Contact with headquarters informed them all the troops that were available had been pushed forward to a point west of Princetown, where they were digging in until the Nuzeeland troops arrived. Safely on a main road, they raced westward to Port Campbell, where they found the Nuzeeland troops had been getting themselves ashore from their transport vessels and were organizing themselves. A lot of the heavy equipment was still aboard the ships and heading toward Warrnambool to be offloaded, but they had managed to offload a whole range of wheeled AFVs and even a couple of light-tracked ones from a couple of specialized landing ships and maybe two thousand troops. They only had mortars rather than heavy artillery, but the General in charge of the expeditionary force, who had landed with his troops and intended to lead from the front, felt it was better that they bottle the Japs up in the hilly and wooded terrain between Princetown and Appollo Bay rather than letting them get out into the open countryside beyond Princetown.

Despite assurances of his intention to stop the Japanese in the wooded hills, the General let a whole day go by before the first of the Nuzeeland troops headed east along the Great Ocean Road. Andrew was forced to say goodbye to his mad but speedy driver, who headed back north with the vehicle they had come south in, and Andrew swapped into a Nuzeeland LAV. It was quite a nice little four-wheel, lightly armored vehicle designed for reconnaissance, primarily. Its armor would stop small arms fire and slow down the cyborg’s lasers but wouldn’t stand up to heavy weapons, but that was okay, as that was one of the reasons Andrew was along.

The Nuzeeland General and most of the senior officers of the unit were dubious about the value of having a mentalist attached to their force, particularly one that insisted on riding at the front, but enough information had circulated about the effectiveness of the Jap mentalists that they were willing to accept his addition to their force. To give the Nuzeelanders their due, once they got moving, they moved quickly. They didn’t stop until they reached the defensive positions of the small militia group holding the exit of the Great Coast Road from the more rugged terrain it passed through after leaving Apollo Bay.

There was no sign of the Japanese, but that didn’t mean anything as their scouts probably included at least one mentalist who could detect the Nuzeelanders from some considerable distance and not have to expose himself. They broke camp at dawn and resumed their advance along the road toward Lower Gellibrand. There had been no indications or reports that the Japanese had reached this far west, so they were traveling at a fair clip. Andrew’s LAV was in the lead, followed by a wheeled APC, with the rest of the force strung out along the road in a long sinuous column.

Ironically, they had passed a sign that said high-risk area not that far back when shots impacted the light shield he was keeping in front of the vehicle. Fortunately, the driver heard the shots and swung left into a side road stopping behind some bushes up a small rise. The second vehicle, a wheeled APC, wasn’t so lucky and it took an RPG round in the from cabin, rolled, and came to a halt diagonally across the road about ten meters beyond the road junction Andrew’s LAV had turned up. The vehicles behind the APC came to a screeching halt and began backing up the road. Shots continued to fill the air, and the bushes Andrew’s vehicle was hiding behind shook as bullets impacted the leaves and branches.