Better late than never… sorry

And he was no longer confident of their ability to conquer this world either. He was becoming increasingly convinced that the scouts had misunderstood or misrepresented the situation. He was expecting the high command to release one of the targeted plagues that they often used to subdue planets, but there had been no mention of one so far, and it was possible that the laboratory facilities required, along with the trained staff, were in the plague area.

Their initial attacks had gone well, but their opponents had fallen back in good order, evacuating their civilians ahead of them, not in a disorganized rout. Their technology level, in some areas, was higher than the Alliance’s, plus they had mentalists of their own, even if they were weak and badly trained. As far as he could see, the whole thing was falling apart at the seams. If not for the extra reinforcements that the fleeing Natori people would now provide him, he was half expecting to have to start falling back in the face of enemy attacks very shortly.

The enemy forces facing his own troops had increased substantially in the last few weeks, and from the few prisoners they had been able to get hold of recently, apparently, the enemy government had carried out a program of raising levies that were just now finishing their training and coming to the front. One of the men he had interrogated also reported that somebody called the Indoneeshans, who had been the main threat to the people they were invading, were now talking about making an alliance with the locals to face the invaders jointly. Even if all they concluded was a peace treaty, it would free up even more troops for the locals to send south.

With no zivvy, it was going to be impossible to control the locals they had taken prisoner. They couldn’t even control their own juveniles, and there were increasing reports of youngsters fleeing to the dubious safety of the enemy. So far, the government had resisted introducing the so-called pinning method that had recently been approved due to the poor survival rate of those it was used on, but the pressure to adopt that method was growing with the ever-increasing number of prisoners. Chipping had been bad enough, and he had several relatives who had had bad grow-ins, including his cousin Himari who had gone from a bright above, average student to a drooling idiot when she received a wife chip. He briefly wondered what had happened to her in all this turmoil before turning his attention back to the matters at hand.

“I had best end my leave and return to the front to oversee the integration of these new troops into my command, sir.”

“Unfortunately, yes. Right. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to it.”

The General received and returned their salutes and departed, leaving Toshiro and Gentaro facing each other. Toshiro took in the nervous expression on the face of the newest mentalist assigned to his command and smiled.

“Where are your troops at the moment?”

“Strung out along the road leading to this town. The armored gun carriers and the mechanized vehicles were right behind us, maybe thirty or forty minutes at most. The rest are on foot, so they probably won’t be here till tomorrow.”