Chapter 3

Escape

Toshiro Ozawa looked around as he stepped through the gate. The cyborgs had cleared the immediate area with just a few bodies left lying around in the burning vehicle that he guessed was a police car from the markings and lights. The vehicle looked ancient and appeared to be powered by an internal combustion engine, yet other aspects of these people’s tech seemed quite modern. The one thing he knew for certain was that the scouts had found no evidence of the ability to construct gates anywhere on this world. A squad of cyborgs followed him through the gate.”

“Four Six, take your squad and clear that building.” He ordered the leader of the squad, pointing to the combination warehouse and office building off to the right.

The leader cyborg led his cyborg soldiers off toward the building. The technicians jumped through and set up the ramps while he surveyed the scene. There appeared to be several people peering at them from down the main street that ran past the warehouse, but everybody in the immediate area had fled. There was a noise to the right, and a flying machine appeared. It stayed low and kept buildings between it and the portal but was clearly studying their position. Several of the cyborgs guarding the gate got off shots at it, but as far as he could tell, they all missed.

He wished he had a high-powered sniper rifle to try a shot, but it was too far away for the ordinary weapons to be accurate, and the cyborg’s lasers dispersed before they reached the target. No matter, it would be almost impossible for the locals to stop them now, even with the problems at home. The ramp placement was finished and locked down, the gateman signaled, and the first of three tanks lined up on the other side of the gate eased its way up and through the portal and onto this world. Two more followed closely behind, and they fanned out to take up defensive positions around the portal. They were followed by five troop trucks that spread out, and the cyborgs they were carrying began dismounting to expand their defensive perimeter even further.

Behind these came three technician trucks. They moved around behind the portal and began assembling a portable power generator as this world lacked broadcast power. Two more tanks clanked through, and three more troop trucks came through that drove over to the right before beginning to unload their cyborgs to enlarge their beachhead. The troop trucks were followed by three engineering vehicles. Two would set power pylons while the third combined with the special strike squad in the next two vehicles to find a good place for a second beacon so another portal could be opened.

Unfortunately, their third and fourth portal facilities had been struck by the plague, so two were all they had that were usable at the moment. He was glad he was in the first wave and not back at home trying to control the massive crowd of True Men, their families, and servants who were all desperate to flee the plague. The panic that had ensued after the plague hit the capital was amazing. This world had been found decades ago and marked as not being worth the effort to conquer because of the radioactive ruins, which were much worse in the northern hemisphere.

“So how come you can shield yourself strongly but can’t pull in a lot of power?”

“I can only shield myself strongly in a mental way. I think that is as much about personality as strength. A physical shield, on the other hand, is all about magical strength, which is why I was weak at them.”

She paused and nodded at Andrew. “Practice your shields for a month or two, and then I might be able to show you something really cool.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Now, a sleep spell is about adjusting their brainwaves to drop them into sleep, while a stun spell is related to the force push spell. Instead of pushing big, it applies limited force to the person’s brain and knocks back and forth against the inside of the skull. It’s rather like a concussion, and you can do damage to people if you are not super careful. I was never steady enough, power-wise, to try it.”

“Once you have you have shielding down and are steady, I will show you push, and then we can go from there.”

“Yeah. Thanks, mum!” Andrew beamed at his parent and trotted off.

Over the next couple of months, he worked on his mental shield practiced collecting power from first the sun, then the air around him even when inside. On one occasion when his mother had started cooking dinner, and his father hadn’t gotten home yet, he cheekily pulled power from the stove. It worked well, except for the food on the stove failing to cook. After laughing, his mother told him to go away before he ruined dinner.

She taught him the sleep spell and one that made people spin on the spot. The stun spell she taught him theory. She was reluctant to do it herself because her abilities were erratic, and she claimed rather weak. They sure impressed him, though! He promised he’d only use the stun spell in a dire emergency. He became really good at Push and his physical Shield very quickly. The school bully threat might have had something to with that!

He worked on his energy shield as well, although the only test he had was not feeling hot when standing in the sun or approaching the stove when it was on. Other things mentioned in the journal he couldn’t work out. Far Seeing worked like a telescope, apparently. He had a couple of ideas to follow up on, but nothing just worked straight off, so he’d shelved that for the moment. Levitation he was still working on too.

Unnoticeable, he deduced, was more a mental compulsion on those around him not to notice him. When he was confident he had it working, he tested it out by walking past two of the bullies who regularly tried to pick on him in the main street. They looked at him briefly and then kept talking as they walked in the opposite direction. Yes!

Over the next two years, he kept slowly getting better and better at magic. Gradually, over time, things in his grandmother’s journal that had made no sense at first he slowly deciphered. He narrowed down the push spell and began punching holes in tree trunks barely half a centimeter wide, and by the time his eighteenth birthday approached, he could punch right through a small tree from ten meters away.

And then the invasion happened.

Sorry people – real life has been a bit hectic

By the time he finished reading the journal, he had much greater theoretical knowledge of what spells his grandmother had available and what they were used for without much practical information on how the spells were crafted, which was a bit frustrating. Over the next few months, he kept re-reading parts of the journal while trying to nut out how she did things. The key seemed to be collecting power which wasn’t really explained in detail, but from a couple of indirect references, he decided it involved absorbing sunshine.

One afternoon when his dad had gone fishing with a mate, his mother asked him how he was going with his grandmother’s stuff.

“Okay, I guess. She mentions quite a few of the things she could do but never explains how she did them.”

“Like what? His mother asked.

“Hang on. I’ve made a list.”

He ducked into his room and retrieved the list he’d made. He brought it back out to the living room where his mother was waiting.

“Right. Let’s see. Sleep, Stun, Shield, Push, Laugh, Hiccup, and Fireball. She also mentions something called bubbles and a spell to make her unnoticeable.”

“I never could work out what she meant by bubbles. I could sort of do the unnoticeable spell, but if I moved, it didn’t work very well. The other spells I learned were Sleep and Stun. Push I lacked the strength for, and she never taught me how to do a Fireball. There were two types of Shield spells. There is a mental Shield that blocks your mental projection and stops things like Sleep and a physical Shield that stops objects. I was okay at the mental Shield but lousy at the Physical one. You can sense people magically?”

“Yes. You are really bright.”

“Oh. Thanks. So close your eyes and watch me mentally.”

He did so, and her glow damped right down until it was about as bright as a dog.

“Wow! How did you do that?”

“I put up my mental shield. Think of a mirror, double-sided, surrounding your head. It keeps your thoughts in and stops others from getting through to you. Come outside.”

She led him onto the porch at the back of the house and had him sit on the deck crosslegged.

“Close your eyes and feel the sun on your skin. Feel the heat flowing into your blood and spreading around your body. Now imagine the double-sided mirror around your head.”

She closed her own eyes and could sense his shaky shield.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes. Now let it go. Practice that every day. As you get stronger and more comfortable doing it, eventually, you will do it automatically. Now feel that power flowing through you again. That is how you power all the spells. Now let the power dissipate from your body into the air around you. Good. Holding too much power can be dangerous, apparently. I could never pull in enough power for that to be a problem.”

The box contained a heap of loose paper with notes scribbled on them and a small journal. His grandmother’s handwriting was hard to decipher, but he started on the journal. He kept an eye on the time, and ten minutes before his dad would normally get home from work, he packed everything away and headed inside, where he hid the box again before his father got home.

A week later, he hadn’t learned anything much in the way of magic as the pages he’d read had mostly been information on people and places she had been traveling through when she started the journal. There was a reference to her stunning two men who were obnoxious but no information on how that spell worked. He made a note of it on his computer, packed up well before his father was due home, and started on his homework.

He made steady progress studying the stuff in the box every day over the rest of the school week, apart from Thursday when he just had too much homework to do. He did learn a few things, mainly mentions of things his grandmother had done or considered doing. She mentioned using a sleep spell lightly on a male pest at a party at one spot, while at another, she said she had been shielding herself mentally at one point, and at another point, after the same function, she had used a shield spell to protect herself from heavy rain and hail.

The biggest takeaway he got that week was her mention of how she could close her eyes and sense the people around her. Apparently, she could tell where people were around her and the difference between a normal person and someone with some magic genes. He had no idea of how to go about that, but he decided to close his eyes and see what he could achieve.

He let his consciousness settle, and he could “see” glows. Hmm. He moved his head and studied what he was sensing. There were two bright glows to his left, and beyond them, at what he felt was probably some distance, there was a whole group of dull glows. To his right, there were four dull glows fairly close. Beyond these nearby glows, which he could sense clearly, there were more glows, but he got the feeling they were all further away.

He considered where he was. The two bright glows had to be his mum and sister. The four to his right were the Kings, the people who lived next door. Interesting. In his mind’s eye, his mum and sister, who both had a fair number of the engineered genes, showed up brighter than everyone else nearby. He studied the Kings some more and noticed that two of the glows were a little brighter than the other two. Not by a lot, but noticeable.

Over the next couple of days, he practiced sensing others, and he also began noticing other things when he closed his eyes. There was a blueness that he found strange. And things that he could sort of see, maybe, that appeared to be just floating around. Hmm. He didn’t know what to make of them. He wasn’t even sure they were real and not something his mind was making up.

“It’s not like it used to be, dad. People are proud of their engineered genes these days.”

“Being tall or purple isn’t the same as being able to do shit. Having powers scares people. Trust me, I know.”

His father used his hands to compress the sunlight into a small ball of light between them. Andrew looked at his father and realized that he was further advanced than his father. He didn’t have to do his father’s extravagant hand movements to achieve the same effect. He decided his father must’ve repressed his abilities to hide for notice. Damn. He’d been hoping his father would teach him more advanced techniques rather than the fumbling self-teaching he had been managing.

” I guess I was hoping you would teach me all those fancy magical tricks I’ve heard all the stories about, dad.”

“Your grandmother tried to teach me a couple of times, but I wasn’t interested. It was just too dangerous. You only had to do one thing once in the hue and cry would be up and, if you’re lucky, escape and be able to hide somewhere else. I don’t know how many times your grandmother had to move in her life, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t get older. A lot of the time, it was because she did something accidentally that made it obvious she had power.”

His father stood up and looked down at him, a frown on his face.

“I can’t stop you fooling around with that stuff, but you won’t do it under my roof, do you understand?”

“Yes, dad. I understand.”

“I want your word. No magic in this house.”

Andrew shrugged. “Ok, dad. I give you my word. No magic in the house.”

“Good.”

His father gave him a sharp look and then left the room. However, all was not lost. On Friday afternoon, when his father normally went to the pub for drinks with the boys from work, his mother took him into their room and pulled out a box she kept in the back of the bottom drawer of her dresser.

“This was left to you by your grandmother. Your father thought I had thrown it out when we went through her things. I showed them to my father, but he and his fellow soldiers had never really received much training in power techniques. I could do some simple things, but I think I lack the right genes to do much. Your father can’t do much either, but I think with him, it’s more a matter of not wanting rather than not being able to. Take the box and hide it in your room somewhere.”

He took the box and smiled at his mother.

“Thanks, mum!”

He hid the box under his bed and refrained from the incredibly strong temptation to go through it right then! He had told his dad he wouldn’t do stuff at home, and he wouldn’t. There was no opportunity over the weekend, but Monday afternoon after school, he grabbed the box and went out behind the garage. It was still on their property, but it wasn’t technically under his dad’s roof.

He had been arguing with himself about whether he should tell his father about his abilities over the last few months. From things his father had said, Andrew had gotten the impression that his father didn’t think much of tellies or people with any sort of power. He could remember his grandmother always saying not to be obvious and attract attention. But he was starting to think that these days that may not be such a problem as it used to be. His dad had been down the coast at Ballina on business for the last week and was supposed to be back today. Andrew’s father had taken the train that ran through Mawillimbar.

Cars were few and far between still. There was a steelworks near Gilong now, and there was talk of a car manufacturing plant being built there to use the steel. So far, though, nothing had actually happened. Most cars in use were salvaged ancient vehicles converted to mostly run on steam power, at least up here in the north. So many gardens had contained decorative rubber tree varieties that rubber, at least, was something that was plentiful.

There were a few coal mines in operation out west, and that was the main fuel for transport and industry alike. And the power station that was at the back of Coolangatta. With the site of Brisbane still radioactive, coal was exported from Southport, the rail line feeding docks near where there had been a large swimming complex, or so he had been told in the history class. The fighting, pestilence, and starvation that had followed the nuclear war had reduced the population to almost subsistence levels, and it had taken centuries to recover.

He had seen pictures of the incredibly tall buildings that had stretched along the coast in the old days. They had been gutted in the aftermath of the nuclear war before some had been destroyed in the fighting, and the rest had collapsed over the centuries, more or less. A nuclear winter and mini ice age that had followed the war had reduced sea levels for several hundred years, but things had since returned to normal, with the huge rubble mounds forming a good base for people to build houses on with great views of the ocean.

Farmers still turned over the odd artifact from before the nuclear war in the farmlands that ran up the length of coast inland from the mounds of rubble. According to the history books, nearly the whole area from the ocean to the mountains had been covered in houses and industrial areas. Nowadays, it was mostly crops and cows with a few towns dotted in between all the way to the edge of the radioactive lands north of Yatlar.

Chapter 2

New skills

He finally summoned up his courage and told His father, who wasn’t impressed when Andrew told him that he could do things.

“Well, don’t do anything! It will only bring unfavorable attention to us all. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to move again.”

Running behind with Arturo 8 – but here is the cover

The whites in South Africa had nearly been exterminated following the war. As he looked and sounded the part, he was able to pass himself off as Indian. He managed to eke out a living there for several years until he could get a job on a ship heading for Indonesia. The Indonesian archipelago had not been as severely damaged by the nuclear war as more important island groups but lacked the industrial infrastructure to maintain civilization.

Fortunately, there was little racial discrimination in Indonesia. He was able to find work on first one island until his lack of visible aging became a problem and then another. Andrew wasn’t sure how long he spent in Indonesia, but it was several centuries, apparently. He married at least three times and had several children who were still there, Andrew assumed.

Eventually, as civilization recovered, it became harder for him to hide his existence, and he moved on. He moved first to Tonga, which, while virtually untouched by the war, had suffered from the breakdown of modern civilization. This was followed by Caledonia and then Nuzeeland, at first on the North Island, and then later he moved to the South Island.

Finally, he was forced to move again and headed for Ostraya. Now he was truly starting to age. He settled in Ballina and met Isabel McHenry, whom he genuinely fell in love with as far as the accounts that were handed down seemed to think. Unfortunately, they only managed to have one child, Andrew’s mother, Cheryl. Andrew still had vague memories of his grandfather from when he was young, but they were only faint.

What it meant was that Andrew had full-blown tellies on both sides of his ancestry. Exactly what that meant for him, he wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain he could set off fires in his near vicinity when he got angry. He’d managed to avoid losing his temper when being bullied on several occasions, but when he was alone in hiding down the back of the park, he had caused several fires to start simply from the anger he felt. Fortunately, he’d managed to put them all out before they became a serious threat or anyone noticed them, but it had scared the hell out of even the first time he’d done it.

With practice, he found he could cause a bunch of dry leaves to burst into flame with a bit of concentration. Next, he had worked on getting twigs to catch alight as well, and these days could make a big lump of firewood catch alight without too much effort. He found that by thinking hard and pushing out his arm in a stop motion, he could project a force in the direction his arm pointed. He’d discovered this by accident when a large dog had rushed at him three months ago. His action of self-preservation had pushed the dog back about three meters and scared it so much it had run away.

late again – sorry people – got really busy.
Anyway – here is this weeks.

Most people seemed satisfied with that. He kept moving south along the coast, although at one stage, he had to detour to a considerable distance inland to avoid the radioactive ruins of a large city. He had a run-in with a small group of armed refugees, or thugs, or survivors. They’d tried to shake him down for whatever he possessed, which at the time wasn’t much, but he took exception to it. Unfortunately for the six thugs, most of them allowed themselves to get too close to him, so when he moved at his genetically enhanced speed, they died quickly and without being able to injure him. One man did manage to get a couple of shots off, but they went wide in the confusion of the fight.

The little battle presented him with weapons, useful supplies, and some useless money, as the economy had collapsed completely by that point. He did gain some half-decent clothes to replace the rags he had been walking around in for months. His other problem was that his combat boots were getting pretty ragged, but he had to keep them as none of the other men’s boots fitted. In the end, he only took three guns. He took two of the assault rifles the men had been armed with, with nearly all the available ammunition for those weapons, and a small pistol he didn’t recognize, but the man had clips for it, so he found a pocket on his uniform to fit them in and kept the gun.

One of the men had a usable backpack which he added to his ensemble and left all the other bits and pieces where the men lay. And the bodies. He felt no need to waste time and energy burying them. After that, it took him months but eventually, he reached the port of Karwar, which had somehow not been nuked. Although it was so damaged, it looked like a bomb had hit the city. He had to detour inland to finally get across the Kali River as the bridge had been destroyed at some point. As had the dam further up the river, which had caused a lot of destruction in the city, he guessed.

He spent some considerable time at Karwar, passing as a native from the north with his yokel accent. Eventually, his lack of apparent aging led to him taking a job on a ship as a deckhand. The ship mostly traveled the western Indian Ocean, calling at ports that hadn’t been bombed during the war. The trading wasn’t brilliant, and the lack of a suitable port where the ship could be dry-docked and the hull maintained would eventually result in the ship sinking.

Andrew wasn’t sure how long Mikail spent on the first ship, but at some point, he swapped vessels to one that traded between Southern Africa and South America. The ship was attacked by pirates in the South Atlantic some years later. Mikail was instrumental in driving them off but having shown his martial abilities to the crew, he thought it best to disappear and he jumped ship in South Africa.

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