“Right. Outside Karen will have your assignments ready for you, so for now, dismissed.” He stood, came to attention, and saluted.

They all came to attention and returned the salute before turning to start filing out.

“Andrew Harris? Can you stay behind, please?” Reynolds said, scanning the faces as he did so.

Andrew nodded and eased back out of everyone else’s way. Reynolds spotted him standing back and nodded. The Captain sat down and waited for the others to exit the room, which took a while as they each had to tell the Corporal out front their name and be given their assignments. Ciccone was the last to exit, and he looked back and gave Andrew a wink before exiting the room. Andrew nodded, heaved himself off the wall, and came over to stand in front of the Captain.

“Sir?”

“I have a personal request to assign you to the strongest mentalist we have, plus a report from Corporal Sanchez saying that you are the most capable mentalist he has ever seen. Yet I can barely feel you, which means you must have very good shields.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Captain studied him for a moment and then gave his head a small shake.

“So, do you know Captain Greaves?”

“We sat next to each other on the train I took from the Gold Coast to training camp. We didn’t talk for most of the trip, sir.”

“I see. Well, she’s requested you to be her understudy. She is currently at Backus Marsh. See the Corporal out the front for your new orders. You should be able to pick up the transport heading that direction fairly easily. Dismissed.”

Andrew snapped to attention and saluted, to which the Captain replied, and then he stepped out of the room to find the Corporal holding up an envelope that no doubt contained his orders.

“Any idea of how I should get to Backus Marsh?” he asked with a smile.

“Head over to the supply section. They’re in the southwest corner of the camp. They’ll have someone heading out that way pretty much every hour or two.”

“Thanks.” He said, pocketed his orders, grabbed his duffel, and headed in what he hoped was the direction of the supply depot. There was a lieutenant on duty there who seemed to be in charge, and after he had shown the lieutenant his orders to proceed to Backus Marsh, the lieutenant checked his delivery list but informed Andrew that there was a truck heading that way in an hour or so.

Andrew found out where the mess was from the Lieutenant and headed in that direction to get something to eat. They were offering some sort of stew that proved to be quite tasty, and he polished off a bottle of water as well before heading back to the supply section to wait for his ride. No one else was traveling, so I got to sit in the cab with the driver as the truck made its way south. There wasn’t much other traffic on the road, but at one stage, they got stuck behind a small convoy consisting of a command vehicle, three trucks, and two transporters with tanks aboard. It was nearly twenty minutes before they finally got to a spot where they could get past the convoy.