Darryl shook his head. “We have to maintain three shields, all at once?”

“That’s the hope. Sanchez can hold three simultaneously, but none of us can yet. After lots of training, we can all do two now, though. He’s training us to work as a team so that one of us will hold the energy shield over our group, another the physical shield, and then we each keep our own mental shield. As we can only do two things simultaneously at the moment, those of us who aren’t holding one of the other shields can then attack while still holding our own mental shield. The shielders create holes for us to work through. At least that’s the theory. We’re a bit rough around the edges as yet, but that is what we’ve been working on the last couple of days.”

The five newbies all looked at each other and grinned. This was more like it!

“Sounds good to me.” Said Andrew, and the others nodded.

“Yeah, well, Sanchez is supposed to be back tomorrow, so we’ll find out what you guys can do pretty quick.”

Corporal Alan Sanchez didn’t look at all Mexican when he turned up the following morning. Williams had taken them through morning physical training where they’d met the two women, and then they’d barely finished their showers when the Corporal arrived. He was impressed that Williams had made them continue their physical training, and no one had the heart to tell him that it only happened that morning because he was due back, and they weren’t sure when he’d arrive.

He had them fall out in the parade area outside the barracks and went over to get the two women who followed him back from their barracks. Sergeant Duncan appeared and took up a position somewhat back from where the Corporal was standing.

“Right, for my sins, I am your trainer. I’d rather be down on the front lines than here, but someone has to train you maggots, and at the moment, I’m the one elected. You’re the second group of recruits we’ve put through here, and so far, we haven’t done very well. Of the eight that were in the first group, four are dead, two are wounded, and one is we don’t know where. This means only one person from that training group is still on active duty, although I understand the two wounded ones will be released from the hospital shortly.”

He paused to take a breath and study their faces. It was pretty shocking hearing that sort of casualty list Andrew decided.

“Fortunately, you people won’t be under the command of idiots like the first group were. We only have two, that’s right, two trained officers who can wield magic. One was on leave, and one was in the Northern Territory when all this blew up, which resulted in my first lot of trainees being sent into action by people who had no idea what they were doing nor what they were facing. Morons.”

“So, we’re all magic? I wonder if Sergeant Duncan is too?”

Nguyen shook his head. “No. Corporal Sanchez is, though. About the same as you, strength-wise. I don’t know about the others. I guess we’ll find out when they show up.”

Andrew looked at his watch.

“In the meantime, I suggest we head to the mess and get ourselves some dinner. Sound good?”

“Sure does, mate,” Paul replied, and the five of them headed off for dinner.

When they returned to the barracks, they found three other men who looked quite at home already and were obviously the missing men from earlier. Andrew could tell they could all do magic with their glows being similar to the men he had already met. One was tall and fair; the second was medium height and rather solid, while the third was of a similar height but with dark hair and a very swarthy appearance.

“So, it looks like the threat of maggots has been fulfilled.” The tall one observed as they walked in, studying the five of them.

Andrew studied the three new acquaintances as well. They were all shielding but were clearly fairly strong magically. The tall one looked to be not quite as strong as John, while the other two were of similar strength to the other three.

“Andrew Harris.” He introduced himself that his four new friends followed suit.

“David Williams,” said the tall one.

“Adrian Reynolds.” Said the solid one.

“Tony Contos.” The last one said.

“So you guys have been here for a while?”

“Yeah. Close to a fortnight. Corporal Sanchez has been working with us to build up our capability. There’s two women as well who are part of the squad.”

“And we don’t have communal barracks? Damn.” Said Paul.

Williams laughed, and the other two sniggered. “You say that now, but you haven’t met them.”

“Oh. I guess from that comment that they’re not that good-looking?” Daryl asked.

“You could say that. One’s built like a battleship, and although her face is pretty, she’s gay, so no joy there, and the other is, well, she’s not ugly, I suppose, but she is not exactly a movie star either.”

“So, where is Corporal Sanchez?”

“He got called down to Army HQ for a meeting about us magic types. He wasn’t impressed with being dragged all the way down there, I can tell you. Of course, I think he’d prefer to be at the front rather than training us. Sanchez doesn’t really hide the fact that he regards this as something he has to do rather than what he wants to be doing.”

“Right. So what form does this training take?” Paul Nguyen asked.

“Mostly, it’s about practicing shields and gathering power. You need to be able to keep up physical, energy, and mental shields pretty much the whole time you’re near these bastards, so that’s what we get drilled at over and over. Their cyborgs use lasers, as do their tanks. Their support troops use normal firearms, and then their Mentalists, as they call them, will use magic on you, and if they can, they will try and control you.”

Northwest Ithria (Taroniah)

Eastern 2/3 of Ithria

The latest Ithria book is out

After the initial fortnight, the training became more specialized with much more intense lessons on weapons, breaking them down, cleaning and re-assembling them, plus basic maintenance. They were introduced to other weapons such as light machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, anti-tank weapons of various types, and drone operations. They did more route marches, cross country maneuvers, and even simulated combat with the instructors firing over their heads.

At the end of six weeks, he had gotten to know some of his fellow maggots quite well, although he hadn’t tried too hard to fit in as none of the others in his squad were going into the Specials. He hadn’t stood out amongst the other trainees at either end of the spectrum, but that wasn’t really that important as he was wanted for his magic, although no one actually mentioned his magic for the whole six weeks. Plus, he was careful not to use it for anything in case he got into trouble for cheating. He was not really surprised, however, when a couple of weeks short of completing training when a strange sergeant turned up and ordered him to grab his gear.

“I’m Sergeant Duncan. You’re being transferred.”

The Sergeant was a serious-looking fellow in his late twenties who was almost certainly a  career regular. You could tell the difference between the reservists and the regulars if you watched them carefully.

Andrew nodded. “Righ now?”

The Sergeant nodded, so he emptied his locker as quickly as he could while the Sergeant stood and watched and then followed the surprisingly patient Sergeant to another part of the training grounds where he was shown into an almost identical barracks where there were four other men already lounging around. Several of the empty bunks also looked to be occupied, but the occupants were missing.

“This is Andrew Harris. He’s done six weeks like you guys. Get yourself settled, and we’ll get to work in the morning.”

“John Lancaster.” A fair-haired guy said, offering his hand.

“Darryl Ciccone.” Darryl was a swarthy chap with dark hair.

“Paul Nguyen” Paul had obvious Asian ancestry at some point in the past.

“Anders Van Hooten.” Who was a tall, blond beanpole.

“So, you can do a bit of magic, too, eh?” Nguyen asked.

Andrew tried to decide how to play this. He thought he was pretty powerful, compared to things he had heard, but he decided against big-noting himself straight off, just in case he ‘wasn’t that much more powerful than these guys. Then he realized they were shielding, just like he was. He backed off his shield about half.

“Shit!” Paul said.

“Man, you’re pretty strong!” John offered.

The others cut their shields, and they showed good strong magical glows. They were all a bit weaker than what he was showing, and he was only showing about half his strength. Damn! Unless, of course, one of them was hiding his glow a little, like Andrew was. Hmmm. He didn’t sense that any of them were hiding their strength, which was interesting. He wondered how powerful the lady Captain from the train was.

It wasn’t till much later that it dawned on him that he was no longer the wimpy nerd he’d been at school. Well, he was still a nerd, and, to be honest, he was still fairly wimpy, but his magic meant that he wasn’t someone you could mess with anymore. The strange thing was that he felt no need to show off to any of these bigger, stronger guys, and he resolved that unless he was directly threatened, he’d keep his magic to himself as much as possible. At least during training. He was enough of a loner already that there was no need to give all his fellow trainees further ammunition to set him apart from everybody else.

Chapter 5

Basic training

The men from the third company were proven to be correct. The new recruits spent their first full day being outfitted with uniforms and equipment in the morning, and after lunch, they were given a tour of the base where all the important buildings were pointed out to them and the location of which they were supposed to remember thereafter. It was a pretty easy start to boot camp. It turned out it was the easiest day they would have for the next two months.

Their platoon consisted of a Sergeant, three Corporals, three Lance Corporals, and eighteen maggots, of which he was one. A real platoon would also have a Signaller and a Combat Medic with a Lieutenant being in command of the whole force, but they didn’t need the three extras for training purposes. The Sergeant was perfectly capable of training the whole platoon himself. Sergeants had always been the backbone of any army, something that Sergeant Hunt made a point of telling them several times as they were shown how to make their beds and pack their lockers, at least three times over for each of them

They were roused out of bed while it was still dark, given ten minutes to do their ablutions, and then get dressed before being led out to the parade ground and taken through a series of calisthenics as a warmup. They were then allowed to have breakfast before being put through marching practice, more marching practice, and even more marching practice. After a light lunch, they were taken to the shooting range and introduced to the AX-3, the main rifle used by the Ostrayan army. In the second session, they were each allowed to shoot off three rounds, whoopty, do! This was followed by basic hand-to-hand combat training and clambering over obstacle courses.

The second day of training was more of the same except that they were introduced to the Fritz handgun, which was the weapon used by officers and specialist troops. They were allowed to fire five rounds from the pistol, woo hoo. They also got to do a five-kilometer jog in full kit, followed by a five-kilometer walk back to the base. The third training day was the same as the first, and so it went for two weeks with no days off. At the end of their first two weeks of training, they got to do a twenty-kilometer route march, which at least made for something different. The route march was followed by their first day off, and most of them simply sat in the barracks and relaxed.