“The Japs are on that hill.”

He no sooner spoke than a fusillade of shots rang out, causing the APC commander to drop down into his hatch until he realized none were getting through Andrew’s shield.

“That’s fucking handy!” He said as he cautiously stuck his head back up.

The turret could be controlled while he had his head out of the hatch, as Andrew discovered when it began to unleash heavy fire on the Japanese positions. Andrew was watching and saw a Japanese soldier step from behind a tree with an RPG on his shoulder. He pointed, and Reynolds fired quicker than he imagined she could. The shot missed, but it hit the tree right next to his head, causing the Japanese soldier to flinch. By the time he got his RPG up again, she took him out with a clean hit to his head. A couple more APCs rolled up on either side and joined in the demolition of the Japanese position, and Andrew could sense the diminishing number of survivors retreating back over the hill.

“You can cease fire now.” He told the commander of the vehicle. “They retreated behind the hill.”

“You can tell?”

“Yeah. I can sense them mentally. Hmmm. They’re huddling into a small area, and now they’re heading off at a far clip – Must be in a truck.”

“Righto.”

The APC lurched into motion once more, and they passed the position the Japanese had occupied, which had very nice views of the ocean off to the right.

Chapter 14

Things are crook

Toshiro Ozawa studied the map, trying to work out a way to get out of the mess they were in. The most recent northern offensive designed to break through the native lines and split their army in two had been stopped practically before it had even gotten started. Instead of breaking through the Native lines at the town of Backus Marsh, their forces had been stopped dead, and they’d had several mentalists killed in the process. What was worse, the natives had apparently fielded at least one mentalist as good or better than their own, unlike the weak ones they had faced earlier in the invasion. Apart from the mentalists that had been killed, the losses, although heavy, had not been crippling. Yes, it had been the best troops used in the attack, and losing a fair number of them was a bad blow, but the biggest problem was that the attack had failed. While his own forces had been rushing forward, the reverse up north hadn’t been quite so critical, but like the army in the north, his troops had come to a crashing halt. He had sent half his first battalion under Akiro Sato up a narrow road to a town called Forrest, whose name suited the location. His advance had stopped just short of the town where the enemy had been found entrenched in a strong defensive position and supported by a mentalist, if not as strong as Akiro, strong enough to make it difficult to assault the position successfully.

The enemy had dug in up there, giving them a good field of fire back up the main road. He couldn’t take his shielded troops off the road and keep the shield up because the trees would get in the way, so as they neared the point where the road turned sharply left around the shoulder the flat area was sitting on and launched several fireballs through the trees at the enemy positions. Only one of them made it to the enemy troops, but the effectiveness of that one fireball that did get through was enough to cause the Japanese troops to retreat back down the road yet again.

He continued his slow advance as the road twisted to the right around the shoulder the Japanese troops had been set up on and then along a straight stretch of road before it curved around to the left once more. He only moved very slowly to allow the troops in the bush on the left to keep up. He couldn’t see the troops that were on the right now because they were on the other side of the shoulder, but he could hear the occasional gunshot as they advanced. He reached out with his senses, and he could feel the Japanese retreating willy-nilly down the road well ahead of them now, just leaving the odd sniper behind as they retired.

The road continued to run below the ridgeline, so he couldn’t see what was happening on the right, but the Japanese troops continued to retire as far as he could tell. The road curved back up on top of the ridge and continued to wind its way east, curving first left and right. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the Nuzeelander’s vehicles being driven forward as they continued to walk along the road. And it was beginning to wonder why there was no serious opposition when the Captain came up to him.

“We just got a report that the Japanese are attacking up the road to Forest. Do you know where that is?”

Andrew tried to visualize the map. Oh yeah, that was the road that ran down to the coast. He nodded to the Captain.

“Right. We should get mounted up and pursue the Japs in front of us back onto their main body. I can ride in the lead vehicle and shield. Enough to survive small arms, at any rate.”

“Righto. We need to put some pressure on ASAP!”

“Okay, sir.”

They brought up one of their wheeled APCs, and he jumped on the top, sitting on the flat area in front of the small turret. Simpson took up a position in the commander’s hatch with her big sniper rifle, and with everyone settled, they started down the road at a much higher speed than they had been managing on foot. This time he kept his senses looking ahead, so he felt the Japs before they reached them. He held up a hand, and Simpson, who had a comms link with the driver, had him bring the vehicle to a stop. He climbed back behind the turret, and Reynolds joined him there, allowing the commander to stick his head out of the hatch. Andrew pointed at the hill to their front.

The Captain looked down the road for a few moments and then nodded. In seconds, he was giving orders for troops to begin dismounting. As they formed up, he began spreading them out into the bush on either side of the road, although the troops on the right stayed within the bush without moving into the open ground out that way that Andrew had only just spotted. The lead battalion’s Colonel came trotting up and spoke with the Captain, and then he looked over at Andrew with an expression that looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end, he refrained. Simpson, the sniper, stayed glued to him as the squad assigned to his advance assembled in his vicinity.

“I’m going to put up a shield that is tinted slightly red. You should be able to see it clearly enough. I will make a hole, not much bigger than the barrel of your guns, for each of you to shoot through. Please don’t stand directly behind the hole because I can assure you the cyborgs will be able to put shots through those holes quite accurately.”

This brought a few smiles from the men and women assigned to him. He threw up the shield, and a dozen soldiers fanned out on either side of him, several of them reaching out to touch the shield gingerly and then spotting the holes he had created for each soldier to shoot through. He glanced behind to make sure Simpson was behind him, and she smiled at him, which he found quite enchanting. He returned his attention to his front and began to walk forward.

The bush at the edge of the road thinned, and he could make out a cleared area beside the road to his right that could be used as a viewing spot because, beyond the cleared area, he was surprised to see the sea. There was a sudden clatter of assault rifles firing, and he could feel the impacts of shells against his shield. The troops sheltering behind his shield fired back, and he was pleased to note they took care not to line up directly on the holes he had opened in the shield as they did so. The fact that his people were shielded and the enemy troops weren’t gradually told as he continued to slowly move forward, and fairly soon, he could feel the enemy troops falling back on either side of the road.

The Nuzeeland troops in the bush on the left were pushing forward as well, while those on the right were being more circumspect given the more open ground on that side of the road. Around the curve, a track leading to a farmhouse of some description branched to the right off the main road.  It went up and over a ridge while the main road continued on and then turned to the left below the ridge. The enemy fire was starting to slacken as his troops took a toll on those of the enemy that tried to stand and fight. His steady advance continued for maybe two or three hundred meters before the road curved around a flattish area that was some way above the road level.

Someone raised the issue that I changed the way Gods are created in Taroniah at Large. This has been bothering me but I can;t find the original post so I thought I’d enlarge on the issue here.
The original version of how gods were created (I think it is only addressed in Taroniah at School but it may be mentioned in other books – memory is not what it used to be.)
Anyway – the earlier information I am fairly sure is what is thought to be the case by the people of Taroniah’s time whereas the information in At Large comes direct form a god and is therefore what really happens.

Kyron the magician should be out the 1st week of February hopefully – depending on how my 2 eye operations go

The Pricness and the Spy with be the next book after Kyron the Magician

Back from holidays …..

“You got more ammo for that thing?” He asked as they got moving across the bridge.

“Some. There’s more in a truck at the back of the column. There is one of us snipers in each Company.”

He had the driver pull up once they crossed the bridge, and he got out and went over to examine the body of the strong mentalist. The fellow had dark hair and a handsome, chiseled face, even in death. His eyes were open, and he was otherwise unmarked, apart from the hole in the middle of his forehead that was leaking a little blood. The mentalist was dressed in a dark grey shirt, black trousers, tall black boots, and an elaborate black coat with a high collar. Even in death, the man looked arrogant.

Andrew shook his head and climbed back aboard the LAV and then looked ahead mentally, but there were no more Japs anywhere close. He surmised that it couldn’t be far from here to their main body and had the driver take it cautiously over the next few kilometers. The winding, narrow road served to encourage the driver’s circumspect approach for the next kilometer or so.

They had just passed the welcome to the Colac-Otway Shire sign when Andrew felt a mentalist ahead and signaled the driver to pull over. The LAV pulled over to the left-hand side of the road, while the vehicle behind pulled over to the right, and the rest pulled up behind. There seemed to be enemy troops on both sides of the road ahead, although most were on the right-hand side. The Captain dismounted and came over.

“What have you got, Harris?”

“I’ve got Japs on both sides of the road. The ones on the left just feel like ordinary troops, but the ones on the right have some mentalist capabilities mixed in, although I can’t feel a real mentalist being present.” He shrugged. “They’re just around the bend. In fact, I would say they’re just beyond that road sign. Either they haven’t detected us yet, or they’re trying to surprise us.”

The Captain looked down the road. “Stopping like this would tend to indicate we’re not going to be surprised easily.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you, Captain? I have to say that they’re positioned like they’re in an ambush situation, and they don’t appear to be moving around much, which would tend to back that up.”

“Right. What do you suggest?”

Andrew scratched his head. “We can’t be that far from their main body, sir. I wouldn’t want to be fighting a lot of Japs strung out along the road like this. I suggest you deploy your troops on each side of the road, with most on the right, and then I will lead a squad down the road to attract their attention. Without a mentalist present on their side, I should be able to shield a whole squad easily. I can assure you that that’ll concentrate their attention, so it should mean that the flank attacks can go in without too much resistance.”

Merry Xmas everyone!!!!

“Holy shit!” the girl said, staring at the piece of metal that thumped down onto the ground at their feet.

“Yeah. This one’s a good deal stronger than the one we took out. Hold on.”

He closed his eyes and felt for the Japs. With the mentalist on their right down, the fire from the Nuzeelanders in the bush behind them had forced the surviving Japs to retreat to the wooded scrub they had advanced out of originally. The strong mentalist had brought up the rear, shielding as many as he could. The other mentalist was definitely dead. Good!

“You got that mentalist. Good job.” He said the sniper.

“What about the other one? I haven’t seen someone carve metal like that.”

“He’s powerful, certainly. But we should be able to take him the same way. Just give me a minute to collect more power.”

He set about drawing power from the sun. The other enemy mentalist was very strong, and he would need every bit of power he could muster. The other two studied him even as a few bullets pinged off the overturned APC.

“You’re glowing!” The girl said.

“What?” Asked the Captain.

“Can’t you see it, sir? He’s literally glowing with power.”

Andrew smiled. “The captain can’t see, but you can, which means you have basic mentalist talent yourself. You’ve never had any formal training?

She shook her head. “No. I went through a period where I could feel this pressure on me mentally that was worse the more people there were around, and then I sort of imagined this mental wall around my head, and it went away, eventually.”

“Right. Well, you need training. In the meantime, we have other matters to take care of. You ready?” he asked, and the girl nodded. “Same as last time.”

He moved down to the other end of the wreck and felt her moving alongside him. He stopped, checked she was ready, and then stepped out from behind the cover to his right. The girl stepped out behind him, and he focused on the mentalist. He cast Control, then Fear, and finally, Fireball. She shot a split second later, and there came the fingernail on a blackboard screech of a powerful mentalist dying. A hail of shots was bouncing off his shield, but with no mentalist to protect them, the rest of the Japs were toast. He moved forward, his shield tinted so it was obvious to the girl, and he used the needle punch to slaughter most of the Japanese troops before they could retreat out of his range, and the girl got the rest.

“The column can advance again, Captain.” He informed the Nuzeeland officer who had followed them, also using Andrew’s shield for cover.

The man nodded and then glanced at the girl. “You ride with the mentalist from now on, Simpson.”

“Sir.” She replied.

The Captain quickly had a couple of squads double time across the bridge and spread out into the woods on the far side of the gully to check on the Japs while a group of troops gathered around the APC and tipped back upright. They then pushed far enough off the road to let their vehicles get past. His driver brought the LAV back down to the main road, and he climbed back aboard with the girl hopping in the rear seat.

He pointed towards the bush where the enemy was and held up both his hands with his fingers splayed, then the left hand with the fingers still fully splayed, and put on his right hand, he held up only three fingers. The man nodded and then disappeared back into the bush, presumably passing that information on while the other soldier crouched in view of Andrew. He moved to the end of the APC and stuck his head around the corner, studying the position. The enemy troops were hidden in the bush, and it was going to be costly to winkle out. Unless he made the decision to earn his pay properly.

He heard the sound of running feet followed by shots and then the clangs of bullets ricocheting off the APC, and two of the Nuzeelanders joined him, hiding behind the wrecked APC. One was definitely the fellow he’d signaled to earlier who had Captain’s tabs on his collar. The other was a female carrying a rifle that was nearly as long as she was tall. Andrew did a doubletake and then realized belatedly that it was a sniper’s rifle. He scratched his head, trying to devise a way to use the girl and her sniper rifle to their advantage. He could tell where the enemy were because he could sense their glow magically, as even the ordinary soldiers had a small glow. The trouble was she couldn’t. Hmmm.

Then he felt another vehicle coming up behind the enemy position. This one had four people in it. However, two of them had to be mentalists as they felt very strong even at a distance. He could sense when the vehicle stopped, and they disembarked somewhere out of sight. All the enemy sort of congregated together in a huddle while they discussed tactics, and then the huddle broke up just like in a football game. The Japs lined up and began to advance. The Nuzeelanders behind them opened fire but with little effect.

“They’re shielded.” He yelled. Then he reached out mentally and felt a strong mentalist to the left front, a much stronger one to the right front, and what felt like an untrained but strong mentalist right next to him. The girl! He’d worry about that later. The girl at least had a natural mental shield, which was why he hadn’t noticed she was a mentalist earlier. He turned to the girl.

“There are two enemy mentalists. A strong one and a weak one. The weak one is on the left. Get behind me and shoot over my shoulder. I am going to distract him with energy and mental spells. He’ll almost certainly drop his physical shield to protect against me. As soon as you see my fireball, shoot him.”

The girl nodded and then pointed at her ear. “Shooting right beside your ear will almost certainly deafen you.”

“I have protection.” She stared at him for a moment and then shrugged as if to say it was his funeral. She hefted her rifle, checked the safety, and nodded. He turned and felt her move right behind him. Then he stepped to the left, which meant they moved out of the cover provided by the vehicle. He knew which man out there was the mentalist and hit him with the Mental Control spell, which slithered off his mental shield, then the much more showy fireball spell, Crack! The rifle fired, and his sound-muffling spell did its job. The rifle sounded like it was a hundred meters away, not a few centimeters! The mentalist went down. He shoved the girl sideways, and the slash from the other mentalist impacted the front edge of the overturned vehicle, cutting off a large chunk of metal.

He hopped out and began moving back down the dirt road that his vehicle had turned up even as the gunner swung his machine gun around, facing where the shots had come from across the far side bridge. He didn’t actually open fire as it wasn’t obvious where the enemy was, which Andrew thought was wise as all it would do would be attract the Jap’s attention. There was no point in attracting attention if he didn’t have a decent target to make it worthwhile. Andrew used his magic to reach out into the distance and sensed only six enemy troops, maybe three hundred meters up the road hiding in the trees. He opened his eyes and compared the scene with his mental image but couldn’t actually see any of the enemy soldiers, so he moved position further along the dirt road, getting much closer to the main road they had been driving along.

The Nuzeelanders were dismounting from their vehicles and deploying into the scrub both on the high side of the road and also on the low side from where they were starting to return fire. Then he felt more enemy troops coming up the road. They were moving closer so fast that they had to be in a vehicle, he decided. Just before they would have come into view, the vehicle pulled over, and he could feel the enemy soldiers disembarking and spreading out. That included the driver, who also jumped out of the vehicle according to Andrew’s magical detection. The vehicle had been packed, and as a result, they added another fourteen soldiers to the enemy force that was blocking their advance.

Andrew put up a shield and raced over to the burning wreck, sheltering behind it. He’d angled the shield a little, so the bullets striking it hadn’t knocked him off balance as he ran across the space. He sliced open the top of the APC as he climbed onto the deck of the vehicle and then looked inside, but no one was still alive. He sucked the heat out of the fires burning inside the cab while absorbing the energy until he had snuffed them, by which time he felt like he was glowing with power. With the fire out, he turned toward the enemy and let loose a fireball using all the power he could. The wooded area wasn’t tinder dry, but it wasn’t damp either, and an area of maybe a hundred meters across went up in flames with a whoosh.

At least one of the enemy soldiers was caught in the fire, and a couple of others had to scramble to get out of the way, so he used a push spell to force the fire to change direction, which caught one of the two before the fire front passed them. He dropped down from the deck of the vehicle and looked back toward the Nuzeelanders. A couple of them were crouched at the edge of the bush, and one of them nodded toward the vehicle behind him, so he shook his head, indicating that there were no survivors. The man grimaced, so Andrew thought he would make the news even worse.

Contact with headquarters informed them all the troops that were available had been pushed forward to a point west of Princetown, where they were digging in until the Nuzeeland troops arrived. Safely on a main road, they raced westward to Port Campbell, where they found the Nuzeeland troops had been getting themselves ashore from their transport vessels and were organizing themselves. A lot of the heavy equipment was still aboard the ships and heading toward Warrnambool to be offloaded, but they had managed to offload a whole range of wheeled AFVs and even a couple of light-tracked ones from a couple of specialized landing ships and maybe two thousand troops. They only had mortars rather than heavy artillery, but the General in charge of the expeditionary force, who had landed with his troops and intended to lead from the front, felt it was better that they bottle the Japs up in the hilly and wooded terrain between Princetown and Appollo Bay rather than letting them get out into the open countryside beyond Princetown.

Despite assurances of his intention to stop the Japanese in the wooded hills, the General let a whole day go by before the first of the Nuzeeland troops headed east along the Great Ocean Road. Andrew was forced to say goodbye to his mad but speedy driver, who headed back north with the vehicle they had come south in, and Andrew swapped into a Nuzeeland LAV. It was quite a nice little four-wheel, lightly armored vehicle designed for reconnaissance, primarily. Its armor would stop small arms fire and slow down the cyborg’s lasers but wouldn’t stand up to heavy weapons, but that was okay, as that was one of the reasons Andrew was along.

The Nuzeeland General and most of the senior officers of the unit were dubious about the value of having a mentalist attached to their force, particularly one that insisted on riding at the front, but enough information had circulated about the effectiveness of the Jap mentalists that they were willing to accept his addition to their force. To give the Nuzeelanders their due, once they got moving, they moved quickly. They didn’t stop until they reached the defensive positions of the small militia group holding the exit of the Great Coast Road from the more rugged terrain it passed through after leaving Apollo Bay.

There was no sign of the Japanese, but that didn’t mean anything as their scouts probably included at least one mentalist who could detect the Nuzeelanders from some considerable distance and not have to expose himself. They broke camp at dawn and resumed their advance along the road toward Lower Gellibrand. There had been no indications or reports that the Japanese had reached this far west, so they were traveling at a fair clip. Andrew’s LAV was in the lead, followed by a wheeled APC, with the rest of the force strung out along the road in a long sinuous column.

Ironically, they had passed a sign that said high-risk area not that far back when shots impacted the light shield he was keeping in front of the vehicle. Fortunately, the driver heard the shots and swung left into a side road stopping behind some bushes up a small rise. The second vehicle, a wheeled APC, wasn’t so lucky and it took an RPG round in the from cabin, rolled, and came to a halt diagonally across the road about ten meters beyond the road junction Andrew’s LAV had turned up. The vehicles behind the APC came to a screeching halt and began backing up the road. Shots continued to fill the air, and the bushes Andrew’s vehicle was hiding behind shook as bullets impacted the leaves and branches.

Better late than never – sorry

“The powers that be were impressed with your performance, Andrew. A promotion and a medal are coming, but more importantly, you will be transferred to the Nuzeeland troops they’re hoping will get to Apollo Bay in time to hold it. The high command was not sure exactly where the Japs have reached and how soon they’ll get to Apollo Bay, so you are instructed to take the road through Rokewood to Colac. From there, you can take the road through Gellibrand to Lavers Hill, and from there, you can either head towards Apollo Bay or back towards Port Campbell, which is where the Nuzeelanders will land if Apollo Bay is out of the question.

The Captain had a map which he studied and nodded in agreement with her suggestion.

“Looks like a plan. Do you expect the troops at Apollo Bay to hold?”

“Just a company with no mentalist support? Not a chance. The only way the Kiwis will be able to land there is if the Japs decide to stop and have a rest instead of continuing their advance. It’s only like an hour and a half’s drive normally, probably twice that for armored vehicles, and I expect they’ll be in a position to attack tomorrow. Here are your orders.” She pulled some paper out of her jacket and handed them over. “They give you the leeway to cut across country to Port Campbell if Apollo Bay falls quickly. Right. There is a driver and a car outside. Get going.”

“Sir.” He saluted, which she returned.

“Look after yourself, Andrew,” She said as he reached the door.

He smiled but didn’t turn back. The car was easy to find, and after a brief stop at his billet to grab his gear, they were off at a hundred k’s an hour down the through road to Rokewood and then Colac. They got held up at various checkpoints, and at one point outside Colac, they had to stop and wait for a long convoy of trucks that had been impressed into the army to pass by before they could proceed.

Andrew thought the trucks couldn’t have traveled much more slowly and still kept moving, and it took forever for the convoy to finally go past. Most were medium-sized box trucks with no idea what was inside them, but there were several impressively marked vehicles that appeared to be carrying ammunition and others that appeared to be carrying food, plus several petrol tankers. So far, the shipment of oil from the oil refinery built on the southeast coast of Victoria nearest the Bass Strait oilfields hadn’t been interrupted, not that the country didn’t have a fair amount of fuel in reserve. He realized that the tankers, at least, must have gone up and around the whole northern front to get here from the refinery.

They were about three kilometers south of Colac when they got word over the radio that Apollo Bay had been taken, and the Japs were pushing ahead along the coast road so it would not be safe for them to take the road through Ferguson to Lavers Hill, but instead cut across to the Carlisle Road then work their way southwest from Chapple Vale and reached the coast road before the Twelve Apostles. Rather than stop to look at the maps, Andrew had the driver head west while he pulled up maps on his phone, and after some rather exciting moments on one dirt road or another, they made it to the Princetown Road and then the Great Ocean Road in one piece. They approached the road junction carefully, and it was with some relief that they decided they were ahead of the Japanese advance, which they saw no sign of.