“Not a vehicle bay with tanks and cyborgs?”

“Nah. Looks like someone’s front yard.”

That was odd as normally the gates were opened from a large warehouse-like complex with lots of machinery on the far side that was required to create the dimensional gate. Mind you, he’d only ever encountered one gate before they took it down, but the gate had definitely been inside a large building, and some of the Japanese prisoners had confirmed that all the gate complexes looked very similar as they had all been constructed to the same blueprint, apparently.

The guy was dressed in casual, indeterminate clothes and looked to be in his early twenties. The young woman was very tall, but he could see that despite her height, she was quite young, probably late teens. She was dressed in a dark grey jacket and pants outfit over a black t-shirt with lots of pockets. They looked neither Oriental nor part of the Triple Alliance, as far as he could see.

“Hello.” The man said in English.

They were both keeping their hands in view and appeared to be unarmed, which meant nothing, as they were both clearly mentalists. Andrew hopped down from the ATV and stepped to the side to make sure Simpson had a clear field of fire before walking forward a little. She had her rifle resting on the window sill of the ATV door but not pointed straight at the two strangers.

“I’m Lieutenant Harris of the Ostrayan Defense Forces. Who are you, please?”

The two looked at each other.

“Officially, I am Destiny Quicksliverdaut of the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation on Embassy. My partner is, technically, Master Mentalist Lord Roland Fey, currently attached to the University of Embassy while he researches his Doctorate in Mentalist Studies at the University of the Alliance on Home.”

Andrew had no idea what the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation was, but he knew what the Alliance was. He heard the click behind him as Reynolds took the safety of her rifle. Lord Fey held up his hands, palms out, in a sign of peace.

“You people obviously had negative interactions with the Alliance, yes?”

“You could say that,” Andrew answered dryly.

“Well, you have nothing to fear from us. I’m an academic, and my partner is a junior agent of Disco. She was experimenting with opening gates, and we saw the gate scars this world has and naturally started with the northern hemisphere, which is normally the center of civilization on most near Earths.” He looked around. “Your world appears to have had a nuclear war at some time in the past, and then, I take it,” and he nodded at the ruined buildings across the road. “One of the Alliance worlds attacked you. Is that correct?”

“Yes. From the surviving prisoners, we learned that the world they came from was called Tier 4 Tomkya. They decided to invade us when they were attacked by something called the Plague. Later on, they were reinforced by people from Tier 3 Natori after their Tier 2 world was grounded following a failed attack on the Alliance’s home world. Natori had trouble first with the Plague and then with the zivvy remover and decided to throw in their lot with their Tier 4 and move here as well.”

Simpson was already stowing her portable cannon in the back of the ATV and grinned at him as she jumped into the rear compartment.

“Henderson, you drive,” Andrew commanded, jumping in the passenger seat. Stevens piled in the back alongside Simpson.

In seconds they were racing up the main drag with the other ATV right behind them and turned right into Mercer Street while Stevens got on the radio to let their commander know what was happening. They roared under the uncollapsed section of the bridge there, then down the slope, past the park, and into North Gilong. The downed overpass had been bulldozed enough that the road was passable, and they raced past the burnt-out shops facing the old highway and then the cricket and football grounds. He closed his eyes and felt for the gate.

“Next right.”

Henderson did his best to get the thing up on two wheels as he turned into the side street, and they powered down the road heading for the bay.

“Slow down.” He ordered and felt for the gate.

There were a few civilians about, a work crew trying to repair one of the brick warehouses, presumably hired by the owners of the business who were trying to get things going again without having to do a total rebuild. They approached an intersection that had empty ground on either side, apart from a small rectangular shed on the left corner. The gate was there somewhere.

“It’s in or behind that shed.” He said, pointing.

There was no driveway from the side street, and there didn’t appear to be one from the street they were on either, so Andrew assumed that the entrance was further down. The lack of a driveway didn’t stop Henderson, who simply drove over the destroyed fence and up the dirt bank while Simpson brought her rifle to bear and Andrew threw a shield around the ATV. The second machine followed them but kept behind as per the doctrine they had worked out.

There was all manner of junk piled up in the yard at the rear side of the shed, piles of rusting somethings, old crates, and drums. Plus, two people who were attempting to work their way through it. They must’ve heard the ATV coming because they’d stopped what they were doing and were simply standing there seemingly defenseless, but Andrew could tell they were well-shielded. The male was a bit under two meters and had dark hair. The female was slim, tall, two meters or more, and had dark glossy hair that seemed to glimmer purple in the light.

Behind them was a large door on the side of the shed that was standing open, and through the door, he could see an apparently rotating lighted circle that looked a lot like a gate. Unlike the Japanese gate, which he could see through, he couldn’t see through the rotating gate as the center looked foggy to him.

“What do you see through the gate?” He asked, hoping someone else could see something.

 “Looks like a lawn or at least a grassy area,” Henderson answered.

The following weeks were full of horror as the full extent of the Japanese invader’s lack of regard for the rules of war became evident. Hundreds of local civilians had been killed in the fighting despite the best efforts of the authorities to evacuate civilians in front of the  Japanese advance. Hundreds, possibly thousands, more who had been taken prisoner had been killed by the enemy after the fighting was over when they proved to be useless to the Japanese. No one who was crippled, paraplegic, or unable to work physically survived at all after their occupation of an area. Mass graves were found, and the laborious task of identifying the bodies began.

Captain Greaves found Andrew, and he was carted off to the Ostrayan headquarters, where senior officers congratulated him, and he was given several medals. Apparently, his report had been quite eye-opening. They were particularly interested in the fact that he could detect the beacons when they were operating. It seemed none of the other Ostrayan mentalists could detect the beacons like it appeared he could, so he was promoted to Lieutenant and put in charge of a beacon-hunting squad. He was given a Sergeant, six soldiers armed with a variety of weapons, and at his special request, Jessica Simpson was transferred in from the Nuzeeland corps.

He quickly discovered that the Sergeant and the six troopers were some sort of special forces, in the traditional sense of the word, if not undercover SAS, and weren’t overly impressed with being assigned to a rather uninspiring newly promoted Lieutenant. Simpson impressed them with her shooting, and they both impressed them once he started teaching her how to do magic, which they now had time to begin. He developed a routine, which the Sergeant in the special forces chaps kept him to religiously of checking for a beacon every hour on the hour regardless of what they were doing.

Epilogue

Andrew felt something mentally and closed his eyes, where he could see the silver thread reaching toward him. It wasn’t all jagged like the Japanese gate threads but rather smooth like a hose. It connected with the world somewhere in the north and well away from where he was, but even as he watched mentally, it wiggled, broke free, and moved. He could see it moving around the world in some definition of around and world, and then it reattached somewhere in the ruined industrial area in North Gilong.

He decided that it was definitely not one of the Triple Alliance powered gates, at least not one of those he was familiar with, but he was almost certain it was a gate of some description. The Japs, or someone else from the Triple Alliance,  had twice tried to reconnect with bright, jagged, writhing electrical snakes but hadn’t found any beacons to attach to. He had watched mentally as they writhed around briefly each time and then snapped out of existence.

“Heads up. A portal has attached somewhere in that ruined industrial area in North Gilong.  Load up! It doesn’t feel like a Jap one, but I could be wrong, so we need to get there fast and shut it down before they get another army through!” He yelled at his people.

Sorry – forgot Ostraya this week – next week.
The Harrecan Problem is next – still WIP so some time away yet – maybe end of October but STCWN (Subject to change without notice)
Taroniah at Sea (either side of Xmas) will be followed by Kyron the Conqueror (March-April)

After that the timetable gets variable as we are building a house in the country at the delightfully named Emu Vale with the build supposed to be starting in March – this will no doubt involve numerous trips up to the Southern Downs to check on progress (2.5 hours each way)
And then we will be moving – having to get internet etc organized – so no doubt more interruptions and delays.
I will do my best to keep up the schedule but no promises.
The Princess & The Gangsters is still my planned work after the next Kyron and then Taroniah at (Something) and Kyron the (Something) These two are probably the start of the 4 book battle with the big bad but again STCWN.

Next: After Ostraya I have the problem of what to serialize:
1. The one unpublished finished book I have written (needs a re-write but hay, good enough for here, right?)
2. Snippets from books I am working on but are NOWHERE near finished
3. Snippets from the next Taroniah or Kyron book – might be a bit spoilerish though
4. Serialize the first book I wrote here – On The Rocks – might garner some new interest in that series

Please let me know which you would prefer!!

It has been brought to my attention that some of you still have the wrong e-book file for Kyron the Magician (Kyron the Bowman)
If that is the case please contact me I will send you a pdf file for hte book.

Peter

Kyron and his mercenary army have taken the Marhingian capital, killed the King and most of the Kingdom’s nobles. Kyron now must decide if this is a raid or a conquest and, if a conquest, how he will organize his newly gained Kingdom. King Kyron the First sounds pretty good to a farmboy from Malia, he has to admit. Unfortunately, the neighbors are acting anything but neighborly, and someone’s trying to assassinate him. If that weren’t enough, his old friend Prince Nalren and the Kingdom of Framland are threatened by their neighbors. It appears Kyron’s life was never meant to be easy!

A bit late – sorry

“Bloody hell,” Simpson said, looking over his shoulder. “Is it still working?”

“I’m not sure. You want to go and tell the Captain we found another one while I look around and see if there are any others?”

That attracted the attention of some other soldiers who had come over to see what they were doing.

“What you’re looking at, bro?” One of them asked.

“Japanese beacon for their portal. We destroyed one around the corner up there, which was the one they were using, so I’m not sure that this one is still working.”

“Shit!”

The men began backing away, and then a fellow who had lieutenant’s tabs on his collar came up.

“Did you say that was a Japanese beacon?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know whether it’s working or not.”

“Right. We’ll assume it’s still operable, and I’ll get some serve defensive situations set up.”

He turned away and began organizing the men that were present. They began setting up barricades at each end of the section of the road and then calling for heavy weapons. Andrew looked at Simpson and shrugged.

“Personally, I’d rather they didn’t have a working beacon to home in on,” Andrew said quietly.

She grinned and nodded. He looked down at the beacon and used a slice to cut the plastic device in half. There was a bit of a spark and a puff of smoke, and that was it. They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed back toward her Captain. They found him at the head of the alley sitting on a bench having a drink of water. He gave them a nod as they came up.

“We found another beacon down there in the next section of this road, sir. I couldn’t tell whether it was working or not, but it still seemed to be at least partly functional, so I made sure it wasn’t working anymore.”

The Captain nodded. He looked tired. Glancing at Simpson, she looked tired as well, and he guessed that he probably looked that way too. It had been a busy few days. He felt like he had stretched his magic every which way fighting the enemy mentalists. And he still preferred to call it magic rather than calling it mentalist abilities. From that point on, all that was left was mopping up a few pockets of resistance. A few diehards kept fighting till the end, but most of the mentalists had been killed, and without their control, the Japanese civilians began surrendering en masse when it was obvious the war was over, and they had lost but weren’t going to be mistreated. Most of the survivors were women and children as the men had been used in the front lines and taken huge casualties, particularly in the last weeks as the Ostrayans, with help from the Nuzeelanders and even the Indonesians, had got their act together and counter-attacked.

The portals worked by honing in on a beacon that was embedded in the ground where the portal was supposed to open. He was almost certainly looking at an accidentally revealed part of the beacon. He sliced the concrete into long lines at an angle each and heaved the bits of concrete out of the small trench he had made, revealing a glassy rod thing. He had no idea whether it was still working on not, but a couple of quick slices made sure that it wasn’t working now. He looked around a bit, but there was nothing else to see, so he turned to find Simpson standing right behind him, taking her by surprise a little.

She was so close and so tempting he threw caution to the wind and leaned forward and kissed her. Her initial reaction was to pull away, but then she stopped herself and returned the kiss. Yes! They didn’t get to kiss for very long because they could both hear the sound of boots coming down the alley behind them. They broke apart and turned to see her Captain and a bunch of Nuzeeland troops spreading out to study the area.

“Jesus!” The Captain said, looking at all the little bits and pieces and some not-so-little bits and pieces of metal lying around. “What happened here?”

“I found out that when an armored personnel carrier hits the side of one of their portals, it explodes and shreds. Very energetically. There is no other way to describe it. It’s a very energetic process, as you can see by the scorch marks and the holes in the wall over there.”

He pointed to where some of the bits of shrapnel had punched straight through a brick wall. The Captain walked over and had a look.

“Damn!.”

“If you want to wander over here, Captain. This is the beacon the portal uses to lock onto. I’ve disabled this one, but we need to find out if they have any others in the city.”

“Right. Good point. I’ll get some techies in here to have a look at that and see what they can do. It would be good to know what signal it sent out.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” Andrew said, thinking about it for a moment.

He closed his eyes and looked into the blue, something he avoided doing normally. There was a spark not too far away. He orientated himself to face the direction it was and then opened his eyes again. He noted the direction he was facing in relation to the alley and turned back to the Captain.

“I think I might be able to tell where there’s another one. There’s something I feel anyway. Shall I go and have a look?”

“Yes. Certainly. You get on with that while I get my tech people in here to study the remains of this beacon.”

“Sir,” Andrew said, saluting the Captain, which the Nuzeeland officer returned, but not before frowning at Andrew. As far as Andrew was concerned, this was no longer a combat zone, just a debris field. He turned and headed up the alley with Simpson right behind him. When they emerged onto the road, he stopped to take a bearing on the sparky thing he could somehow detect. Straight ahead. He moved back to the main road they had come up just a short while before and took another bearing on the spark. It was just over there. This looked like it had been a wide road that had been narrowed down in this section, and part of it turned into a park. There was a disturbed strip of dirt and grass just off the street. He bent down, pulled out his knife, and started digging in the dirt. Then he hit something that sounded almost plastic, cleared away more of the dirt, and revealed the shape of another beacon.

The two men who had jumped through onto Andrew’s world and set up the ramp looked around nervously as if expecting to see people waiting for them, and when they spotted Andrew, they yelled something in Japanese that meant nothing to him. The people who had jumped through the circle were gesturing and speaking to the people inside the warehouse, who then turned and stared at Andrew. There were several cyborgs and a lot of people in uniform staring in his direction. The people who had donned the white cloth coverings threw them off, said something to the group standing there, and disappeared from view.

“Surely they must realize that their invasion has failed, with us standing here,” Simpson said in his ear.

The cyborgs carried large caliber rifles, which they now opened fire with, the impacts rocking Andrew back on his feet. He began to retreat towards the corner of the building, but at a nudge from Simpson, he stopped, and she stuck her rifle through the small hole he had opened in his shield for her and fired, taking down one of the cyborgs. He resumed his backward shuffle as the APC, or whatever it was, began to move forward, swinging its turret around so that the rather large-looking barrel lined up to fire at him. Having learned from his previous experience, he angled the shield up and to the left, and when the vehicle fired, the shell hit his shield and deviated up into the air before exploding. Fortunately, it went far enough up and to the left that they didn’t get showered in shrapnel.

They reached the corner just as the front of the vehicle reached the top of the ramp, and it nosed forward from the other world onto their side of the portal. At least there was a bit of sunshine here at the corner of the building, and he pulled more power and then slashed, slicing across the vehicle’s tracks. The armored vehicle slewed sideways away from Andrew, and then it hit the edge of the glowing circle, and it seemed like the world had ended in a flash of bright light. He felt himself speed up as he pushed Simpson back and got behind the building just as large pieces of metal came flying past and crashed into the building on the other side of the alley. The bits of metal kept flying for some time, or at least what felt like some time, but which turned out to be barely a second or two. One piece looped up in the air, over the roof of the building they were sheltering against and crashed into the alley behind them.

Finally, it all calmed down, and they looked at each other before he cautiously peeked around the corner. The parking lot was strewn with bits of metal, and there was a large burnt area right where the ramp had been, and that was it. No portal, no Japanese. They walked forward to where the portal had been. Parts of the concrete had been obliterated by the blast or gouged by the metal, perhaps. He could see there was some sort of rectangular object buried in the concrete. He remembered what he’d been told about how their portal worked, the very limited information they had gleaned from a few prisoners who’d been chipped slaves from other worlds that weren’t Japanese ones and who had been willing to talk. Most non-Japanese prisoners were pretty girls with purplish hair, a hair color that was very popular with Japanese lords for female slaves.

“This is where we earn the big bucks, Jess.” He said with a grin over his shoulder.

Simpson just shrugged, then started getting out of the commander’s hatch of the APC with her hand cannon.

“We’ll do what we can, sir.” She said to the Major as she stepped down onto the ground.

They walked forward to the barricade, which a couple of soldiers pulled open, and they moved up to the entrance to the alley. Andrew thought about sticking his head around for a quick look but then decided to go bold. He pulled power from the sun that was shining down the length of the narrow road they were on and then boldly stepped around the corner with Simpson bringing up the rear, staying snuggled up behind him. The alley had a row of shops at ground level on the right and a blank wall on the left that led to a multistory unit block further down the alley. They had just reached the southern edge of the multistory unit block when a man stepped around the corner of the building from what looked to be a parking area at the end of the alley. He had tall black boots, dark pants, and a shirt that was similar to the mentalist Andrew had fought earlier but lacked the coat.

“Surrender,” Andrew called out in English.

“I am a True Man. I do not surrender to livestock.” The man said in English with a strong Japanese accent.

He threw a pencil-thin force punch at Andrew, which caught Andrew by surprise. He had his shield tinted as normal so that Simpson could see it, and a spot directly in front of his forehead was pushed back almost to his skin, the pressure forcing his head back slightly. Fuck! Right. He returned the favor, throwing as hard a force punch as he could. The Jap was still staring at him like he expected Andrew to fall over. Andrew’s punch must’ve gone through the man’s shield because a small dot appeared on the man’s forehead, and then a spray of material appeared from behind his head. The Japanese man’s expression changed to a look of surprise, and then he keeled over, falling flat on his back and not moving.

Andrew stepped forward, pulling a bit more power from the air, although there wasn’t so much to be had in this shaded alley. He heard a crackling noise and rounded the corner to the car parking area just in time to see a glowing circle appear. There were four people on this side of the circle, all looking back at Andrew. They had white cloth cowls of some description over their ordinary clothes. As soon as the center of the circle changed to a warehouse or something, they jumped through, even as two other men jumped the other way and began setting up a ramp. There were other people in the warehouse and what looked like a tank or an APC of some description. Not a design that he had seen the Japanese use before.