Kato nodded, taking in the information.”And our broadcast power doesn’t reach the front here?”

“Not yet. The engineers keep expanding the coverage, but it’s slow work. Without a Cybernetics Centre and zivvy, we can’t impress large numbers of natives as labor without tying up too many of our troops as guards, which is limiting things a bit.”

“Yes. Over on the northern front where I’ve been serving, they have been using native labor for cleanup tasks and gross engineering tasks like rebuilding bridges and such, even though it does tie down men as guards. The overseers are using whips, would you believe, to get the natives to work.” He shook his head. “It’s all very medieval.”

“You don’t sound like you approve?”

Kato shrugged. “With no zivvy, I don’t have an alternative, but it seems very inefficient.”

It was Toshiro’s turn to shrug. “We need to get as much use out of the healthy ones as we can. Our reinforcements are starting to slow down while the enemy is growing in strength.”

“That’s certainly true, although I was told they aren’t as strong down here on this front.”

“No. Nothing like the number of regular troops I’ve heard you’ve been facing up north. We are generally facing a lot of militia leavened by a few regulars down here. No Tanks and only a few pieces of artillery. They do have plenty of mortars which are a pain.”

He paused and pointed at some nearby troops. “And down here, we have a much higher ratio of impressed militia to military cyborgs than they have on the northern front, or so I’ve heard.”

The other man nodded in agreement. “Yes. And even then, a lot of the cyborgs we have aren’t even military. You’ll find a good third are ex-police or ex-chauffeurs or whatever.”

“Good God!”

“Yes. About the only thing we haven’t resorted to so far as using women in the front line, although I’ve heard they’re being pressed into service in the city, doing jobs that men would normally do because of all the manpower being on the front line.”

Rokuro smiled at some thought.

“You should hear some of the complaints from the older matrons whose daughters are being put to work.” He grinned at Toshiro. “A lot of the younger women are quite happy to be put to work, mind you. It gets them away from the matrons!”

Toshiro couldn’t help himself and snorted while Kato grinned at him.

“So. What relation are you to the main Rokuro family?”

Kato frowned at Toshiro for a moment and then shrugged.

“Before the troubles started, I was Rokuro 22. God knows what number I am now. Don’t let it bother you, though. I try not to let it bother me.”

“Right,” Toshiro said after a moment while he took that in and tried to process someone that high being on the front lines so far from Home. Damn, the fellow was probably even higher in rank now, and Toshiro was supposed to treat him as a subordinate? This could get dicey.

This invasion typified the whole blind, arrogant mentality. No one had checked the information the scouts had provided. Instead, they just assumed they’d be able to overcome any resistance with their mentalist powers and by chipping any natives they didn’t kill. Only, there was no zivvy, and the plague had disrupted everything so much the whole invasion was struggling. Toshiro was still confident they would prevail in the end, at least locally, but they could probably forget about the rest of the planet until the supply of zivvy resumed. He presumed their leaders would resort to some sort of biological attack on the other lands to reduce their threat.

“Well, until he turns up, I’ll keep commanding my troops. We will attack their line tomorrow morning just before dawn. We can’t let them have too long to strengthen it.”

Uesugi nodded. “No. It’s a pity we don’t have real military troops in our commands. If we did, we could attack this afternoon and into the evening. As it is, we’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the night reorganizing our men, I imagine.”

Toshiro nodded. “I’ll have to do the same so this Kato Rokuro doesn’t complain when he turns up to take command.”

Uesugi grinned at his friend, gave him a short bow, and headed off to his command center. Toshiro returned the bow, and after a moment spent contemplating the way things were going, he set about organizing his men or, more accurately, reorganizing his men. About seven, a truck rolled up to his headquarters. There were half a dozen armored cyborgs and six conscripted civilians in the back, sent as reinforcements, and his new battalion commander.

Toshiro had come out of the house that he was using as a headquarters and stood on the front step watching the truck being unloaded. Besides the troops, there were half a dozen boxes of ammunition and even some food, by the look of it, Rokuro was in the passenger seat. He came around to where Toshiro was standing and looked him up and down, which was pretty insolent, but Toshiro was too tired to make n issue of it. Kato Rokuro looked about fifty, give or take, and didn’t appear very military.

“Toshiro Ozawa?”

“Kato Rokuro?”

“Sir.” The man replied and finally saluted, which Toshiro returned.

“You have been informed you will be taking over command of the troops I have been operating, which are now being designated the first Battalion of the sixth Brigade?”

“Yes. You will find that they are a mix of cyborgs and former civilians as with most of the forces that make up most of our army.”

“I understand.” The man said with a resigned nod.

“Yes. Just so. We still have two tanks and a couple of AGCs in the first battalion, and there are three tanks in the second. Vehicles aren’t a problem as we’ve been commandeering local vehicles. Most of them use gasoline, of which there is a good supply at present. The few electric vehicles they have aren’t dependent on broadcast power like ours. We’ve captured several intact fuel stations, so gasoline is still plentiful on our front, but unless we can capture a refinery soon or keep overrunning the native’s fuel stations, the use of local vehicles will decline.”

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.