“That’s good, sir. We’ve driven them back for now, but I’m down to just the one healthy mentalist for the next week or so. Any chance of another one or two being sent this way?” Silence as he listened to the answer. “Right. And the Kiwis don’t have any?” Silence as he listened. “Well, that can’t be helped. The news about the Indos is good, though, sir.” Another short pause as the person on the other end of the line responded to that comment. “Very good, sir. We’ll try and hold.”

He got off the phone and nodded at Andrew. “You’re my main man until Greaves is out of her hospital bed. Think you can handle it?”

“I have so far, sir. They appear to have many more mentalists than we do, sir, but many of them aren’t that strong, comparatively speaking. At least not the ones I’ve run into.”

“Read your report from training school. You are the strongest of the mentalist trainees in that batch. The others have all been deployed on either the northern front or the northeastern one. This is understandable as they have been sharing one not very strong mentalist between them. The Kiwi convoy is about to leave Wellington, so they should be here in a week or two, although it hasn’t been decided where they’ll unload. Unfortunately, while they have people with the talent, none have had any training, as such talents were frowned upon in Kiwi-land.” He gave his head a little shake. “Much like they were here up until a decade ago.”

He paused for a moment, perhaps reviewing the past, but then he continued. “The good news is the Indos are sending an expeditionary force that will have half a dozen strong mentalists. Although how strong theirs are compared to the Jap ones is anybody’s guess. They might think they’re strong and then find they’re woefully underdone, like our first group.” Then he grinned. “Finally, the tide is turning. Ammunition production is up, and we’re about to introduce the Japs to thirtieth-century warfare with our new drones.”

“Is that what was filling up the helipad area at the hospital?” Andrew asked, forgetting for a moment that he was a private in the office of a Lieutenant Colonel.

“Spotted them, did you? Yes. Both we and the Japs have been using quite a few drones but mostly for surveillance and artillery spotting. All the traditional drone roles. Our strategists have found it interesting that the Japs don’t seem to regard them as weapons in their own right. We haven’t been subject to mass attacks by kamikaze drones so far. There have been some used on apparently choice targets, but generally, they haven’t attacked infrastructure or the population. When you think about it, what with them being Jeps and all, it is kind of odd.” He shook his head in puzzlement.

“Of course, our air defenses are quite good and have had a fair bit of practical experience in recent years, which they discovered very rapidly as we shot down several hundred drones in the first few days. Not that we don’t have the same problems. Their cyborg lasers are more than capable of taking down drones at a low altitude, and the chips in the cyborg’s heads mean they have no trouble competing the angles and how much to lead the target on the fly in the field without the computer set up that we have on our defense systems.”

The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake by a strange lieutenant. It took him a moment to realize that a superior officer was waking him, but then his mind stepped into gear, and he rolled off the couch, stood up in a somewhat wobbly manner, and managed to salute, after a fashion.

“You’re Harris, right?” The Lieutenant said rather than asking him.

“Sir.”

“Come with me.” The Lieutenant clearly didn’t want to waste any time, but as the officer turned to head out of the room, Andrew queried the immediacy.

“Be all right if I take a leak first, sir. I need to go pretty bad.”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

That task was quickly accomplished, and he followed the Lieutenant out of the building where there was a car waiting. It was clearly a civilian car that had been requisitioned for military use and given a quick dab of olive paint here and there over its black base color. As they came down the stairs, he could see some kind of white design painted on the roof, but because of the low angle, he couldn’t make out what it was. They turned left and drove back up Grant Street until they reached the hospital, where they pulled up at the front entrance, having gone past the helipad that was covered in men doing something. He wasn’t exactly sure what.

He was taken inside the hospital and soon discovered that some of the outer buildings had been taken over for military use. He was shown around the corner to one where he found Captain Greaves reclining in a bed with her right leg all bandaged up. He came into the room to the end of the bed and came to attention.

“How are you, Captain? What happened to your leg?”

“Harris. I hear I have you to thank for the hospital not getting overrun by the Japs yesterday.”

“I wasn’t on my own, Captain.”

The Captain nodded. “No. But without you, we wouldn’t have held once I was injured. You did a damn fine job. The officer in charge of the defense is putting you in for a metal.”

“Um, I don’t feel I am due a medal, sir.”

The Captain nodded. “Those that earn them usually feel that way. Anyway, you’re going to be tasked with the defense of this whole section of the front. At least as far as countering enemy mentalists are concerned. Do you think you can handle it?”

“All I can do is try, sir.”

She smiled from her bed. “Good man.”

“Any idea of when you’ll be getting out, sir?”

“Probably another week yet, maybe longer. The doctors aren’t sure.”

“Well, I hope you get better soon, sir.”

The Captain nodded with a smile. “I will try, I will try. Anyhow you do your best; that’s all anyone can ask.”

“Sir.”

He left the room to find the Lieutenant still waiting for him. They returned to the car and proceeded up Grant Street to the roundabout, where they turned right, took the first right, and then pulled up in front of the RACV center, which had been taken over to be used as the Battalion headquarters. He was taken to an office just inside the front doors, where he sat and waited for nearly an hour before being ushered into the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Grey. The weathered, tough-looking officer was on the phone with someone when he was shown in, and he was waved to sit in the chair at the front of the desk so the battalion commander didn’t have to interrupt his listening to whatever the other person was saying. Whoever was speaking on the other end of the phone finally stopped, and the Lieutenant Colonel spoke for the first time.

The things must not have been armed with machine guns, or at least if they were, they weren’t firing at him, but one of them had a mentalist on board because the next thing he knew, a fireball slammed into his shields. He did the arcing fireball trick to the right-hand machine, and it went up spectacularly, the explosion damaging the vehicle next door, which twisted sideways and then ran diagonally into the next house along the street from its position. A figure jumped down from began advancing up the road towards him, and a series of fireballs came glancing towards Andrew from the Japanese mentalist. They weren’t overly strong fireballs, as far as Andrew could tell, and then he prepared his own response with fireball, slice, sleep, and stun. He followed the stun with another fireball and slice combination.

Whatever he did, the mentalist was suddenly in several bloody pieces as the slice spell got through. He looked to the south but couldn’t see any more the gun carriages he knew with there, so he ran back across the main road to the service station as he was fairly certain they wouldn’t target that as all scuttlebut said that the Japs were short of fuel. He spotted one of the machines sticking its front around the football club building, but from where he was, he couldn’t lob a fireball into the top compartment. Then he saw a second one moving around the other corner of the football club and heading across the football ground. Sacrilege! He thought to himself as the tracked vehicle dug up the hallowed turf.

He raced back across the road to the cricket club practice wickets, where he could clamber up the wire fence and balance on one of the horizontal cross pieces while eyeballing the gun carriage. From his precarious perch, he could see enough of the open top lob a fireball into the opening, which turned it into a giant fireworks display. There must’ve been troops somewhere nearby because lasers suddenly flashed out in his direction, and more solid rounds bounced off the wire netting around him. He dropped back down and scooted away, angling back towards the main road to see if you get a bead on the remaining gun carriage he could hear moving. Looking down the main road, he couldn’t see anything, but he could hear it moving, and then he saw it to the left of the sport football club building retreating down the road taking the troops with it.

With the Japs apparently retreating, a couple of hundred Ostrayan troops poured across the bridge and began deploying on Andrew’s side of the river, leapfrogging down Grant Street. Other squads advanced down peel men’s Lane and Taverner Street as the Japs began a general withdrawal from the area. By this stage, Andrew was exhausted and found his way back to the pub on the corner on this side of the bridge. The place was closed, but he banged on the door loudly until finally, a portly gentleman opened the door, and he explained that he had been fighting the Japs all day and he needed a drink and somewhere to sleep. The portly gentleman looked past him and saw no one else trying to get in, so he beckoned Andrew into the building and shut the door behind him. Five minutes later, he was stretched out on a comfy lounge in the man’s office with a beer half-drunk beside him, and he decided he’d just close his eyes for a minute.

“Shit!” Andrew said in surprise.

A couple of soldiers bailed out of the building next door and raced across the road to the restaurant there, although they didn’t go inside. Instead, they went around the back to put the building between them and the enemy. Andrew couldn’t see anything from where he was, so he diagonally ran across the road to join them. Leaning out looking down ground Street he could see one of the gun carriages just turn at the roundabout where Station in Griffith met. That lined itself up on the college building to the right of where Andrew wasn’t fired, the explosion knocking down a fair chunk of one of the buildings.

Andrew still couldn’t see enough and decided he needed to get higher. He could try and get upstairs in the building he was hiding behind, but then, if the building became a target, that wouldn’t be such a good idea. He spotted the big tree in the verge area between the car park on the main road. He made a snap decision, kicked in the rear door, and started through the restaurant. Then he spotted a fridge with drinks in the main dining area and grabbed a cola. The sugary drink was just what he needed! Then he saw some sports drinks in the last section and grabbed two of them. One he chugged even as he moved to the front of the restaurant while he shoved the other into his backpack for later.

He spotted the tree just out front and then had trouble opening the front door before nearly ripping it off its hinges. He raced out to the tree, trying to keep low, and took up a position behind the trunk while he studied the trunk. There were a couple of convenient branches that allowed him to haul himself a fair way up, and then the was a junction area where several branches spread out that he managed to climb up to and where it was possible to stand.

From here, he could just make out the closest of the silvery, reflective gun carriages much more clearly, and he could also see that it was apparently open-topped. How convenient! He smiled as a thought occurred to him. He prepared a strong fireball as he could manage and then looped the spell into the open top of the gun carriage. A flash of flame shot up from inside the vehicle, and then it exploded as the ammunition cooked off. He could see a second vehicle still driving up Station Street, but it was just too far away for him to reach with a fireball.

The house on the corner that had blown up was now just a smoldering ruin, so he hopped out of his tree and raced over the main road, where he took up a position behind a tree with a lot of branches. He was able to work his way up into it to some extent, although not as far as he had on the previous tree. Because the house had been largely demolished, he could see down Taverner Street, where two of the gun carriages were moving forward in tandem. The tree had too many branches for him to throw the spell properly, so he hopped down and ran across the road to an electrical box or something. The gun carriages must’ve seen him as one of them fired in his direction. He heard the shell whistle past his head before it smashed into the house behind him, where it exploded, wrecking the house pretty much totally.

800 years ago, a large science vessel accidentally created a wormhole into a different universe. The survivors traveled to the Earth in this strange universe and discovered it was still hot, humid, and ruled by dinosaurs, as the asteroid that impacted their universe had apparently missed in this one. Unable to find any way home, they developed a planet in the system they had arrived in, where they built a new civilization derived from their old one and called it the New Federation. Over the centuries, they had caught intimations of other civilizations but chose to keep hiding until they were strong enough to stand alone. And then the Troodons came…. and the Troodons weren’t friendly.

Follow the New Federation as they struggle to survive in a galaxy full of aggressive aliens.

“Who’s in charge here?”

The crowd parted, and a Captain, whom Andrew hadn’t even noticed until then, stepped forward.

“Captain Wilson, sir.” The man said, saluting the General.

“Ah, Paul, there you are. We’re one mentalist down for the moment, so I want you to get your men dug in along the river line but deployed along the edge of the built-up area so they have to cross the open ground to get to us if they come across the river. I need your mentalist.”

“Okay, general.” He looked around and spotted Andrew, whom he gave a jerk of his head. “Here he is, sir.” He jerked his head, causing Andrew to step forward. “He did a damn fine job, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” The general said, frowning at Andrew. “What’s your name, soldier?”

Andrew came to attention and saluted. “Andrew Harris, sir.”

“I don’t think much of you people, Harris, but you’re all we’ve got to stop these bastards. Climb in. You’re needed down in the center of the army.”

Andrew piled in the back of the 4×4 while the general took the front seat. As soon as they were both the board, the driver took off racing back along Gisborne Street and then down towards the main part of town. They turned left onto Main Street before pulling up outside the shopping center, where an obvious command post was positioned in the car park. Several officers came racing over as the General got out of the ute.

“How far have they advanced?” He demanded.

“They’re just about at the tennis courts, sir.”

“Right. Harris, wasn’t it?” But before Andrew could answer, the general continued. “There’ve got a mentalist and some tank things. They’re not real tanks, sort of tracked gun carriers, or something. Get down there and see what you can do about stopping them. Take the ute.”

Andrew mentally shrugged and saluted. He really needed a rest before engaging another mentalist, but from the look on the General’s face, he didn’t think the General would welcome him asking for a rest first. He hopped into the front seat of the ute this time, and the driver gave him a nod and then concentrated on a quick U-turn before racing back to the corner and then heading south to where the fighting was taking place. Ahead of them, Andrew could see explosions taking place, and plenty of smoke rose from burning buildings. They crossed the river, and the driver screeched to a halt as a couple of men jumped out in front of them, flagging them down.

“You’ll have to back it up.” One of the men said loudly. “The Japs are advancing up Taverner Street and Station Street. They’ve got these tracked gun things.”

“Righto, I’ll hop out here,” he said to the driver. “You can head back to the General.” The driver obviously thought this was a good idea because he wasted no time in chucking a U-turn and heading up the road at a great rate to get out of the danger zone as quickly as possible. Andrew ran over to the building on the left-hand side of the road that the two soldiers had appeared out of and joined them in taking cover behind a hedge as the house on the corner of the next block blew up.

NOTE:
for those of you reading along – first the good news. I finished the story and submitted it to Pam. She is happy for it ot go ahead.
Bad news: she wants me to change a few things… at least 2 and probably 3 chapters will be heavily revised and 1 or more chapters possibly added. I won’t know until I sit down and do it. So the published book will have some differences to what you have read here.

The two of them began throwing spells at each other as fast as they could, fireball, slice, fireball again. Both the shields were very effective until Andrew had an idea. A wrecked car was on the side of the road, partly on the footpath that the enemy mentalist had advanced past. Andrew moved to that side of the road drawing the mentalist after him as they continued to pound each other with spell after spell. Andrew felt he was probably the stronger and would eventually win, but there was no point in taking the risk of confirming his impression the hard way when he had a better idea.

He threw two fireballs in quick succession and then hit the enemy mentalist, who was only thirty meters away now, with a straight push of force. The enemy mentalist didn’t have his shields grounded properly due to his maneuvering to match Andrew’s, and the push caught him by surprise. He flew backward at great speed and crashed straight into the wrecked car. It all happened too fast for the enemy mentalist to react and throw a shield up behind himself. There was a sickening thud and the screech of fingernails on a blackboard sensation that signified the death of a strong mentalist as a twisted piece of the front of the wrecked car punched straight through his chest. Andrew struggled not to throw up at the gory sight. He turned away, red-tinted his shield again, pushed it out wide once more, and glanced back at the troops.

“Well, come on, you lot!” He bellowed. “We haven’t got all day. I’ve got places to go and people to kill!”

His gallows humor raised a few snickers from amongst the troops as they formed on either side of him, taking turns to shoot around the shield as he resumed his advance down the road. The Japanese troops should have been demoralized by the loss of their mentalist, but at first, there was no sign of any panic as they continued to fire back despite the difficulty of shooting around his shield. One of his men went down, a lucky shot having him in the head as he leaned around the edge of the shield to fight the Japanese, but that was the only casualty they took before they moved within fireball range of the Japanese positions. Andrew opened up a hole momentary in his shield so he could throw a fireball at the enemy. The Japanese troops were tough, but they couldn’t stand up to a mentalist without mentalist support, and they knew it.

Once it started, the retreat gathered pace as troops that had pushed across the bridge and fanned out to attack the Ostryans now found themselves in danger of being cut off as Andrew’s force pushed forward rapidly. They couldn’t hold without a mentalist even though Andrew was tiring rapidly. Within half an hour, the remaining Japanese forces had either retreated across the river or were dead. He was preparing to lead an assault across the river when a 4×4 ute, painted in camouflage but clearly an ex-private vehicle, came racing up. A General hopped out, the first one he’d ever seen, and studied the situation briefly. He turned to the troops.

“Here they come.” Somebody else yelled, and the troops around Andrew all took cover.

Looking down the road, he can see Japanese troops working their way up both sides of the street, darting from cover to cover. The Ostrayan troops began firing, but after inflicting a couple of casualties, their bullets seemed to lose their effectiveness. Andrew reached out mentally, and he could feel the enemy mentalist somewhere up ahead. The fellow was keeping out of sight but was obviously close enough to the front to put a shield up in front of his troops.

“Cover me!” He yelled.

With that, he took off down the side of the street along the footpath, running from bush to bush. The Ostrayan troops layed down covering fire, not that it was all that effective, but it did serve to keep some of the Japanese heads down while he made his way along the street. He could sense the enemy mentalist much better now and decided the fellow was just up the road a little way.

He tossed a fireball in the direction of the mentalist, which must’ve caught the fellow by surprise because there was no immediate response. The firefight between the Ostrayan troops and the Japanese forces continued unabated as he threw another fireball where he thought the enemy mentalist was hiding. Instead of trying to take the mentalist on frontally, he ran down the cross street to the next intersection, where a few Japanese troops were starting to advance carefully. They spotted him and opened fire without a lot of effect against his shields. He threw a couple of fireballs in their direction. Two of the Japanese troops were badly wounded, and one of the cyborgs screamed as he burnt to death.

A few Ostrayan troops advanced down the street behind him, so he pushed forward, taking a lot of fire on his shields until he reached the next intersection. A wrecked car at the intersection provided cover so they could see around the corner. He quickly informed the soldiers that he was putting a shield in front of them and that he would tint it red so they could see it and shoot around it while staying shielded most of the time. With that in place, he stepped out from behind the vehicle and began advancing up the road. At first, the Japs concentrated their fire on his shield while the troops with him kept learning around the outer edges and picking off Japanese soldiers and cyborgs whenever they exposed themselves to fire at Andrew. It was all going quite well until a very strong enemy mentalist appeared at the end of the street.

“Shit!” he exclaimed as the mentalist threw a fireball at him.

He was able to get his energy shield up just in time, but he still felt the heat of the explosion. He threw a fireball of his own back to keep his opponent busy. “Might be an idea to get under some cover, fellas, till I sort this guy out.”

He was just planning to head for his tent when he heard his name being called.

“Harris, Harris!”

He looked around and private with the radio waved at him.

“There are problems on the left flank. The Captain’s sending a car. Grab your gear.”

‘Righto.” He yelled back.

Andrew grabbed his pack and quickly shoved his few toiletries and such into it, plus his spare uniform that had turned up three days before. He’d hardly finished packing when he heard the sound of a vehicle traveling fast, and a green-painted ute came racing down the road and screeched to a halt barely a meter from him.

“Harris?” The driver asked.

“That’s me.”

“Hop in.” The driver said.

Andrew jumped in the front next to the driver, who took off like a bat out of hell, doing a screeching U-turn throwing up a cloud of dust, and racing back up the road that he’d just come down. It didn’t take that long to get into the town, or at least the edges of it, but when they got to the roundabout, instead of turning right, they went straight across. The driver must have sensed Andrew’s unspoken question.

“They’ve got around the left flank entirely and are threatening to break through into our rear.” He offered by way of explanation as they began wandering through the edge of the suburban area.

At first, there had been a road they could follow that ran roughly in the right direction, but before long, they started having to drive along dirt tracks and semi-suburban streets that didn’t necessarily go in quite the direction they wanted in order to make progress. The driver got on the radio at one point to find out exactly where he was needed and then turned rather more east than north. The road they were following ran almost due east and ran along the side of the hill at a slightly higher elevation than what they had been on, and he could see burning buildings and the occasional explosion ahead in the direction they were traveling.

The road swung around to the north, but the driver did a hard right that took them to a roundabout where a detachment of troops was frantically digging in along the line of a canal or stormwater channel. A couple of the troops waved over, and the driver pulled up.

“Got the mentalist from the right flank here.”

“Beauty.” One of the men said with a Corporal’s insignia. “The bastards are pushing down this road after taking the bridge over the river. They’ve got a couple of them mentalists with them since the Captain got injured, we haven’t been able to stop ’em.”

“Are you talking about Captain Greaves?”

“Yeah. She got hit early on when she was battling one of their mentalists. We got him, but she got carted off by the medics. Sergeant Hollister is down at the city center doing what he can to stop their mentalist down there. The Captain got patched up, but she hardly got back to the front lines when another one of their mentalists did something, and she went down like a sack of potatoes. We managed to get her out still alive, but we’ve been pushed back steadily ever since. Part of their army is pushing west from the quarry while the rest is trying to push into town along Gisborne road. We were holding them at the bridge up until half an hour ago when another one of their mentalists turned up, and we just couldn’t stand.”

The Kyron The Mercenary paperback is done and uploaded – Amazon should approve sometime on Friday for you yanks.
The next book – The Taxon War – New Federation 1 – should be out by the end of the month – depending on the editor.
This is the start of a sweeping series with real Space Opera scale story lines so there is some setup..
Taroniah Takes Control is up to about 70k written so should be ready for the editor when they finish The Taxon War.

Ostraya is nearly done – its up to 60k and I’m nearly at the end. I will then send it to Pam to see what she thinks and what changes need to be made before feeding it to the editor – assuming Pam is happy with it. I hope you’ve been enjoying the unedited alpha version of the story.

Do you want me to serialize something else once Ostraya is finished?

That’s all for now.