The next morning the Nuzeelanders were fully prepared to assault the Japanese position. They deployed dozens of the small mortars they carried with them and opened the day’s activities with a steady barrage of mortar shells being dropped on the obvious Japanese defensive positions. Then Andrew led a squad of troops across the beach using the colored shield with holes as he had previously done. About halfway across Japanese opened fire with a machine gun which rocked him back but then Simpson took out the Jap firing the machine gun, and by the time the replacement fellow took over control of the gun, Andrew was ready and lobbed a fireball at him which dealt with him and the gun because the ammunition started exploding.

As he reached the edge of the scrub on the eastern side of the beach, a Japanese mentalist appeared at the top of the ridge and started lobbing fireballs at him. Andrew used the heat from the impacts on his shield to build up his own power while he felt out the man’s shield, decided the fellow wasn’t that strong, then used the needle punch to the forehead to kill him. The death of the mentalist seemed to take the fight out of the rest of the Japanese in the area, and their defensive position crumbled. The collapse spread through their whole force, and soon they were retreating east along the coast road once more. This time they started leaving behind the odd Japanese who surrendered. The few who started surrendering were among the non-cyborg Japanese, and as the pursuit continued further to the east, the number of surrendering Japanese increased.

At Torquay, the Japanese tried to defend the built-up area, so Andrew took the lead group of Nuzeelanders around the northeastern side of the town before driving south into the center of the town, bypassing a lot of the Japanese defenders and their positions. Enough of the Nuzeelanders advanced through the built-up area to keep the Japanese occupied until it was too late, and Andrew’s column cut them off, reaching Spring Creek before most of the defenders realized they had been bypassed. On the instructions of the Nuzeeland Colonel, the advance halted at the bridge over Spring Creek, and they started mopping up the Japanese trapped to the southwest of the waterway. Once again, most of the cyborgs refused to surrender, but an ever-increasing number of civilian soldiers did, and for the first time, they rounded up a whole bunch of women and children. Apparently, the Japanese occupation had reached the point of allocating houses in Torquay to Japanese families.

It took the rest of the day to work their way through the built-up area and clear of Japanese. The next morning and discovered the Japanese troops on the far side of the creek had all retreated during the night, and they heard from high command that the advance through Winchelsea had reached the outskirts of Gilong itself. It seemed the entire Japanese army was falling back on Gilong for fear of being cut off from their dimensional gate. Andrew and his people resumed their advance. The Japanese had blown the bridge across Spring Creek at first light, but the creek wasn’t that deep, and the Nuzeeland APCs had no problem fording the creek, and the advance continued. Their ordinary wheeled vehicles couldn’t ford the creek and had to retreat and use a road further to the northwest, rejoining the main road north of Torquay, which might have been a problem except that the Japanese had fallen back completely, forming a new defensive line at the edge of the built-up area along the railway line.

Late again – sorry

“Does anybody speak Japanese?” He asked the troops with him.

Unfortunately, they all shook their heads, but he tried anyway by putting a mental shield around the civilian soldiers, hopefully cutting off their superior’s mental control. Then he stepped out onto the edge of the car park, where he was quite obvious and attracted quite a bit of fire that impacted his shield without serious effect.

“Surrender!” He called out, pointing at the Japanese and then putting his hands in the air to indicate that they should surrender.

At first, it had no effect, and they continued to fire him, but then one of the men threw down his weapon and said something to the others. This caused mass confusion as some also threw down their weapons while others turned and opened fire on the ones who had thrown down their weapons. In the end, most of them killed each other, with only about four still on their feet at the end of the small firefight, and they were all clearly the belligerent ones as they started firing at Andrew once more. Not that it helped, as one of the New Zealanders had crept through the bush and now lobbed a grenade into the section of the trench where the four remaining Japanese were, which killed them all once it exploded.

It took a another twenty minutes for the rest of the Japanese pocket to be crushed and then the pursuit started along the coast road towards Amglsea. Andrew once again resumed his position sitting on the top front of the APC with Simpson behind him, standing in the commander’s hatch as they raced along the road after the fleeing Japanese. Every couple of kilometers, they would run into one or more enemy troopers who had been left to snipe them, which would slow them down, not that the snipers lasted long. If Andrew didn’t force-punch them, Simpson would get them with her rifle.

At one point, they were ambushed by a whole group that even had a mortar that opened fire on the column. Rather than stop and deploy, Andrew had Simpson tell the driver to keep going and angled to the left to the left where the mortar shells seemed to be coming from. Andrew protected the front of the vehicle with his shield, and they crashed over and through the Japanese defensive position as the fireball he threw into the mortar pit exploded exuberantly. The rest of the Japanese defending the position had been rather shocked by the APC driving straight up and over their position while protected by Andrew’s shield. The APC crashing over the top of them disrupted and stunned them to the point that the rest of the Nuzeeland force had no trouble taking them out relatively quickly.

The column continued their pursuit to the east until they reached Anglesea. Here they discovered the Japanese were dug in on the far side of the river using the defenses they had constructed when they’d first advanced to that point. As it was very late in the day by now, the Nuzeeland commanders elected to deploy and camp for the night on the western side of the river and worry about attacking the Japanese the following day. This suited Andrew as he was getting to the completely worn-out stage, and he was worried bullets would start getting through his shield before much longer, given how tired he was.

Sorry people – forgot yesterday

Chapter 15

Driving forward.

Andrew saw the enemy mentalist crumple and collapse to the ground and then had a brainwave. He felt the enemy troops and put a mental shield around them, hoping they would stop fighting if they were cut off from the mentalists’ control. It was only partially successful, and a short firefight amongst the Japanese troops that ended in favor of the loyalists going on the fire coming his way, he resumed covering his troops with a tinted physical shield as they stood up out of cover in advance behind him, laying down fire on the enemy whenever they revealed themselves. Without the cover of a mentalist, the Japanese couldn’t hold against the attack and began falling back.

As the Japanese casualties mounted, the retreat began to gather speed and affected the troops on either side as more and more of the Nuzeelanders got into the fight. Soon the attack was over the ridge, starting down the other side following a street that led straight to the water. While the fighting became house-to-house on either side, Andrew strode down the street, protecting the troops advancing alongside him with his shield and taking out anybody that stood in the way. Word must have spread amongst the Japanese because as they got closer to the shore, they could see dozens of Japanese troops running along the coast road from the right and heading for the left before Andrew cut them off.

As his advance neared the shore, one of the armored gun carriers the Japanese favored appeared to his right and fired a shot at him before he could react. The shell exploded against his shield, knocking him down, but he stood back up and somehow managed to keep his shield up while collecting more power. He slashed the AGC before it could fire again, the slash impacting diagonally across the front of the metal shell that protected the compartment the gun was in, causing the gun to sag to the left and down and taking the machine out of action. From the red that appeared running down the shiny surface, he’d also taken at least one of the crew out of action.

The troops with him surged forward to reach the water and take up defensive positions trapping the goodly number of Japanese in the pocket that was created. He made sure the defense line facing east would stand up to an attack by the Japanese in an attempt to break through to their trapped forces and then turned his attention to the troops trapped in the pocket. He began advancing along the coast road even as more than Nuzeeland troops came down the slope from the ridgeline fighting house-to-house and driving the Japanese before them. The small portable mortars the Nuzeeland troops had gave them a distinct advantage against the Japanese, enabling the Nuzeeland troops to winkle out any Japanese troops in makeshift defensive positions. Advancing along the road, he spotted a group of non-cyborg Japanese soldiers hastily digging trenches in a section of soft ground near a parking bay and people using the beach.

He set out his mental sense and discovered his commanders weren’t quite correct. A large force of enemy troops was barely a hundred meters away, moving towards his position in a skirmish formation. He set out the alarm and ordered reinforcements while his own people dug in with the few troops that were stationed on the hill. Two minutes later, a firefight erupted as the first of the enemy troops appeared through the trees. A surprisingly brief firefight ensued as the enemy fell back almost immediately. He was keeping track of the enemy with his mentalist senses, and then suddenly, he felt a powerful mentalist’s bright, hard knot of power appear right in front of his position. The man must’ve been shielding himself the whole time the enemy advanced.

Figures appeared out of the trees, and his men opened fire immediately, but it did no good because, this time, the enemy troops were shielded by the mentalist who was clearly at the center of the small group of enemy soldiers that were visible. He spread his shield out to offer his men some protection and then collected as much power as he could before slashing at the enemy mentalist, who was only about twenty meters away. He didn’t break through the enemy’s shield, but he must have surprised him with the strength of his slash because the enemy mentalist ordered his men to take cover and then pulled his shield back to around just himself and another soldier that was standing behind him. Toshiro slashed again, but this time it seemed to have even less effect than the previous time, and before he could come up with some alternative plan of action, the enemy threw a force punch at him that didn’t break through his shield but rocked him back a couple of feet from the force of it. Damn, the man was strong!

Then a fireball came his way, and he hastily raised an energy shield. He’d already had both a physical and a mental shield up and holding three shields was as much as he could manage, which meant he couldn’t attack. He briefly dropped his mental shield and threw a fireball of his own, only to see it disperse against the enemy’s energy shield, and he quickly threw the metal shield back up again as he felt the first glimmerings of a mental attack. Whatever it was didn’t get through his mental shield, and he dropped his physical shield to throw a force punch of his own. The enemy mentalist yelled out as he did so.

“Now!” There was a crack of a high-powered rifle just as his force punch hit his enemy, and the enemy mentalist staggered backward slightly, but the force punch clearly didn’t penetrate his shield. At the same time, something hit him hard, knocking him back, and he found it hard to breathe. His vision started to tunnel as he and any felt himself falling to the ground as everything went completely black.

Clearly, the vehicle had the mentalist aboard, and he had to be very strong to have absorbed the explosion. Toshiro wasn’t sure he’d be able to absorb the blast of an artillery shell like that on his shield and simply keep on driving! The artillery fire at least caused the column to stop and reverse around the point out of view. Undoubtedly, the enemy would deploy their own artillery or send infantry up and over the hills. He jumped back into his ATV and proceeded into the town, where he quickly set about organizing reinforcements to dig in along the ridgeline that ran north-south, protecting the town from the west. Meanwhile, he sent Gentaro with the third battalion up the road towards Deans Marsh with instructions to find a good defensive position not too far up the road and to dig in.

His main concern was the enemy’s advance north of him. They could swing down and cut him off at Torquay if they got beyond Winchelsea. General Yamashita was organizing reserve forces to prevent the enemy from doing that, but given the enemy numbers that were being reported, Toshiro had no real confidence that the enemy advance could be stopped short of Gilong. Concerned about his rear, he had Usegi begin pulling the second battalion back toward Anglesea even though it would leave him short of troops here. The first of the second battalion’s troops had barely left the town when the enemy began their attack on the hill to the west.

The enemy had occupied the hill to the west beyond the small stream and obviously had some mortars or other artillery up there out of sight behind the crest as they were laying down sporadic fire on Akiro’s positions. Toshiro had them pull back behind the ridgeline to make it harder for the enemy to fire on them while, at the same time, he moved to the north as it was clear the enemy troops were attempting to flank their defenses by moving through the rough ground to the north. So far, he had felt their mentalist, which was odd. He had his ATV run him along the street that ran along the top of the ridge, trying to see what the enemy was up to, but the visibility wasn’t great with all the trees. He closed his eyes and tried to sense the enemy troops but couldn’t feel any that were very close. They were definitely heading in this direction, though.

He found a position near the town’s water tank and tried sensing again but still couldn’t feel anything too close. At least the radio coverage was good at the top of the hill. He decided to spend the night there with one of his people on watch all night in case anything happened. He didn’t sleep particularly well in the tent that he had thrown up himself, refusing the assistance of his men and field rations for breakfast with the ideal way to start the day, but a quick call around to all his commanders produced the result that the enemy had stayed quiet all night as well, apparently.

my eyes seem to be OK after the two operations in January.
The Princess & The Spy is in the hands of the editor. Should be out by the end of next month hopefully – early April at worst.
Just started writingTaroniah at Sea. Aiming for July release but early days so subject to change.
Am doing a a full edit of Ostraya when I feel the urge…. my editor will go through it as time permits as well and then we’ll send to Pam for her (hopefully) approval. No time frame but some time this year.
I am changing the next Kyron title from Kyron the Conquerer to Kyron the Warlord.

He instructed Saburo Gentaro, the commander of the third battalion, to get the battalion back to Lorne as quickly as possible and then push up the road to Deans Marsh, link up with the force that was already holding that position, and dig in and not allow the natives to break through and cut the rest of the brigade off. Meanwhile, Toshiro would stay at Apollo Bay and coordinate the retreat of the other two battalions. It was all turning into a disaster! Tachibana was the first to get back to the coast road, and he had him deploy his troops at the road junction until the first battalion reached them. At the same time, he ordered Akiro to begin falling back down the road from Forrest. Fortunately, the enemy dug in around that town showed no signs of following up immediately. Indeed the only people that seemed to be aggressively advancing with the ones coming from the west. They were advancing rapidly in a highly mobile column led by the damn mentalist who had killed Rokuro.

An hour later, the first of Uesugi’s troops began arriving at Apollo Bay, and rather than clog up the road to the east, he had them deploy and begin new defensive positions as more and more of them straggled into the town. He had Akiro keep his troops moving when he reached the coast road with instructions to support Gentaro as well as hold the road leading inland from Lorne until the rest of them had made it back to that town.

Once the last of Akiro’s troops were clear of Skene’s Creek, he had Tachibana start pulling his troops out to follow as the last of the first battalion’s troops had finally retreated to Apollo Bay. He held them there for an hour to let the second battalion get well up the road before joining the retreat. The first battalion’s troops were extremely twitchy. He’d never seen Japanese troops quite so nervous-looking and made sure that he showed a confident front in front of everybody.

The drive back to Lorne was marred by mechanical failures amongst the vehicles, particularly the civilian ones they had pressed into service, and he finished up having to order trucks forward from the third battalion to pick up troops that had lost all their transport as the ragged column made its way eastward. They were barely a kilometer from Lorne when the troops at the rear of the column reported enemy vehicles were in sight, pursuing them. He had his driver pull his ATV off the road and let the rest of the column pass before getting going again at the rear of the column.

He had Akiro deploy his troops on the top of the hill to the west of the town, including two of the remaining artillery pieces, and they were ready to open fire as soon as the pursuing natives came into view. Toshiro had stopped at a spot where he could still get a view of where the road came around the point to the west and waited for the first enemy vehicle to appear. The column of enemy troops came around the point in the artillery open fire almost immediately. The first shell hit on the side of the hill above the road and slightly in front of the column doing no damage other than to shout the road with debris. The second shell appeared to hit the first vehicle in the column, but even before the smoke cleared, the vehicle appeared out of the smoke and continued driving along the road. Damn!

The other half of the first battalion had diverged off the same road and headed west through a town called Beach Forrest and then had turned north, but that thrust had been stopped short of a town called Gellibrand. Hiro Tachibana, who was commanding the force, reported the natives dug in on a ridge in a strong defensive position with mentalist support yet again. They even had artillery support, and he hadn’t even contemplated an assault on their position but had simply dug in while waiting for further orders or reinforcements.

Rokuro had been surging west with his battalion, trying to catch the reported enemy troops arriving by sea before they could be fully deployed, but apparently, not only were they deployed, but they were advancing, and they had a very strong mentalist at their head because Rokuro was dead and his leading force had been shattered and was retreating on his main body at a place called Lavers Hill. His battalion was completely disorganized, strung out along the road as well as on several side roads, and he had no faith in the man’s second-in-command, Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida had never struck him as a particularly steady individual, and going on the feverish demands for support arriving at Toshiro’s headquarters, he was almost in a panic already.

Toshiro had stayed at the town of Apollo Bay with the third battalion, into which all the companies that had suffered heavy casualties had been transferred while the fresh companies that had been in the third battalion were transferred to the front line units in the first and second battalions. He had already dispatched Uesugi Kenshin to take over the second battalion from the whining Fuchida with instructions to hold the town of Laver’s Hill while Toshiro got the third battalion on the road to support him. Looking at the map, Toshiro was getting the distinct impression that they had reached the high tide mark of their invasion as the Natives continued to field ever-increasing numbers of troops and now mentalists of their own in significant numbers. On the other hand, his people were reaching the end of their possible reserves unless one of the other Japanese worlds came to their aid. Going on the reports about the failed attack on Home, this was unlikely, to say the least.

He sighed, then had one last look at the map before he began organizing to get the third battalion heading west. At least they had a few days’ rest to recuperate. He had barely traveled two kilometers from the town when General Yamashita called him in a panic. The Natives had launched a surprise attack to the east of the town called Colac, which was next on the list of places General Yamashita had intended to take, and had caught the Japanese forces by surprise and were already at a town called Birregura and they were threatening to drive to the coast behind Yashiro and cut him off. He ordered Toshiro to withdraw back to Lorne and drive northwards from there to disrupt the enemy advance and drive them back beyond Birregurra.

Toshiro quickly ordered his column to stop and pulled out the map, which he studied for some time before giving orders. He called the panicking Fuchida and told him to get his entire battalion on the road back to Apollo Bay and that Kenshin should be there shortly to take over command from him, which didn’t go over so well. He then called Tachibana and got him to start retreating with his troops while leaving Akiro in place for the moment until the others were past where the road his troops were deployed on joined the coast road so that the rest of the brigade could retreat safely.

So0rry about no Ostraya this week – I came to a bit where there were changes being made – finished now so I will post on Monday as normal.

Kyron is out
https://www.amazon.com/Kyron-Magician-Ithria-Book-8-ebook/dp/B0CTXV17VK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SITO8ZLDLXKX&keywords=kyron+the+magician&qid=1707163414&s=digital-text&sprefix=kyron+the+magicia%2Cdigital-text%2C400&sr=1-1

The next book is The Princess & the Spy
I’m running behind with it due to the eye operations – I concentrated on getting the edits to Kyron done
Princess is up to 85k words so only 3 weeks or so until he writing is done. I will begin editing it early to speed things up.

Taroniah at Sea is next, then the next Kyron and then Federation 2 where a well know person is found.

The eye operations worked great – $3500 each so they should have.

Peter
–