This invasion typified the whole blind, arrogant mentality. No one had checked the information the scouts had provided. Instead, they just assumed they’d be able to overcome any resistance with their mentalist powers and by chipping any natives they didn’t kill. Only, there was no zivvy, and the plague had disrupted everything so much the whole invasion was struggling. Toshiro was still confident they would prevail in the end, at least locally, but they could probably forget about the rest of the planet until the supply of zivvy resumed. He presumed their leaders would resort to some sort of biological attack on the other lands to reduce their threat.

“Well, until he turns up, I’ll keep commanding my troops. We will attack their line tomorrow morning just before dawn. We can’t let them have too long to strengthen it.”

Uesugi nodded. “No. It’s a pity we don’t have real military troops in our commands. If we did, we could attack this afternoon and into the evening. As it is, we’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the night reorganizing our men, I imagine.”

Toshiro nodded. “I’ll have to do the same so this Kato Rokuro doesn’t complain when he turns up to take command.”

Uesugi grinned at his friend, gave him a short bow, and headed off to his command center. Toshiro returned the bow, and after a moment spent contemplating the way things were going, he set about organizing his men or, more accurately, reorganizing his men. About seven, a truck rolled up to his headquarters. There were half a dozen armored cyborgs and six conscripted civilians in the back, sent as reinforcements, and his new battalion commander.

Toshiro had come out of the house that he was using as a headquarters and stood on the front step watching the truck being unloaded. Besides the troops, there were half a dozen boxes of ammunition and even some food, by the look of it, Rokuro was in the passenger seat. He came around to where Toshiro was standing and looked him up and down, which was pretty insolent, but Toshiro was too tired to make n issue of it. Kato Rokuro looked about fifty, give or take, and didn’t appear very military.

“Toshiro Ozawa?”

“Kato Rokuro?”

“Sir.” The man replied and finally saluted, which Toshiro returned.

“You have been informed you will be taking over command of the troops I have been operating, which are now being designated the first Battalion of the sixth Brigade?”

“Yes. You will find that they are a mix of cyborgs and former civilians as with most of the forces that make up most of our army.”

“I understand.” The man said with a resigned nod.

“Yes. Just so. We still have two tanks and a couple of AGCs in the first battalion, and there are three tanks in the second. Vehicles aren’t a problem as we’ve been commandeering local vehicles. Most of them use gasoline, of which there is a good supply at present. The few electric vehicles they have aren’t dependent on broadcast power like ours. We’ve captured several intact fuel stations, so gasoline is still plentiful on our front, but unless we can capture a refinery soon or keep overrunning the native’s fuel stations, the use of local vehicles will decline.”