Fang: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 3)

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

  “We're still not going to take any chances,” Nora told her. “I already sent out the Code Black message. We'll see how much help they can send us.”

  Selene suddenly looked up into the sky. Nora started to look up as well, but she couldn't glimpse whatever she was looking at.

  “Cover! COVER!” Selene shouted out. She grabbed her and half-dragged Nora into an alley.

  Something zoomed overhead. Then another, and then something blew up toward the center of the bastion. The chatter of several machine guns filled the air.

  Selene was up on her feet quickly. She pulled Nora up and broke into a run again. Nora followed behind her.

  “Was that what I think it was?” Nora asked aloud, still in shock.

  “Yeah. That was. And that means trouble,” Selene replied.

  A pair of aircraft had just zoomed overhead, firing rockets and machine guns at targets inside the bastion. They were straight winged and propeller driven, but they were still far beyond anything that Hydra could field. They had utility aircraft, but they were larger and slower than the Ragnarok fighters that had just zoomed overhead.

  The worst part was that their air superiority might be gone. That would be especially damaging for Ghost Battalion. The rangers relied on their choppers for quick movement, and if those were in danger of being shot down then their main advantage was gone. This would also hurt their other ground forces as well. Rogue Battalion's vehicles were going to be especially vulnerable to air attack, and they had no antiaircraft defenses to speak of.

  They weren't completely defenseless. They had the ability to create antiaircraft guns with either .50 caliber machine guns or 20mm autocannons. The problem was that they would have to be designed by Hephaestus Company, and they were busy trying to rebuild the losses Hydra had sustained fighting in the south.

  They might have bitten off more than they could chew, Nora realized.

  Of course, those thoughts were unimportant now. They weren't going to matter if they didn't hold the bastion.

  Nora and Selene raced up the stairs to the top of the wall. The rest of Black Wolf was already there, sheltering in bunkers, pillboxes and behind the battlements of the wall itself. Logan saw them and motioned them over.

  “How are we?” Selene asked.

  “Holding,” Logan said. “We lost twelve in the rocket attack. But we're in a good position up here, and they're not being very aggressive.”

  “They're not advancing?” Nora asked with a frown.

  Logan shook his head. “No. We've pretty much been trading pot shots with them. I have no clue what their game is right now.”

  “This is definitely a feint,” Selene said. “Keep us busy while they go after Ronin.”

  “Then Ronin is dead meat,” Logan said.

  Nora grabbed her assault rifle and cocked the bolt. “No matter. We've got our own problems to take care of.”

  She brought her gun up to bear, aimed and fired.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Gathering Storm

  “So we might be in trouble,” Nora said simply.

  Zach looked through the report she and Selene had written up. “No kidding. You said that they had fighters?”

  “Fighter bombers and rocket artillery,” Selene said. “The walls and the fortified positions survived without too much damage, but over three quarters of the other buildings in the bastion were flattened. We were lucky that we moved the Forge and our supply stocks before the attack.”

  Zach looked around at the others gathered for the informal meeting at Black Wolf's southern headquarters; David and Morgan from Sacred Sword, Gina and Connor from Grizzly, Anna, Gray and Liz from Redd Foxx, Yusuf from Hephaestus and himself, Nora, Selene and Danny from Black Wolf. There was concern on many of their faces, and he was pretty sure that he was wearing a similar expression.

  News from the north was grim. Fort Odin had fallen, blasted by artillery and rockets and then swamped by a tide of Ragnarok troops. Ragnarok now had the ability to make a hard push at Hydra's northern areas, and that was cause for great concern. They needed to have some way of accessing Old Chicago, otherwise they would run the risk of depleting their stocks of explosives, grenades and fusion batteries. They lacked the ability to make fuel for their flamethrowers as well, and it looked like they were going to be vital for clearing the tunnels below Indianapolis.

  Hydra's forces were going to be stretched to the limit. They would have to defend their northern fortresses and take the rest of Indianapolis at the same time. Coupled with the fact that they would have to defend every district that they captured, it looked like they were going to run out of troops.

  Gina said as much. “How are we going to get enough troops to garrison the districts?”

  “The attack came up through the subway tunnels,” David pointed out. “That means that they're the only way into each district that doesn't involve breaking through one of the walls. If we can explore the tunnels and figure out where they go we can figure out what choke points we need to guard.”

  “That's going to take a lot of troops,” Liz said.

  “So is everything else,” David said. “At least we can garrison the other districts with NPC troops. They'll help, at least.”

  “Do we have enough money to afford that?” Selene spoke up.

  Nora clicked her tongue. “It might get a bit hairy.”

  “The choke point idea might be a good one,” Zach said. “If each district connects to only a few others we can form a plan of attack that best uses what strength we have.”

  “There's a lot of area to cover,” Morgan said.

  “Then we had best get to it soon,” Anna replied. “I'll volunteer Ghost to start exploring the tunnels. We can send teams in different directions to cover more ground.”

  “I don't think we should rely on just fireteams or even squads,” Liz said. “That's just asking for one of our teams to get cut off or lost, and that's going to be a huge waste of time. I would send them in by platoon, at least.”

  “That will reduce the amount of ground we can cover,” Gray pointed out. “Plus, it's not that big of a deal if we get killed.”

  “We do need to make sure the the maps are accurate,” Nora said. “One mistake could end up costing us.”

  Danny spoke. “What about a combination of the two? Say we sent my platoon into the tunnels. They'd be controlled under my central command, but I would have my squads spread out as needed. That way we could cover a lot of ground while still being able to support each other.”

  “Three squads might not be enough,” Selene said. “We might need to have the whole company present.”

  Danny shrugged. “OK, different numbers, same concept. Does it sound workable to everyone else?”

  “Depends what kind of opposition we're going to be facing in the tunnels,” Yusuf said.

  “A bus size chilus,” Danny muttered.

  Zach shook his head. “Come on. It wasn't that big.”

  Black Wolf Company had a fair amount of experience with tunnel fighting, having cleared many bunkers in search of schematics. They knew very well the dangers they were likely to run into as well as the equipment they would need.

  For starters, light was going to be absolutely critical. Many locations underground were pitch black, and their night vision gear was completely useless since it needed some ambient light to function. That meant they needed to use lights, but those could give away their position and weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There were blind spots where the beams of light couldn't cover, and it was very possible an enemy could use that to their advantage.

  Weaponry was another issue. By now Zach and the rest of Black Wolf refused to go inside of a tunnel complex without a flamethrower on hand. They had only gone in the last time because they weren't expecting to go underground and were short on time. Too many tunnels contained creatures that were resistant to bullets, and flames were the best way of dealing with them. Even against humanoid enemies the jet of flame was dead
ly in a confined space.

  The type of heavy weaponry they could bring was also limited. Recoilless rifles were out of the question, since their backblast would injure or kill the operator and anyone else near the weapon when it was fired. Heavy machine guns, autocannons and other large weapons were unwieldy in the confines of a tunnel, even one as large as a subway. Light machine guns and grenade launchers were going to have to provide the majority of their heavy support. Hand grenades would be important as well.

  And close combat would be critical. Knives, hatchets and other such melee weapons were very useful over short distances. They could sneak up on an enemy and stab them silently. Just a important, if something managed to ambush them at close range they had a weapon they could use while grappling.

  That didn't take into account other nasty surprises like poison gas, cave ins, pitfalls and the like. Zach had a feeling that their work was going to be very, very dangerous.

  “The other big question is how we're going to defend the north,” Selene said. “Given the fact that Ronin lost Fort Odin I think we can expect Ragnarok attacks pretty soon.”

  “Could we fortify the northern frontier?” Gina asked.

  “How are we going to man it?” Morgan pointed out. “We're short on troops as it is, and it's not like we can hire enough NPCs to cover.”

  Zach frowned. “Plus we'd have to build them, and that's probably not going to be feasible right now. Reequipping the armored company and repairing Lerna Bastion should be our top priorities.”

  “Honestly, the best idea might be to help Ronin Company take back Fort Odin,” Liz said. “Once they have it the way south is blocked off again.”

  “They can still go through Old Chicago,” Danny pointed out.

  “Which everyone will notice and we'll have time to prepare,” Liz said.

  Nora frowned. “That still leaves us in a pretty weak position. Ragnarok took Fort Odin, which means that we're capable of doing it again. Do we really want to rely on Ronin's alliance to guard our northern flank? It could get pretty messy.”

  Zach grimaced. She had a good point, but at the same time they also had very little choice. Morgan's assessment of the situation was correct; their forces were too thinly spread to do much else. They would have to rely on Ronin holding the forts to keep their northern areas secure.

  “Maybe we need to be more offensively minded?” Gina suggested. “Raiding might be a good idea. If we can force Ragnarok to fight on their own territory then we'll keep them off ours.”

  “The problem being that they have enough troops to stop us, and they'll still have enough to launch attacks,” David said.

  “Plus we're really going to need those troops to explore the subway system,” Anna spoke up again. “Taking Indianapolis is going to be our top priority.”

  “We need more troops,” Nora said plainly. “Even with our increases we're far too small to take on the tasks we want to.”

  Zach frowned and thought. Once again there was no good solution. The capture of the Eagle Creek district was attracting more and more of the smaller companies, but it still probably wasn't going to be enough. They were getting dozens of troops when they needed hundreds.

  And that was the real issue they were facing right now. It wasn't a question of strategy or tactics. It wasn't one of alliance against alliance. When they got right down to it, their problem was one of simple economics. The pressing question was whether they had enough resources to take Indianapolis and hold off Ragnarok at the same time. That included troops, munitions, equipment and even time. Every single one of them had lives in the real world to contend with as well.

  It wasn't like they had any real choice either. It was likely that the Hydra Alliance would slowly be crushed if they simply held onto the territory they already controlled; the fact that Lerna Bastion had been completely flattened only exacerbated the problem. If they were to have any real hope of survival then they needed to take the city.

  “What can we do to make them nervous?” Danny asked.

  “What do you mean by that?” Zach questioned him.

  Danny shrugged. “Well, we know that we don't have enough troops because we have to defend against NPC attacks. But Ragnarok doesn't since we've been pretty mum on the whole incident. What if we could bluff them to buy ourselves some more time?”

  “We really don't have the capability to do that right now,” David said. “Knight Battalion is going to be the main force if we try that, and I'm not certain that we can pose a credible threat.”

  “What about posting the armored portion of Rogue Battalion in the north?” Gina suggested. “Ragnarok is probably going to do recon from the air. If we can make it look like we're massing for an offensive then we can really make them nervous.”

  “What they'll do when they're nervous is the next question,” Liz posited.

  That was definitely a potential problem as well. Ragnarok could act defensively against the threat, or they could strike out. If the second possibility happened then they were dead meat.

  Zach blew out a frustrated breath. “We're going around in circles. We're going to need to decide which risk to take, and how.”

  It took them several more hours to hash out a cohesive plan. They would need to get it approved by Hydra Command, and Zach was definitely not looking forward to that. He didn't think it would be a huge issue, but there would still be debates and possible modifications during the entire process.

  Their plan needed to be ready for action as soon as possible, so Zach had decided to gather Black Wolf's command staff together, They would figure out the procedures they would use while exploring the metro. Redd Foxx was having a similar meeting, but Anna had told them to work out their own plan. The two companies were going to work separately in order to cover more ground.

  Zach looked at the others seated around the table: Nora, Danny and Selene. He spoke.

  “So, which way should we explore? East or west?”

  “Do we have any idea which direction the attack came from?” Selene asked.

  Zach shook his head. “Not a clue.”

  Danny scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, I would say that heading east would be the best option, in my opinion.”

  “Why not west?” Zach asked, curious.

  “Well, we have no clue where any of the tunnels lead, but we can make educated guesses. If I were doing that, I would say that the east tunnel connects to the most northeastern district of the city, since it started to curve away in that direction, from what I could tell. That's probably the best district to try to capture next. It connects to the main highway running south from Old Chicago, so it'll be much easier to more stuff between the north and south.”

  “We still have to drive,” Selene said. “It'll save us time for sure, but will it be enough if the district itself isn't very defensible?”

  “Actually...” Nora began and then trailed off.

  Selene glanced over at her. “What's your idea?” she asked in a tone that sounded very interested.

  “If we're dealing with a metro then there's probably subways cars or the like,” she said. “I wonder if it would be possible to reconstruct the rails.”

  “So we could shift equipment between stations? That sounds like a pretty good idea, actually,” Danny said.

  She nodded. “Right, that's one possibility. But the other one I was thinking of was constructing a rail link between here and Lerna Bastion. We could possibly extend it up to our old stronghold as well.”

  “Would that even be possible?” Zach said.

  “I think the better question would be if it's even practical,” Selene said pragmatically. “That's a lot of resources, and I'd image that the rail cars would run on fusion batteries. That's not going to be cheap in any case.”

  Nora shrugged. “I think that possibility makes going for the northeastern district a smart decision. Strategic mobility is going to be key. We need to be able to shift forces as quickly as possible, and this will help to do it. Even if we
can't build the rail link.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Zach said. “Anyone else?”

  The other two agreed. Zach opened up his holographic wrist menu and cycled through a list he had made.

  “Alright, now that we have a direction we need to figure out exactly how we're going to explore the place.”

  “I'm still sold on my plan,” Danny said. “We send in a platoon and divide up by squad. That allows us to cover a lot of ground while still giving support.”

  “I actually think we should take the entire company on the missions,” Selene said. “Even if you have an entire platoon you'll still be spread out all over the place. If we take the whole company we can leave several squads or a platoon in reserve. Plus, we have a bunch of new recruits. We can use this as an opportunity to give them some experience in the field.”

  “Wouldn't that be a waste of resources?” Danny asked.

  “Having our recon mission wiped out would be a big waste of time as well,” Selene said. “This place just seems really dangerous, from what you guys have told us. We need to be careful.”

  “So recon in force?” Nora asked. “I'd agree with that.”

  Zach nodded. “Yeah, me as well. Plus, the weapons we can use are going to be very restricted. Heavy support is going to suck.”

  “We can carry machine guns, flamethrowers and grenade launchers,” Selene said.

  “Yeah, but if we run into something really tough we're going to wish we could use a recoilless rifle, and I think they're too dangerous to fire in the tunnels,” Zach said. The backblast would be deadly in the confines of the underground to both the operator and anyone standing near them.

  “Could we carry heavy machine guns, at least?” Nora suggested.

  Zach nodded. “That's why I think that sending the whole company is a good idea. Having some of the heavier equipment with the forward teams will probably slow them down, but the backup teams could have heavier weapons with them for if the others run into trouble.”

  “Next question. Who's going to be the backup team?” Selene asked.