“Who’s in charge here?”

The crowd parted, and a Captain, whom Andrew hadn’t even noticed until then, stepped forward.

“Captain Wilson, sir.” The man said, saluting the General.

“Ah, Paul, there you are. We’re one mentalist down for the moment, so I want you to get your men dug in along the river line but deployed along the edge of the built-up area so they have to cross the open ground to get to us if they come across the river. I need your mentalist.”

“Okay, general.” He looked around and spotted Andrew, whom he gave a jerk of his head. “Here he is, sir.” He jerked his head, causing Andrew to step forward. “He did a damn fine job, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” The general said, frowning at Andrew. “What’s your name, soldier?”

Andrew came to attention and saluted. “Andrew Harris, sir.”

“I don’t think much of you people, Harris, but you’re all we’ve got to stop these bastards. Climb in. You’re needed down in the center of the army.”

Andrew piled in the back of the 4×4 while the general took the front seat. As soon as they were both the board, the driver took off racing back along Gisborne Street and then down towards the main part of town. They turned left onto Main Street before pulling up outside the shopping center, where an obvious command post was positioned in the car park. Several officers came racing over as the General got out of the ute.

“How far have they advanced?” He demanded.

“They’re just about at the tennis courts, sir.”

“Right. Harris, wasn’t it?” But before Andrew could answer, the general continued. “There’ve got a mentalist and some tank things. They’re not real tanks, sort of tracked gun carriers, or something. Get down there and see what you can do about stopping them. Take the ute.”

Andrew mentally shrugged and saluted. He really needed a rest before engaging another mentalist, but from the look on the General’s face, he didn’t think the General would welcome him asking for a rest first. He hopped into the front seat of the ute this time, and the driver gave him a nod and then concentrated on a quick U-turn before racing back to the corner and then heading south to where the fighting was taking place. Ahead of them, Andrew could see explosions taking place, and plenty of smoke rose from burning buildings. They crossed the river, and the driver screeched to a halt as a couple of men jumped out in front of them, flagging them down.

“You’ll have to back it up.” One of the men said loudly. “The Japs are advancing up Taverner Street and Station Street. They’ve got these tracked gun things.”

“Righto, I’ll hop out here,” he said to the driver. “You can head back to the General.” The driver obviously thought this was a good idea because he wasted no time in chucking a U-turn and heading up the road at a great rate to get out of the danger zone as quickly as possible. Andrew ran over to the building on the left-hand side of the road that the two soldiers had appeared out of and joined them in taking cover behind a hedge as the house on the corner of the next block blew up.

NOTE:
for those of you reading along – first the good news. I finished the story and submitted it to Pam. She is happy for it ot go ahead.
Bad news: she wants me to change a few things… at least 2 and probably 3 chapters will be heavily revised and 1 or more chapters possibly added. I won’t know until I sit down and do it. So the published book will have some differences to what you have read here.

The two of them began throwing spells at each other as fast as they could, fireball, slice, fireball again. Both the shields were very effective until Andrew had an idea. A wrecked car was on the side of the road, partly on the footpath that the enemy mentalist had advanced past. Andrew moved to that side of the road drawing the mentalist after him as they continued to pound each other with spell after spell. Andrew felt he was probably the stronger and would eventually win, but there was no point in taking the risk of confirming his impression the hard way when he had a better idea.

He threw two fireballs in quick succession and then hit the enemy mentalist, who was only thirty meters away now, with a straight push of force. The enemy mentalist didn’t have his shields grounded properly due to his maneuvering to match Andrew’s, and the push caught him by surprise. He flew backward at great speed and crashed straight into the wrecked car. It all happened too fast for the enemy mentalist to react and throw a shield up behind himself. There was a sickening thud and the screech of fingernails on a blackboard sensation that signified the death of a strong mentalist as a twisted piece of the front of the wrecked car punched straight through his chest. Andrew struggled not to throw up at the gory sight. He turned away, red-tinted his shield again, pushed it out wide once more, and glanced back at the troops.

“Well, come on, you lot!” He bellowed. “We haven’t got all day. I’ve got places to go and people to kill!”

His gallows humor raised a few snickers from amongst the troops as they formed on either side of him, taking turns to shoot around the shield as he resumed his advance down the road. The Japanese troops should have been demoralized by the loss of their mentalist, but at first, there was no sign of any panic as they continued to fire back despite the difficulty of shooting around his shield. One of his men went down, a lucky shot having him in the head as he leaned around the edge of the shield to fight the Japanese, but that was the only casualty they took before they moved within fireball range of the Japanese positions. Andrew opened up a hole momentary in his shield so he could throw a fireball at the enemy. The Japanese troops were tough, but they couldn’t stand up to a mentalist without mentalist support, and they knew it.

Once it started, the retreat gathered pace as troops that had pushed across the bridge and fanned out to attack the Ostryans now found themselves in danger of being cut off as Andrew’s force pushed forward rapidly. They couldn’t hold without a mentalist even though Andrew was tiring rapidly. Within half an hour, the remaining Japanese forces had either retreated across the river or were dead. He was preparing to lead an assault across the river when a 4×4 ute, painted in camouflage but clearly an ex-private vehicle, came racing up. A General hopped out, the first one he’d ever seen, and studied the situation briefly. He turned to the troops.

“Here they come.” Somebody else yelled, and the troops around Andrew all took cover.

Looking down the road, he can see Japanese troops working their way up both sides of the street, darting from cover to cover. The Ostrayan troops began firing, but after inflicting a couple of casualties, their bullets seemed to lose their effectiveness. Andrew reached out mentally, and he could feel the enemy mentalist somewhere up ahead. The fellow was keeping out of sight but was obviously close enough to the front to put a shield up in front of his troops.

“Cover me!” He yelled.

With that, he took off down the side of the street along the footpath, running from bush to bush. The Ostrayan troops layed down covering fire, not that it was all that effective, but it did serve to keep some of the Japanese heads down while he made his way along the street. He could sense the enemy mentalist much better now and decided the fellow was just up the road a little way.

He tossed a fireball in the direction of the mentalist, which must’ve caught the fellow by surprise because there was no immediate response. The firefight between the Ostrayan troops and the Japanese forces continued unabated as he threw another fireball where he thought the enemy mentalist was hiding. Instead of trying to take the mentalist on frontally, he ran down the cross street to the next intersection, where a few Japanese troops were starting to advance carefully. They spotted him and opened fire without a lot of effect against his shields. He threw a couple of fireballs in their direction. Two of the Japanese troops were badly wounded, and one of the cyborgs screamed as he burnt to death.

A few Ostrayan troops advanced down the street behind him, so he pushed forward, taking a lot of fire on his shields until he reached the next intersection. A wrecked car at the intersection provided cover so they could see around the corner. He quickly informed the soldiers that he was putting a shield in front of them and that he would tint it red so they could see it and shoot around it while staying shielded most of the time. With that in place, he stepped out from behind the vehicle and began advancing up the road. At first, the Japs concentrated their fire on his shield while the troops with him kept learning around the outer edges and picking off Japanese soldiers and cyborgs whenever they exposed themselves to fire at Andrew. It was all going quite well until a very strong enemy mentalist appeared at the end of the street.

“Shit!” he exclaimed as the mentalist threw a fireball at him.

He was able to get his energy shield up just in time, but he still felt the heat of the explosion. He threw a fireball of his own back to keep his opponent busy. “Might be an idea to get under some cover, fellas, till I sort this guy out.”

He was just planning to head for his tent when he heard his name being called.

“Harris, Harris!”

He looked around and private with the radio waved at him.

“There are problems on the left flank. The Captain’s sending a car. Grab your gear.”

‘Righto.” He yelled back.

Andrew grabbed his pack and quickly shoved his few toiletries and such into it, plus his spare uniform that had turned up three days before. He’d hardly finished packing when he heard the sound of a vehicle traveling fast, and a green-painted ute came racing down the road and screeched to a halt barely a meter from him.

“Harris?” The driver asked.

“That’s me.”

“Hop in.” The driver said.

Andrew jumped in the front next to the driver, who took off like a bat out of hell, doing a screeching U-turn throwing up a cloud of dust, and racing back up the road that he’d just come down. It didn’t take that long to get into the town, or at least the edges of it, but when they got to the roundabout, instead of turning right, they went straight across. The driver must have sensed Andrew’s unspoken question.

“They’ve got around the left flank entirely and are threatening to break through into our rear.” He offered by way of explanation as they began wandering through the edge of the suburban area.

At first, there had been a road they could follow that ran roughly in the right direction, but before long, they started having to drive along dirt tracks and semi-suburban streets that didn’t necessarily go in quite the direction they wanted in order to make progress. The driver got on the radio at one point to find out exactly where he was needed and then turned rather more east than north. The road they were following ran almost due east and ran along the side of the hill at a slightly higher elevation than what they had been on, and he could see burning buildings and the occasional explosion ahead in the direction they were traveling.

The road swung around to the north, but the driver did a hard right that took them to a roundabout where a detachment of troops was frantically digging in along the line of a canal or stormwater channel. A couple of the troops waved over, and the driver pulled up.

“Got the mentalist from the right flank here.”

“Beauty.” One of the men said with a Corporal’s insignia. “The bastards are pushing down this road after taking the bridge over the river. They’ve got a couple of them mentalists with them since the Captain got injured, we haven’t been able to stop ’em.”

“Are you talking about Captain Greaves?”

“Yeah. She got hit early on when she was battling one of their mentalists. We got him, but she got carted off by the medics. Sergeant Hollister is down at the city center doing what he can to stop their mentalist down there. The Captain got patched up, but she hardly got back to the front lines when another one of their mentalists did something, and she went down like a sack of potatoes. We managed to get her out still alive, but we’ve been pushed back steadily ever since. Part of their army is pushing west from the quarry while the rest is trying to push into town along Gisborne road. We were holding them at the bridge up until half an hour ago when another one of their mentalists turned up, and we just couldn’t stand.”

The Kyron The Mercenary paperback is done and uploaded – Amazon should approve sometime on Friday for you yanks.
The next book – The Taxon War – New Federation 1 – should be out by the end of the month – depending on the editor.
This is the start of a sweeping series with real Space Opera scale story lines so there is some setup..
Taroniah Takes Control is up to about 70k written so should be ready for the editor when they finish The Taxon War.

Ostraya is nearly done – its up to 60k and I’m nearly at the end. I will then send it to Pam to see what she thinks and what changes need to be made before feeding it to the editor – assuming Pam is happy with it. I hope you’ve been enjoying the unedited alpha version of the story.

Do you want me to serialize something else once Ostraya is finished?

That’s all for now.