“The Japs are on that hill.”

He no sooner spoke than a fusillade of shots rang out, causing the APC commander to drop down into his hatch until he realized none were getting through Andrew’s shield.

“That’s fucking handy!” He said as he cautiously stuck his head back up.

The turret could be controlled while he had his head out of the hatch, as Andrew discovered when it began to unleash heavy fire on the Japanese positions. Andrew was watching and saw a Japanese soldier step from behind a tree with an RPG on his shoulder. He pointed, and Reynolds fired quicker than he imagined she could. The shot missed, but it hit the tree right next to his head, causing the Japanese soldier to flinch. By the time he got his RPG up again, she took him out with a clean hit to his head. A couple more APCs rolled up on either side and joined in the demolition of the Japanese position, and Andrew could sense the diminishing number of survivors retreating back over the hill.

“You can cease fire now.” He told the commander of the vehicle. “They retreated behind the hill.”

“You can tell?”

“Yeah. I can sense them mentally. Hmmm. They’re huddling into a small area, and now they’re heading off at a far clip – Must be in a truck.”

“Righto.”

The APC lurched into motion once more, and they passed the position the Japanese had occupied, which had very nice views of the ocean off to the right.

Chapter 14

Things are crook

Toshiro Ozawa studied the map, trying to work out a way to get out of the mess they were in. The most recent northern offensive designed to break through the native lines and split their army in two had been stopped practically before it had even gotten started. Instead of breaking through the Native lines at the town of Backus Marsh, their forces had been stopped dead, and they’d had several mentalists killed in the process. What was worse, the natives had apparently fielded at least one mentalist as good or better than their own, unlike the weak ones they had faced earlier in the invasion. Apart from the mentalists that had been killed, the losses, although heavy, had not been crippling. Yes, it had been the best troops used in the attack, and losing a fair number of them was a bad blow, but the biggest problem was that the attack had failed. While his own forces had been rushing forward, the reverse up north hadn’t been quite so critical, but like the army in the north, his troops had come to a crashing halt. He had sent half his first battalion under Akiro Sato up a narrow road to a town called Forrest, whose name suited the location. His advance had stopped just short of the town where the enemy had been found entrenched in a strong defensive position and supported by a mentalist, if not as strong as Akiro, strong enough to make it difficult to assault the position successfully.