He threw out his senses and detected all the various men with mentalist capability out to his right. There were several that had some mentalist power, although when he looked, it was clear they were cyborgs. That was apart from the strong glow just near a tree at the bottom of the embankment. He studied to position and realized a man standing next to the tree wearing a long coat projecting a large shield to protect the Japanese troops. This had to be one of the full-on mentalists, and Andrew had no idea how he would fair now that he was facing a trained mentalist.

He began collecting power, and the man at the tree immediately turned his attention in Andrew’s direction and began advancing, gathering power himself. Not sure how strong the man’s shields were, Andrew through a slice out as hard as he could. The power of the attack staggered the Japanese mentalist and must’ve surprised him as he stopped advancing and threw a fireball at Andrew, followed by a second and the third. Andrew’s shields had no trouble coping with the attacks; indeed, with the last one, he drew power from his opponent’s spell while at the same time addressing the men behind him.

“Open fire on the chap in the coat. I will try to distract him and cause him to change his shielding, or I might even break it entirely.”

He had no idea whether they’d be in a position to take aim at the man, but he immediately threw sleep and then stun, followed by a really strong fireball of his own. The enemy mentalist shifted his shields to mental and energy just as he had hoped and didn’t appear to have enough power to have a third shield running as two of the men with Andrew shot several holes in the man almost simultaneously as the fireball arrived. The mentalist collapsed, and Andrew began picking off the cyborgs with the mentalist ability with the slice spell thrown hard.

Without the mentalist to protect them, the rest of the Japanese assault force quickly began to take casualties, and over the next two hours, the Ostryayn troops drove them back over the railway embankment. From there, they kept going and drove the Japs back across the creek bed until they came under direct fire from heavy weapons on the low hill to the rear that now provided cover for the retreating Japanese troops. Having Andrew able to protect groups of soldiers near him with a shield of his own spread out in front of them enabled the Ostrayans to advance in the same way the Japs had originally, nicely turning the tables on the enemy. Lieutenant Langford was just organizing a new assault up the hill when Captain Wright turned up and told them to resume defending the railway embankment and not to press too far beyond it for the moment.

He then called Lieutenant Langford back to headquarters so that he could be debriefed about the attack, and Andrew overheard Captain Wright saying that there was a much more serious attack on their left flank beyond the town. By the end of the day, their section of the front had calmed down again, with just the occasional artillery shell landing on something the Japanese drones spotted. Andrew took himself back up to the top of the embankment where the railway crossed the road and could hear the shelling going on to their east. He also spotted a speck in the sky not too far away from their front, and he did a quick radio check with Captain Wright, resulting in them declaring it an enemy drone. It was too far away for them to fire at effectively, but Andrew let off a very narrow, highly focused lightning discharge in the general direction. He didn’t think he hit the drone, but it went down like a shot duck and stayed down as far as they could tell.

“That’ll be that hot Captain Greaves.” One of the men said. “For a Spec, she’s not bad!”

As Andrew rather agreed with that thought, there wasn’t much he could say, so he just nodded in agreement. He pointed to the right rear.

“I’m going to keep following the railway line to get a better feel for our position here. Catch you later, guys.”

“Yeah. Later.” One of the men said.

Andrew continued to follow the railway line, which curved right around the entire area, making a large horseshoe shape. The Japs apparently stayed with the creek line, leaving a very wide no man’s land between the Ostryan defense line on the railway and the Jap forward positions in the creek bed. A road came down from the town at about a forty-five-degree angle that crossed the railway line, and that bridge marked the end of his unit’s operational area. Studying the terrain as he walked along the railway, he decided any major offensive would almost certainly be directed at the curve that was essentially at the bottom of the battalion’s deployment area.

The only redeeming feature of the area was the fact that the curve of the railway line rose above the surrounding ground level on a bank with the highest point where it crossed over the main south road. Of course, in truth, it was the ground dropping down rather than the railway rising up, but even so, the bank the railway was on would provide a good cover against anyone trying to attack out of the streambed.

Chapter 10

Combat

Over the next two days, Andrew settled in as the time passed without any excitement occurring, apart from the fact that it rained heavily on the first day. Just before dawn on the third day, Andrew was awakened by the crump of mortars and the boom of artillery shells landing close by. His tent wasn’t far from the headquarters building, although it was covered with a camouflaged netting, along with three other tents in the immediate vicinity. He threw his uniform on a raced over towards the vehicle park, where he jumped in the first vehicle heading south. The ute already had four other soldiers in the rear, but they squeezed over the let him sit on the tailgate. The driver floored it, throwing up dust everywhere as they headed for the front.

They didn’t have to go far to find the war. There were Japanese infantry and cyborgs all over the railway bank where the road passed underneath it, and the driver of the ute had no option but to pull over to the side of the road behind a line of trees and scrub, bouncing over the property’s barbed wire fence as shots came their way. Andrew had thrown up a shield so no one was hit, and as soon as the vehicle stopped, they all piled out and took cover in the trees and bush, returning fire against the Japanese troops.

It was a basically untenable position, particularly as Japanese troops began pouring off the railway embankment to their right, flanking their position. More troops were coming down the road behind them but were stopping further back under enemy fire. Then he realized that the Japanese troops out in the open to their right were not taking any casualties despite the fire being directed in at them from both Andrew’s own group of men and from the increasing numbers of troops that had stopped further back up the road and were deploying into the paddock to the right of the road facing the Japanese.

The Japanese positions weren’t terribly obvious until he brought up his distant viewing spell, and the bushes leaped toward him visually. Ah, there you are. He thought to himself with a smile. He could see several of the Japanese troops in a trench they had dug on the far side of the creek. The trench didn’t look that long and only appeared to hold five or six men. He turned his view slightly to his left and could see that there was another trench maybe twenty meters further along the creek. Presumably, the trenches were only dug in areas are soft ground. He briefly considered trying out some of the longer-range spells on them but then decided that keeping his presence on this front a secret was probably a better idea.

He dropped back down to the other men and grinned at them.

“No shots. My lucky day, I guess.” The other men just shook their heads at him, so he grinned and pointed further along the railway line, where it curved around towards the road. “I’ll just do a recce over there and see what’s happening.”

The railway actually passed over the road on a wooden trestle bridge, and the creek curved up towards the railway at that point. He eased himself up the side of the bank and carefully looked over the top. The Japanese weren’t actually positioned on the opposite side of the creek bank here but further back along the ridge, where a line of interlocking dugouts covered the area. You couldn’t really call them trenches so much as hollows. It looked to Andrew as if they shoveled out a bit of dirt which they piled up at the front of the hole they were digging, and that would do for a defensive position. Given that they were on the high ground, relatively speaking, it was probably good enough.

He looked around and saw a group of soldiers dug in on the other bank at the bridge’s western end and gave them a wave. They just shook their heads at him. He shrugged, clambered back down the slope, and then ran across the road to their side. A couple of bullets whizzed past him, fired from somewhere, and then he was across the behind the bank on the south side of the bridge.

“Ya mad!” One of the men yelled at him as he climbed up the bank to their position.

“Na. I was prepared.” He said and tapped the patch as he turned his shoulder so they could see it clearly.

“Well, I’ll be blowed; we got our own medallist!” The man was Corporal’s stripes on his sleeves said.

“Yep. I’m not going to make any rash promises, but hopefully, it will come as a bit of a surprise to those fellas when they attack.”

“You know when they’re going to attack?” The corporal asked.

Andrew shook his head. “The Captain thinks it will be real soon.”

“He’s been say’n that for a month, mate.” Jason shrugged. “I just got here, so I’ve got no idea. But my Captain seemed to think having me over here was a good idea.”

As promised

Just so everybody is up to date
Next book to be released is

The Taxon War
New Federation book 1

this is the first of a new Space Opera series – the second book of which series will see the re-appearance of a well-know character from elsewhere.

The Taxon War is with the editor now (only just so it won;t be out until next month at the earliest)

After that will be Taroniah in Control followed by Kyron The Magician
Beyond Kyron 4 I am not sure
either The Princess and the Spy or the second New Federation book….
Ostraya is nearly finished – it will then have to go to Pam Uphoff for her consideration – she may want significant changes if it doesn’t fit in with her other books/plans . After that it will need to go tot he editor so it might be out this year or perhaps not until next year – art this stage it will get published separately to the normal production schedule.

Maps

Tomorrow I will post all the Ithria maps I have lying around so they don;t submerge this update.

Bear in mind that the map gets changed/updated as things happen.

What am I reading?
One of my favorite authors, Nathan Lowell added 2 books to his Ishamael Wang books – third later this month or next. His books are slow and satisfying to read – start with Quarter Share
Pam Uphoff’s latest book – Aslanov – a couple of weeks ago – currently re-reading the entire Wine of the Gods series.
The latest in Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic series – The Demon’s Design – great series

Several other unmemorable books – sigh
One defect of becoming an author is I’ve become much pickier with what I read.

sorry I’m late people

He went over and looked and then backed out. “Seems like it has everything. If you need something, see Sergeant Krasny over at HQ. Try not to move around too much in the daytime, as they have drones up now and then and occasionally drop artillery on us. So far, they haven’t directly targeted the HQ, as they generally concentrate more on the front lines.”

“Thanks, sir. And where are the front lines?”

The Lieutenant motioned him to follow out into the field. He pointed at the raised line at the far end of the paddock.

“At the moment, the railway embankment is our front line, with the far side of the creek beyond there being their front line.”

“Is it all right if I go down and have a look?”

The Lieutenant studied him for a moment and then shrugged.

“It’s your funeral.”

“Sir. I’ll just check out the tent and see what’s what.”

Andrew saluted, and the Lieutenant returned the salute and walked away. The tent was well-ordered, and he saw four meal packs with relief. Nothing had been said about meals up to this point. As an added bonus, the tent came with a gun and five clips of ammo, which tended to indicate the previous fellow had been wounded when off duty. He grabbed the gun, checked it out, attached a couple of magazines to his webbing, and then headed toward the railway embankment. He sent his senses out ahead and picked up the troops dug in along the line of the railway.

About two-thirds of the way across the paddock, he realized how stupid he was simply walking across the open ground, but he couldn’t detect anything threatening him, so he kept walking and soon reached the scrub that grew on the beside of the embankment. He climbed up the bank and nodded to the three men in the small trench near the top who had been watching him.

“Pretty ballsy walking across the field like that.” One of them commented.

Andrew dropped down into the trench and shrugged. “Quickest way to get here. So, where are the Japs?”

One of the men pointed at the line of scrub about four hundred meters away.

“They’re dug in on the far side of the creek. We don’t catch sight of them very often. They don’t seem to have many snipers, but every so often, one of their snipers will turn up and take potshots at anyone who sticks his head up over the berm.”

“There’s never any warning. Just bang, and someone gets a hole in his head. Damn annoying, mate!”

“I can imagine.” Andrew concurred.

He moved up to the top of the rise.

“Hey, mate. Don’t go stickin’ ya head up. Ya never know when one of their snipers is about.”

“I’ll be right, mate.” He answered, pointing to the red circle with a red diagonal cross-bar patch on his shoulder.

He put up both a physical and energy shield in case a powered cyborg took a shot at him. During their basic training, the instructors warned them that the cyborgs would charge up their lasers in the rear areas and then save the charge until needed. The Cyborg lasers degraded rapidly in the atmosphere, but they were still deadly out to several hundred meters, they had been informed. Satisfied with his defensive measures stuck his head up over the rise so he could see the creek and the scrub that ran along it.

Andrew thought the Captain was going to dismiss him, but after contemplating Andrew for a few moments, he instead turned to the wall to his right and pointed at the map that was displayed there. He pointed to the wiggly line of a creek.

“We’re deployed along the northern side of this creek with a secondary line of defense set up this side of the railway line in case they push us back. They took the airfield last week though we didn’t try and defend it very strongly as it was nothing that was easily defendable.”

He glanced at Andrew to make sure he was paying attention, then pointed at a spot on the map.

“Down here, where the road crosses the creek and passes under the railway, is where they’re going to attack. They’ve been slowly building up their forces, trying to hide them from our drones, but my estimate is that there’ve got close to a thousand troops in this area here.”

With this, he waved his finger around the area directly to the south of where they were, covering an area extended east to west of their position.

“They’ve been camouflaging their troops in all these small patches of trees in the hope of hiding their numbers, but when you look at the aerial photos, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot more troops in the area than what HQ seems to think.” He pointed at a patch of greenery southwest of the road that ran largely east-west across most of the map before turning northwest near the edge. “We’re pretty sure the headquarters is in that building there. We’ve tried bombing it a couple of times, but all we’ve done is lose several drones and one aircraft. They definitely put those mental shield things up when we tried to bomb, so we’re pretty sure that’s where their mentalists are hanging out.”

“If that’s where their mentalists are, sir, then we’ll need to track the vehicles when they leave, so I can get myself in a position to face them down across the battlefield.”

“You honestly think you’re powerful enough to face one of their mentalists in the field?”

“Only one way to find out, sir. And as they won’t expect us to have a mentalist or at least a powerful one, at any rate, they’re more likely to put a second rater on this flank where they don’t expect they’ll need one, if you see what I mean, sir.”

The Captain studied for a short while without commenting. Finally, he nodded.

“Can’t fault your willingness to fight, I guess. Well, you’ll get your chance soon enough. My people think they’re going to attack sometime in the next week.” He turned to a Lieutenant whom Andrew hadn’t noticed, standing in the corner of the room.

“Pete, find this man a billet, please.”

“Sir.” The Lieutenant motioned to Andrew. “Come this way, please.”

He was led around the building to a small copse of trees where there were a bunch of tents. The Lieutenant pointed to a tent off to the right. “Jackson got invalided out the other day, so you can have his tent.”