“Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to your new subordinates, which include my nephew, but don’t coddle him, please. He’s grown up a lot since we invaded here, but he still needs to do a bit more growing up yet. He still has a tendency to see the natives as people.”

Kato nodded but didn’t reply, and then he followed Toshiro to where his junior officers were adding the final touches to the plan for the action that would kick off in the morning. Toshiro ran through the plan for Kato’s benefit, who seemed to pick the operational details up without a problem, and eventually, they all headed for their billets or tents, as the case may be.

Their attack in the morning went well. The first thing Toshiro noticed about being the Brigade commander and not having to oversee the fighting directly was how strange that felt. The second thing he noticed was that the attacks went far too well and that they broke through much too easily. In fact, he noticed from the reports that the native force was not only falling back faster than his men could advance, but they were falling back to the southwest and leaving an ever-widening gap at the eastern end of their line.

As their advance to the east picked up speed along the broad highway and through the open paddocks, their advance to the south and southeast slowed. The enemy began to defend every line of trees, wall, fence, and house slowing their advance as much as they could. Finally, Toshiro managed to get one of their increasingly rare drones in the air to the southeast to see what was happening behind the lines. The enemy had all manner of ways of getting rid of drones and had obviously faced drones before. That in itself was worrying.

It quickly became apparent that the enemy was evacuating all their civilians from the headland. There was a massive lineup of cars and trucks along the road leading to the bridge across the river that emptied into the ocean to the south of Gilong as the residents from further east attempted to flee to the west. The drone was destroyed before it could get a good view of what was happening other than a massive traffic jam, but it did explain why things were progressing the way they were. The enemy was desperately defending directly north of the ocean road while allowing the True Men to advance at will along the coast of the bay to the north.

In the area due west of the swampy lake ground that divided the Peninsula from the flat lands to the west, the enemy had set up defensive positions along a creek line that ran west and then northwest beyond the edge of the suburban area until it finished up in a mine or something. That was outside his operational area, being Fifth Brigade’s responsibility, but he gathered they were having trouble making any ground and so far had crossed the creek successfully anywhere. If anything, Fifth Brigade was even less well-equipped than his brigade.