He looked around and pointed at some of them in the bushes just behind him.

“You five, into the building. Top floor. Work your way to the end but try not to attract attention. When I say now mentally, open fire on them.”

The five men his wave had encompassed all nodded, and they headed inside the building. He signed to the rest to move forward under cover of the hedges in the garden fronting the road. Then the bushes ran out, so he signed for them to press up against the wall and move forward that way. The gunmen had opened fire too soon, Toshiro decided. Just then, the dull noise in the background suddenly got louder in the form of a grinding metal machine noise, and a tank appeared behind them and began grinding its way up the left-hand side of the road.

Behind it came a force of maybe ten cyborgs and twenty former civilians led by a fellow in a black suit. Toshiro did a double-take when he realized it was his nephew Akiro, who was supposed to be in his second year at university.

“Akiro! What are you doing here?” Toshiro yelled at the young man.

“Drafted. The whole university was. They’re starting to fly unaffected people and cyborgs over from Europe, but it’s a slow process. Everyone’s petrified of losing our last portal. I am now Provisional Mentalist Akiro Sato. So what’s going on?”

“Resistance is stiffening. There’s a bunch of fellows in that building up there. If your tank can blow them out, that would be very welcome.”

Akiro closed his eyes for a few moments, then smiled at Toshiro. The tank’s turret rotated, and then it fired at the building, taking out a large section of the top floor. Toshiro thought he saw at least one of the enemy fall down with the rubble.

“Come on!” He yelled, waving everyone forward, and led the charge.

They stumbled into the wrecked building but met no opposition. The enemy had evacuated the building, probably when they saw the tank coming, so he pressed on. The next door led them inside the hospital proper, and he discovered that many of the beds were still occupied despite the staff having fled. He directed Akiro to take most of the troops upstairs.

“Check the other floors!” He yelled, and then he pressed forward as his nephew disappeared up the stairs

A laser flashed past him from one of the cyborgs who had stayed with him.

“Is the broadcast power on?”

“Looks that way, sir.”

“Right. Clear all the floors in here.” He ordered and headed out of the building, leaving the Cyborgs to the unpleasant task.

It was harsh, but they didn’t have time to coddle patients too sick to move. Besides, the Japanese worlds had always eliminated a much higher proportion of the natives than the Russian or German branches of the Alliance. It made even more sense if there was not going to be any more zivvy to keep them under control. Then there was the Plague to worry about as well. Eliminating all the patients still here would make for a messy clean-up later, but that wasn’t his problem. He had to keep pushing and take as much territory as possible as quickly as possible before the defenders got organized. Given the increased gunfire he could hear as he exited the building, he had a feeling the natives were getting organized quicker than he had been hoping.

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Taroniah at War

“Sir.” The cyborg said, saluting. “I am Cyborg one eight two seven six, seventy-six. We have a composite force of twenty-six former household servants that have been assigned to your command. General Koga wants you to continue pushing south.”

“Hence the reinforcements. Right. I recognize you, and you’re now my second in command until another mentalist arrives. There’s what looks to be a hospital a block south that should be our first target. It will probably make a good Cybernetics Centre.” The cyborg nodded. “Take one of your squads west to the next crossroad and advance on the hospital along that street while I take the other half forward from here.”

“Sir.” The cyborg replied and began issuing orders to the servants.

Toshiro shook his head, turned, and began issuing orders to the cyborgs that had formed his entire force up until now.

“All you cyborgs fan along this block and move through the buildings. Check every room, and I mean every room, even the lady’s lavs. Treat all civilians fairly but firmly. Kill them if they resist or don’t follow orders promptly. Bring them all to the street here and put them under guard. Got that?”

The two senior cyborgs nodded. He left them to it and led his half of the the servant force west. The two trucks returned north, presumably to go back to the homeworld for more troops. There was no real opposition as he moved up the street. A couple of bullets came his way from an unseen sniper, but that was about it. Ahead of their advance, people were decamping from the buildings and fleeing in the opposite direction, which was actually a good thing. It would mean more mouths for the defenders to feed, and until they got a new Cybernetics Center up and running, there was not a lot they could do with masses of prisoners. Apart from killing them. Not that most of the True Men would have any problem with doing just that, despite it being a waste of potential manpower.

And then there were the rumors about the latest shipment of zivvy not arriving as scheduled. If there was no zivvy, they couldn’t chip the natives anyway, even if they got a Cybernetics Centre set up. He tried not to think about what the non-delivery of the zivvy meant. It had only been a breathless rumor that had swept the portal facility just as they’d prepped to open the portal to this world, and he’d had other things to worry about, so he hadn’t paid much attention. Was it just a break in the chain somewhere due to the plague? Was Natori sitting on their zivvy, or had Sendai kept it? Was it because of an attack on the 300? Shit, now that would be a disaster! Surely the Enemy wasn’t strong enough to attack the 300! They had reached about halfway up the block when several automatic rifles opened up without warning. Toshiro was holding a shield, so casualties were limited, but at least three of his men were hit, dead or just wounded; he wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to worry about the matter right then! The fire seemed to be coming from the yellow brick building that was on this side of the hospital. Some of the men dropped behind a parked car on the far side of the broad road. Another got stuck in the middle behind one of the trees that were planted in the median strip. The rest piled into the bushes on the right-hand side of the road.

Toshiro came to attention and saluted as soon as the General turned in his direction.

“Sir.”

“Report.” The General grunted, his eyes roaming the area.

Toshiro quickly outlined the situation, where he had sent troops, and pointed out they hadn’t really had a chance to search all the buildings in the immediate area. And he mentioned the big missile that had taken out the portal and the surrounding area.

“Yes. It destroyed the portal machinery and killed the portal maker. We’re down to one working portal interface at present. Right. Did you say the troops over there didn’t have a Mentalist in charge?” He pointed to the south.

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir, they don’t.”

“Very well. You are now in command of that force. I will get you more troops as they come through.”

“Sir!” He saluted and then hesitated, waiting for further information, but nothing came.

The General turned away, patently ignoring him, which he took as dismissal, so, after another look around, he headed south to take charge of that flank.

Damn. Only one portal for an invasion of a technological world was going to make this even harder than it had been. Who’s idea had this been? Of course, they needed a technological world to set up a cyborg and chip installation center. This place looked good to the scouts, being a technological world but not a strong one, but he had a horrible feeling it would be harder than the government thought. Their technology seemed higher than the scouts had reported, and they had certainly reacted quickly! No matter. He headed towards where he had sent the troops on this flank earlier and began assessing the situation.

The cyborgs he’d sent south had established a line on a road running north-south and were pushing south to extend the line. Fortunately, there was little opposition as the troops were getting very spread out. Looking to the south down the straight road, he could see hordes of civilians running for their lives. He brought the southern expansion to a halt and did a quick recon up and down the line in a captured civilian vehicle driven by a cyborg who had claimed he could drive the machine. With a bit of practice, the cyborg probably would be able to drive the vehicle.

The city, or at least the main center area of it, was laid out on a north to south and east to west grid of roads. He was only fired on a couple of times as he drove along the road that a sign told him was called Yara Street. That sounded almost Russian, but he was sure the people here spoke English, or at least that is what the scouts had claimed. The street ran right down to the shore of the bay the city was built along,  stopping where a green park strip ran along the shore.

He returned to the main street just in time for two trucks to roll up crammed with what looked like civilians. They dismounted, and he found he had a platoon of servants. They were armed with an assortment of weapons and under the command of three cyborgs. Two were older cyborgs and they were in direct command of half the force each, while the third was a genuine military cyborg who was in overall command of the small company.

Abe Fushida came trotting up the alley in his full Mentalist armor, followed by a squad of armored military cyborgs. He could hear vehicle engines down the alley, so reinforcements were finally coming through and none too soon.

“What’s happening?” Abe asked glancing around.

Toshiro pointed back at where the first portal had been.

“They used some sort of low-flying missile to take out the portal.”

Abe nodded. “Yeah. The backblast took out the portal maker, too. It leaves us with only one healthy portal maker now.”

“What I figured. I persuaded the engineers to put the second portal down that alley. The access problems don’t matter as it beats getting it taken out by one of the damn missiles.”

“Yeah. Good point. So where are the enemy?”

“Heaviest over there.” He pointed over beyond where the blast site was. “Just skirmishers and snipers on this side. At least so far. The first job is to get a perimeter established. I suggest pushing that way, though. Tackle them head-on.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Fushida turned to the cyborgs with him. “Right, troops. That way.”

He led them at the trot off towards where the first portal had been. He had barely disappeared around the corner before two truckloads of cyborgs came up the alley, and he directed them after Fushida. Likewise, the three tanks that came next. Two more truckloads of cyborgs were next, and he ordered them over to the side to unload. He wanted them to begin deploying against the snipers and such that were harassing them from the south. Three more tanks came through, and he directed them to the north to start pushing that way and sent three truckloads of cyborgs in their direction as well.

Another armored mentalist leading a squad of armored cyborgs came trotting up the alley. He didn’t know Jiro Asano all that well, but technically, Toshiro was his superior.

“Asano. Take your men to the north and take control up there. Watch out for large missiles.”

“How big?” Asano asked in surprise.

“They took out the first portal with one. It left a crater ten meters across.”

“Shit! Okay, we’ll keep our heads down.”

Asano led his men north. Two trucks of cyborgs followed who he sent north, and there seemed to be more explosions in that direction. Three engineer trucks with power generation gear to replace the stuff lost earlier came up the alley. He flagged down the lead truck.

“Head over there. See if you can find an empty garage or something to put that in so that it is out of sight. The locals have big damn missiles.”

“Yes, sir!” The driver replied, and they headed in the direction he had indicated.

More trucks with cyborgs. He sent one after the engineers to provide security. The next two he sent south and then two west. They were followed by a big black all-terrain vehicle which pulled up, and General Akira Koga got out along with three armored bodyguard cyborgs who spread out around them, watching everywhere.

::Report:: He said mentally.

The squad leader was out of sight but heard his mental command.

::The portal is gone, sir. At least a dozen of our cyborgs are dead, and many more injured.::

::Right. Organize defensive positions as we can expect a counterattack. Hopefully, the beacon for the second portal was undamaged, and they can get it going soon. I am going to go and find the engineers and make sure they hide the portal location to avoid a recurrence of this attack.::

He left the cyborg commander to carry out the task of organizing the defense, and he ran over to get behind one of the knocked-out tanks. As he did, he began to hear things again, although only faintly. He was sure that the engineers were over that way somewhere, so he made his way in that direction as quickly as possible. Strangely there was no sign of a counterattack under cover of blowing up the portal. He had no sooner thought this than heard shots ring out, still strangely muffled.

Something caromed off the wall in front of him, and he flinched as dust and chips of stone hit him. He tightened his kinetic shield and felt something impact it, but then the shooting died away. Sounds were starting to sound normal as he finally found the engineers. They were setting up the beacon in the middle of an intersection.

“No, no!” He yelled. “Find somewhere out of sight, or they’ll destroy it as well.”

He marched over and faced the man in charge, who looked upset with being interrupted.

“Move the beacon somewhere else. They have missiles. We need to have it out of sight.”

The man finally shrugged.

“Okay. So where?”

Idiot, Toshiro thought to himself. He looked around the area. There was nowhere obvious to put it here, so he headed up the street away from where the other portal had been. Here we are, he thought as he found a small alley between two buildings. The alley led to a parking area that was out of sight due to being surrounded by buildings.

“Down here!” He yelled and trotted back out of the ally. “Put it down at the end of that ally, there’s room around the corner.”

The engineering leader came down the street and wandered into the alley. As the man walked back to where Toshiro waited, there was a sudden spray of gunshots. Toshiro threw up a shield.

“Quickly. Get the beacon down there and the portal open. We need reinforcements quickly!”

“Right, men. Let’s get the beacon set up down here.” The leader of the engineers waved to his men, at which point they hopped in their truck, turned it around, and drove into the ally.

Just as they disappeared into the alley, Toshiro’shield blocked some shots that had been aimed at him. He held the shield in place for five minutes, and then came the distinctive crackling sound of the portal forming. There was a lull in the shooting, and he fell back into the mouth of the alley a little to see what was happening. There were explosions and a lot of shooting from back where the first portal had connected, but he couldn’t see what was happening clearly from where he was.

In the face of the disaster at home, it was decided that this world would make a good target for them to take over and move their population. Their tech was good but somewhat limited. While most of the northern hemisphere was still regarded as a radioactive wasteland, most of the major cities in the south had been nuked as well. Australia, or Ostraya, as they called it here, was the best organized and most advanced of the remaining states and would make a good base. He understood that Indonesia to the north was a hodge-podge of independent islands, while South America was an ongoing war zone and pretty chaotic. Their information on the rest of the planet was much more limited.

With the plague hitting Tomkya, Natori had stopped all contact, and a desperate government had decided to invade here and move to this world as a stop-gap measure until they could find something better or a cure was found for the plague. Toshiro thought the whole operation was all too panicked and rushed, but he was just an Intelligence Bureau mentalist drafted into the invasion army as most of the senior commanders and the best troops had been hit with the plague and were either powerless or in revolt.

Well, if he had to be a stand-in grunt, he would try and do as good a job as possible. Another couple of trucks with cyborgs bounced through and pulled over to the left, where they began dismounting and deploying. Suddenly, he could hear a high-pitched whine, almost like a jet aircraft. It was coming from over to the right somewhere, but nothing was in sight. The helicopter was now hovering in plain view, taking a good look at them, but it was ready to drop behind a building if needed. It was at least five kilometers away, he decided. He moved over to where the cyborgs were unloading.

“Deploy over there. We need more room. Clear those two buildings.”

He pointed where he wanted them to go and then heard a different sound that sounded a lot like the roar of a rocket. Shit!

“Incoming!” He yelled and threw himself on the ground with the truck between him and the portal.

He put up a hard shield even as the startled Cyborgs began to drop, and then the world ended. Or it at least it seemed to end. The truck rocked, shook and the force of the blast flipped it over on its side, the cab just missing him as it crashed onto the ground. The truck’s underside rang with repeated clangs as metal debris from the portal shred crashed into it. A vehicle must have been passing through the portal when the missile hit. Finally, the heat, pressure, and noise stopped, and he peeked around the corner of the horizontal truck cabin.

The smooth pavement where the portal had attached was gone. Instead, there was an enormous crater with smoke still rising from it and small pieces of shiny metal scattered around from whatever was shredded. Two of the tanks were over on their sides, and the third was missing a large part of its turret where something had impacted. He couldn’t hear anything but then realized the cyborg nearest to him was saying something, which meant he was deaf, although hopefully it was just an effect of the blast, and his hearing would come back soon.

Chapter 3

Escape

Toshiro Ozawa looked around as he stepped through the gate. The cyborgs had cleared the immediate area with just a few bodies left lying around in the burning vehicle that he guessed was a police car from the markings and lights. The vehicle looked ancient and appeared to be powered by an internal combustion engine, yet other aspects of these people’s tech seemed quite modern. The one thing he knew for certain was that the scouts had found no evidence of the ability to construct gates anywhere on this world. A squad of cyborgs followed him through the gate.”

“Four Six, take your squad and clear that building.” He ordered the leader of the squad, pointing to the combination warehouse and office building off to the right.

The leader cyborg led his cyborg soldiers off toward the building. The technicians jumped through and set up the ramps while he surveyed the scene. There appeared to be several people peering at them from down the main street that ran past the warehouse, but everybody in the immediate area had fled. There was a noise to the right, and a flying machine appeared. It stayed low and kept buildings between it and the portal but was clearly studying their position. Several of the cyborgs guarding the gate got off shots at it, but as far as he could tell, they all missed.

He wished he had a high-powered sniper rifle to try a shot, but it was too far away for the ordinary weapons to be accurate, and the cyborg’s lasers dispersed before they reached the target. No matter, it would be almost impossible for the locals to stop them now, even with the problems at home. The ramp placement was finished and locked down, the gateman signaled, and the first of three tanks lined up on the other side of the gate eased its way up and through the portal and onto this world. Two more followed closely behind, and they fanned out to take up defensive positions around the portal. They were followed by five troop trucks that spread out, and the cyborgs they were carrying began dismounting to expand their defensive perimeter even further.

Behind these came three technician trucks. They moved around behind the portal and began assembling a portable power generator as this world lacked broadcast power. Two more tanks clanked through, and three more troop trucks came through that drove over to the right before beginning to unload their cyborgs to enlarge their beachhead. The troop trucks were followed by three engineering vehicles. Two would set power pylons while the third combined with the special strike squad in the next two vehicles to find a good place for a second beacon so another portal could be opened.

Unfortunately, their third and fourth portal facilities had been struck by the plague, so two were all they had that were usable at the moment. He was glad he was in the first wave and not back at home trying to control the massive crowd of True Men, their families, and servants who were all desperate to flee the plague. The panic that had ensued after the plague hit the capital was amazing. This world had been found decades ago and marked as not being worth the effort to conquer because of the radioactive ruins, which were much worse in the northern hemisphere.

“So how come you can shield yourself strongly but can’t pull in a lot of power?”

“I can only shield myself strongly in a mental way. I think that is as much about personality as strength. A physical shield, on the other hand, is all about magical strength, which is why I was weak at them.”

She paused and nodded at Andrew. “Practice your shields for a month or two, and then I might be able to show you something really cool.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Now, a sleep spell is about adjusting their brainwaves to drop them into sleep, while a stun spell is related to the force push spell. Instead of pushing big, it applies limited force to the person’s brain and knocks back and forth against the inside of the skull. It’s rather like a concussion, and you can do damage to people if you are not super careful. I was never steady enough, power-wise, to try it.”

“Once you have you have shielding down and are steady, I will show you push, and then we can go from there.”

“Yeah. Thanks, mum!” Andrew beamed at his parent and trotted off.

Over the next couple of months, he worked on his mental shield practiced collecting power from first the sun, then the air around him even when inside. On one occasion when his mother had started cooking dinner, and his father hadn’t gotten home yet, he cheekily pulled power from the stove. It worked well, except for the food on the stove failing to cook. After laughing, his mother told him to go away before he ruined dinner.

She taught him the sleep spell and one that made people spin on the spot. The stun spell she taught him theory. She was reluctant to do it herself because her abilities were erratic, and she claimed rather weak. They sure impressed him, though! He promised he’d only use the stun spell in a dire emergency. He became really good at Push and his physical Shield very quickly. The school bully threat might have had something to with that!

He worked on his energy shield as well, although the only test he had was not feeling hot when standing in the sun or approaching the stove when it was on. Other things mentioned in the journal he couldn’t work out. Far Seeing worked like a telescope, apparently. He had a couple of ideas to follow up on, but nothing just worked straight off, so he’d shelved that for the moment. Levitation he was still working on too.

Unnoticeable, he deduced, was more a mental compulsion on those around him not to notice him. When he was confident he had it working, he tested it out by walking past two of the bullies who regularly tried to pick on him in the main street. They looked at him briefly and then kept talking as they walked in the opposite direction. Yes!

Over the next two years, he kept slowly getting better and better at magic. Gradually, over time, things in his grandmother’s journal that had made no sense at first he slowly deciphered. He narrowed down the push spell and began punching holes in tree trunks barely half a centimeter wide, and by the time his eighteenth birthday approached, he could punch right through a small tree from ten meters away.

And then the invasion happened.

Sorry people – real life has been a bit hectic

By the time he finished reading the journal, he had much greater theoretical knowledge of what spells his grandmother had available and what they were used for without much practical information on how the spells were crafted, which was a bit frustrating. Over the next few months, he kept re-reading parts of the journal while trying to nut out how she did things. The key seemed to be collecting power which wasn’t really explained in detail, but from a couple of indirect references, he decided it involved absorbing sunshine.

One afternoon when his dad had gone fishing with a mate, his mother asked him how he was going with his grandmother’s stuff.

“Okay, I guess. She mentions quite a few of the things she could do but never explains how she did them.”

“Like what? His mother asked.

“Hang on. I’ve made a list.”

He ducked into his room and retrieved the list he’d made. He brought it back out to the living room where his mother was waiting.

“Right. Let’s see. Sleep, Stun, Shield, Push, Laugh, Hiccup, and Fireball. She also mentions something called bubbles and a spell to make her unnoticeable.”

“I never could work out what she meant by bubbles. I could sort of do the unnoticeable spell, but if I moved, it didn’t work very well. The other spells I learned were Sleep and Stun. Push I lacked the strength for, and she never taught me how to do a Fireball. There were two types of Shield spells. There is a mental Shield that blocks your mental projection and stops things like Sleep and a physical Shield that stops objects. I was okay at the mental Shield but lousy at the Physical one. You can sense people magically?”

“Yes. You are really bright.”

“Oh. Thanks. So close your eyes and watch me mentally.”

He did so, and her glow damped right down until it was about as bright as a dog.

“Wow! How did you do that?”

“I put up my mental shield. Think of a mirror, double-sided, surrounding your head. It keeps your thoughts in and stops others from getting through to you. Come outside.”

She led him onto the porch at the back of the house and had him sit on the deck crosslegged.

“Close your eyes and feel the sun on your skin. Feel the heat flowing into your blood and spreading around your body. Now imagine the double-sided mirror around your head.”

She closed her own eyes and could sense his shaky shield.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes. Now let it go. Practice that every day. As you get stronger and more comfortable doing it, eventually, you will do it automatically. Now feel that power flowing through you again. That is how you power all the spells. Now let the power dissipate from your body into the air around you. Good. Holding too much power can be dangerous, apparently. I could never pull in enough power for that to be a problem.”