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

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

  Morgan shook his head and motioned for Danny to follow. “It’s going to be tough for them to move normally anywhere that isn’t one of the trails.”

  Danny nodded. “Yeah, the brush looked pretty thick to me when I got here.”

  “Not only that, though,” Morgan added as he lead him over to the edge of the crossroads clearing. “See the plants that are growing here?”

  Danny leaned in for a closer look. Sure enough, the area between the trees was choked with a thick mess of thorny vines he had never seen before. He reached out to touch one for a better look…

  Morgan grabbed his arm and shook his head. “You probably don’t want to do that. Those thorns are nasty.”

  “How bad?”

  “They’re as bad as razor wire, according to the codex,” Morgan said. “It’s called ripvine, and it’s pretty hard to cross. It’ll tear gear, flesh, you name it, and some varieties have poison on top of that.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Danny muttered, half to himself. The more they explored this world the more they found new horrible ways to die.

  “Yeah, looks like it grows in thick forests. There’s probably some in the forests west of Lerna Bastion, if anyone’s brave enough to try and go there.”

  They’d have no shortage of people with that kind of courage, Danny thought to himself, but whether that was even a good idea was yet another matter. Too many powerful creatures lurked in the wild corners of this world, from packs of fen wolves, to giant chilus, to monstrosities that remained only rumors and whispers at this point. Danny had a feeling they had only scratched the surface of what this world had to offer.

  “So, doesn’t this work in our favor?” he asked. “Who the heck’s going to want to go crawling through that, especially if it could kill them?”

  “No one,” Morgan said, “but it’s not a perfect barrier. It’s a plant, remember? That means it burns.”

  “Ah. So you think they’ll try to force their way through with flamethrowers? That’s still going to take some time. They’ll have to torch the stuff and then wait for it to burn down enough for them to get through. That should give you guys enough time to rally.”

  “It will,” Morgan agreed, “but it might not take long enough. We’ve tested it some, actually. It takes around five minutes or so to burn down the larger patches. Less if you really pour on the fuel, though that comes with its own problems.”

  “I’ll bet,” Danny commented. It might provide the attackers with a way through, but it cost them valuable fuel that could be used to great effect against trenches and bunkers.

  But then again, it did provide a better option for advance, avoiding the pathways which would be certain deathtraps. From a few glances he could already see they were preparing machine gun nests with interlocking fields of fire. Anyone coming straight at the position would be turned into mincemeat within seconds.

  “So we’re digging positions around the most likely routes they’ll take once they start burning down the brush,” Morgan continued. “That’ll give us some more defense and hopefully cause more casualties.”

  The pair continued down the pathways toward the river, passing dozens of platoon members preparing their positions for the inevitable attack. Or at least, the attack he thought would be inevitable. If it didn’t come, he was going to end up looking pretty foolish.

  “We’re going for defense in depth,” Morgan explained. “If we only have one continuous line, then we’re completely screwed if they break through. And I’m pretty sure they will break through. So our goal is to bleed them, slow them down until backup arrives. They have a lot of rough terrain in their way.”

  Danny looked toward the north. “And they have to get across the river first. Are you digging in there?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yeah, Staci and Gio are digging in their platoons, trying to stop them as they cross. It’s not going to be easy, though. They’ll probably either send small raider units across to make a bridgehead, or they’ll rush us all at once.”

  “They’ll still be in boats,” Danny pointed out.

  “True, but they’ll also have plenty of fire support from the other bank, and the river isn’t that wide. If they want to, they’ll be able to force their way across.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “I wish we could get our river craft out here to help you cover, but we don’t have the troops to crew them.”

  “They’re not doing much right now, right?” Morgan asked.

  “Well, they’re currently in reserve at Waukegan,” Danny told him. “But Hydra Command wants to keep them there for the time being, along with the landing craft. It’s a threat that Ragnarok can’t ignore. If they do, then we might attempt an amphibious landing. Or at least, that’s what we want them to believe.”

  “Do you think they believe it?”

  Danny thought about it. “I don’t know. What I do know is that we’re bluffing way too much without any real power to back them up,” he said. “We’re spread pretty thin, and they have to know that. Why else wouldn’t we be making strikes on the other fronts, unless we couldn’t do that?”

  “Doesn’t help when most of your reserves are committed to one spot, and an urban warzone at that,” Morgan agreed. “I’d have thought that everyone would realize that after the Indianapolis campaign. This is going to take months and months of fighting to finish.”

  “And meanwhile, that gives the enemy plenty of time to line up their shots on us,” Danny said. “I never liked the feeling of being a sitting duck.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Their situation was indeed precarious. The Hydra Alliance had committed themselves to several fronts, but they could only exert enough force to go on the offensive on one of them. The others had to hold their positions, sometimes with little more than skeleton forces.

  That worried Danny the most. Hydra Command seemed to think the implied threat would serve to give Ragnarok pause, but did it mean anything if they lacked the necessary troops to perform even limited actions? Their enemy could read maps and figure out what units were where as well as they could. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out most of Hydra’s forces were committed to Milwaukee, and that the other fronts couldn’t mount offensives.

  And what was the point of implied threats if they lacked any teeth? Ragnarok Company wasn’t one to be intimidated easily. They’d have to account for the possibility of an attack on another front, to be sure, but if they determined the threat was remote they would probably be content to ignore it.

  If that happened, then hundreds of valuable Hydra troops would be left sitting in far-off locations doing absolutely nothing to help the overall strategic situation. That was why Danny continued to insist that they needed to pull Magic Battalion out of Green Bay and bring them south. What good was the city if it didn’t serve their overall strategic goals?

  “You’re going to be in reserve, right?” Morgan asked.

  “My platoon will be, yes,” Danny confirmed. “Backed up by our transport and attack wing from Raven Company. They should help to make up for the lack of numbers.”

  The forest began to thin out and then completely parted as they reached the edge of the river. Danny got his first good look at it from ground level. Like Morgan had told him, it wasn’t very wide, probably twenty to thirty yards, but it remained a significant obstacle. It wasn’t like the enemy could just swim across.

  Morgan continued the conversation. “Yeah, that’s the thing. Is one platoon in reserve going to be enough? To be honest, that’s part of my reason for trying to get us deployed in depth. Are you going to have enough troops to plug the gaps?”

  “That’s where air and artillery support come in,” Danny said. “From the air recon photos of the other side of the river, I gather that it’s pretty heavily forested there too, and it stretches for miles. There’s no way they can get large, heavy equipment through, which means no rocket artillery or stuff like that. Plus, I think they focused it all in Milwaukee.”

  “Same g
oes for us, though,” Morgan pointed out. “We’re going to have to rely on mortars, because it’s hard to get any artillery positioned in terrain like this. Even the 75mm guns are a hassle.”

  “Which is where air support comes in,” Danny said. “They can lug miniguns and rockets and take them wherever they need to go.”

  “Provided we can keep them in the air. Ragnarok’s probably going to have their air units out in force. And speaking of that, they’ll have their dive bombers as well.”

  Danny frowned. “Yeah, they will. That’s going to be a problem.”

  He hadn’t experienced them much in the fighting at Green Bay, but Selene’s unit had taken the brunt of a dive bomber assault and come out the worse for wear. It wasn’t just the effect of the bombs, either. Their power and accuracy caused significant damage, but so did rockets or shells. No, the dive bombers showed their real bite when coordinated with infantry units on the ground.

  It wasn’t the explosions that caused the most damage, it was that the enemy used the chaos to close the distance and put themselves right on top of the defenders when the smoke cleared. Troops that weren’t killed still had to take cover, and that let the enemy come to grips with them.

  Danny didn’t fancy their chances against some of the elite Ragnarok troops in hand-to-hand combat. Black Wolf had plenty of training and practical experience under their belt. Ghost Battalion as a whole had experienced some of the worst up-close and brutal fighting the alliance had seen and acquitted themselves well, but still, he wasn’t sure they could match the ferocity of the Valkyries in battle.

  And he wasn’t sure about Sacred Sword, either. From the beginnings of the alliance and even before, the company had been considered one of the best fighting companies in World at War. He knew they had fought Ragnarok to a standstill on the northern front for months, many times having to force them out of their fire bases after they had broken through the perimeter. But could they continue to do that against the elite of the elite?

  “They’re going to bring the Valkyries,” Danny said out loud. “Maybe Ymir and Fenris too. I’m guessing they’ll commit the bulk of their resources to this sector.”

  Morgan leaned over and picked up a stone, then chucked in into the river. Danny watched it skip three times before it disappeared under the surface.

  “Probably,” he agreed. “If they can get around us, they’ll be in prime position to cut us off from the south, and then we’re really screwed.”

  They could move troops through Old Chicago, but not their heavy equipment. That would need to be transported by water, and they lacked enough ships for the job. And what would they choose, if it came to that? If they had to abandon some or most of their firepower would it be their artillery, or would they chose to leave behind their armor.

  The retreat would take time as well, leaving their holdings in the south very, very vulnerable. At the moment their holdings around Lerna Bastion and Indianapolis were guarded by NPC mercenary troops and Hephaestus Company. The NPCs were little better than cannon fodder, and Hephaestus concentrated on engineering rather than combat. They could fight if pressed, but they couldn’t match Ragnarok’s hardened frontline troops, let alone their elites and special forces.

  “So we hold here,” Danny said. “We have to.”

  Morgan turned around and headed back into the forest with Danny in tow. “We’ll fight as hard as we can for as long as we can. I have as much confidence in my guys as possible, but even I’m not sure if we can hold out if they really start to bring the heat. We could use more backup.”

  “The rest of the line is already too weak, though.”

  “That’s what David said, and unfortunately, I have to agree with him,” Morgan replied. “We’re not getting backup from elsewhere, unless someone pulls off a minor miracle.”

  “Last I heard, there’s the possibility of a gradual drawdown in Green Bay,” Danny said. “If they are going to give up the city they’re going to take units away one by one. That might give us a steady trickle of reinforcements on our end.”

  “Will it be enough, though?” Morgan asked. “And are they going to be any good? Most of them are new companies.”

  “Can’t really speak for the rest, but Thorn and Myrmidon can fight,” Danny told him. “We’d have never held out in Green Bay without them.”

  “Still though.”

  “Keep this quiet, but we’re trying to get Magic Battalion to replace us in Milwaukee,” Danny told him.

  “Just your company, or the entire battalion?”

  “The entire battalion,” he clarified. “We’ll be better used as a fast strike force that can go anywhere and everywhere.”

  “Play to your strengths. That I can agree with,” Morgan nodded.

  “So, if they’re drawing units out of Green Bay, we can use them to replace some of the Ghost units inside the city,” Danny said. “It’ll be nice to finally be working together again.”

  Morgan paused for a moment. “Trust me, count yourself lucky that you’re not in the middle of that mess right now.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  He had seen plenty of urban combat in Indianapolis, from the open vulnerability of the twisting streets to the enclosed, claustrophobic tunnels underneath the city. Brutality was the name of the game in that kind of environment. Even so, that had been against NPC troops, and while they weren’t pushovers, they also didn’t have the abilities of players.

  “Yeah,” Morgan confirmed. “The biggest problem is that Ragnarok troops are able to respond much quicker than the AI ever could, and their improvisational skills are better. And when you couple that with their fighting ability, well…”

  “You get one heck of a nasty fight, I’m guessing,” Danny said.

  Morgan shook his head. “That’s putting it lightly. The worst thing is that they’re just like us. They have pride, and they’re not ones to give up easily. The southern wall? They just wouldn’t give. We had to kill every single one of them there before we were able to get past. We had to blast some of them out with direct artillery fire.”

  “I guess that thing crosses companies and alliances,” Danny shrugged. “All of us are here to win. None of us want to lose, or failing that, none of us want to go down without taking a few with us.”

  “That’s part of the fun of fighting other players,” Morgan said. “You know they don’t want to lose, same as us, and they’ll do anything to make sure it stays that way. It adds a ton of challenge to a fight. But on the flip side, it makes our jobs a whole lot harder.”

  It did, but again, that was part of the thrill of the game. One wrong move could cost them dearly and set off a catastrophic chain of events. One lost battle could lead to a failed campaign, which could lead to a loss of territory, which could eventually bring about the downfall of an alliance. All stemming from one instance, one mistake, one miscalculation. In a way, it was like the ultimate form of high-stakes gambling, and the rush they got from it was undeniable.

  They were dancing on the edge of a knife. And while every step might result in their doom, there was no greater thrill.

  Danny felt his confidence brimming inside of himself, despite their situation. Even from their beginnings, the Hydra Alliance never had it easy. They had barely pulled out a victory at Lerna Bastion. Ragnarok had slaughtered them in several battles at the beginning of the war. They suffered severe casualties in Indianapolis. Time after time, they flirted with disaster. And yet, despite the setbacks, despite their failures, they managed to find a way through.

  Sure, sometimes it was by the skin of their teeth, and sometimes they had to improvise to an extreme degree, but even when backed into a corner hope still remained. Even in their most desperate hours the possibility of pulling out a victory drove them forward, slim as it might be.

  And that meant something to him.

  “You know,” Danny spoke, “I don’t think we’ll lose. I don’t think we can lose. Doesn’t matter how hard they hit us, or how much they throw at us. W
e’ll find some way to pull through.”

  “I like the swagger,” Morgan commented. “But we’re not going to win on that alone.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Danny told him. “Swagger might not win us the fight, but it’ll help put the backbone in all of us.”

  Morgan nodded. “That it will. And the entrenchments certainly won’t hurt.”

  They’d need both for the onslaught he believed was lurking on the horizon.

  22

  PILEUP

  “Good news. It took a lot of time and effort, but we’ve finally made a breakthrough. The military council has finally agreed to a withdrawal from Green Bay,” Nora told the group of assembled Ghost Battalion officers.

  Selene raised a hand. “What the timeframe for this?” she asked, though in truth, she would take just about anything right now.

  “Gradual,” Nora told her. “They’ll pull them out company by company. Hopefully that’ll keep Ragnarok thinking they’re still in the city for a while, and it won’t put too much stress on our transport capabilities.”

  It wasn’t ideal, Selene thought, but then again nothing in their current situation was. At least they’d be getting more troops on the main axis of their offensive, possibly enough to turn the tide.

  Ragnarok and Hydra remained deadlocked within the district, dug in with neither side being able to gain the upper hand. Aside from minor raids and occasional artillery duels, the conflict had settled down into an uneasy stalemate, with neither side daring to do anything bold. One mistake on the offensive could result in a disaster that might cost them valuable ground.

  But the arrival of significant reinforcements would all the Hydra Alliance far more flexibility. They could concentrate forces at a single point of the front, or make attacks in several locations, forcing Ragnarok to defend several spots at once. And while they would certainly suffer significant casualties, they’d be able to withstand them with greater numbers at hand.

  “Have we determined what order they’ll be moved, or are we still deciding that?” Neil asked.