“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.