Progress is happening on Kyron the Mercenary. That will be followed by A Far Federation which is genuine Space Opera.
After that will be Taroniah at Marsea the Kyron the Magician. Beyond that is still a little murky but probably The Princess and the Spy.
Ostraya will be finished in the next few months – edited – sent to Pam Uphoff for approval and hopefully will be out before the end of the year separate to the regular publishing stream.

and….

Taroniah at Peace is live
The war might be over, but for Taroniah life goes on. Follow her through her semi-exile back to Alcitran where she needs to turn her magical abilities into enough money for her, Kauriga and Rengard to live on while continuing her magical studies. Her peaceful existence is interrupted by the Assassins Guild, reacquainting with old friends, experiencing the joys of motherhood, and trying to keep up with her booming business interests.

Backus Marsh was reached just as the sun was going down, and the supply driver very kindly dropped him at the headquarters shack in the base just outside the town proper. From there, he was directed to a house just beyond the wire-protected base area. He knocked on the door before walking in. The lounge room had been converted into an office with two desks. There was a male Corporal behind one at a female private behind the other, both looking at him.

“I’m supposed to report to Captain Greaves.”

“You’ll be our new mentalist then?”

“Yes, Andrew Harris.”

“Right. Just a moment.”

The man’s face took on a distant expression, and Andrew could feel him doing something mentally. Then the Corporal snapped back into a normal expression.

“The Captain will see you straight away. You can leave your duffel there.” The man pointed to the left of the door Andrew had come in through. “Through the door on the left.”

“Thanks, Corporal.”

As per the military etiquette he was taught in training, he knocked and then entered without waiting for permission as he was expected by the person inside. Captain Greaves was sitting behind the desk that was directly opposite the door. Dressed in the sand and brown camo and with her hair tied up, she looked completely different from the girl on the train. Andrew marched forward, came to attention, and saluted, which the Captain returned.

“Sit.” She said, waving a hand at the chair standing a little to the right of the center of the desk.

Sharon watched him sit, studying him and her expression became more puzzled by the second. She knew he had power, she’d picked that up on the train, and she knew he was apparently quite strong, but he was showing little more glow than an ordinary person. Damn, that was an impressive shield he was holding, seemingly automatically. Well, they’d been looking for another powerful magician apart from her, and it appeared they had found one. He and his squad had been sent to the front after an accelerated training program which she wasn’t entirely happy with after the disaster the first group of magic recruits had been subjected to, but she wasn’t in overall command, so she could only do the best she could.

She had read the report from Sanchez with some interest. Harris’s suggestion about grounding shields was simple but clever, and she had passed that idea on to the other mentalists in the army. Such as they were. Reading Sanchez’s report, there seemed to be little that Harris needed to learn in terms of mentalist skills, which surprised her as she thought she was quite well-trained. Her grandfather had been a very powerful magician, as they used to be called, and had taught her very well once he’d realized she’d inherited his magical ability. She was still puzzled by her father’s lack of apparent magical ability, but she put it down to one of those genetic quirks that happened every now and again. The power gene must have been recessive in her father, which seemed a bit odd but was not unheard of, apparently, according to her grandfather.

“Right. Outside Karen will have your assignments ready for you, so for now, dismissed.” He stood, came to attention, and saluted.

They all came to attention and returned the salute before turning to start filing out.

“Andrew Harris? Can you stay behind, please?” Reynolds said, scanning the faces as he did so.

Andrew nodded and eased back out of everyone else’s way. Reynolds spotted him standing back and nodded. The Captain sat down and waited for the others to exit the room, which took a while as they each had to tell the Corporal out front their name and be given their assignments. Ciccone was the last to exit, and he looked back and gave Andrew a wink before exiting the room. Andrew nodded, heaved himself off the wall, and came over to stand in front of the Captain.

“Sir?”

“I have a personal request to assign you to the strongest mentalist we have, plus a report from Corporal Sanchez saying that you are the most capable mentalist he has ever seen. Yet I can barely feel you, which means you must have very good shields.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Captain studied him for a moment and then gave his head a small shake.

“So, do you know Captain Greaves?”

“We sat next to each other on the train I took from the Gold Coast to training camp. We didn’t talk for most of the trip, sir.”

“I see. Well, she’s requested you to be her understudy. She is currently at Backus Marsh. See the Corporal out the front for your new orders. You should be able to pick up the transport heading that direction fairly easily. Dismissed.”

Andrew snapped to attention and saluted, to which the Captain replied, and then he stepped out of the room to find the Corporal holding up an envelope that no doubt contained his orders.

“Any idea of how I should get to Backus Marsh?” he asked with a smile.

“Head over to the supply section. They’re in the southwest corner of the camp. They’ll have someone heading out that way pretty much every hour or two.”

“Thanks.” He said, pocketed his orders, grabbed his duffel, and headed in what he hoped was the direction of the supply depot. There was a lieutenant on duty there who seemed to be in charge, and after he had shown the lieutenant his orders to proceed to Backus Marsh, the lieutenant checked his delivery list but informed Andrew that there was a truck heading that way in an hour or so.

Andrew found out where the mess was from the Lieutenant and headed in that direction to get something to eat. They were offering some sort of stew that proved to be quite tasty, and he polished off a bottle of water as well before heading back to the supply section to wait for his ride. No one else was traveling, so I got to sit in the cab with the driver as the truck made its way south. There wasn’t much other traffic on the road, but at one stage, they got stuck behind a small convoy consisting of a command vehicle, three trucks, and two transporters with tanks aboard. It was nearly twenty minutes before they finally got to a spot where they could get past the convoy.

Only a quick stop at Allbree, but he had time to get another coffee and eventually fell asleep with only about an hour of the trip remaining! He was still bleary-eyed when he staggered off the train at Seemor along with most of the troops. A huge army base had grown up here since the invasion had started, just to the south of the town. It appeared to be a hive of activity as far as Andrew could see as the troops off the train marched down the road from the railway station and into the camp. There were a couple of officers with some enlisted flunkies just inside the gate, and each group of men from the train was asked what their orders were and then directed to the appropriate part of the camp.

The newly minted Special Forces mentalists, using the term the enemy had for what up till now had been called magic, were sent to the far west of the camp to find a Captain Reynolds. The Captain was found in one of the simple wooden shacks that comprised most of the camp’s buildings. He heard Contos telling one of the others that the shacks were a pre-sawn kit that had been manufactured by the hundred to provide quick accommodation and office space for both the military and the thousands of refugees that had fled the invasion.

They were looking for a hut halfway along the last street on the left after being pointed down the road that headed west across the sprawling camp. Not the most precise directions, but easy enough to follow. The last street on the left ran up a slight hill, and the hut at the top had a sign that read Special Forces tacked onto the front above the doorway. Inside was a desk with a female Corporal who didn’t seem overjoyed to see them. She ran through the list to make sure they were all present and then buzzed the Captain, who told them to come in.

Captain Reynolds was a solid man in his late forties or early fifties, balding and clearly very old for his rank. He saluted them all as they squashed into his office and then sat while he contemplated them.

“Right. Hopefully, you lot will do better than the last lot.” He shook his head. “First off, you will all be assigned to an existing mentalist for evaluation and to be shown the ropes. Until that person decides that you are both capable enough and sensible enough to be allowed out on your own, you will stay glued to your assigned mentalist at all times, do you understand?”

There were reluctant nods from everyone. The Captain smiled.

“I know. It doesn’t sound real exciting. But it is the new policy, and you will all follow it to the letter, or you’ll be assigned to garrison duty in the Gulf. Do you understand?”

The vehemence inherent in the way the Captain said this had its effect, and they all nodded quickly.

Besides the constant rumors of help from the Kiwis, who were supposed to be sending troops any time now, there were also supposed to be expeditionary forces being sent to the mainland from places like New Caledonia and Tonga, although nothing had actually materialized as far as Andrew was aware. There was supposed to be a Nuzeeland division arriving in Western Port Bay any day now, but he had first heard that rumor three months ago, and there were no Kiwis walking around that he had seen. Apart from a few exchange fellows and a bunch of Kiwis who lived in Ostraya, some of whom had volunteered or been drafted where they’d become dual citizens. The train’s carriages were old, although perhaps not as old as the ones he’d had coming south to begin training, but clearly, they’d been dragged out of storage somewhere for this troop train.

The line diverged to the right at Hornsby to dodge the still radioactive area of the former city of Sydney proper, and then it diverged again to dodge the radioactive area that had been the city of Parramatta. The line curved through Castle Hill and then Blacktown before rejoining the old mainline at Fairfield. Most of the inner parts of the former Sydney metropolitan area were composed of overgrown ruins, at least in the areas surrounding the two atomic bomb blast sites. Areas further out had been less directly affected but had still suffered from radioactive fallout and had largely been abandoned in the immediate postwar period. Over the last couple of centuries, the radioactive fallout had been washed away to a large extent, and civilization was slowly returning.

The whole area had been scavenged over the centuries, but these days some of the areas were being turned over to agriculture, provided they’d been certified to be free of radioactive fallout. It was mostly cattle and sheep rather than plants that had roots that dug down into the soil, and he’d heard that a lot of people were very wary of anything that came out of the area regardless of what the scientists said. Penriff had largely been spared the radioactive fallout and was both a large city and the state capital.

They stopped at Liverpool for some of the troops to disembark and presumably head for the army base nearby while more soldiers joined the train, heading south to the front. There was a train loaded with tanks, LAVs, and artillery waiting in a siding and which appeared to be ready to follow them south. He wondered why such a train-load of heavy equipment wasn’t already at the front, but then he overheard one of his fellow soldiers tell the guy next to him that the equipment had been pulled out of storage and had needed to be refurbished before being sent south. He guessed that the soldiers who had joined the train were probably the crews for the equipment on the other train.

The train rattled south at a reasonable rate. This was the old mainline between Sydney and Melbourne, and the engineering was much better than more recently built lines that connected some of the new centers that had grown up since the nuclear war. There was a half an hour stop at Golburn, where most of the troops grabbed a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Andrew, being used to the balmy temperatures of his hometown, found the cold getting to him as the train dragged itself over the Great Dividing Range, and Wagga at 4 am was easily the coldest place he had ever been! He huddled in his seat, trying to stop his teeth from chattering as the train finally got going again, heading for Allbree.

Uesugi’s troops were kept to a standstill for most of the afternoon while Toshiro’s troops, well, Kato’s now, forged ahead. Unlike the built-up area they had taken a few days before, the town of Drysdale fell with hardly a shot being fired. A few old folks were dealt with, but the momentum barely slowed as they continued to forge along the road that ran parallel to the southern shore of the bay. Early the next morning, the lead troops reached the shore at Portarlington and swung to the east along the shore. The resistance was minimal, and the whole Battalion was instructed to swing south and west.

Uesegi’s troops started making progress again, and by late that day, his battalion had reached the edge of the built-up area called Ocean Grove. The First Battalion had no trouble taking the town of Queenscliff by the end of that day, and these began pushing west to link up with the Second Battalion. They gradually squeezed the natives back into a smaller and smaller area until, finally, they retreated across the bridge at Barwon Heads, blowing the bridge behind them.

Toshiro ordered an assault across the waterway the next morning, but the losses were heavy, and he gave it away as a bad investment and sent reports to headquarters while the two armies sat looked at each other across the waterway. The enemy didn’t even bother with much in the way of harassing artillery fire, presumably to save ammunition. Apparently, the natives were no more well off as far as artillery shells were concerned than Toshiro’s troops were. Still, it had been a successful advance, the best they had managed so far since the invasion started. On the other hand, it was obvious the locals had planned their withdrawal well ahead of time. They left next to nothing behind and blew up anything they couldn’t take with them. That included every fuel supply point, much to Toshiro’s annoyance.

Chapter 8

To the front

Andrew found himself crammed aboard the train that took them south. The comment from a grizzled Sergeant in the seat across the aisle from Andrew’s spot was that they were packed in like sardines. Andrew wondered where that saying had originated, but he had to agree with the sentiment. Besides all the new recruits that had just finished training, there were numbers of men and women returning from leave, plus men who had been transferred from garrisons further north. Talking to a couple of men from Harvee Bay, it appeared the government was running down the coastal garrisons and leaving the older, not as fit men to hold the forts, so to speak, and transferring the younger healthy men to combat units in the south. They were apparently still keeping a strong garrison in the far north to face the Indos, but they felt no need to have similarly strong garrisons along the east coast in the face of the transdimensional invasion. Ostraya’s relations with the islanders to the east and northeast were good.

  “Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to your new subordinates, which include my nephew, but don’t coddle him, please. He’s grown up a lot since we invaded here, but he still needs to do a bit more growing up yet. He still has a tendency to see the natives as people.”

Kato nodded but didn’t reply, and then he followed Toshiro to where his junior officers were adding the final touches to the plan for the action that would kick off in the morning. Toshiro ran through the plan for Kato’s benefit, who seemed to pick the operational details up without a problem, and eventually, they all headed for their billets or tents, as the case may be.

Their attack in the morning went well. The first thing Toshiro noticed about being the Brigade commander and not having to oversee the fighting directly was how strange that felt. The second thing he noticed was that the attacks went far too well and that they broke through much too easily. In fact, he noticed from the reports that the native force was not only falling back faster than his men could advance, but they were falling back to the southwest and leaving an ever-widening gap at the eastern end of their line.

As their advance to the east picked up speed along the broad highway and through the open paddocks, their advance to the south and southeast slowed. The enemy began to defend every line of trees, wall, fence, and house slowing their advance as much as they could. Finally, Toshiro managed to get one of their increasingly rare drones in the air to the southeast to see what was happening behind the lines. The enemy had all manner of ways of getting rid of drones and had obviously faced drones before. That in itself was worrying.

It quickly became apparent that the enemy was evacuating all their civilians from the headland. There was a massive lineup of cars and trucks along the road leading to the bridge across the river that emptied into the ocean to the south of Gilong as the residents from further east attempted to flee to the west. The drone was destroyed before it could get a good view of what was happening other than a massive traffic jam, but it did explain why things were progressing the way they were. The enemy was desperately defending directly north of the ocean road while allowing the True Men to advance at will along the coast of the bay to the north.

In the area due west of the swampy lake ground that divided the Peninsula from the flat lands to the west, the enemy had set up defensive positions along a creek line that ran west and then northwest beyond the edge of the suburban area until it finished up in a mine or something. That was outside his operational area, being Fifth Brigade’s responsibility, but he gathered they were having trouble making any ground and so far had crossed the creek successfully anywhere. If anything, Fifth Brigade was even less well-equipped than his brigade.

Kato nodded, taking in the information.”And our broadcast power doesn’t reach the front here?”

“Not yet. The engineers keep expanding the coverage, but it’s slow work. Without a Cybernetics Centre and zivvy, we can’t impress large numbers of natives as labor without tying up too many of our troops as guards, which is limiting things a bit.”

“Yes. Over on the northern front where I’ve been serving, they have been using native labor for cleanup tasks and gross engineering tasks like rebuilding bridges and such, even though it does tie down men as guards. The overseers are using whips, would you believe, to get the natives to work.” He shook his head. “It’s all very medieval.”

“You don’t sound like you approve?”

Kato shrugged. “With no zivvy, I don’t have an alternative, but it seems very inefficient.”

It was Toshiro’s turn to shrug. “We need to get as much use out of the healthy ones as we can. Our reinforcements are starting to slow down while the enemy is growing in strength.”

“That’s certainly true, although I was told they aren’t as strong down here on this front.”

“No. Nothing like the number of regular troops I’ve heard you’ve been facing up north. We are generally facing a lot of militia leavened by a few regulars down here. No Tanks and only a few pieces of artillery. They do have plenty of mortars which are a pain.”

He paused and pointed at some nearby troops. “And down here, we have a much higher ratio of impressed militia to military cyborgs than they have on the northern front, or so I’ve heard.”

The other man nodded in agreement. “Yes. And even then, a lot of the cyborgs we have aren’t even military. You’ll find a good third are ex-police or ex-chauffeurs or whatever.”

“Good God!”

“Yes. About the only thing we haven’t resorted to so far as using women in the front line, although I’ve heard they’re being pressed into service in the city, doing jobs that men would normally do because of all the manpower being on the front line.”

Rokuro smiled at some thought.

“You should hear some of the complaints from the older matrons whose daughters are being put to work.” He grinned at Toshiro. “A lot of the younger women are quite happy to be put to work, mind you. It gets them away from the matrons!”

Toshiro couldn’t help himself and snorted while Kato grinned at him.

“So. What relation are you to the main Rokuro family?”

Kato frowned at Toshiro for a moment and then shrugged.

“Before the troubles started, I was Rokuro 22. God knows what number I am now. Don’t let it bother you, though. I try not to let it bother me.”

“Right,” Toshiro said after a moment while he took that in and tried to process someone that high being on the front lines so far from Home. Damn, the fellow was probably even higher in rank now, and Toshiro was supposed to treat him as a subordinate? This could get dicey.

This invasion typified the whole blind, arrogant mentality. No one had checked the information the scouts had provided. Instead, they just assumed they’d be able to overcome any resistance with their mentalist powers and by chipping any natives they didn’t kill. Only, there was no zivvy, and the plague had disrupted everything so much the whole invasion was struggling. Toshiro was still confident they would prevail in the end, at least locally, but they could probably forget about the rest of the planet until the supply of zivvy resumed. He presumed their leaders would resort to some sort of biological attack on the other lands to reduce their threat.

“Well, until he turns up, I’ll keep commanding my troops. We will attack their line tomorrow morning just before dawn. We can’t let them have too long to strengthen it.”

Uesugi nodded. “No. It’s a pity we don’t have real military troops in our commands. If we did, we could attack this afternoon and into the evening. As it is, we’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the night reorganizing our men, I imagine.”

Toshiro nodded. “I’ll have to do the same so this Kato Rokuro doesn’t complain when he turns up to take command.”

Uesugi grinned at his friend, gave him a short bow, and headed off to his command center. Toshiro returned the bow, and after a moment spent contemplating the way things were going, he set about organizing his men or, more accurately, reorganizing his men. About seven, a truck rolled up to his headquarters. There were half a dozen armored cyborgs and six conscripted civilians in the back, sent as reinforcements, and his new battalion commander.

Toshiro had come out of the house that he was using as a headquarters and stood on the front step watching the truck being unloaded. Besides the troops, there were half a dozen boxes of ammunition and even some food, by the look of it, Rokuro was in the passenger seat. He came around to where Toshiro was standing and looked him up and down, which was pretty insolent, but Toshiro was too tired to make n issue of it. Kato Rokuro looked about fifty, give or take, and didn’t appear very military.

“Toshiro Ozawa?”

“Kato Rokuro?”

“Sir.” The man replied and finally saluted, which Toshiro returned.

“You have been informed you will be taking over command of the troops I have been operating, which are now being designated the first Battalion of the sixth Brigade?”

“Yes. You will find that they are a mix of cyborgs and former civilians as with most of the forces that make up most of our army.”

“I understand.” The man said with a resigned nod.

“Yes. Just so. We still have two tanks and a couple of AGCs in the first battalion, and there are three tanks in the second. Vehicles aren’t a problem as we’ve been commandeering local vehicles. Most of them use gasoline, of which there is a good supply at present. The few electric vehicles they have aren’t dependent on broadcast power like ours. We’ve captured several intact fuel stations, so gasoline is still plentiful on our front, but unless we can capture a refinery soon or keep overrunning the native’s fuel stations, the use of local vehicles will decline.”

Although his troops were in a position to begin the assault on the built-up area, Toshiro hadn’t actually intended to attack today, planning to give his men an extra night’s rest before commencing the battle for the suburb. With the arrival of Uesugi and his extra troops, he decided not to wait and signal his men to begin their assault immediately.

They made some rapid progress for the first hour or so, and then the attack started to grind to a halt, but by that stage, Uesugi had gotten most of his men into position, and using his three tanks as spearheads, they struck into the built-up area from what was the flank to the front line to Toshiro’s men had created. His troops had taken roughly half the area by nightfall and kept up the pressure throughout the night. About an hour before dawn, the enemy broke contact and retired rapidly, leaving the now empty and largely destroyed built-up area for the Japanese to occupy.

In the morning, reconnaissance showed that they had fallen back to a new defense line that stretched from the lake almost to the coast along a road that was lined with trees along much of its length. They were apparently digging trenches and generally making it clear that the Japanese would find it expensive trying to thrust through their new line as the Japanese would have to attack over open ground, by and large. Toshiro studied the enemy positions and determined the best lines of attack. He concentrated his own force to the north of what used to be a railway line while Uesugi’s forces were massed to the south of that point.

After the confusion of the night fighting, they spent the following day reorganizing and transferring some troops from one command to the other to balance up the two forces. He didn’t want to give the natives time to dig in more effectively, but he had no choice as the whole force was disorganized and worn out. Late in the day, a runner turned up informing him that he had been promoted to brigade commander with Uesugi’s men being designated the Second Battalion while his own men, which were to be placed under a mentalist named Kato Rokuro and his troops would now be designated the First Battalion of Sixth Brigade. After the messenger had left, Toshiro turned to Uesugi.

“Do you know this Kato Rokuro?”

“No, but he’s clearly from the well-known Rokuro family. I know old Lord Shigaru Rokuro, who I think is the head of the local family now, or at least he was before all the troubles started. He’s Rokuro 3, the last I heard. Sorry, I don’t know exactly what this Kato Rokuro’s relationship with the family’s main branch is. Like all families, they must have lost people in the disaster in Europe.”

The Rokuro’s formed a large family, and the main branch had once been very important. The only ones that Torshiro knew were not members of the main family, but even so, they were all typical upper-class lords who did little but acted like they were important anyway because of the family they were born into. Arrogant to a fault. Mind you, that was a fault that ran across all three branches of the Alliance and was probably the main reason they were in the mess they were in here.