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.”