like it.”
“Well, not ninjas. Not technically. Special forces. Ex-military.” The boy filled in for her. “But I’m getting sidetracked and you need to get inside.”
“Why?”
“Do you prefer to sleep in one of the adjoining tunnels? I can tell you, it won’t be pleasant.”
Tillie smiled. “Pushy.”
“No. Just…I have things to do and places to go before I can go home. I’ve taken up way too much of our time as is.” The boy said, climbing the steps with the metal railings.
Tillie followed closely—but not too closely—and waited for the boy to do his thing.
He did—ringing an old-fashioned bell—which buzzed more than it rang.
But it got the attention of the attendant inside and he came up and unlocked the door.
“Well, well, well…this is a surprise Charlie. Normally, you’re not down this far—unless you found something,” he paused and gazed at his traveling companion.
“Or someone.”
Tillie was surprised. “Charlie? That’s your name?”
“It’s my given name.” The boy said in defense of himself. “I didn’t come with an ID card or a birth certificate when they found me.”
“And that’s why…you couldn’t tell me your name?”
Generation Witch Year One Page 2