Andrew was assigned to the first squad of the second platoon of the second company of the third training battalion and directed to barracks B23. Fortunately, the buildings were laid out fairly logically, and he quickly found the correct room and walked in the door. There were rows of two-story bunks with a footlocker at either end.

“Pick whichever is empty.” A voice said from almost behind him, surprising the hell out of Andrew.

He kicked himself for not trying to sense if anybody was already here as he turned to find a soldier with two stripes on his arm standing beside a single bunk to the right of the doorway. With the door opening that way, Andrew hadn’t noticed him as he’d walked in, which he kicked himself about once he realized. Andrew looked around the room, and the bunks all looked like they were empty. He glared at the soldier, who he decided was a Corporal from the stripes.

“Am I the first man here?” he asked.

“I’m here.” The Corporal offered, grinning at him.

Andrew was tempted to show him how unamused he was but refrained. Being hazed upon arrival might well be some form of test. He was still upset with himself for not sensing ahead as he’d walked in, thereby preventing himself from being surprised by the Corporal as he entered the barracks.

“There are four blokes here already. They’re over at the mess getting something to eat. But other than that, pick a bunk. The locker nearest the door is the bottom bunk’s.”

“Righto,” Andrew replied and looked around.

He settled on a bunk that was one row of bunks in from the door and to the left because the latrines were on the right-hand side of the barracks. Ha, he thought he’d used the correct military term for the toilets. He quickly emptied his possessions into the locker, politely inquired where the mess was, and headed off with what he hoped were accurate directions to get some dinner.

He didn’t know anybody else, apart from the Captain on the train, but he found a seat at a table once he’d filled his tray, and the table turned out to contain people from the third company of the third training battalion. They’d all arrived the previous day and were all from Norwest and what used to be New South Wales. They all assured him that the first day would be mostly taken up with getting issued uniforms and a tour of the base so that the newbies wouldn’t get lost. Apparently, the real training didn’t start until the second day, and it appeared none of them were looking forward to it, well, apart from one bloke. The others all agreed that the fellow was a gym junkie and a bit strange, although the guy they were referring to seemed to be taking their comments in good part. Eyeing him, he certainly seemed to be fairly ripped!

The food was better than he had been expecting, with a choice of roast beef or sausages, lots of vegetables, and a thick gravy. There were vegetarian alternatives, and most of it was gluten-free as well. The gravy was really tasty! The other four men were already back in the barracks when he returned. Another six men turned up over the next half an hour, each having arrived and gone searching for food just as Andrew had. The ten other recruits were all typical young Ossies. About half were tradies; a couple were off farms, and the others were uni students. Andrew didn’t feel comfortable with any of them. Besides being the youngest, being volunteers meant they leaned to the macho end of the scale, and they all reminded him too much of the bullies at school to feel relaxed around them.

“That’s, that’s just…”

“Yes. Fortunately, they seem to be running out of real troops.”

“Really? The news reports always talk about thousands of cyborgs, but as usual with the media, it’s a bit hard to gauge exactly how many troops we’re facing.” Andrew commented.

She nodded. “It’s hard to get numbers because they keep bringing more people through the portal. The Colonel told me the count was up to nearly five thousand cyborgs, maybe a hundred of the really powerful mentalists, with maybe a thousand weaker ones backing them up and about ten thousand non-cyborg soldiers. They’ve been reduced to training and arming men who weren’t soldiers back on their homeworld. We’re seeing household servants, office workers, all sorts. They’re still shipping more and more of people through the portal, but the flood has been reduced to a trickle recently. We’re hoping that means we’re nearing the end of them, but it could just be a bottleneck of some description that’s slowing things up. Faulty power supply to their portal or something.”

She paused and stared at him. “Plus our own people they’ve gained mental control over. They usually put them at the front line when they attack.”

“Shit!” He hissed, feeling sick at the mental image of women and kids being made to advance in front of cyborg soldiers.

“Yeah. It’s been pretty horrific, apparently.” She glanced around at the other people in the nearby seats, who were all trying to look like they weren’t listening in. “Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

Andrew found it hard to sleep aboard the bouncy train. They stopped at Grarftun for forty minutes so everybody could get some crappy food, stretch their legs and use the station refreshment facilities. He finally fell asleep after Coffsarbour and didn’t wake until they reached Maitland. They swapped trains here for the army camp at Singletun while the passenger train continued on to Newcassel. Newcassel was west of the old city, which had been bombed in the war. Well, the steel plant had been hit, and the city had been downwind at the time. He remembered something from his history class at school that a lot of the radioactive dust had been washed off the buildings and out of the soil into the river and ocean. He seemed to recall something he’d seen in a textbook to the effect that the whole area would be liveable again in another seventy to eighty years.

Singletun was thriving with the sudden increase in the size of the army. According to a Sergeant who had joined their train at Maitland, two new brothels had recently opened in the town, which seemed to be his measure of a place’s success. He didn’t seem to recognize Captain Greaves, so he was probably a regular. Her being out of uniform probably didn’t aid recognition.

The train pulled up at a long wooden platform. He grabbed his luggage, and after exiting the train, he headed up the platform to what was apparently an exit point. There were actually several he noticed. He joined a long line of recruits and returning military personnel heading towards a large gate. Inside there was a line of tables off to the left manned by two soldiers each. A couple of uniformed personnel were directing new recruits to the tables. Troops returning from leave went one way, while a few reserves who had only just gotten their recall notices were sent in another.

There’s no point in raising a whole new army if we don’t give them proper training before shoving them into the sharp end. If you qualify for the Specials, they’ll probably ship you to the front straight away, but at this stage, I’m still out of the loop, information-wise, so I’m not sure.”

She turned to smile at him. It wasn’t a nice smile at all. It was more like the smile of a tiger or even a crocodile.

“Which means we’ve got plenty of time to put you grubs through the wringer.”

Andrew decided that she was trying to intimidate him. Well, she’d find that it took a fair bit to put the wind up Andrew Harris! He remembered something else she said.

“So they’re Japanese like the news people are saying, only from another world.”

“Yes, they’re definitely not Japanese from our world. Our Japan is still very sparsely settled because of all the radioactive hot spots. They’re definitely from some other world, and it must be a pretty horrible place to live, apparently.”

He cocked his head slightly. “Why?”

“Well, as far as we can tell from the few prisoners we’ve taken, every person except the male Lords at the top get a chip put in their head to control them at age eighteen, not just the cyborgs.” She shuddered.

“What? The women as well?” When he saw her frown developing, he added quickly. “I mean noncombatants, not soldiers.”

“They don’t appear to have women soldiers. Or at least they didn’t. As far as we can tell, from the limited information we’ve been able to gather, it’s a very patriarchal society, almost medieval. We don’t have much firm information about them, just observations our scouts have managed to make and a couple of prisoners with which we’ve been able to capture who we have managed to make talk. I was told we have seen armed women recently, but the powers that be seem to think that their using women on the front line is more about their shortage of manpower than anything.”

“Our troops have to keep at least twenty meters away from theirs because of their powers. They call them Mentalists, apparently. About one in ten cyborgs is a leader who has some mental power, and then they have these non-cyborg officers who are the real Mentalists. Nearly all of them can control people within ten to twenty meters, which is why we have to keep back. The cyborgs and any of the other chipped people can be controlled from much further away. The few prisoners we’ve managed to take, we have to keep at least a hundred kilometers away from their mentalists to avoid them taking control of our prisoners.”

Andrew whistled as he considered the information the Captain had just imparted. His grandmother’s notes had mentioned things like being able to detect people with power from a considerable distance, but all the spells she mentioned were relatively short range. Even twenty meters seemed a bit long, although there were some things she said could reach a hundred meters if you concentrated and had enough power. The chip must be the thing that controls them and allows them to be controlled so far away.

She had barely gotten organized when the engine gave a toot, and the train lurched into motion. Andrew gave her a sidelong glance and decided she really was a delight to look at. She was probably a year or two older than him, which meant she wouldn’t be interested in him, but at least he’d have something nice to look at during the long, boring trip. She caught him glancing at her the third time, and rather than glaring at him, she gave Andrew a little smile. Which only served to embarrass him even more than if she’d been annoyed, and he felt his face heat up as he blushed.

The train followed the river to Mawillumbar past farmlands and a few smaller villages where the train didn’t stop. A smaller train would follow this one for the local traffic. More people got on at the large town or small city, although only a couple took seats in Andrew’s carriage. As the train got underway once more, he sat up and did a good look around at his fellow passengers. He decided most of the passengers in this carriage were probably recruits, and the rest were most likely military, who were returning from leave by the haircuts.

“Are you a new recruit?” He asked the girl hesitantly.

She smiled. “No, Andrew. I was on leave and am returning to duty.”

Wait, she knows my name? What the fuck! He studied the young woman closely and realized she was shielding. A very strong shield that made it impossible for him to tell how strong she was.

“How the fuck do you know my name? Who are you?” He demanded.

“I am Captain Sharon Greaves. OSF. I’ll most likely be the one evaluating you when we get to Singleton. Depending. I might be sent straight to the front. Things aren’t going well, last I heard.”

“Oh. So does your knowing my name and sitting here with me mean that I’ll be going straight into the Special Forces?”

She shook her negatively while giving him a wry grin.

“Huh. Very funny. No. You’ll get put through basic training like every other recruit, and then you’ll be evaluated by someone from SF, and maybe you’ll get picked. Or not. We’ll see. It used to be as much about personality as strength, but with the way things are going, provided you can control whatever power you have, you’ll likely be selected regardless. Just a warning, though. The OSF might be special, but they are still part of the army. You need to learn how to be a good soldier first and how to be a Special second. Do you follow?”

Yes, he could follow that. “Yeah, I guess. I thought they were desperate for troops to face these invaders, though?” “They were, and they still are, according to my colonel. We took many losses early because their troops were led by what they call mentalists. We’ve adjusted some of our tactics and methods, so we sort of have their measure now, it appears. They’re still gaining ground but at a considerably slower pace than they were at first. The high command seems to think we have enough reserves in the pipeline to shore up the front lines in the near future, and once this recruiting drive starts building us a whole new army, then we’ll be able to go over to the counterattack. I doubt that will be before the end of the year, though.

The soldier ran it through the machine to check its authenticity. The photo on it was crap, and he’d often wondered if anybody had a good ID card photo. The soldier looked from the photo to Andrew and handed it back.

“You can volunteer for a specific service, but there is no guarantee you’ll be assigned there. It depends on your skills and knowledge. So, what are you volunteering for? Infantry? Armor? Air force?”

“Specials.” Andrew said.

“You need to have power to be in the specials. I can’t feel you.” The soldier said, a sneer in his voice.

“That’s because I’m shielded,” Andrew replied and lowered his shield.

The soldier sat up straight and shook his head, his eyes opening in alarm. Andrew put his shield back in place.

“Shit!” Said the soldier. “You’re strong!”

“Yes. That is why I shield.”

“Good. You’re just what we need. Too many of us are doing this recruiting crap. The invaders have power as well, and there are a lot of them. Fill out this form.” He shoved a pad in front of Andrew.

Amused that suddenly people with power were wanted rather than shunned, Andrew quickly filled out the form on the pad the soldier had offered. There wasn’t much to it, and the only real important part was agreeing to serve in the military for the duration. He shrugged, signed that part, read the rest of the terms quickly, and handed the pad back. The soldier gave a quick once over and then shook his hand!

“Congratulations. Be at the station in the morning. The train leaves at seven am. You can bring one suitcase and don’t be late. You’re in the Army now, soldier.”

The train normally only consisted of three or four carriages. Today, it had four of the modern carriages it normally used, plus three older carriages tacked on at the front. Plus, the normal guard’s carriage and a second baggage car. Unfortunately, his ticket was for one of the old carriages along with lots of other young people. He found a seat and threw his carry bag into the roof rack. His suitcase was hopefully being loaded into the baggage car at the rear.

He’d managed to get a window seat, mainly because he had come early, and as the carriage filled up, the seat next to him stayed empty. The number of people boarding dwindled, and he saw that there were only five minutes left before the train was due to depart. A young woman came down the aisle, looking at the people seated already and then glancing at her pad every so often. She passed a couple of empty seats before reaching him. She glanced at her pad and then gave him a big smile as she sat in the empty seat next to him. She had a small carry bag which she kept with her rather than put the bag in the overhead rack. She had light brown hair, startling bright blue eyes, and was very attractive.