Back from holidays …..

“You got more ammo for that thing?” He asked as they got moving across the bridge.

“Some. There’s more in a truck at the back of the column. There is one of us snipers in each Company.”

He had the driver pull up once they crossed the bridge, and he got out and went over to examine the body of the strong mentalist. The fellow had dark hair and a handsome, chiseled face, even in death. His eyes were open, and he was otherwise unmarked, apart from the hole in the middle of his forehead that was leaking a little blood. The mentalist was dressed in a dark grey shirt, black trousers, tall black boots, and an elaborate black coat with a high collar. Even in death, the man looked arrogant.

Andrew shook his head and climbed back aboard the LAV and then looked ahead mentally, but there were no more Japs anywhere close. He surmised that it couldn’t be far from here to their main body and had the driver take it cautiously over the next few kilometers. The winding, narrow road served to encourage the driver’s circumspect approach for the next kilometer or so.

They had just passed the welcome to the Colac-Otway Shire sign when Andrew felt a mentalist ahead and signaled the driver to pull over. The LAV pulled over to the left-hand side of the road, while the vehicle behind pulled over to the right, and the rest pulled up behind. There seemed to be enemy troops on both sides of the road ahead, although most were on the right-hand side. The Captain dismounted and came over.

“What have you got, Harris?”

“I’ve got Japs on both sides of the road. The ones on the left just feel like ordinary troops, but the ones on the right have some mentalist capabilities mixed in, although I can’t feel a real mentalist being present.” He shrugged. “They’re just around the bend. In fact, I would say they’re just beyond that road sign. Either they haven’t detected us yet, or they’re trying to surprise us.”

The Captain looked down the road. “Stopping like this would tend to indicate we’re not going to be surprised easily.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you, Captain? I have to say that they’re positioned like they’re in an ambush situation, and they don’t appear to be moving around much, which would tend to back that up.”

“Right. What do you suggest?”

Andrew scratched his head. “We can’t be that far from their main body, sir. I wouldn’t want to be fighting a lot of Japs strung out along the road like this. I suggest you deploy your troops on each side of the road, with most on the right, and then I will lead a squad down the road to attract their attention. Without a mentalist present on their side, I should be able to shield a whole squad easily. I can assure you that that’ll concentrate their attention, so it should mean that the flank attacks can go in without too much resistance.”

Merry Xmas everyone!!!!

“Holy shit!” the girl said, staring at the piece of metal that thumped down onto the ground at their feet.

“Yeah. This one’s a good deal stronger than the one we took out. Hold on.”

He closed his eyes and felt for the Japs. With the mentalist on their right down, the fire from the Nuzeelanders in the bush behind them had forced the surviving Japs to retreat to the wooded scrub they had advanced out of originally. The strong mentalist had brought up the rear, shielding as many as he could. The other mentalist was definitely dead. Good!

“You got that mentalist. Good job.” He said the sniper.

“What about the other one? I haven’t seen someone carve metal like that.”

“He’s powerful, certainly. But we should be able to take him the same way. Just give me a minute to collect more power.”

He set about drawing power from the sun. The other enemy mentalist was very strong, and he would need every bit of power he could muster. The other two studied him even as a few bullets pinged off the overturned APC.

“You’re glowing!” The girl said.

“What?” Asked the Captain.

“Can’t you see it, sir? He’s literally glowing with power.”

Andrew smiled. “The captain can’t see, but you can, which means you have basic mentalist talent yourself. You’ve never had any formal training?

She shook her head. “No. I went through a period where I could feel this pressure on me mentally that was worse the more people there were around, and then I sort of imagined this mental wall around my head, and it went away, eventually.”

“Right. Well, you need training. In the meantime, we have other matters to take care of. You ready?” he asked, and the girl nodded. “Same as last time.”

He moved down to the other end of the wreck and felt her moving alongside him. He stopped, checked she was ready, and then stepped out from behind the cover to his right. The girl stepped out behind him, and he focused on the mentalist. He cast Control, then Fear, and finally, Fireball. She shot a split second later, and there came the fingernail on a blackboard screech of a powerful mentalist dying. A hail of shots was bouncing off his shield, but with no mentalist to protect them, the rest of the Japs were toast. He moved forward, his shield tinted so it was obvious to the girl, and he used the needle punch to slaughter most of the Japanese troops before they could retreat out of his range, and the girl got the rest.

“The column can advance again, Captain.” He informed the Nuzeeland officer who had followed them, also using Andrew’s shield for cover.

The man nodded and then glanced at the girl. “You ride with the mentalist from now on, Simpson.”

“Sir.” She replied.

The Captain quickly had a couple of squads double time across the bridge and spread out into the woods on the far side of the gully to check on the Japs while a group of troops gathered around the APC and tipped back upright. They then pushed far enough off the road to let their vehicles get past. His driver brought the LAV back down to the main road, and he climbed back aboard with the girl hopping in the rear seat.

He pointed towards the bush where the enemy was and held up both his hands with his fingers splayed, then the left hand with the fingers still fully splayed, and put on his right hand, he held up only three fingers. The man nodded and then disappeared back into the bush, presumably passing that information on while the other soldier crouched in view of Andrew. He moved to the end of the APC and stuck his head around the corner, studying the position. The enemy troops were hidden in the bush, and it was going to be costly to winkle out. Unless he made the decision to earn his pay properly.

He heard the sound of running feet followed by shots and then the clangs of bullets ricocheting off the APC, and two of the Nuzeelanders joined him, hiding behind the wrecked APC. One was definitely the fellow he’d signaled to earlier who had Captain’s tabs on his collar. The other was a female carrying a rifle that was nearly as long as she was tall. Andrew did a doubletake and then realized belatedly that it was a sniper’s rifle. He scratched his head, trying to devise a way to use the girl and her sniper rifle to their advantage. He could tell where the enemy were because he could sense their glow magically, as even the ordinary soldiers had a small glow. The trouble was she couldn’t. Hmmm.

Then he felt another vehicle coming up behind the enemy position. This one had four people in it. However, two of them had to be mentalists as they felt very strong even at a distance. He could sense when the vehicle stopped, and they disembarked somewhere out of sight. All the enemy sort of congregated together in a huddle while they discussed tactics, and then the huddle broke up just like in a football game. The Japs lined up and began to advance. The Nuzeelanders behind them opened fire but with little effect.

“They’re shielded.” He yelled. Then he reached out mentally and felt a strong mentalist to the left front, a much stronger one to the right front, and what felt like an untrained but strong mentalist right next to him. The girl! He’d worry about that later. The girl at least had a natural mental shield, which was why he hadn’t noticed she was a mentalist earlier. He turned to the girl.

“There are two enemy mentalists. A strong one and a weak one. The weak one is on the left. Get behind me and shoot over my shoulder. I am going to distract him with energy and mental spells. He’ll almost certainly drop his physical shield to protect against me. As soon as you see my fireball, shoot him.”

The girl nodded and then pointed at her ear. “Shooting right beside your ear will almost certainly deafen you.”

“I have protection.” She stared at him for a moment and then shrugged as if to say it was his funeral. She hefted her rifle, checked the safety, and nodded. He turned and felt her move right behind him. Then he stepped to the left, which meant they moved out of the cover provided by the vehicle. He knew which man out there was the mentalist and hit him with the Mental Control spell, which slithered off his mental shield, then the much more showy fireball spell, Crack! The rifle fired, and his sound-muffling spell did its job. The rifle sounded like it was a hundred meters away, not a few centimeters! The mentalist went down. He shoved the girl sideways, and the slash from the other mentalist impacted the front edge of the overturned vehicle, cutting off a large chunk of metal.

He hopped out and began moving back down the dirt road that his vehicle had turned up even as the gunner swung his machine gun around, facing where the shots had come from across the far side bridge. He didn’t actually open fire as it wasn’t obvious where the enemy was, which Andrew thought was wise as all it would do would be attract the Jap’s attention. There was no point in attracting attention if he didn’t have a decent target to make it worthwhile. Andrew used his magic to reach out into the distance and sensed only six enemy troops, maybe three hundred meters up the road hiding in the trees. He opened his eyes and compared the scene with his mental image but couldn’t actually see any of the enemy soldiers, so he moved position further along the dirt road, getting much closer to the main road they had been driving along.

The Nuzeelanders were dismounting from their vehicles and deploying into the scrub both on the high side of the road and also on the low side from where they were starting to return fire. Then he felt more enemy troops coming up the road. They were moving closer so fast that they had to be in a vehicle, he decided. Just before they would have come into view, the vehicle pulled over, and he could feel the enemy soldiers disembarking and spreading out. That included the driver, who also jumped out of the vehicle according to Andrew’s magical detection. The vehicle had been packed, and as a result, they added another fourteen soldiers to the enemy force that was blocking their advance.

Andrew put up a shield and raced over to the burning wreck, sheltering behind it. He’d angled the shield a little, so the bullets striking it hadn’t knocked him off balance as he ran across the space. He sliced open the top of the APC as he climbed onto the deck of the vehicle and then looked inside, but no one was still alive. He sucked the heat out of the fires burning inside the cab while absorbing the energy until he had snuffed them, by which time he felt like he was glowing with power. With the fire out, he turned toward the enemy and let loose a fireball using all the power he could. The wooded area wasn’t tinder dry, but it wasn’t damp either, and an area of maybe a hundred meters across went up in flames with a whoosh.

At least one of the enemy soldiers was caught in the fire, and a couple of others had to scramble to get out of the way, so he used a push spell to force the fire to change direction, which caught one of the two before the fire front passed them. He dropped down from the deck of the vehicle and looked back toward the Nuzeelanders. A couple of them were crouched at the edge of the bush, and one of them nodded toward the vehicle behind him, so he shook his head, indicating that there were no survivors. The man grimaced, so Andrew thought he would make the news even worse.

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.

Better late than never – sorry

“The powers that be were impressed with your performance, Andrew. A promotion and a medal are coming, but more importantly, you will be transferred to the Nuzeeland troops they’re hoping will get to Apollo Bay in time to hold it. The high command was not sure exactly where the Japs have reached and how soon they’ll get to Apollo Bay, so you are instructed to take the road through Rokewood to Colac. From there, you can take the road through Gellibrand to Lavers Hill, and from there, you can either head towards Apollo Bay or back towards Port Campbell, which is where the Nuzeelanders will land if Apollo Bay is out of the question.

The Captain had a map which he studied and nodded in agreement with her suggestion.

“Looks like a plan. Do you expect the troops at Apollo Bay to hold?”

“Just a company with no mentalist support? Not a chance. The only way the Kiwis will be able to land there is if the Japs decide to stop and have a rest instead of continuing their advance. It’s only like an hour and a half’s drive normally, probably twice that for armored vehicles, and I expect they’ll be in a position to attack tomorrow. Here are your orders.” She pulled some paper out of her jacket and handed them over. “They give you the leeway to cut across country to Port Campbell if Apollo Bay falls quickly. Right. There is a driver and a car outside. Get going.”

“Sir.” He saluted, which she returned.

“Look after yourself, Andrew,” She said as he reached the door.

He smiled but didn’t turn back. The car was easy to find, and after a brief stop at his billet to grab his gear, they were off at a hundred k’s an hour down the through road to Rokewood and then Colac. They got held up at various checkpoints, and at one point outside Colac, they had to stop and wait for a long convoy of trucks that had been impressed into the army to pass by before they could proceed.

Andrew thought the trucks couldn’t have traveled much more slowly and still kept moving, and it took forever for the convoy to finally go past. Most were medium-sized box trucks with no idea what was inside them, but there were several impressively marked vehicles that appeared to be carrying ammunition and others that appeared to be carrying food, plus several petrol tankers. So far, the shipment of oil from the oil refinery built on the southeast coast of Victoria nearest the Bass Strait oilfields hadn’t been interrupted, not that the country didn’t have a fair amount of fuel in reserve. He realized that the tankers, at least, must have gone up and around the whole northern front to get here from the refinery.

They were about three kilometers south of Colac when they got word over the radio that Apollo Bay had been taken, and the Japs were pushing ahead along the coast road so it would not be safe for them to take the road through Ferguson to Lavers Hill, but instead cut across to the Carlisle Road then work their way southwest from Chapple Vale and reached the coast road before the Twelve Apostles. Rather than stop to look at the maps, Andrew had the driver head west while he pulled up maps on his phone, and after some rather exciting moments on one dirt road or another, they made it to the Princetown Road and then the Great Ocean Road in one piece. They approached the road junction carefully, and it was with some relief that they decided they were ahead of the Japanese advance, which they saw no sign of.

Most of the defenders had already fallen back to face Tachibana’s attack, so his troops had no trouble brushing the remaining defenders aside and advancing into the town as well. It quickly devolved into a route during which probably only a third of the Ostrayan troops managed to escape along the ocean road. Yamashita had sent his troops in the four-wheel-drives to that further south on the fire trails anticipating cutting the Oastrayans off, but it took the troops longer to get back to the ocean road than they had anticipated. They arrived at the junction just as the first Ostrayan troops did and were held up short of the main road as an ever-increasing number of native soldiers joined the defense line to allow their brethren coming along behind to escape along the road.

The locals took up defensive positions on the far side of a creek at the next town, but they didn’t have time to dig in properly before the now combined Japanese troops arrived. Tachibana did the same trick by putting mentalists in the armored infantry vehicles and simply charged across the mudflats and assaulted the defender’s positions with the mentalists shielding the vehicles as they approached. The short, sharp action lasted for about an hour, leaving the few survivors to flee further west along the ocean road.

Chapter 13

Responding to the Japs

Rumors of the breakthrough down on the coast road spread rapidly through the Ostrayan army once word had reached headquarters in the usual manner that rumors spread through armies faster than the speed of light. Troops were pulled out of their positions near Winchelsea and rushed south. Two companies of infantry with artillery support were sent to Deans Marsh with instructions to push forward down that road and bottle the Japs up on the coast. More troops were sent to Forest with similar instructions for the road leading down to the coast from there. A company of infantry and some artillery that were at Warnumbool raced along the coast in a convoy of cabin cruisers and reached Apollo Bay before the Japanese did where they dug in. The hope was that they would hold until the Nuzeeland troops arrived, who were due any time soon.

Andrew had not been called upon in the two weeks since the battle of Backus Marsh, as it was now being called. Captain Greaves was back on her feet, and Paul Nguyen had turned up to reinforce their mentalist stocks. When news of the breakthrough arrived, there was considerable concern shown by all concerned. Captain Greaves pulled Andrew and Paul aside the day after the news of the breakthrough had been released officially and informed them that David Williams and Tony Contos had also been assigned to this front but had since been forwarded to the troops in the south. Contos was assigned to the force holding the Deans Marsh Road, and Williams was headed for Forest. The Captain gave a subtle signal to Andrew to stay behind when Paul left the room.

He proposed using the still-fresh Natori battalion to hook around the northern flank of the locals and either force them to retreat in a hasty and disorganized manner or get cut off and trapped in the western half of the town. It took two days for a reply to come back, which only said that they were looking at his plan. Then, two days later, a mentalist turned up whom he’d never met, so he was presumably one of the Natori people. One of the Tachibana family, Hiro, was in his fifties by the look of it, but if he’d had a good response to Rejuv, he could be a good deal older. He strode into Toshiro’s headquarters as if he owned it, which didn’t endear him to Toshiro, but he was quite respectful in his manner. After introductions, he got down to the reason for his appearance.

“I’ve got a force of ten tracked APCs with troops to add to your force. The general likes your idea and wants you to get the operation underway tomorrow.”

Toshiro was a little surprised but didn’t object to getting things underway. He introduced Tachibana to Gentaro, and the three of them sat down to work out the operational details for the following day’s attack. Because Tachibana’s troops were completely fresh, it was decided they would take the lead in the offensive, supported by all the operational armored vehicles, with Gentaro’s battalion following behind to back them up. The plan was to swing north around the large mine site that was out of use and follow the forestry trails to attack the Ostrayan positions in the flank and rear. Tachibana suggested they round up local cars to provide extra mobility for Gentaro’s troops, but Toshiro reduced that down to just four-wheel-drive vehicles and informed Gentaro would assign all the four-wheel-drive vehicles he had to Gentaro, but it wouldn’t be enough for even a quarter of his troops. Nothing else would get through the forestry trails. Tachibana shrugged and accepted their assessment of the local situation.

The attack kicked off just on first light with a team of mentalists, including Gentaro and Tachibana, ranging ahead of the lead troops knocking out the sentries and scouts. It worked so well that Toshiro didn’t think the locals realized what was happening until they were nearly surrounded. The main attack came slicing down past where the ruined communications tower was, slamming into the back of the defenders with little or no warning as far as Toshiro could tell from his position on the far side of the river.

A chaotic action ensued in the houses as the defenders tried to hold up the Japanese attack, but they hadn’t received enough reinforcements to compensate for the losses they’d taken as a result of their own attack a few days previously. Their depleted units had great trouble stopping the armored vehicles pushing into their positions, especially the ones that had mentalists aboard shielding the front of them, and gradually their whole position collapsed. Toshiro personally led an attack by his veteran first battalion across the sands at the mouth of the river where the Ostrayans had been decimated in their attack.

Rocked by the alarming news of her natural father’s death, swiftly followed by the disappearance of her half-brother, Taroniah begrudgingly returns to Marsea, the capital of Marland, at the urging of her natural father’s cousin. Here, she finds herself facing many problems; uppity nobles, rebellious Kerns, foreign invaders, and, most importantly, locating the whereabouts of her half-brother, Patros, who is now the King of Marland.

Most of these problems are not things her enormous magical power can easily rectify. Fortunately, there are some loyal people on her side who can help her resolve all these issues as she attempts to restore her brother to his throne.

“No problem. If headquarters doesn’t tell me to expand my front to the north more than it is now, I may use your troops initially to give some of my own troops a break. We’ve been practically fighting non-stop since the invasion began. Well, a lot of the men have. A few days’ break will do them good.” He gave his head a little jerk in the direction of their now-departed commander. “The enemy is building up to a counterattack on this front, or so my analysts assure me. I think it will be important that our men rest up as much as possible before the enemy launches their offensive rather than try and continue attacking ourselves just now.”

True to his word, he fed the Natori troops into the line and pulled his first battalion out for a break, and after a week, used them to replace the second battalion. Unfortunately for the second battalion, the locals decided to attack after they had only enjoyed two days’ rest. Fortunately, the local’s attack was ill-coordinated and not as strong as he had feared.

The battle raged for two days, and Toshiro even got into the action himself, personally leading a counter-attack at one point when it looked like the locals were going to break through the line. In the end, the locals lost nearly three to one in casualties and achieved nothing of significance. They managed to knock out three of his newly acquired gun carriers and a couple of the armored troop vehicles, and his brigade’s casualties were mostly among the more experienced of his troops, but it was still a resounding victory.

The key attack had come across the shallow river to the north of the town and actually managed to get across the river briefly. That was when Toshiro took the field personally. His mentalist combat skills, especially his shields, enabled them to drive back the locals across the eastern branch of the river and the western one, where they had been able to lodge a firm foothold on the far side of the river. Although his two original battalions were pretty worn out, the new one composed of Natori troops was still pretty fresh, especially as the area of the river they were defending had been subject to very little in the way of attacks by the locals.

A mad charge across the sand near the river mouth was decimated, and after that, the only action they saw was the desultory artillery barrage that went on intermittently while most of the fighting occurred further north. He pulled the second battalion back and gave them a couple of days rest before replacing the Natori battalion bringing it into reserve while he wrote up detailed plans, which he submitted to headquarters. He estimated that it would take the locals the best part of two weeks to recover from their losses in terms of organization and even longer in terms of replacements. They didn’t appear to be as short of infantry equipment as his own forces were getting, but they were short of artillery and heavy vehicles. Their losses in this battle wouldn’t help.