Although his troops were in a position to begin the assault on the built-up area, Toshiro hadn’t actually intended to attack today, planning to give his men an extra night’s rest before commencing the battle for the suburb. With the arrival of Uesugi and his extra troops, he decided not to wait and signal his men to begin their assault immediately.

They made some rapid progress for the first hour or so, and then the attack started to grind to a halt, but by that stage, Uesugi had gotten most of his men into position, and using his three tanks as spearheads, they struck into the built-up area from what was the flank to the front line to Toshiro’s men had created. His troops had taken roughly half the area by nightfall and kept up the pressure throughout the night. About an hour before dawn, the enemy broke contact and retired rapidly, leaving the now empty and largely destroyed built-up area for the Japanese to occupy.

In the morning, reconnaissance showed that they had fallen back to a new defense line that stretched from the lake almost to the coast along a road that was lined with trees along much of its length. They were apparently digging trenches and generally making it clear that the Japanese would find it expensive trying to thrust through their new line as the Japanese would have to attack over open ground, by and large. Toshiro studied the enemy positions and determined the best lines of attack. He concentrated his own force to the north of what used to be a railway line while Uesugi’s forces were massed to the south of that point.

After the confusion of the night fighting, they spent the following day reorganizing and transferring some troops from one command to the other to balance up the two forces. He didn’t want to give the natives time to dig in more effectively, but he had no choice as the whole force was disorganized and worn out. Late in the day, a runner turned up informing him that he had been promoted to brigade commander with Uesugi’s men being designated the Second Battalion while his own men, which were to be placed under a mentalist named Kato Rokuro and his troops would now be designated the First Battalion of Sixth Brigade. After the messenger had left, Toshiro turned to Uesugi.

“Do you know this Kato Rokuro?”

“No, but he’s clearly from the well-known Rokuro family. I know old Lord Shigaru Rokuro, who I think is the head of the local family now, or at least he was before all the troubles started. He’s Rokuro 3, the last I heard. Sorry, I don’t know exactly what this Kato Rokuro’s relationship with the family’s main branch is. Like all families, they must have lost people in the disaster in Europe.”

The Rokuro’s formed a large family, and the main branch had once been very important. The only ones that Torshiro knew were not members of the main family, but even so, they were all typical upper-class lords who did little but acted like they were important anyway because of the family they were born into. Arrogant to a fault. Mind you, that was a fault that ran across all three branches of the Alliance and was probably the main reason they were in the mess they were in here.

Yes, Princess Gizel is back!

When a derelict spaceship is spotted in an out of the way system it raises several different questions.

Is it a human ship or have the finally found aliens?

And who shot it up?

The Emperor of Kimeria decides to keep it quiet while they learn more and he has just the person to send…..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BW48QN8Z?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_3&storeType=ebooks

Note: This is the longest book I have written so far – 166k words

“You have troops?”

He waved back down the road where Toshiro could indeed see columns of figures marching along each side of the dual carriageway and what looked to be three tanks plus some trucks, all heading in this direction.

“Right, well, we have this large urban area here to take next, which I anticipate is going to be nasty. The first day of the invasion was easy as there was no real organized resistance, but since then, we’ve been slugging it out to gain even a few kilometers each day as the resistance has been hardening up. They’ve got mortars, machine guns, and real soldiers facing us now. There are no tanks or heavy artillery on this front yet, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time until they get stuff down here from up further north.”

“Yes, fill me in. The original survey said this was the capital of only a small civilized area that was in the immediate vicinity of this city on a world that had been hit with a nuclear war some centuries ago. Was it wrong?”

“Yes and no. Nuclear war, yes. Only a small civilized area, not really. This was the capital of the Commonwealth of Ostraya, as they call Australia here, but their country stretches right up the east coast to the far north and westward to the edge of the desert at least. They have real weapons and a real military due to past problems with their northern neighbors, although it is taking them a while to get their regulars down south to oppose us.”

“I see,” Uesugi commented.

Before Toshiro could say anything further, there was a sudden roar as a jet aircraft appeared from the west, flying extremely low, which accounted for why they hadn’t heard up to now. It came roaring over the urban area they had to assault next and began dropping munitions on the troops on the road. In a couple of seconds, the plane had disappeared into the distance, disappearing as if it had never existed apart from the figures that were now lying in the roadway and one of the trucks which was burning furiously.

“Damn, that’s new.” Toshiro heard himself saying.

“I wasn’t briefed on them having jet aircraft,” Uesugi said dourly.

“Neither was I. That’s the first one I’ve seen. I hope they don’t have too many.”

“You and me both.” The older man added as he looked back down the road trying to determine how many casualties his force had just taken. It was too far away, and his men too spread out to tell easily, so he gave up his survey and turned back to Toshiro.

“I suppose I had better get my troops added to your men so we can assault this urban area together, then.”

Toshiro nodded. He quickly counted the surviving troops Uesugi had brought with him.

“Seeing your forces are here on the road. You can assault from this corner. I’ll get my troops to assault along the northern front of the built-up area to distract them while you get your men into position. Then you hit them in the flank, and hopefully, we’ll roll them up quickly.”

Chapter 7

New men

There had been some heavy drizzle earlier in the day, and there were still puddles in the lower spots in the immediate area as an exhausted Toshiro Ozawa perched on the bus stop seat on the side of the divided road at the top of the ridge that had taken his men all day to take. Their advance along the coastal areas had gone fairly easily, but trying to advance along the two main roads had gone slowly as the local’s defense had solidified. The defenders were still short of heavy weapons, and they were increasingly using civilian volunteers to slow the advance of the Tomkyan forces.

He had decided that this would do for today. Tomorrow he would re-organize, see what new troops had been assigned to him, if any, and then start the assault on the town. He heard a whistling sound, dropped to the ground, and rolled under the seat just as half a dozen mortar shells landed, straddling the dual carriageway road. A couple of pieces of shrapnel hit the plastic bus shelter, but he remained unharmed. The salvo wasn’t repeated. The mortar unit was probably re-locating before counter-battery fire could target them.

He picked himself up off the ground and looked around. Maybe a casualty or two, but nobody seemed to have died this time. He heard a shout and looked around. Uesugi Kenshin was creeping along the side of the fence of the second house back from where Toshiro was sheltering. Toshiro moved to meet him, then halted and looked sharply at the older man. Uesugi held out his hand and showed power, and Toshiro relaxed.

“I thought you were in Europe? I was worried that you would have caught the plague.” He said as he and his old mentor clasped forearms.

The older man smiled and shook his head.

“Actually, I was in Nippon visiting family when the attack started. There were huge amounts of panic, of course. People were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was truly amazing. I’m talking about senior officials here, sensible dour, career bureaucrats, and such like, you understand. And the plague wasn’t even in Nippon. No wonder Europe collapsed.”

“Have you heard what is going on there? I’ve been a bit out of touch here.”

“Civil war. Besides the plague that removes a mentalist’s power, there’s something else that dissolves the zivvy. Cyborgs started running amok all over the place, and then they got clever and began spreading the substance that dissolves the zivvy wires. I don’t know whether it was the cyborgs or the abolitionists, but I doubt we control anywhere in central Europe anymore. When I flew out of Nippon for the portal complex in North America, there were reports of cyborgs revolting and civilian servants supporting them in Nippon as well.”

“Shit!”

“Yes. That about sums it up. The revolts looked so strong and widespread that I told the authorities in Nippon that they’d be better off shipping everybody they could over to North America and through the portal to here rather than trying to defend Nippon, but whether anybody’s listening, I don’t know. So tell me where you’re up to on this front. The General was a bit vague when he sent me down this way with my troops.”

sorry people – late again

The other spell they learned was a lot more dangerous. It was called the slice spell, although some called it the slash spell. It was essentially a modification of the shield spell, but instead of erecting a wall of force in front of yourself, you extruded the force as a narrow plain horizontal to the ground. With practice, you could make it so thin that it would slice through almost anything. They spent considerable time learning to slice the tops off pieces of dowels stuck in the ground at varying distances. The best of them could manage to slice through a broom handle at five meters range. Andrew had no trouble matching the best of them but deliberately refrained from doing any better than the best of the others. He was pretty sure he could slice through a broom handle at ten meters, maybe more. He’d practiced slicing through thicker and tougher things, not really trying for a longer range. Hmmm. He would have to think about trying a few things the next he was on his own.

The next week was spent learning to expand their shields, both their physical shield and their mental shield. The idea was that they would be able to protect the people on either side of them by extending their physical shields or protect people from shrapnel and airborne debris by extending their shields over their heads. With the mental shield, the idea was that they would stop someone from being taken over by one of the enemy mentalists by extending their protection to the people around them. Almost everybody struggled with enlarging the area of their mental shield and making it extend to cover someone nearby. Meanwhile, Sanchez would be trying to take that person over and make them quack using the same spell he had tested them with the first day.

The physical shield they did better at, possibly because being able to color it and see it meant that they had a better idea of how far they were extending it and could push themselves to make the area covered larger. With both types of shields, Andrew had no trouble meeting the requirements and again deliberately didn’t show off when he could have. By the end of the week, they were all able to do the minimum requirement that Sanchez had set, much to his delight. It was probably the first time they had seen Sanchez actually pleased with them.

On the following Saturday, they were lined up after breakfast and inspected by the training camp commander. Major Collins congratulated them on completing their training and informed them that apart from Private Contos, they were all being transferred to the front. Contos was getting promoted to Corporal and would be replacing Sanchez as the main magical training officer.

They were then given two days’ leave with instructions to report on Tuesday morning for deployment orders. Suddenly the war got very real, at least for Andrew, knowing that he would be heading to the front on Tuesday morning. His grandmother’s journal had contained a note that she had increased one of her son’s power by inhibiting his transition through puberty and had listed the spell she had used. She had noted how much stronger that sone had been to the other sons she had had previously, and although it wasn’t a huge sample for comparative purposes, Andrew had used it on himself shortly after reading the entry. Up until now, he had not really had any idea if the spell was doing anything apart from making him not that interested in girls, but now he had to admit it made a good way of explaining how much stronger he was than the others. Actually, he wasn’t uninterested so much as there was no hormonal component when he found admiring a female.

Contos waved and trotted down to the target, where he began fiddling with the shield, trying to work it into the ground.

“You need to make your shield very thin!” Andrew yelled out.

Contos looked like he had heard Andrew and renewed his efforts to dig his shield into the ground. After another minute or so, he quite clearly nodded to himself. He braced and then gave a little signal, following which the sniper opened fire. Contos hardly moved, and the second shot had little effect as well. He returned to the group as happy as anything and gave the Sergeant a jaunty salute.

“Worked like a charm.” He grinned.

“Probably not a good idea to use in a built-up area.” Andrew grinned back.

This brought a general laugh from the others while the Sergeant shook his head, although he grinned a little as well.

“Okay. None of you are to practice that anywhere until I’ve had a chance to talk to Sanchez and develop a proper training drill. Understood?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” They all echoed, losing their happy grins.

Later that day, after training had finished, Sanchez pulled him aside and had him demonstrate digging his shields into the ground and angling his shield, neither of which the Corporal had run across before. The Corporal appeared to accept the story about the football practice and how Andrew had used that to come up with the idea in the first place, and Sanchez informed Andrew that he was to stay with the first group for the next day when they would begin to study offensive spells.

The second group would practice shields against each other under Sergeant Duncan’s supervision. Andrew wasn’t sure how effective that would be, but it wasn’t his place to comment. The offensive spells they were going to learn were fairly limited. The first was a push spell that could be done both in a broad manner, useful in a crowd situation, although the range was fairly limited, with the best of them being only able to push hard enough to move someone out to a couple of meters. The other spell was a needlepoint push spell that would punch a hole through something, including a person. As with the broad push, the range was limited, but the best of the others could project the needle push out to around five meters and could penetrate several centimeters of wood at a meter or so. Andrew was careful not to do any better than the others. Well, not much better. He didn’t mind them thinking that he was strong, but he made a point of keeping the differences limited so that they didn’t see him as being something really special. At least not at this stage of their training. All the practicing he’d done over the last two years was really paying off now.

They learned several spells that could only be classed as nuisance value spells, laughter, hiccups, and spin. They also learned to throw a bright light that would ruin someone’s night vision, and finally, they got onto the two seriously offensive spells. The first was learning how to throw a fireball, which was actually rather easy as it was really just an extension of gathering power together, something most magicians learned straight off as it was usually how they first learned they had power. The secret was to be able to concentrate the energy and then release it as you threw it so that it traveled like a ball at the target you had selected. They all managed to do a fireball that was at least strong enough to kill an individual man after a couple of days which pleased some of them no end, especially the ones that were struggling with the other mental activities they were learning.

“Sanchez has never said anything about anchoring the shields by digging them into the ground or even angling them for that matter.” The Sergeant said. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Andrew thought quickly and came up with what he hoped was a reasonable explanation.

“Football practice.” They all looked at him like he was some sort of idiot. “You know where you hold up one of those pads so the other guy can tackle you or push you, right?”

This at least got some response from the guys in the form of several nods.

“Well, I was thinking about the shields watching the others get shot, and I couldn’t help remembering how in football practice, the big guys would just push me out of the way or push me over and then stomp over the pad, with me underneath it.” This description got a few snickers from a couple of the guys. “So I thought that I’d try digging my shield into the ground when it was my turn to be a target. I’ve done that before but more as an experiment to see if I could do it rather than because I thought it would add to my ability to defend against someone shooting at me.”

And hopefully, they would believe him. He had read about the idea of digging the shields into the ground to defend against bullets from the journal his grandmother had left. He was going to have to be careful about what he did in the future and plan ahead, so he had reasoned arguments for doing whatever it was that he did that nobody else had done or could even do, for that matter.

“Can you color your shield like that you just did so we can see the angle it is at when you get shot?” Duncan asked.

“Sure thing, Sergeant.” He said and then turned and trotted down to the target.

He colored the shield and angled it without digging it into the ground. He tried to brace himself and gave the signal for the soldier to shoot. The bullet slammed into the shield and angled off somewhere. Clearly, the angling worked well as he hadn’t been knocked off his feet or even pushed backward. It had jarred a little mentally but nowhere near as much as the straight-on shot had done. He trotted back to the Sergeant.

“Can everybody see that?” When they all nodded or indicated yes and otherwise, he continued. “I have no idea where the bullet went as it ricocheted up and past me, I’m pretty sure. I’m not entirely certain because I closed my eyes.”

This admission brought a few snickers from the others.

“We’ll leave the angling idea till after I’ve discussed the matter with Corporal Sanchez. Meanwhile, do you want to have another go, Contos?”

Contos nodded. “I’ll try and jam my shield into the ground. It may take me a few moments.”

“That’s fine, Contos. I’ll warn the sniper you might be a little while working out Harris’s ground digging thing.”

Had a request for Maps of Taroniah’s part of the world – I’ve posted these before but here are a few.

“I knew to anchor my shield in the ground, Sergeant. It was something no one mentioned to me before I went down there, so I assumed the lack of information was part of the test. Did they mention that to you, Contos?”

“What do you mean, anchor your shield in the ground?” Contos retorted sharply.

He looked annoyed, and Andrew assumed it was because he had done better than Contos, or anyone else for that matter, he assumed, now that it was obvious that no one had been told to anchor their shields in the ground before being fired at by the rifleman. Clearly, his granny had known things that these people didn’t, which he found surprising, and it also meant he would have to be careful about his assumptions from now on. And how much she showed them, for that matter.

“You sort of dig your shield into the ground. Here, I’ll put up a colored shield, and you can see what I do.”

“What do you mean, color your shield?” Howsen asked.

“You just change the frequency slightly so that it shows up a particular color.”

He brought up his shield and changed the frequency a bit into the infrared, which meant it gained a slight shade of purple.

“Wow. I’ve never seen that before,” Howson said, sounding surprised.

“But how do you change the frequency?” Contos asked.

Andrew shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it. When you create your energy shield, you pull in outside energy to create it, right? Sunlight usually for me, at any rate. You then naturally use the visible spectrum, which makes your shields invisible because, well, I don’t know why, but it does. So I just mentally tell it to change the spectrum slightly.”

They all looked at him like he’d just escaped from the lunatic asylum. He looked around at the others, shrugged at the disbelieving or uncomprehending expressions on their faces, and then went back to the subject at hand.

“So, having created the shield, you just force it down into the ground a bit. Probably not a good idea to force it down too far in somewhere like an urban environment where there’s lots of underground power and water and sewerage and all that stuff, but it generally doesn’t need to be too far.”

He pushed his shield into the ground slightly to demonstrate. The ground was hardpacked dirt here, so the thin line that the almost non-existent edge of his shield created in the ground was a lot more obvious than what would have been in other circumstances. He released the shield and knelt down to look at the ground and found he could still see a faint indentation where his shield had been. The others got down and looked as well.

“Damn.” Commented Howsen.

“The other thing you can do is brace yourself and angle the shield slightly. Or a lot, depending on the circumstances. It’s like angled armor on a tank so that the effective armor is considerably thicker than the actual armor because of the angle.” He looked over at Sergeant Duncan, who was standing watching and listening to everything but not commenting. “It would be handy to know whether just angling the shield works without digging it into the ground, Sergeant. Can you get your sniper chap to give me another couple of shots?”

Okay. I had a nice holiday – a few days off around Xmas and then a week at beautiful Yamba on the NSW north coast (Google it). I am back at work now, although it is hard getting back into the swing of things.

The Princess & The Travelers is still progressing – it is now the longest book I have ever written, for what that is worth. (over 160k) At this stage I can’t see it getting published until February – the length is adding like a month to the timetable sorry folks. Despite the title the Romans only play a small part in the story… just the way it went….

I have now retired from my graphic design position to be a full time author. So I am now dependent on you guys!!
Being full time will mean I should be writing more although how much more is still to be determined. Up until now I have been writing 1500 words a day in the main story and usually another 500 words in something else every day – 7 days a week. I would do the 1500 session before starting the graphic design and the 500 late in the day or at night. I am leaning toward keeping the total weekly word count roughly the same but using the extra writing time I now have to enable me to have a day off a week… that is one idea, anyway. Another is that I keep working as I was but upping the word count to 1500 + 1000 (I find 1500 to be about the limit for a single writing session) and simply take a day off whenever I want to or feel in need of a break. Not having the pressure of the graphic design work 5 days a week will take me a while to adjust to and it will probably be a couple of months before I come up with the optimum work pattern.

I hope you all had a good Xmas and that 2023 proves to be a happy and profitable year for all of you.

Peter