Deception City: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 5) (15 page)

Danny spoke up. “Looking at the map, the weakest point in our lines is where our flank ends and Ronin territory begins. I’ve been trying to get them to guard their end more, but most of their forces are tied up around Davenport.”

That elicited a buzz around the room. There were still a lot of hard feeling from Ronin leaving the attack into Ragnarok territory, and Danny couldn’t blame them. But that was secondary to the real issue at hand.

“Anyhow,” he spoke up. “That area is heavily forested and has a major river they’d need to cross, but that’s not an impossible obstacle, as we all know. I think Ronin is relying on the terrain to slow them down enough to move reinforcements north.”

“Or us,” Morgan pointed out. “We can’t exactly ignore them mowing through the area around our western flank.”

Danny shrugged. “Also a possibility. Whatever the case, I think we should assume that Ragnarok’s been studying the situation, and I’d imagine they’re smart enough to pick out a weak point like that.”

“So we can guess that they might try to launch a flank attack in that direction,” Shayna said. “With the objective of completely flanking our front line defenses and threatening our rear areas, I’m guessing.”

“Yes, that’s my guess as well,” Blake said. “Think of it this way. No matter how hard we fight or what gains we make in Milwaukee, the fact remains that we need supplies from the south. Without the land corridor we’d have to use water or air transport, and neither of those are sustainable.”

“So the attack there doesn’t even have to fully succeed,” Danny elaborated. “It just has to threaten to cut us off from our supply lines in the south. Enough to make us pull back, maybe even south of Old Chicago.”

“Tall order, for them,” Aaron commented.

“And quite possible as well,” Gina pointed out. “We’re completely screwed if we can’t get supplies from the south, and Ragnarok will have plenty of opportunities to rampage through our vital areas. We’d have to withdraw to protect them, at least.”

“And then there goes months of work,” Blake said. “I don’t think anyone wants that.”

Indeed, Danny thought. Months of hard work, time, and ferocious fighting for the ground they had gained, only for it to be lost in an instant. Something like that could be extremely demoralizing.

“In any case,” he continued, “we need to have some sort of contingency plan in case they try that. For now we can use Raven and Bravo Wolf, but that’s not going to be enough to stop them cold. We can use the terrain and our fieldcraft to slow them down, but a platoon’s not going to be able to stop a force the size of a battalion.”

“We’re pretty thin on troops as it is,” Gina pointed out.

“That probably means you’ll need reinforcements from elsewhere, and we’re probably your best bet,” Morgan spoke up. “David thought this might happen.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to need the extra troops,” Blake said. “I know that takes them away from the Milwaukee offensive, but it doesn’t matter if we end up getting flanked.”

Morgan nodded. “The rest of them might not like it, but it’s the best course of action.”

“I’ll talk to my battalion to try and get some support from them,” Danny said. Zach and Nora would defer to his judgment, and Liz could probably help convince Anna as well.

“Any guesses as to what they might bring?” Tyler asked.

“The terrain makes armor attack impossible,” Blake said. “There’s just no way they can move anything larger than an ATV through the forests, and even that might be dicey.”

“They’ll have to bring light infantry,” Danny added. “And if they want a breakthrough, they’ll bring their best. That probably means they’ll be bringing the Valkyries or Fenris.”

He let those words hang in the air for a moment while everyone absorbed their grim implications. Their enemy’s best troops were likely to be stacked against their western flank. That meant they were in for a nasty, brutal fight with heavy casualties.

Not ideal, Danny thought, but at least no one could blame them for having it easy. Hydra was going to have tough sledding ahead, both inside and outside the city.

“
A
ll units report your status
.”

“Eagle Lead, ready.”

“Lion Lead, ready.”

“Viper Lead, ready.”

Selene looked down at her watch, waiting for her turn to respond. She could hear the sounds of her platoon preparing their equipment around her. Veteran troops would always make last minute checks of their weapons and gear just to ensure it was in working order. The last thing they needed in the middle of a fight was a jam or another failure.

“Fox Lead, ready.”

Selene perked up at the sound of Liz’s voice on the radio. That meant her turn was coming up soon.

“Spirit Lead, ready.”

“Alpha Wolf, ready,” she spoke up.

“That’s everyone,” Bryce said.

“Right,” Cody agreed. “We’ll launch the attack as planned. Bravehart Company, you have permission to open fire.”

“Roger,” Bryce replied.

A few seconds later the thunder of heavy artillery reverberated through the district.

Selene felt the impacts, each with their own distinctive characteristics. The 81mm and 75mm shells only caused slight vibrations at this distance, while the 120s and 155s shook the ground and rattled teeth. She imagined that it felt mostly the same to the Ragnarok troops on the other end. Right now there was little they could do but cower in their positions and hope a shell didn’t land right on top of them.

The lack of counterbattery fire surprised her. Ragnarok didn’t have anything equal to the 155s, but they had 75mm artillery and mortars. Selene thought they would have used them to suppress Hydra’s artillery, but so far there had been no response. Maybe they were in another spot, or maybe Black Wolf’s raids along the supply routes had deprived them of desperately shells.

“We’re set,” Gavin told her over the radio channel.

Ethan and Logan also confirmed their readiness. Good, she thought to herself. Selene appreciated not having to babysit her platoon, because that left her free to focus on the purely tactical aspects of a fight. She could always depend on her troops to be ready to fight and to be in position. Her role was to make sure that position was one they could succeed in.

“Ready?” Liz asked.

“Ready as ever,” Selene told her.

It felt weird. Anna had traveled back to Lerna Bastion to meet with Hephaestus Company, leaving Zach in charge. He had delegated responsibility to the individual units on the ground, meaning everything in the offensive tonight was on the platoon and company commanders. He would only give them broad directives, giving his sub-commanders the freedom to execute them as they saw fit.

Not that he needed to do much in this case, because the situation tonight wouldn’t be very complicated. Hydra would be launching their first major offensive from within the city, hoping to take their enemy off guard and gain ground.

Objectives for tonight were conservative, because no one thought they could take this place in one go. Their enemy was too skilled and too well dug in for that to happen. Instead they would take it piece by piece, grinding their enemy down as they slowly squeezed them out of the district.

Tonight was the first step in that chain of events, aimed at taking several blocks of front. Once those were secure, the Hydra forces could consolidate their position and bring up supplies and reinforcements. They’d gain the most ground in the eastern part of the city bordering the lake, which meant they had more room to offload supplies coming in by water.

The sluggish, relentless warfare didn’t quite suit her, but it was the situation at hand at the moment. Ghost Battalion was more suited for fast moving warfare and lightning attacks using their battlefield mobility to its full effect, but they could fight on the front lines well enough if pressed. Selene wasn’t worried about them not being able to perform.

Even so, they couldn’t quite equal the street fighting ability of Dragon Battalion, who had spent a considerable amount of time fighting under similar circumstances in Indianapolis. Bereft of troops and without any prospect of reinforcement, Dragon Battalion had learned the trade of slow, grinding street fighting out of necessity. They could take a district house by house, street by street, block by block, enduring repeated counterattacks, strong enemy positions and horrific casualties.

But that had been against the Indianapolis garrison made up of NPC troops. Could they do it against a strong organization made up of players like Ragnarok? That question continued to loom over their heads, and it wouldn’t go away until they made it.

Well, Selene thought to herself, they were about to find out. Two very strong forces were about to clash, and the results would be nothing but chaos and carnage. But she believed they were good enough to come out on top and accomplish their objectives, even when faced by a daunting enemy like the one before them.

Besides, what would this game be without its challenges? Selene was a competitor by nature, and the prospect of going up against a strong enemy thrilled her. Ragnarok had beaten her once, beaten her down so badly that she never wanted to repeat the experience ever again. It motivated her, though, pushing her to hone her close-combat skills in preparation for the next time they were confronted with that situation. As a result, Alpha Wolf had followed her lead and became one of the best units in Ghost Battalion at hand-to-hand combat.

Iron sharpened iron, as they said.

“All units, the bombardment will end in one minute,” Cody said. “Prepare for your ground attack.”

Selene looked down at her wrist menu clock, watching the seconds tick down. One minute. One minute until they would come face to face with the enemy. She paused for a moment, then decided to fix her bayonet to the end of her assault rifle.

“Alpha Wolf,” she said over the radio, “If you’re using bayonets fix them now.”

Aside from being practical, that order would set the tone for the coming fight. Everyone knew it would be nasty, brutal, vicious, but the order to fix bayonets only reinforced that notion. If they didn’t know it would be face-to-face, hand-to-hand before, they certainly did now.

“Thirty seconds.”

Selene went over her gear one last time. Assault rifle and bayonet, check. Magazines, check. Grenades for room clearing, check. Handgun for a backup weapon, check. Gas mask, check.

“Last ten seconds.”

She looked back down at the clock and counted down the seconds, preparing for zero to hit. Selene could hear the sound of her troops getting into position around her, preparing for the moment of no return.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

This was it.

“Alpha Wolf, let’s go!” she yelled out as the counter hit zero. Her unit rose to their feet as one and started to spill out onto the streets, headed for the enemy’s positions.

Selene was in the process of climbing out of cover when she saw several of her troops in front pause for a moment and look skyward. Then she heard it, a low moaning sound that grew louder by the moment. It took her a half-second to register it, but when she did…

“Get down! GET DOWN!” she shouted out, just seconds before the world in front of her burst into flames.

The force of the blasts threw her backward, sending her tumbling back into cover. Selene tried to regain her bearings, but then something else slammed into her, knocking her flat on her face. Her limbs went completely numb and her vision clouded. Even so, she could see the devastation unfolding in front of her as more explosions went off within seconds. The shape of a ragdolling corpse flew past her line of sight, and she could hear the cries and screams of wounded and dying troops.

Although she had no leg to stand on in that department. Selene tried to move, but her virtual avatar wouldn’t respond. Every effort to rise, every push to even move her limbs did almost nothing. With great effort she finally managed to get her arms moving and started for pull herself along, trying to do something, anything.

Selene suddenly felt something stop her, and then a sharp pain went through her right arm. But her vision began to clear, and then the feeling in her limbs returned. A pair of hands helped her up into a sitting position.

She looked up at her rescuer. “Thanks Joon,” she said, but he was already moving, headed to treat more casualties.

Selene pushed herself back up onto her feet and retrieved her weapons, trying to make sense of the situation. She had the new system to thank for her survival. In the old world she probably would have been killed, but under the sync system players who were badly wounded survived for much longer, unable to fight but still capable of being revived. As a result, medics had become extremely valuable.

Selene’s mind raced as she turned back toward the burning scene in front of her. It had only been for a split-second, but her mind had identified with sound she had heard in an instant.

Ragnarok had countered their assault with extreme precision. The moaning sound was the noise of rocket artillery descending on them.

“Alpha Wolf, Alpha Wolf, are you there?”

“I’m here Liz,” Selene responded.

“Good,” Liz replied, sounding relieved. “What kind of damage did you take?”

Selene looked around. “Underdetermined, but it looks bad. I just got revived after being hit, actually. I’ll try to get a head count ASAP.”

“Thanks. It sounds like everyone took a bad hit,” Liz told her.

Selene frowned at that statement. Hitting a single section with artillery was one thing, but doing it along the whole front was another. And then there was the fact that they had hit Hydra just as they were launching their attack and breaking from cover…

“Not good,” she muttered to herself. Selene had the suspicion that they had just played straight into the enemy’s hands. How else could they explain being hit with such precise timing? It was almost like Ragnarok wanted them to attack.

“What’s our orders?” Selene asked.

“Still trying to determine-”

And then the line suddenly went dead.

“Liz?”

No response.

Selene switched channels and tried to contact the others. No one responded.

“I can’t hear you through the radio,” Ethan shouted over to her from his position.

Selene looked at the display. None of the radio readouts displayed anything.

“What the…”

And then she heard the sound of gunfire, just seconds before a stream of bullets went whizzing by her head.

Selene threw herself to the ground and aimed her rifle, trying to find the source of the attack. She found it alright. A Ragnarok soldier was advancing down the street in front of her, firing tight burst with her assault rifle. Selene ended that with a pair of shots straight to the chest.

But as soon as she fell more enemy troops appeared. Not just a fireteam or a squad. Dozens. Scores. A platoon at least, maybe even a full company.

“Oh crap,” Selene said as she suddenly realized what was happening.

The artillery bombardment wasn’t just dumb luck or a means to slow down Hydra’s attack. Ragnarok had caught them out in the open, and were using the opportunity to launch a counterattack.

And somehow, some way, they had managed to cut Hydra’s communications, further adding to the confusion. The din of battle only increased around her. Selene couldn’t even communicate with the rest of her platoon unless they were within shouting distance, and that was becoming smaller and smaller the louder the ambient noise became.

Her mind raced as she tried to make sense of everything. How were they going to fend off a determined Ragnarok attack? It was hard enough with optimal conditions, but how were they going to do it when they couldn’t even coordinate the various units.

“Ethan!” she yelled out as she hurried to his position. “How many do you have left?”

“Seven, counting me,” he said.

“Take one off the line and have them act as a runner,” she ordered. “Have them head toward Redd Foxx’s position on the right and reestablish communications with them. I’ll see about getting in contact with Barghest.”

“Got it.”

No helping it, Selene thought to herself as she sprinted in the direction of Gavin’s squad. In a situation like this they had no choice but to fall back on the old ways of doing things. That meant using runners and a whole lot of guesswork. Or rather, it meant falling back on the old ways the existed in the real world. Selene never had to coordinate a situation without the radio before, and now she was going to have to learn on the fly. This could very well turn into a disaster of epic proportions, she realized.

“Gavin!” she shouted as she reached his position. “Get a runner and send them to Barghest’s position.”

“One step ahead of you,” he replied. “I figured we’d have to resort to that once the radio went down.”

“Good. Try to hold out while we get a clear picture.”

“Right,” Gavin nodded. “Perfect time for something like this to happen.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Zach always said there were ways to screw with the communications systems,” Gavin commented. “Ragnarok must have found one.”

True enough, but simply finding it only meant so much. It was the way they were deploying it that made it so damaging, timing it to cause maximum confusion in the middle of a counterstrike. Hydra was literally stumbling around in the dark out here.

Selene checked up on Logan next and got them into position to repel the enemy attack. By now the Ragnarok assault was in full force, held at by for the moment only by withering fire from Alpha Wolf. But how long could it last? Eventually a weak point would appear, or they would simply run out of ammunition. Artillery or mortar fire could help, but how could they get them? Even if they sent a runner they couldn’t provide accurate coordinates.

She was about to send another runner back toward the rear when an ATV pulled up at the rear of their positions. Selene moved to greet the newcomer.

“How’s it looking?” Nora asked as she dismounted.

“We might have a problem,” Selene told her with a sour smile.

“Yeah, I thought we might. Communications are dead throughout the district, and from what we can gather Ragnarok’s launching a counterattack along the entire length of the front.