In the face of the disaster at home, it was decided that this world would make a good target for them to take over and move their population. Their tech was good but somewhat limited. While most of the northern hemisphere was still regarded as a radioactive wasteland, most of the major cities in the south had been nuked as well. Australia, or Ostraya, as they called it here, was the best organized and most advanced of the remaining states and would make a good base. He understood that Indonesia to the north was a hodge-podge of independent islands, while South America was an ongoing war zone and pretty chaotic. Their information on the rest of the planet was much more limited.

With the plague hitting Tomkya, Natori had stopped all contact, and a desperate government had decided to invade here and move to this world as a stop-gap measure until they could find something better or a cure was found for the plague. Toshiro thought the whole operation was all too panicked and rushed, but he was just an Intelligence Bureau mentalist drafted into the invasion army as most of the senior commanders and the best troops had been hit with the plague and were either powerless or in revolt.

Well, if he had to be a stand-in grunt, he would try and do as good a job as possible. Another couple of trucks with cyborgs bounced through and pulled over to the left, where they began dismounting and deploying. Suddenly, he could hear a high-pitched whine, almost like a jet aircraft. It was coming from over to the right somewhere, but nothing was in sight. The helicopter was now hovering in plain view, taking a good look at them, but it was ready to drop behind a building if needed. It was at least five kilometers away, he decided. He moved over to where the cyborgs were unloading.

“Deploy over there. We need more room. Clear those two buildings.”

He pointed where he wanted them to go and then heard a different sound that sounded a lot like the roar of a rocket. Shit!

“Incoming!” He yelled and threw himself on the ground with the truck between him and the portal.

He put up a hard shield even as the startled Cyborgs began to drop, and then the world ended. Or it at least it seemed to end. The truck rocked, shook and the force of the blast flipped it over on its side, the cab just missing him as it crashed onto the ground. The truck’s underside rang with repeated clangs as metal debris from the portal shred crashed into it. A vehicle must have been passing through the portal when the missile hit. Finally, the heat, pressure, and noise stopped, and he peeked around the corner of the horizontal truck cabin.

The smooth pavement where the portal had attached was gone. Instead, there was an enormous crater with smoke still rising from it and small pieces of shiny metal scattered around from whatever was shredded. Two of the tanks were over on their sides, and the third was missing a large part of its turret where something had impacted. He couldn’t hear anything but then realized the cyborg nearest to him was saying something, which meant he was deaf, although hopefully it was just an effect of the blast, and his hearing would come back soon.