The venom in that word was quite startling. Obviously, he wasn’t impressed with the command decisions at the front that led to the virtual annihilation of his first group of recruits.

“When I am happy that you can perform your various tasks adequately to ensure your survival on the battlefield, I will release you to active duty. You are all very poorly trained militarily, and so far, I haven’t been impressed with your mental capabilities either of the ones I’ve seen, but that is par for the course in our society. We have no truly strong magical people, and we lack the institutional training to make proper use of the people with magical ability that we do have.”

He paused and looked around the recruits and then nodded.

“Just so you understand what you’ll be up against, listen up. They have mentalists who can shield against a cannon blast and reach out twenty, perhaps thirty meters, take control of someone, and make them do what they want. Hence we will be concentrating on mental shields. Whenever you are within the combat zone, you will always keep your mental shield up. Do you understand? Failure to do so will be a serious infraction. We’ve already had too many self-inflicted casualties from people in our army who have been taken over and used against us. Having one of you people taken over would be even worse.”

“I already have a good idea of the strength of the people I’ve been working with the last week, so you five will get my undivided attention this morning. While I am familiarising myself with your capabilities, Sergeant Duncan here will take the others over to the firing range, where they can practice their physical shield against real bullets fired from real guns. So there will be no mucking around, do you understand, Reynolds?”

Reynolds tried to look innocent, but from the way the others stared at him, Andrew could tell the Corporal hadn’t made the comment without a good reason. The others left with the Sergeant leaving Corporal Samchez with the five new men. He consulted his pad and looked at the man.

“Lancaster?”

“Corporal.” The fair-haired man replied.

He worked through the list, clearly memorizing each man’s face before turning his attention back to Lancaster.

“Right. Can you form a physical shield?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Andrew could feel the man do something, presumably erecting a physical shield in front of himself. Corporal Sanchez made a flicking motion with his left hand and sent what Andrew thought was a push spell towards Lancaster. Lancaster hadn’t done anything to prepare himself to absorb the energy of the Corporal’s push, and he went flying backward to land on his butt a good two or three meters from where he had been standing. Sanchez didn’t seem to be all that concerned with what he’d just done to Lancaster as the new man picked himself up off the ground, looking a bit sore and sorry.

“Let that be a lesson to you. When you are asked to put up a physical shield, make sure you brace yourself; otherwise, that is what will happen. Right, Ciccone. Can you put up a physical shield?”

“Yes, Corporal.”