“I’m thinking that we should arrest you as a spy. You’re probably here to assassinate the Colonel.” The one on the left said.

“Yeah. No orders. Just wants to walk straight into the joint.”

Andrew crossed his arms over his chest and studied the two men. If they made the list attempt to arrest him, they would find out that he wasn’t just any old private.

“You two are getting funnier all the time. You know that, don’t you?”

The one on the left went to sling his assault rifle, but Andrew waved a finger at him.

“You don’t want to be doing that, fella.”

The soldier hesitated before Andrew was faced with trying to work out how to re-respond to them pointing their weapons at him, another vehicle pulled up. The vehicle was a militarized version of the Emu 4×4 made by Macedon Motors, which was one of the more popular off-road vehicles on the Ostrayan market. It was painted in the usual green and brown camouflage colors and had military markings on the front and back bumper bar, body reinforcement panels, and roof racks. An officer hopped out of the driver’s side and strode towards the three men who had stopped their now heated discussion to observe the arrival of the Emu.

The officer, a Lieutenant Andrew saw, nodded the two idiots, glanced at Andrew, and made to walk into the building but then stopped and turned to look at Andrew again.

“I don’t recognize you. Who are you?”

“Private Andrew Harris, sir. I was told to report to Lieutenant Colonel Gray, sir.”

“Orders?”

“Only verbal ones from Captain Greaves, sir.”

The man’s eyes open slightly. “You’re one of her people?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Come with me, and I’ll take you to the Colonel.”

The Lieutenant strode off inside the building, and Andrew managed to get in a smug smile at the two idiots at the door before following him. The building had clearly housed an industrial operation before the invasion but was now fully given over to military activities. There was a maintenance bay along the right-hand side of the complex with several vehicles and APCs being worked on. Andrew guessed that most of the left-hand side of the building had been empty originally as well, but the small office area at the left front had been expanded backward nearly the whole length of the building.

The Lieutenant marched straight past what had to be the secretary or orderly’s desk, the occupant turning her head to watch them walk past without saying a word, merely nodding to the Lieutenant as he strode past. There was a short corridor dividing the two sections of such offices, the old ones and the new ones, by the look of it that he headed down, and at the far end, there was a door on the left at which he stopped, looking back to make sure Andrew was behind him and then knocked on the door and entered. Inside was a drab office with two metal chairs off to one side and a large metal desk in the center with a dark-haired man in his forties sitting behind it. To the left, there was a large map on the wall of the immediate area that Andrew thought was showing the dispositions of the Ostrayan forces in the area with a few not-so-clear markings on the map, which from their position on the map, he felt showed the invaders positions.