Deus Ex Machina

Chapter Six

Abel and Cain had reached their emergency stash with relative ease, they had not been challenged on their way. The stash was a small house on a side street, discrete and out of the way, it was both inconspicuous and accessible at the same time. And for now, it was the only place where they were safe from the purificators. Still limping from his ankle injury, Cain was helped into the main room by Abel. Depositing his bag of supplies on a couch, Abel opened it and grabbed some bandages and gel-aid. As Cain settled down on another couch, he grabbed a can of some energy drink off the side table and started gulping it down. The brothers had been on the run for about two hours now, though it had been a day since they had last had proper rest. Worn out and tired, Abel promptly plonked down on the adjacent sofa after applying the gel-aid on Cain's ankle and wrapping it in bandages.

"What do we do now?" Cain asked, staring straight up at the ceiling, a million thoughts running through his head. Their options were severely limited now. They had lost their primary base of operations and since it was the purificators who had come for them, they would have to assume that Kaél was no longer safe for them. They would have to relocate to another city, not an easy task considering that the nearest cities were about fifty kilometers away.

"For now, all we can do is rest," Abel suggested as he took a deep breath. He was running several options in his head, how to exit the city and what chance they had to make it to the nearest city. Of course staying there would be foolish, the purificators would look there first if they hadn't already stationed men there. 

Nodding in agreement with Abel, Cain struggled to get up, his ankle still throbbing from the injury. "I'm going to sleep for about an hour or two, wake me when you need me," he instructed Abel, the weariness in his voice pushing past the worry and anxiety. Without another word he hobbled into an adjacent bedroom and promptly fell asleep on a bed roll at one corner of the room.

While all of this was occurring, at the highest point of Kaél, a radio tower with a platform near the tip of the antenna, a small meeting was ongoing. The team leaders of the purificators were meeting with their overseer, the black clad veteran. Heated discussion was ongoing between various squad leaders while the overseer stood to one side, merely looked down into the dimly lit city below him. The squabbling of his underlings brought a scowl to his face.

"Silence," he ordered, his voice neither loud nor angry, but the tone in which he conveyed the message brought all other conversation to a stand still.

"Two men, no, two boys. That's who we were ordered to capture. Two boys who were doing illegal business without the supervision and guidance of the great machine. But somehow we have three dead purificators from this simple mission. Three! Two shot dead like dogs in an alley and another shocked to death by a trap. This is hardly befitting for purificators,"  he said, his voice soft but barely containing his incumbent rage.

He turned to face the men who stood before him, slowly walking towards them staring into the eye's of each of the men who stood before him.

"No more nonsense, I have had enough of failure. It took us a month to find their hide out. Thirty days to simply find them, and when we finally find them, they slip through our fingers. Three dead and no one can explain how the boys managed to evade our search net. I have had enough of this nonsense," he said, his fury apparent from the intensity of his voice.

The overseer walked over to the edge of the platform as the team leaders nervously looked on, wondering if they would be punished for their failures. As the overseer looked down on the pitiful settlement around him, he turned abruptly, his cloak whistling in the frigid night air.

"No more chances. Seal the entrances and burn the rats out. At four exactly tomorrow morning, I want the four guard towers and the gates below them to be under our control. I shall call for a flamer squadron to assist us with this task. The firefly would be more than sufficient in burning this little outpost to the ground," the overseer proclaimed, distaste and anger punctuating every word.

As he turned to face the men assembled, he gave them one final warning, " do not mess this up, it will very well be your last" the unsaid threat apparent in his words.

And so it began at four the next morning, the moment when the human body was most at rest. Within the walls four small teams of purificators moved silently through the shadows. The first two teams who reached the west and east gate towers subdued the men within with ease, knocking them out with tranquilizer darts. The north tower team found the gate house empty, the guard on station no where to be found. In the south tower, things didn't go as smoothly as planned. The guard was in the process of swapping with another man when the team entered the building. Caught by surprise, both the guards had instinctively fired their long ceremonial rifles at the approaching men. Though both shots went wide, a ricochet caught one of the purificators in the back. Stealth out of the picture the remaining purificators had rushed forward with black blades in their hands, slashing the lives out of the two guards.

It was at about thirty minutes past four when a small whine could be heard throughout the town. Soft enough not to awaken anybody sleeping, but yet loud and ominous for anybody who might have been awake at that time. A firefly gunship, the size of a small house fitted with two rotors on the sides was flying low towards the city. It had been given the signal roughly ten minutes ago and the pilots had started up their engines and warmed up the napalm tanks which were present on both sides of the fuselage. An ugly machine, it's sole purpose was to spew fire from the flamethrower located at its bulbous nose. The pilots themselves had been through many missions and their airtight cockpit prevented them from breathing in the rancid smell of burning flesh.

As the pilots reached their first waypoint, they reported their position to the overseer, who in turn replied with a simple phrase, "Prepare to purify."

Confirmation received, the co-pilot who acted as the gunner ignited the flamethrower starter flame. The gunship was about to start its arduous task of turning an entire city into ash.