Sans ice caps which expand and contract depending on the seasons and after the first half of Kyron the Warlord (which is where I am up to in the writing – 58k words)

Taroniah at Work is with the editor – hopefully it will be out early June or sooner
Kyron the Warlord is 1/3 written – give or take – aiming for August but you know… Murphy
The Harrecan Problem (Federation 2) will follow including the return of an old friend – eta October/November but again – Murphy
Ostraya is not quite ready to go to the editor yet and it will be on a fit it in when you can basis so no timeline yet. After the editor it needs to go to Pam for final approval.
After changing the latest Taroniah to Taroniah at Work, the next one will be Taroniah at Sea… have next to nothing in it yet as most of what I had written got moved to Taroniah at Work .. sigh
Kyron the Conqueror will follow that.
After that I am tossing up – I have no good stories that work for Princess Gizel at the moment so you may get something else…..

“Sir.” The Captain was standing nearby and came over. “If I get down to those bushes on the right-hand side of the bridge, I should be able to throw a mental shield out over the main part of the bridge that may disrupt the mentalist’s control over the suicide bombers. It will become a battle of power between how far I can reach and how far their mentalist can reach.”

He paused and thought about what would happen in such a circumstance. It would depend upon the strength of the enemy mentalist to a large extent, he expected.

“Do we have someone that speaks Japanese?” At the Captain’s nod, he continued. “If you have someone that has a loud carrying voice, have your Japanese speaker coach them in how to yell out, “Throw the bombs in the river and run to our side.” It will completely disrupt their plan, hopefully.”

The Captain thought about it for a few moments. “I see. You’re hoping that your mental influence will break their control long enough for them to obey our instructions and wander to our side of the bridge where they will be out of range of the Japanese mentalists.”

“That’s the idea, sir. I have no idea of how many I’ll be able to affect, but if the Japanese keep forcing them across the bridge, more and more of them will come under my control or at least my shield that will free them from the Japanese mentalist’s control. Can I suggest we have a few snipers placed on the roofs to pick off those who choose to carry the bombs across the bridge anyway? There’s no guarantee that freeing them of the mental controls they are under will necessarily make them happy to follow our instructions.”

“No, I guess not. Particularly with Japanese, they tend to be a bit more fanatical than some.” The Captain commented, turned away, and began giving orders to his assembled underlings to get things happening.

Andrew turned back and resumed contemplating the bridge. After a minute or two, the Captain rejoined him.

“You know, it would pay to have some troops ready to organize the refugees into those open areas, the tennis courts over here to the left and the parkland there to the right behind those trees so the Japs across the river can’t see them. I think if we break them up into small groups, it will work well in case the odd bomber makes it through.”

The Captain nodded. “Good idea.”

The Nuzeeland officer took a few minutes to study the ground where Andrew had pointed and then called over a couple of Lieutenants and began issuing more orders.

“I’ll go downstairs and head for that scrub as soon as your man with a loud voice turns up.”

Fortunately, the Japanese were still busy organizing, and nothing happened over the next few minutes. A large Kiwi Sergeant turned up at the entrance of the building.

“You’ll be Harris, then?”

“Yeah, mate. You’re the one with a loud voice?”

“Parade ground voice is what they call it, bro. I hope this idea of yours works.”

“If you’ve got the Japanese words down right, it should work well. It’ll depend on how powerful the Jap mentalist is and how fanatical the Jap women and children are.”

slack again – sorry

“I’d invite you in, but I’m too tired even to consider it.”

Simpson snorted. “Any excuse. Bloody Ossies, weak as piss.”

“Am not!” He said, trying to defend himself, and then saw the grin on her face. “You wait, Simpson. You’ll get yours; don’t you worry about that.”

“Promises promises.” She said with an even wider grin before she pushed open the door of the room she had selected and then disappeared from his view. Andrew was so exhausted that all he did was take his boots off before collapsing on the bed. The next thing he knew, there was a knocking on the door. He decided it must be the morning already, as it appeared to be light outside.

“Come.” He yelled.

The door opened, and a Nuzeeland soldier entered.

“Captain’s compliments, sergeant, but he wonders if you could come and see what’s going on with the Japs.”

Andrew couldn’t help himself and sighed loudly. He sat up in bed and looked blearily at the soldier before shaking his head.

“Righto. I’m going to have a quick shower first, Japs or no Japs.”

“Don’t care, bro. I’m just the messenger.” The soldier replied and exited the room.

Andrew kept the shower brief and headed back to where he thought the command post most likely was. In the event, they had moved it upstairs from where it had been the previous day because the view was better.

“Ah. Harris. What you make of that.” The Captain said, pointing out the window.

Andrew looked out the window, which gave him a view across the river. There were people filling the streets everywhere we looked. Women and children mostly. They were all standing in big clumps, and then he noticed individuals walking amongst them, handing things out. He brought up his telescopic vision spell and looked at one of the individuals. They were carrying a sack draped over their shoulder, handing out globular items to the women and children. Oh fuck! They all had Japanese features, so the crowd must be all the women and children attached to the male servants whom they’d been using as soldiers. Possibly even the widows and children of those who had been killed in action. Who knew what criteria they’d use with the way the True Men carried on?

“They chip all the women, don’t they?”

“That’s the report your people sent us. All the women and the boys born to servants who otherwise aren’t selected to become Real men.”

“Yeah. There handing out grenades. They are going to send all those women and children across the bridge and force our men to kill them all; otherwise, they’ll become thousands of suicide bombers.”

“Fuck.” The Captain said.

Andrew stood watching the crowds for some time, trying to think of some way of dealing with the issue that didn’t involve massacring thousands of women and children. He’d sort of felt the control spell that the Japanese mentalists used to control their cyborgs a few times, but only the edge of it. He had no idea of what form it actually took. Then he looked at the bank that supported the bridge approach road on this side and at the bushes on the right-hand side of that bank, which ran all the way up to where the concrete abutment of the bridge proper was.

Sorry guys – public holiday yesterday and was doing family stuff and plain forgot.

They came shopping center, but once they had reached it, some of the troops who ducked inside reported that the inside had been completely trashed. Some of the shops had even been burnt out. And still no civilians. After waiting for the troops to check out the shopping center, they continued their slow advance up the road, but almost immediately, they came under mortar fire from Japanese troops across the river. Andrew thought about marching up the road across the bridge in the face of the Japanese fire, but he was getting tired mentally and was still a bit shakey from the earlier blast, so he decided to wait and let the Nuzeelanders earn their keep for a change.

They proceeded to set up artillery on a road that ran diagonally across the street they had been advancing down. Andrew stopped a bit back from where it reached a parkland area before retreating to the shopping center. They set observers up to the top of the shopping center roof to direct the artillery fire, and it wasn’t that long before they started dropping shells on the Japanese positions, forcing the Japanese to relocate their mortars. At the same time, Nuzeeland troops began filtering forward into the parkland and into the housing area close to the river to the west of the road Andrew had been marching down. Andrew found a comfortable spot to sit at the front of the shopping center and just rested for some time.

Chapter 16

Suicide bombers

Finally, he decided he’d better get active again and stood up, but he hadn’t even taken a step before he heard a voice behind him.

“Sit back down again. You’ve done enough for the moment.”

He turned and found the Nuzeeland Captain from back on the road frowning at him. He went to salute and remembered they were in a combat zone, and stopped himself.

“It’s not going to be easy getting across that river regardless, so sit down and rest and let the artillery salts soften them up. You’ve done more than enough anyway. Oh, and I received notice that you are to be promoted to Sergeant. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.” He hesitated and then pointed across the road. “If you’re not going to need me in the near future, sir, perhaps I can go and catch a bit of rest over there.”

The Captain looked to where he was pointing at the motel that was across the road and nodded.

“The Japs have probably stripped anything valuable out of it as they have everywhere else, but hopefully, the mattresses will still be there. Good idea, Sergeant. Take Simpson with you. Both of you get some shut-eye. We’re either going to attempt across the river tonight once it’s dark or first thing in the morning, so I want you fresh for then.”

Andrew nodded and replied. “Sir.”

Simpson nodded at the same time, and the Captain nodded back. They turned around and headed across the road to where the motel was. Strangely, although the office and the rooms had been stripped of electronic and electrical goods, most motel rooms still had comfortable beds. The keys to the rooms were still in the doors where the Japanese looters had left them, so there was no problem accessing the rooms. Andrew grabbed the first one he passed, put his hand on the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

They pushed forward, keeping right up against the buildings on the right-hand side, ducking into doorways and such as they advanced another hundred meters or so without anything happening. Then, a fusillade of shots erupted from diagonally across the road to their front, indicating that some of the Japanese troops had gotten into a position to fire on them. None of the shots had any effect, as he was holding a really hard shield to defend against the shells from the AGC’s cannon. He opened a small hole for Simpson over his right shoulder and put a sound shield over his ear to protect against the sound.

“Can you see that?”

Her response came in the form of the shot she fired, which he assumed hit one of the Japanese. Her accuracy was such that she would hit with four out of five shots she fired in the huge rifle she wielded meant that whatever she fired at stayed down permanently, generally speaking. He stood still and let her take several shots, which resulted in the Japanese fire diminishing rapidly until it stopped altogether, and they proceeded to move further down the road again. He must’ve lent a bit too far out when provided the target because the AGC fired, the shell hitting his shield, which he had angled, fortunately.

Because he had been protecting them from the shots from diagonally across the road, the shield was at about a sixty-degree angle to where the AGC was firing from, and instead of exploding in his face as the shell earlier had, this one deflected off his shield at a shallower angle and impacted a building a good distance back up the road and again, on the other side of the street. He jumped out from the cover they were using, concentrated, and lobbed a tight fireball into the fighting compartment of the AGC, using a bit of telekinesis to pull it down into the open top. He ducked back just as the thing exploded in a massive ball of fire.

He grinned at Simpson, and they began walking down the road, not bothering to hide anymore. The occasional Japanese burst of small arms fire in their direction was invariably met by Simpson sticking her gun passed his shoulder into the hole he created in the shield and her blowing the person firing away. Between attacks by the enemy, he could hear firing both left and right as the Nuzeeland troops moved down the parallel streets, clearing the enemy from them as well. They passed the smoldering wreckage of the AGC and continued their advance in the face of the occasional Japanese fire.

So far that day, they had found no Japanese willing to surrender, although they hadn’t really come across any civilians yet. The troops advancing behind them ducked into buildings as they passed to clear them, but most of them were empty, just the occasional holdout who all seemed to be soldiers that were too wounded to retreat. Strangely, the further they advanced, the less the resistance proved to be. He wasn’t sure whether it was because the Japanese were running out of troops or enthusiasm. Most of the houses they passed seemed to have been ransacked at some point since the invasion started, but they didn’t look like they had been subjected to long-term occupation by civilians, or at least that was how it looked to Andrew. Which he thought odd given the civilians they had found earlier, but he supposed they might have been families of some of the troops and were further forward for that reason.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Trying to modify the healing spell that I know so it’ll work on my ACL.”

Simpson shook her head, but the medic perked up.

“You really think you can fix an ACL rupture with one of these spells?”

Andrew shrugged. “Maybe. I’m going to give it a go in a minute if you want to hang around.”

“This I’ve got to see.” The medic said. “Growing up, magic was just something they did in the old days. Uncanny people tended to be ostracised in recent times. Not that I’ve ever met anybody quite like you.”

Andrew nodded. It sounded as if Nuzeeland was worse than here and more like what his father had complained about. He still hadn’t seen much of that sort of discrimination so far himself. The few bits and pieces of discrimination that he’d experienced were mostly verbal quips that he hadn’t paid much attention to. He grinned at the medic and focused on his modifications to the spell. He reasoned that he could use the bit for pulling the skin back together to repair a cut, as it should work just as well for repairing the ligament if he got the spell right. He studied what he had come up with, memorized it, and then cast the spell on his knee.

It hurt briefly, then it ached for a bit, but the swelling started going down, which was another section of the spell, and the rapidly forming bruise from where his knee contacted the ground started fading as well. The medic watched with his mouth hanging open. The ache started to die away, and Andrew flexed his knee. There was no shooting pain, so he reached over for his trousers, which had been deposited to his left. He fed his legs and decided that lying down was too awkward, so he stood up gingerly. He eased up on his good leg when he put weight on his bad knee. It was fine, perhaps a little sore, but nothing to write home about.

“How is it?” The medic asked, unable to keep the amazed tones out of his voice.

“It feels a bit tender, but it’s fine.” To emphasize the point, he walked a couple of paces before returning to pull up his trousers on finally.

“Damn.” The medic said.

Before they could do anything, there was a hissing sound as a shot from the AGC down the street went swooshing past to explode against the building across the road. Looking around, they spotted the APC that had been easing around the corner further up the street and signaled it to back up out of view.

“Time to earn our pay, Simpson.”

She grinned at him and moved over to where she put down her rifle. “Ready whenever you are.”

“Okay. We’ll keep to the right and see what we can achieve.” They grinned at each other, and the medic just shook his head as Andrew eased around the corner with his shields up, angled from right to left, and started down the street. They must’ve been seen at first, but then the AGC fired a shell, which he felt more than he saw. It impacted his shield but didn’t explode due to the angle he was holding it, and the shell rocketed across the street and exploded against a building on the far side of the street, three buildings further up the street. The impact still staggered him, but he was pleased that it didn’t explode on contact with his shield.

“She did a good job, bro.” The medic said. “Any other problems? Heard you got blown off the front of the APC.”

“Yeah. Scared the hell out of me, I can tell you. My left knee’s bad.”

“Right. Will your trousers come off, or do we need to cut them?”

“I think they’ll slide off if I undo them.”

Simpson had stood up and glanced around the corner of the building but mustn’t have spotted anything because now she looked down at him with a grin.

“I could help.”

The medic was getting his left boot off while he tried to undo the righthand one.

Simpson leaned down and took over, undoing his right-hand boot, then helped slide it off his foot. She then moved sideways along his leg to get a little better position and reached for his belt. Her hand stopped short of the buckle, and she looked him in the eye, grinning just a little before going further. He could tell she was enjoying herself, and she smiled at him. He tried to shrug without hurting himself any more than he already was.

“Go for it.” He said and lay down, closing his eyes.

By lying there with his eyes closed and trying to ignore things down in his waist area, he was able to keep himself under control, particularly as he made a conscious effort not to try and differentiate between whether it was Simpson or the medic doing something. He felt his trousers being slipped down and then gentle prodding of his knee. He tried to think of a healing spell that would work, but generally, they didn’t work as well on your body as when used on other people.

“The verdict, Doc?” He said after a few moments when the gentle ministrations stopped.

“It’s a bit hard to tell here in the field, but at a guess, I’d say it’s an ACL when you landed.”

Andrew considered that.

“If you got a pad, you can show me a diagram of the ACL injury, mate?” He asked, sitting himself up on his elbows.

The medic shrugged, looking puzzled, but he pulled a combat pad out of his jacket. It was slightly different in design from the Ostrayan ones but worked the same. He fiddled with it for a little bit and then showed Andrew a picture of the ACL rupture. Actually, the pad had a series of pictures from different angles, and Andrew studied them all for a few moments, swiping backward and forwards on the screen as he lay slightly on one side to free up one of his arms while he rested on the other’s elbow while his free hand held the pad.

He mentally brought up the healing spell that he had memorized the best. It was suited cuts, even bullet holes, rather than a ruptured ACL. He couldn’t remember anything better in his grandmother’s journal, which he didn’t have with him anyway, so we set about modifying the spell on the fly. He must’ve looked a bit odd lying half on his side, staring into space as Simpson finally interrupted him.

The next Princess book is out

The Princess & The Spy

The next book will be Taroniah at Work (changed the title) followed by Kyron the Warlord.

With that, he took himself off, heading for a group of officers who had gathered nearby, clearly waiting for him. Whatever it was, he said to them it was over with pretty quickly as they split up and headed off in various directions. Troops began relaxing and setting up tents, except for the ones on patrol out towards the Japanese lines. For their part, the Japanese seemed content to just sit in their defensive positions and wait rather than do anything aggressive. Andrew could hear a considerable artillery barrage happening off in the distance somewhere to the north, but their part of the front went quiet now that they’d knocked down the Japanese drone.

In the morning, the night-time patrols reported no sign of the Japanese, so they mounted up and resumed the advance up the main road into the built-up area to see if the Japanese had indeed pulled out. They encountered little resistance, just the occasional sniper. Andrew was riding in the front of the lead APC with his shield out as before, and he quickly took care of any snipers after their shots hit his shield. The buildings all looked like they had been ransacked as the Japanese retreated, or perhaps when they’d originally advanced, as it was hard to tell without stopping. The first serious resistance came when they reached a retail area where several roads intersected. Numerous signs referenced Belmont, so he assumed that was the suburb they were in.

They drove up Corio Street and turned right into High Street. The Japs had one of the AGCs hiding off the road with just the edge of the body and the gun sticking around a building, and it fired as they rounded the corner. Andrew wasn’t expecting the blast from a large caliber shell, and he was knocked off the front of the APC and onto the ground, where he landed heavily.

“You all right?” Simpson called.

“Back up, back up quick!” he yelled at her, and she quickly passed the message on to the driver.

He had done something to his left knee, and his arm felt like he’d come off a motorbike at speed. He scrambled over toward the shop on the righthand corner even as the APC growled backward, just in time too, as the next shot from the AGC just missed and hit a tree on the far side of the corner. He couldn’t put any real pressure on his knee, but he could hop and managed to get behind the cover the shop on the corner presented. The door had been smashed open, and the inside looked a mess, although, with no lights on, it was hard to see in the gloom. The Nuzeeland troops were deploying and beginning to advance down the side street. Simpson came running over, cradling her massive gun and carrying a first aid kit.

“Shit! Your arm’s all grazed. Let me get some stuff on it. You’re going to need a new tunic.”

She proceeded to start undoing the buttons on his tunic and then stripped it off him. He was having trouble moving his arm, so he sat and let her tend to the grazed section of his elbow and arm that he couldn’t get a proper look at because it hurt too much to twist his arm around. She was finishing wrapping it up when a proper medic arrived and watched her finish.