“Right. You were right. You’re not as good with mental shields as physical. Nothing that can’t be fixed with practice, though. Okay, let’s see, van Hooton, I think you’re next, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Corporal.” Van Hooton replied, sounding depressed.

Sanchez smiled at the man. “These tests aren’t meant to put you down, van Hooton. They are merely to give me an idea of how much training you need. The fact that you can do shields of any type at all means we’ll be able to train you up to a point where, in time, you will be quite good. Now mental shield up.”

It took about two seconds before van Hooton started laughing, which Sanchez quickly stopped by canceling the spell. He must have noticed a grin on Andrew’s face because he shook his head while pointing to Andrew.

“You won’t think it’s so funny when you’re laughing, Harris. You ready?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Andrew could feel pressure on his mental shield, but it was nowhere near giving way. Sanchez tried to get through his mental shield on three separate occasions, presumably with different spells, Andrew decided, although he wasn’t entirely sure each attempt was different. Finally, he shook his head.

“That’s impressive, Harris. Can you do an energy shield?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Sanchez studied him for a moment. “Put up an energy shield, Harris.”

Andrew already had his energy shield up, anticipating just such an order. The Corporal pulled power from the sun as Andrew watched, noticing that the Corporal gathered it in his left hand, and then Sanchez threw a fireball at Andrew.

“Shit!” He exclaimed in surprise as the small fireball splashed on his shield and dissipated.

Several of the others made noises of surprise, making it clear that none of them had been expecting the Corporal to throw a fireball at Andrew. Sanchez just nodded at Andrew with a wry grin.

“I’m going to move you into the first group straight away, Harris, while I work further with the rest of these guys.”

Andrew wasn’t entirely happy with that, but he guessed there was no point in Sanchez trying to improve his shields when they were stronger than anything Sanchez could get through anyway. The Corporal pointed over towards where the firing range was.

“Head over there and tell Sergeant Duncan I said you were to join the other group. I think, just observe for today unless you’re feeling brave.” This last bit was said with a grin.

“Yes, Corporal,” Andrew replied, keeping his expression bland.

He walked past the others giving each of them a nod, and then made his way over to the firing range, which took some time as it was a considerable distance from where they had been practicing shields. The Sergeant looked surprised to see him, as did the other five soldiers. He smiled at the others, noting that the description of the two females hadn’t been far off, as he walked up to the Sergeant.

“Corporal Sanchez said I was to join this group as my shields are good enough already. He added that I could just watch today if I didn’t feel up to actually participating.”

I hope everyone has a great Xmas and that everyone has a healthy, happy and enjoyable year.in 2023

Peter

“Listen up. Attempting to take mental control of another person, someone outside of training, be they military or civilian, is a potentially lethal offense. Right? Just so you understand. You will learn how to take control of someone simply by default as part of learning to defend against it, but if you use it except against the enemy, there is a very good chance you will be taken out and shot. Understand?” He waited till they all nodded before continuing. “The powers that be are scared to death of people like us, and the jap wankers have only made the situation worse with the things they do. So keep that in mind, all right?””Now, we will go through the same procedure again, and I will throw a mental spell at you, and no, I won’t tell you what it is, but the result should be obvious if you can’t defend against it.” This last was said with a grin, although Andrew didn’t think it was a friendly grin in any way, shape, or form. 

Chapter 6

Shields and weapons

 Corporal Sanchez was a methodical man, Andrew decided. He could tell because he now worked through the men in the same order that he had originally.”Can you form a mental shield, Lancaster?” He asked.”Yes, Corporal. I don’t know how strong it is, though, Corporal, because no one has ever tried to do anything to me mentally.””Well, put it up as hard as you can, Lancaster, because I’m about to do stuff to you mentally in ways you probably never imagined.” This last was said in an evil theatrical tone of voice, and the other men couldn’t help themselves from snickering a little at the Corporal’s obvious enjoyment of the situation.There was a moment of silence that stretched into two moments or even three, Andrew couldn’t decide what you would call it, and then Sanchez threw a spell that got through, and Lancaster began barking like a dog.”You actually had a reasonable shield, Lancaster. However, as you can see, I got through it fairly quickly. Don’t worry about it, though, as we’ll be working on hardening up your shield.”He made a gesture, and Lancaster stopped barking and merely stood there looking sheepish instead. Ciccone was up next, and Andrew could tell he was trying to project as strong a mental shield as possible by the way he was screwing up his face like he was desperate to head for the latrines. It took a bit longer this time, but suddenly Ciccone started laughing and couldn’t stop. The Corporal let him laugh several seconds before waving a hand, and the now embarrassed-looking soldier subsided.”Better than Lancaster’s, but still needing work. Let’s see. Nguyen, can you do mental shields?””Yes, Corporal, but not as good as I am with physical shields, I’m sorry.”The Corporal nodded. “Well, it’s good that you understand your limitations. Let’s see how strong they are anyway.”Nguyen lasted barely half the time Ciccone had before he started laughing.

Kyron the Swordsman is now available in paperback
The next book is The Princess and the Travelers – hopefully by the end of January but Xmas will slow things down
After that will be Taroniah at Peace.

If anybody would like their name Tuckerized (i.e. used as a character – usually minor) let me know. Always looking for character names – depending on the book there may need to be some localization of the name. Harold Smythe-Jones the Third is just not going to work in a Taroniah book.

He sounded pretty confident and grinned as he put up a shield promptly. Andrew saw a puff of dust where Ciccone had extended his chield to the ground in front of himself, but to Andrew, it didn’t look like he had dug them in very far, if at all. When the Corporal flicked his wrist and sent the push spell, Ciccone barely budged. Then the Corporal did more of the thrusting motion with his left hand, sending what Andrew could feel was a lot stronger push spell at Ciccone, who staggered backward, and Andrew could tell the man’s shield was gone.

“Damn!” Ciccone muttered.

“Right, Nguyen, you’re up.”

Nguyen took a solid, braced-looking stance, obviously trying to brace his shield, and again Andrew saw the tell-tale puff of dust indicating the man had anchored the ground. Corporal Sanchez studied Nguyen for a second and bypassed the light push, going straight for the heavy push first up, this time. Nguyen staggered in much the same way Ciccone had done, and once more, Andrew could tell the man’s shield had collapsed under the pressure of the Corporal’s push.

The Corporal nodded at Nguyen before he turned to Andrew and van Hooton. He studied the two of them for a moment before pointing to van Hooton as the next one to be tested. Van Hooten held up a hand in a stop motion.

“I can sort of do a shield, Corporal, but I doubt mine’s anywhere near as strong as any of the other guy’s shields.”

“That is sensible of you had to admit, Private. Put up the shield you can anyway so I can at least see what I’m working with.”

Andrew could hardly tell that the man had put up a shield at all, his magic was so weak, and after studying van Hooton for a few moments, the Corporal took his head.

“We’re going to have to spend a lot of time working with your shields, Private van Hooten.”

He frowned and then turned to Andrew.

“So, Harris. You ready?”

“Yep, Corporal.” Andrew followed the others and braced his shield without actually sticking it in the ground. He figured if the others hadn’t done it, they must have been told not to do it. Probably a training method to build up their shield skills. The Corporal went straight for the strong push as he’d done with Ciccone. Andrew was tempted to say something smart arse like, whenever you’re ready when the push failed to have any effect on his shield but decided not to. Corporal Sanchez studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“Good shield there, Harris. Right. Now we’ll do mental shields. Mental shields are just as important as physical shields against the people you will be facing as they specialize in taking control of people and making them do what they want. Not only will you need to shield yourself, but hopefully, with training, you’ll be able to throw at a mental shield that protects everybody in your near vicinity from these arse holes.”

He paused and looked around at the men standing in front of him.

The venom in that word was quite startling. Obviously, he wasn’t impressed with the command decisions at the front that led to the virtual annihilation of his first group of recruits.

“When I am happy that you can perform your various tasks adequately to ensure your survival on the battlefield, I will release you to active duty. You are all very poorly trained militarily, and so far, I haven’t been impressed with your mental capabilities either of the ones I’ve seen, but that is par for the course in our society. We have no truly strong magical people, and we lack the institutional training to make proper use of the people with magical ability that we do have.”

He paused and looked around the recruits and then nodded.

“Just so you understand what you’ll be up against, listen up. They have mentalists who can shield against a cannon blast and reach out twenty, perhaps thirty meters, take control of someone, and make them do what they want. Hence we will be concentrating on mental shields. Whenever you are within the combat zone, you will always keep your mental shield up. Do you understand? Failure to do so will be a serious infraction. We’ve already had too many self-inflicted casualties from people in our army who have been taken over and used against us. Having one of you people taken over would be even worse.”

“I already have a good idea of the strength of the people I’ve been working with the last week, so you five will get my undivided attention this morning. While I am familiarising myself with your capabilities, Sergeant Duncan here will take the others over to the firing range, where they can practice their physical shield against real bullets fired from real guns. So there will be no mucking around, do you understand, Reynolds?”

Reynolds tried to look innocent, but from the way the others stared at him, Andrew could tell the Corporal hadn’t made the comment without a good reason. The others left with the Sergeant leaving Corporal Samchez with the five new men. He consulted his pad and looked at the man.

“Lancaster?”

“Corporal.” The fair-haired man replied.

He worked through the list, clearly memorizing each man’s face before turning his attention back to Lancaster.

“Right. Can you form a physical shield?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Andrew could feel the man do something, presumably erecting a physical shield in front of himself. Corporal Sanchez made a flicking motion with his left hand and sent what Andrew thought was a push spell towards Lancaster. Lancaster hadn’t done anything to prepare himself to absorb the energy of the Corporal’s push, and he went flying backward to land on his butt a good two or three meters from where he had been standing. Sanchez didn’t seem to be all that concerned with what he’d just done to Lancaster as the new man picked himself up off the ground, looking a bit sore and sorry.

“Let that be a lesson to you. When you are asked to put up a physical shield, make sure you brace yourself; otherwise, that is what will happen. Right, Ciccone. Can you put up a physical shield?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Darryl shook his head. “We have to maintain three shields, all at once?”

“That’s the hope. Sanchez can hold three simultaneously, but none of us can yet. After lots of training, we can all do two now, though. He’s training us to work as a team so that one of us will hold the energy shield over our group, another the physical shield, and then we each keep our own mental shield. As we can only do two things simultaneously at the moment, those of us who aren’t holding one of the other shields can then attack while still holding our own mental shield. The shielders create holes for us to work through. At least that’s the theory. We’re a bit rough around the edges as yet, but that is what we’ve been working on the last couple of days.”

The five newbies all looked at each other and grinned. This was more like it!

“Sounds good to me.” Said Andrew, and the others nodded.

“Yeah, well, Sanchez is supposed to be back tomorrow, so we’ll find out what you guys can do pretty quick.”

Corporal Alan Sanchez didn’t look at all Mexican when he turned up the following morning. Williams had taken them through morning physical training where they’d met the two women, and then they’d barely finished their showers when the Corporal arrived. He was impressed that Williams had made them continue their physical training, and no one had the heart to tell him that it only happened that morning because he was due back, and they weren’t sure when he’d arrive.

He had them fall out in the parade area outside the barracks and went over to get the two women who followed him back from their barracks. Sergeant Duncan appeared and took up a position somewhat back from where the Corporal was standing.

“Right, for my sins, I am your trainer. I’d rather be down on the front lines than here, but someone has to train you maggots, and at the moment, I’m the one elected. You’re the second group of recruits we’ve put through here, and so far, we haven’t done very well. Of the eight that were in the first group, four are dead, two are wounded, and one is we don’t know where. This means only one person from that training group is still on active duty, although I understand the two wounded ones will be released from the hospital shortly.”

He paused to take a breath and study their faces. It was pretty shocking hearing that sort of casualty list Andrew decided.

“Fortunately, you people won’t be under the command of idiots like the first group were. We only have two, that’s right, two trained officers who can wield magic. One was on leave, and one was in the Northern Territory when all this blew up, which resulted in my first lot of trainees being sent into action by people who had no idea what they were doing nor what they were facing. Morons.”

“So, we’re all magic? I wonder if Sergeant Duncan is too?”

Nguyen shook his head. “No. Corporal Sanchez is, though. About the same as you, strength-wise. I don’t know about the others. I guess we’ll find out when they show up.”

Andrew looked at his watch.

“In the meantime, I suggest we head to the mess and get ourselves some dinner. Sound good?”

“Sure does, mate,” Paul replied, and the five of them headed off for dinner.

When they returned to the barracks, they found three other men who looked quite at home already and were obviously the missing men from earlier. Andrew could tell they could all do magic with their glows being similar to the men he had already met. One was tall and fair; the second was medium height and rather solid, while the third was of a similar height but with dark hair and a very swarthy appearance.

“So, it looks like the threat of maggots has been fulfilled.” The tall one observed as they walked in, studying the five of them.

Andrew studied the three new acquaintances as well. They were all shielding but were clearly fairly strong magically. The tall one looked to be not quite as strong as John, while the other two were of similar strength to the other three.

“Andrew Harris.” He introduced himself that his four new friends followed suit.

“David Williams,” said the tall one.

“Adrian Reynolds.” Said the solid one.

“Tony Contos.” The last one said.

“So you guys have been here for a while?”

“Yeah. Close to a fortnight. Corporal Sanchez has been working with us to build up our capability. There’s two women as well who are part of the squad.”

“And we don’t have communal barracks? Damn.” Said Paul.

Williams laughed, and the other two sniggered. “You say that now, but you haven’t met them.”

“Oh. I guess from that comment that they’re not that good-looking?” Daryl asked.

“You could say that. One’s built like a battleship, and although her face is pretty, she’s gay, so no joy there, and the other is, well, she’s not ugly, I suppose, but she is not exactly a movie star either.”

“So, where is Corporal Sanchez?”

“He got called down to Army HQ for a meeting about us magic types. He wasn’t impressed with being dragged all the way down there, I can tell you. Of course, I think he’d prefer to be at the front rather than training us. Sanchez doesn’t really hide the fact that he regards this as something he has to do rather than what he wants to be doing.”

“Right. So what form does this training take?” Paul Nguyen asked.

“Mostly, it’s about practicing shields and gathering power. You need to be able to keep up physical, energy, and mental shields pretty much the whole time you’re near these bastards, so that’s what we get drilled at over and over. Their cyborgs use lasers, as do their tanks. Their support troops use normal firearms, and then their Mentalists, as they call them, will use magic on you, and if they can, they will try and control you.”

Northwest Ithria (Taroniah)

Eastern 2/3 of Ithria

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