Sorry – forgot Ostraya this week – next week.
The Harrecan Problem is next – still WIP so some time away yet – maybe end of October but STCWN (Subject to change without notice)
Taroniah at Sea (either side of Xmas) will be followed by Kyron the Conqueror (March-April)

After that the timetable gets variable as we are building a house in the country at the delightfully named Emu Vale with the build supposed to be starting in March – this will no doubt involve numerous trips up to the Southern Downs to check on progress (2.5 hours each way)
And then we will be moving – having to get internet etc organized – so no doubt more interruptions and delays.
I will do my best to keep up the schedule but no promises.
The Princess & The Gangsters is still my planned work after the next Kyron and then Taroniah at (Something) and Kyron the (Something) These two are probably the start of the 4 book battle with the big bad but again STCWN.

Next: After Ostraya I have the problem of what to serialize:
1. The one unpublished finished book I have written (needs a re-write but hay, good enough for here, right?)
2. Snippets from books I am working on but are NOWHERE near finished
3. Snippets from the next Taroniah or Kyron book – might be a bit spoilerish though
4. Serialize the first book I wrote here – On The Rocks – might garner some new interest in that series

Please let me know which you would prefer!!

It has been brought to my attention that some of you still have the wrong e-book file for Kyron the Magician (Kyron the Bowman)
If that is the case please contact me I will send you a pdf file for hte book.

Peter

Kyron and his mercenary army have taken the Marhingian capital, killed the King and most of the Kingdom’s nobles. Kyron now must decide if this is a raid or a conquest and, if a conquest, how he will organize his newly gained Kingdom. King Kyron the First sounds pretty good to a farmboy from Malia, he has to admit. Unfortunately, the neighbors are acting anything but neighborly, and someone’s trying to assassinate him. If that weren’t enough, his old friend Prince Nalren and the Kingdom of Framland are threatened by their neighbors. It appears Kyron’s life was never meant to be easy!

A bit late – sorry

“Bloody hell,” Simpson said, looking over his shoulder. “Is it still working?”

“I’m not sure. You want to go and tell the Captain we found another one while I look around and see if there are any others?”

That attracted the attention of some other soldiers who had come over to see what they were doing.

“What you’re looking at, bro?” One of them asked.

“Japanese beacon for their portal. We destroyed one around the corner up there, which was the one they were using, so I’m not sure that this one is still working.”

“Shit!”

The men began backing away, and then a fellow who had lieutenant’s tabs on his collar came up.

“Did you say that was a Japanese beacon?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know whether it’s working or not.”

“Right. We’ll assume it’s still operable, and I’ll get some serve defensive situations set up.”

He turned away and began organizing the men that were present. They began setting up barricades at each end of the section of the road and then calling for heavy weapons. Andrew looked at Simpson and shrugged.

“Personally, I’d rather they didn’t have a working beacon to home in on,” Andrew said quietly.

She grinned and nodded. He looked down at the beacon and used a slice to cut the plastic device in half. There was a bit of a spark and a puff of smoke, and that was it. They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed back toward her Captain. They found him at the head of the alley sitting on a bench having a drink of water. He gave them a nod as they came up.

“We found another beacon down there in the next section of this road, sir. I couldn’t tell whether it was working or not, but it still seemed to be at least partly functional, so I made sure it wasn’t working anymore.”

The Captain nodded. He looked tired. Glancing at Simpson, she looked tired as well, and he guessed that he probably looked that way too. It had been a busy few days. He felt like he had stretched his magic every which way fighting the enemy mentalists. And he still preferred to call it magic rather than calling it mentalist abilities. From that point on, all that was left was mopping up a few pockets of resistance. A few diehards kept fighting till the end, but most of the mentalists had been killed, and without their control, the Japanese civilians began surrendering en masse when it was obvious the war was over, and they had lost but weren’t going to be mistreated. Most of the survivors were women and children as the men had been used in the front lines and taken huge casualties, particularly in the last weeks as the Ostrayans, with help from the Nuzeelanders and even the Indonesians, had got their act together and counter-attacked.

The portals worked by honing in on a beacon that was embedded in the ground where the portal was supposed to open. He was almost certainly looking at an accidentally revealed part of the beacon. He sliced the concrete into long lines at an angle each and heaved the bits of concrete out of the small trench he had made, revealing a glassy rod thing. He had no idea whether it was still working on not, but a couple of quick slices made sure that it wasn’t working now. He looked around a bit, but there was nothing else to see, so he turned to find Simpson standing right behind him, taking her by surprise a little.

She was so close and so tempting he threw caution to the wind and leaned forward and kissed her. Her initial reaction was to pull away, but then she stopped herself and returned the kiss. Yes! They didn’t get to kiss for very long because they could both hear the sound of boots coming down the alley behind them. They broke apart and turned to see her Captain and a bunch of Nuzeeland troops spreading out to study the area.

“Jesus!” The Captain said, looking at all the little bits and pieces and some not-so-little bits and pieces of metal lying around. “What happened here?”

“I found out that when an armored personnel carrier hits the side of one of their portals, it explodes and shreds. Very energetically. There is no other way to describe it. It’s a very energetic process, as you can see by the scorch marks and the holes in the wall over there.”

He pointed to where some of the bits of shrapnel had punched straight through a brick wall. The Captain walked over and had a look.

“Damn!.”

“If you want to wander over here, Captain. This is the beacon the portal uses to lock onto. I’ve disabled this one, but we need to find out if they have any others in the city.”

“Right. Good point. I’ll get some techies in here to have a look at that and see what they can do. It would be good to know what signal it sent out.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” Andrew said, thinking about it for a moment.

He closed his eyes and looked into the blue, something he avoided doing normally. There was a spark not too far away. He orientated himself to face the direction it was and then opened his eyes again. He noted the direction he was facing in relation to the alley and turned back to the Captain.

“I think I might be able to tell where there’s another one. There’s something I feel anyway. Shall I go and have a look?”

“Yes. Certainly. You get on with that while I get my tech people in here to study the remains of this beacon.”

“Sir,” Andrew said, saluting the Captain, which the Nuzeeland officer returned, but not before frowning at Andrew. As far as Andrew was concerned, this was no longer a combat zone, just a debris field. He turned and headed up the alley with Simpson right behind him. When they emerged onto the road, he stopped to take a bearing on the sparky thing he could somehow detect. Straight ahead. He moved back to the main road they had come up just a short while before and took another bearing on the spark. It was just over there. This looked like it had been a wide road that had been narrowed down in this section, and part of it turned into a park. There was a disturbed strip of dirt and grass just off the street. He bent down, pulled out his knife, and started digging in the dirt. Then he hit something that sounded almost plastic, cleared away more of the dirt, and revealed the shape of another beacon.

The two men who had jumped through onto Andrew’s world and set up the ramp looked around nervously as if expecting to see people waiting for them, and when they spotted Andrew, they yelled something in Japanese that meant nothing to him. The people who had jumped through the circle were gesturing and speaking to the people inside the warehouse, who then turned and stared at Andrew. There were several cyborgs and a lot of people in uniform staring in his direction. The people who had donned the white cloth coverings threw them off, said something to the group standing there, and disappeared from view.

“Surely they must realize that their invasion has failed, with us standing here,” Simpson said in his ear.

The cyborgs carried large caliber rifles, which they now opened fire with, the impacts rocking Andrew back on his feet. He began to retreat towards the corner of the building, but at a nudge from Simpson, he stopped, and she stuck her rifle through the small hole he had opened in his shield for her and fired, taking down one of the cyborgs. He resumed his backward shuffle as the APC, or whatever it was, began to move forward, swinging its turret around so that the rather large-looking barrel lined up to fire at him. Having learned from his previous experience, he angled the shield up and to the left, and when the vehicle fired, the shell hit his shield and deviated up into the air before exploding. Fortunately, it went far enough up and to the left that they didn’t get showered in shrapnel.

They reached the corner just as the front of the vehicle reached the top of the ramp, and it nosed forward from the other world onto their side of the portal. At least there was a bit of sunshine here at the corner of the building, and he pulled more power and then slashed, slicing across the vehicle’s tracks. The armored vehicle slewed sideways away from Andrew, and then it hit the edge of the glowing circle, and it seemed like the world had ended in a flash of bright light. He felt himself speed up as he pushed Simpson back and got behind the building just as large pieces of metal came flying past and crashed into the building on the other side of the alley. The bits of metal kept flying for some time, or at least what felt like some time, but which turned out to be barely a second or two. One piece looped up in the air, over the roof of the building they were sheltering against and crashed into the alley behind them.

Finally, it all calmed down, and they looked at each other before he cautiously peeked around the corner. The parking lot was strewn with bits of metal, and there was a large burnt area right where the ramp had been, and that was it. No portal, no Japanese. They walked forward to where the portal had been. Parts of the concrete had been obliterated by the blast or gouged by the metal, perhaps. He could see there was some sort of rectangular object buried in the concrete. He remembered what he’d been told about how their portal worked, the very limited information they had gleaned from a few prisoners who’d been chipped slaves from other worlds that weren’t Japanese ones and who had been willing to talk. Most non-Japanese prisoners were pretty girls with purplish hair, a hair color that was very popular with Japanese lords for female slaves.

“This is where we earn the big bucks, Jess.” He said with a grin over his shoulder.

Simpson just shrugged, then started getting out of the commander’s hatch of the APC with her hand cannon.

“We’ll do what we can, sir.” She said to the Major as she stepped down onto the ground.

They walked forward to the barricade, which a couple of soldiers pulled open, and they moved up to the entrance to the alley. Andrew thought about sticking his head around for a quick look but then decided to go bold. He pulled power from the sun that was shining down the length of the narrow road they were on and then boldly stepped around the corner with Simpson bringing up the rear, staying snuggled up behind him. The alley had a row of shops at ground level on the right and a blank wall on the left that led to a multistory unit block further down the alley. They had just reached the southern edge of the multistory unit block when a man stepped around the corner of the building from what looked to be a parking area at the end of the alley. He had tall black boots, dark pants, and a shirt that was similar to the mentalist Andrew had fought earlier but lacked the coat.

“Surrender,” Andrew called out in English.

“I am a True Man. I do not surrender to livestock.” The man said in English with a strong Japanese accent.

He threw a pencil-thin force punch at Andrew, which caught Andrew by surprise. He had his shield tinted as normal so that Simpson could see it, and a spot directly in front of his forehead was pushed back almost to his skin, the pressure forcing his head back slightly. Fuck! Right. He returned the favor, throwing as hard a force punch as he could. The Jap was still staring at him like he expected Andrew to fall over. Andrew’s punch must’ve gone through the man’s shield because a small dot appeared on the man’s forehead, and then a spray of material appeared from behind his head. The Japanese man’s expression changed to a look of surprise, and then he keeled over, falling flat on his back and not moving.

Andrew stepped forward, pulling a bit more power from the air, although there wasn’t so much to be had in this shaded alley. He heard a crackling noise and rounded the corner to the car parking area just in time to see a glowing circle appear. There were four people on this side of the circle, all looking back at Andrew. They had white cloth cowls of some description over their ordinary clothes. As soon as the center of the circle changed to a warehouse or something, they jumped through, even as two other men jumped the other way and began setting up a ramp. There were other people in the warehouse and what looked like a tank or an APC of some description. Not a design that he had seen the Japanese use before.

The northern and western defense lines kept being overrun, and then the enemy advanced from the southwest as well. In the end, their remaining troops simply collapsed in the face of the enemy onslaught, and finally, all that was left were the two of them and three other people standing in front of where the portal beacon was, hoping like hell that the portal would open on time. The few remaining cyborg soldiers were up at the entrance of the lane, ordered to protect the portal site to the last cyborg.

Chapter 18

Portal

Andrew could see a barricade with troops manning it about a hundred meters along, and from his perch on top of the APC, Andrew could see there was a similar barricade on the far side, perhaps two hundred meters or more beyond the first barricade, that was blocking this road almost to where this road reached the main road they had advanced up earlier. There were heaps of vehicles, including proper tanks, over on that side, which was probably why the officer brought them around this way, where very few vehicles were blocking the way. There was a road off to the right that the officer’s APC pulled up across, giving Andrew’s APC room to park next to them.

“Their portal’s at the end of that alley up ahead there on the left. We can bomb the thing, but we don’t want to damage the city more than we have to,, so we were wondering if you could do something about it. There are at least two mentalists in there who refuse to surrender. We think they’re waiting for the gate to open so they can escape. We’re not sure how many other people are down there. Every drone we’ve put up gets obliterated.”

Andrew cocked his head as he considered the situation.

“You can’t get closer by going through the buildings?”

“We tried that, but they seem to be able to sense us coming, and they’ve collapsed the buildings all around the area where they are, which is making it difficult.” The officer replied.

Andrew could now see that he was a Major from the collar tabs. The man paused before continuing.

“We could just wait for them to go, but we’re worried that they’ll bring in more reinforcements or perhaps some sort of biological weapon or even nuclear.”

Andrew nodded. Now, that was a valid point he hadn’t considered before. With a portal, they could just leave a bomb, either nuclear or biological, and simply walk away through the portal. Damn! All right. Time to earn the big bucks. More likely biological, he decided. Something they had a vaccine for that they could release to decimate us locals and then waltz back in later to minimal opposition.

“Can I have permission to do a deal with them if they will surrender?”

The Major scratched his head as he considered this point.

“Shit. Yeah, if you can come up with some way of guaranteeing there are no further portals opening down there, then yes, you have permission to do a deal. Intelligence says to look for a long rectangular object, probably buried in cement, that will be the portal beacon. If you destroy that, it will make it very hard for them to find us again.”

Toshiro stared off into space for a moment.

“How much damage did they do?”

“Very little. The enemy mentalist you reported from the southern front snuck forward and took out our mentalist and then commanded all the women and children to throw their munitions over the bridge into the river and flee to their side of the bridge. Our own troops shot quite a few of them before they got clear of the bridge, but then that mentalist came across the bridge and demolished what forces we had left in that area.”

Toshiro sighed. “Well, Captain Tokigawa,” he picked up a com unit and set it to start recording. “Please record a factual accounting of our current military position and what our options are other than dying in place.”

The Captain rattled off a brief summary that covered pretty much everything he had told Toshiro and concluded that their position on this world was untenable and that they should retreat.

“I concur, Captain. For the record, I am declaring this invasion of failure. I am ordering all surviving personnel to retreat through the portal as soon as it reopens.”

He shut off the recording, pocketed it, and then began organizing the defense. He ordered the troops to start setting up barricades to block the streets and make it more difficult for the enemy to drive through an opposed. But there simply wasn’t all that much left that he could do anything with. The only good news was another mentalist appeared. He had been on the northern front, where he had been wounded, but did manage to extricate himself. He was junior to Toshiro and wasn’t impressed with Toshiro’s orders to retreat.

Somehow, he hadn’t faced any of the enemy’s strong mentalists and wasn’t impressed with Toshiro’s wariness about facing them. The only enemy mentalist Kobe Toyoda had faced he had killed, so he was dismissive of the enemy. Even so, when shown the numbers the enemy had on the front lines, even he had to admit the position was hopeless, at least without reinforcements from home.

Together, they set about shoring up the defenses as best they could, but it quickly became clear that it was an impossible task without fresh troops. They did their best to halt the enemy’s advance, but it was just impossible. As soon as they set up a strong defense line, hundreds of the drones he had been told about would descend on the defenses, wreaking havoc before the enemy ground troops advanced. As a result, the enemy ground forces would then have no problem punching through the defensive positionand moving on to the next.

Toyoda ran into the strong mentalist that had been deployed on the northern front, whom he had not previously faced. Somehow, he managed to survive, but it had been a close-run thing. He looked quite shaken when he returned to Toshiro and admitted that only an artillery shell exploding against the enemy mentalist’s shield, distracting her and knocking her to the ground, had allowed him to escape. The fact that a female mentalist had proved stronger than him was so shocking he’d blurted out the truth to Toshiro without trying to lie about it.

Toshiro felt hollow in the stomach. How could this disaster happen? They had been pushing the enemy back everywhere up until recently, but the enemy had clearly not been committing all their troops or at least only enough to stop his people from completely breaking through while they built up their reserves. Down south, the arrival of the Nuzeelanders and that damnable mentalist had reversed their fortunes. Three whole divisions of fresh troops was a staggering number for them to deploy out of the blue. “Anything else I need to know about?”

“We have indications that there are at least two more divisions following up their advance that are so far unengaged. It may well be that the units are reserves for the formations they have deployed, but we don’t think so.”

“Marvelous. What have we got left?”

“Not much, sir. According to the mechanics, there are two damaged gun carriages that they have just finished repairing that can be deployed, and they will have one tank repaired by tomorrow, but that’s all there is in the way of armor without reinforcements from home. Their drones have taken a massive toll on all our armored vehicles. We were organizing a combat group around six of the personnel carriers and roughly thirty cyborgs that have recovered sufficiently from injuries and damage to be put back on the front line.”

“There are approximately one hundred wounded ex-civilian soldiers that we can put back on the frontlines tomorrow as well. We have approximately a thousand male civilians we can arm that we hadn’t up until now because there unfit in one way or another, but apart from that, we’re basically scraping the bottom of the barrel unless we get reinforcements from home.”

“And how heavy  are the casualties the enemy has taken from those fresh divisions during their advance?”

“Because of the drones, their casualties have been light, sir. Maybe five percent tops.”

Toshiro shook his head. “And their divisions are what, sixteen or eighteen thousand men strong?”

“Probably more like twenty thousand, sir.”

The man looked scared and stiff despite trying to keep a blank expression on his face. He probably expected Toshiro would punish him for the bad news he had just delivered. Many commanders would, Toshiro knew. Toshiro had never felt any need to shoot the messenger, no matter how unhappy he was with the news he was receiving.

“What about arming the women?”

Captain Tokigawa snorted. “Besides the fact that we have never used women in combat, it is an idea that was discussed. Unfortunately, General Koga decided to use the women and children as suicide bombers. He had grenades and other devices strapped to them, with a mentalist commanding them to cross the bridge on the southwestern side of the city. The idea was that they would spread amongst the attackers and blow them up, hopefully breaching the entire front.”