Late again – sorry

“Does anybody speak Japanese?” He asked the troops with him.

Unfortunately, they all shook their heads, but he tried anyway by putting a mental shield around the civilian soldiers, hopefully cutting off their superior’s mental control. Then he stepped out onto the edge of the car park, where he was quite obvious and attracted quite a bit of fire that impacted his shield without serious effect.

“Surrender!” He called out, pointing at the Japanese and then putting his hands in the air to indicate that they should surrender.

At first, it had no effect, and they continued to fire him, but then one of the men threw down his weapon and said something to the others. This caused mass confusion as some also threw down their weapons while others turned and opened fire on the ones who had thrown down their weapons. In the end, most of them killed each other, with only about four still on their feet at the end of the small firefight, and they were all clearly the belligerent ones as they started firing at Andrew once more. Not that it helped, as one of the New Zealanders had crept through the bush and now lobbed a grenade into the section of the trench where the four remaining Japanese were, which killed them all once it exploded.

It took a another twenty minutes for the rest of the Japanese pocket to be crushed and then the pursuit started along the coast road towards Amglsea. Andrew once again resumed his position sitting on the top front of the APC with Simpson behind him, standing in the commander’s hatch as they raced along the road after the fleeing Japanese. Every couple of kilometers, they would run into one or more enemy troopers who had been left to snipe them, which would slow them down, not that the snipers lasted long. If Andrew didn’t force-punch them, Simpson would get them with her rifle.

At one point, they were ambushed by a whole group that even had a mortar that opened fire on the column. Rather than stop and deploy, Andrew had Simpson tell the driver to keep going and angled to the left to the left where the mortar shells seemed to be coming from. Andrew protected the front of the vehicle with his shield, and they crashed over and through the Japanese defensive position as the fireball he threw into the mortar pit exploded exuberantly. The rest of the Japanese defending the position had been rather shocked by the APC driving straight up and over their position while protected by Andrew’s shield. The APC crashing over the top of them disrupted and stunned them to the point that the rest of the Nuzeeland force had no trouble taking them out relatively quickly.

The column continued their pursuit to the east until they reached Anglesea. Here they discovered the Japanese were dug in on the far side of the river using the defenses they had constructed when they’d first advanced to that point. As it was very late in the day by now, the Nuzeeland commanders elected to deploy and camp for the night on the western side of the river and worry about attacking the Japanese the following day. This suited Andrew as he was getting to the completely worn-out stage, and he was worried bullets would start getting through his shield before much longer, given how tired he was.