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.”