Karen thought for a moment. “If Black Wolf can give us cover while we advance on the wall that should make our jobs much easier.”
Zach agreed. “Will do.”
Karen turned to Nora. “Could you hang back with them? You can give us fire support, and you also have the best tracking equipment. You can tell us what's going on and can help direct us to where we need to go.”
“Sure thing,” Nora replied. “I'll try to get Sacred Sword on standby, and I'll signal them once we think that the gate is secure.”
“Good. Once we're don here we'll regroup and force our way through to the southwest. We'll shade toward Redd Foxx so we can give them backup if they need it.”
“Sounds good,” Zach said. Nora agreed with him. Karen was becoming quite the decisive commander in her own right.
Karen turned to the platoon leaders to give out instructions. Zach got on the radio and contacted his own officers. Nora turned back around and got back inside her exoskeleton.
The system powered back up without incident. Judging from the power bar, she had about two hours of fight time left before she would be forced to return to the charging station. She thought that would be enough time to last through the entire battle, but there was no way to be sure. At least she would probably be able to stick around long enough to influence the outcome, but again, she wasn't sure. Nora was quite worried that she would have to abandon her comrades in the middle of a fight to recharge the suit. Command's orders had been quite strict; she was to minimize the risk to the suit as much as possible. If it cost them troops or other equipment, then so be it. They were replaceable. The suit was not.
Nora purged those thoughts from her mind. They weren't going to matter if she got hit because she wasn't paying attention. She needed to focus.
“Ready?” Danny asked her quietly as she moved into position. He hefted his machine gun and aimed it at the positions on the wall.
“All ready,” Nora said. “By the way, you might want to stand back. The ejection port is right next to you, and I can't say that a stream of lead to the face is going to feel pleasant.”
He backed off. “OK, good point.”
“All units,” Zach's voice said over the radio. “Ready? FIRE!”
The night lit up with flashes and tracers. Nora aimed with her right arm and pulled the trigger. The minigun roared to life, sending a hail of bullets toward her targeted area. Nora swept the gun back and forth along the wall, firing tight bursts to conserve ammunition. She thought she got several hits, but there was no way to tell in the confusion. Black Wolf was throwing everything they had at the enemy; small arms, machine guns, launched grenades, sniper shots and even recoilless rifle rounds.
The effect of the barrage was apparent. The enemy on the walls wasn't even able to respond. Any time one would try to retaliate they would immediately be cut down in a deluge of fire. Meanwhile, Barghest Company was quickly approaching the bottom of the stairs.
“Cease fire!” Zach ordered. Black Wolf's veteran troops almost instantly went silent.
“Wolf Lead, I'm going to keep selecting targets of opportunity as per Black Lead's orders,” Nora said.
“Copy that,” Zach responded. “Snipers, you have permission to engage as well. Make sure that there are no friendly fire casualties.”
That wasn't going to be a hard order to follow. Everyone's HUD displayed markers that told whether someone was a friend or a foe. Friendly fire accidents could still happen, but anyone worth their weight knew not to engage when that was a possibility. The snipers had the accuracy to reach out and hit the enemy accurately, so they were exempt.
Nora didn't have that luxury. She was noticeably less precise even with the suit's targeting and stabilizing systems, so she would have to be far more careful. Her role would be to take out tough targets that the others couldn't manage.
“Headed up,” Selene said over the radio.
Nora made a visual scan of the area above them. She saw movement, and then her HUD identified hostiles.
“Red Lead, you have an enemy squad moving above you,” Nora warned. “I'm opening fire.”
She lifted her arm and squeezed off a burst. Two of the enemy fell. The rest dove for cover. There were still at least six to eight of them left, but Nora's distraction had bought Red Platoon valuable time. They stormed the rest of the way up the stairs and blazed away at the enemy they encountered.
Now that they had a foothold on the wall Nora turned her attention elsewhere. More enemy troops were moving on the wall, attempting to shore up the hole in their defenses. Nora laid down another barrage of fire, killing some and forcing the rest to take cover.
Something flashed in front of her.
“Watch it!” she warned, and a split-second later a rocket exploded where she had been a second before.
She guessed the trajectory of the rocket and aimed right where it came from. Nora pummeled the area with minigun and autocannon fire just to make sure the enemy heavy was dead.
The extra work with the suit had served her well. She now knew how it augmented her reflexes, and that knowledge allowed her to move much more quickly. It had just saved her a nasty death, or at least severe damage.
“You OK?” Danny asked.
“Yeah. I'm more worried about you,” Nora replied.
“I'm fine. Managed to dodge out of the way. No casualties here.”
Zach's voice came over the radio again. “Everyone, keep an eye out for enemy heavies on the walls.”
“Make sure that you focus on taking the wall as well,” Nora said. “Nothing else happens if we don't.”
She found another target and opened fire. The exoskeleton was performing well under the circumstances, though this could hardly be called the average fight. The enemy was cooped up in a narrow space, making them easy targets for any burst. Once she got into the city it would be much harder to manage.
Barghest Company, meanwhile, did an excellent job of taking the wall. They were much more aggressive than in their fight in the Zionville district, and it allowed them to take the wall quicker this time. Any resistance was swept aside by relentless firepower. Specialist teams armed with breaching charges and flamethrowers cracked open bunkers and dealt with the troops inside.
There was no mistaking it. Barghest was truly coming into its own, and Nora was enjoying being a part of it. This battle might be just the thing they needed to establish themselves as a formidable company on the level of Black Wolf and Redd Foxx, and if she could help then she was glad to do whatever was needed.
She opened up a radio channel. “Sword Lead, Sword Lead, this is Hoplite. I say again, this is Hoplite.”
“Go ahead Hoplite,” David responded.
“We're in the final stages of clearing out the gate,” Nora said. She watched Bravo Wolf Platoon advance toward the gatehouse. “It should be clear. If you advance now you'll reach the gates at about the time they'll open them.”
“Roger that. Any word on how it's going?”
“Smoothly, light casualties,” Nora told him. “We're making steady progress, and it should be fine once you get here.”
“Let's hope so,” David replied.
Nora's assessment of the situation might have been too optimistic. Sacred Sword reached the gate within minutes and headed into the western reaches of the district. Freed from the fighting around the gate, Black Wolf and Barghest formed up and pushed southwest.
But the route wasn't easy. About a mile away from the gate they ran into heavy resistance at a crossroads. An enemy platoon had dug themselves into several multi-story buildings and were waiting for them. Unbeknownst to the Hydra troops, they also had spotlights with them. As soon as they were switched on there was complete chaos.
The Hoplite armor had an advanced array of sensors, and the suit immediately switched off the night vision mode as soon as the lights were triggered. The others weren't so lucky. Many of them were temporarily blinded by the brightness of the spotlights. Several of them were cut down in the ensuing gunfir
e, and everyone else was forced to take cover.
The situation at crossroads became even worse when enemy reinforcements began to flood in from the south. Black Wolf and Barghest dug in and prepared for a slugging match. The enemy fire was ferocious.
Nora had been forced to take charge of the situation. She could see better than most due to the array of displays she could bring up on her HUD. Using them, she managed to organize their force into a firm defensive line and even launch limited counterattacks. But it wasn't going to last forever. They need help, and they needed it fast.
“Raven Flight, do you copy? Raven Flight, this is Hoplite. Do you copy?” Nora asked.
She nimbly dodged a rocket fired from the other side of the street. The enemy heavy suddenly dropped and fell off the building. Courtesy of one of their snipers, no doubt.
“Hoplite, this is Raven 1,” Robbie replied.
“Raven 1, we need air support,” Nora told him.
“Uh, can you be more specific?”
“Can you see me moving on the street?” she asked.
There was a pause. “Yeah, I can see you.”
“Behind me is our side of the street. Blast everything on the other side. I don't care how you do it, just do it.”
“Copy that, Hoplite. You guys might want to duck and cover,” Robbie replied.
Nora saw four dots moving on her radar at high speed. Then the world in front of her caught fire. The face of the building in front of her exploded. Thousands of bullets raked the remains. Anyone inside was probably dead meat.
Nora wasn't the only one with a new toy. Raven Flight had received several upgrades as well, and now they were putting them to good use.
Originally the choppers had been armed with heavy machine guns. While they were better than anything that the rangers were carrying on the ground, the amount of firepower they could throw out was sorely lacking. Their rate of fire was poor, and they were essentially useless against anything but the lightest vehicles.
Leave it to Hephaestus Company to find a solution to the problem. On the anti-vehicle front they had devised a stopgap weapon until they discovered a schematic for something better. They mounted six recoilless rifle tubes, three to each stub wing, and attached a trigger mechanism. They weren't the most accurate things and they lacked ammunition for sustained fighting, but they were powerful.
Raven Flight was also using the prototype miniguns, the same weapon that Nora had mounted in her exoskeleton's right arm. She knew from first-hand experience that it was powerful.
The face of another building exploded and then more bullets came raining down. The amount of fire coming from the other side slackened off quite considerably.
“Nice work, Raven Flight,” she said.
“We aim to please,” Robbie responded. “We'll make another pass and then we'll need to withdraw to get more ammo.”
“Roger that, and thanks.”
Selene came on the line. “Now's the time to exploit the confusion,” she said.
Nora agreed. “Raven Flight is making one last pass. Get as many platoons as you can and push forward. I'll help to cover you.”
“Got it.”
The chain of command had broken down somewhat in the confusion, but that was fine. There was no way that the company commanders could keep track of every last detail in the middle of this maelstrom, and so they would rely on their subordinates to get the job done. Ghost Company was known for the effectiveness of its lower levels of command. They could take care of business even if their captains were out of action.
Two more choppers came zooming in from behind, guns blazing. The noise outside was probably deafening. Inside, the suit automatically adjusted the volume levels to reasonable levels.
“Barghest, let's go!” Selene ordered.
Nora scanned the enemy side of the street for targets. A muzzle started flashing in a window that was somehow still intact after Raven Flight's attack runs. She squeezed off a few shots with her autocannon.
“Hoplite, we have an armored vehicle coming up on our flank,” Allen's voice warned.
“Be right there,” Nora told him. She took off at full speed down the street, leaping over the heads of a squad that crossed her path.
There it was. An enemy armored car was pushing up the side streets with a platoon of infantry in tow. Yellow Platoon was caught between stopping to deal with the threat or supporting the advance.
Nora was going to make that decision easy. She aimed her autocannon and pulled the trigger. The first shot did nothing, and the second shot did nothing again. But for the moment it distracted the vehicle, and that was all Nora needed.
She bounded the last few yards and cut down several of the enemy with a burst from her minigun. Then she turned and grabbed the enemy vehicle by its side and pushed up.
The vehicle must have weighed at least a ton, but the exoskeleton could easily lift that amount of weight. The armored car flipped over on its side, completely helpless. Nora took the opportunity to put several 20mm shells into its belly at point blank range. It shuddered and split apart in an understated explosion.
“Keep going,” Nora told them as she gunned down the rest of the enemy platoon.
“Thanks.”
“Don't mention it,” she said.
A warning light flashed up. Low ammunition.
Nora checked her display again. In the chaos she had neglected to pay attention to her ammunition stocks. Her minigun was almost empty, and the 20mm cannon wasn't far behind. There was a small forward depot in the Central City district where she could restock, but that would take some time.
“All leads, this is Hoplite. I'm running low on ammunition, so I'm headed back to the depot,” Nora told them.
“Copy that, Hoplite,” Zach said. “We'll take it from here.”
“Good luck,” Nora replied.
She took off for the gate and made a quick glance at the power display. A third gone. It would last. Hopefully.
CHAPTER 23
Tooth and Nail
The enemy had fought them hard and with great skill. They were heavily armed and entrenched in a good position. Many companies would crumble in the face of such a stubborn defense. But Hydra was in no way average, and Ghost Battalion contained many of the alliance's best.
Under the relentless blows of the Hydra assault the enemy line crumbled, overwhelmed by both firepower and the sheer determination of the attacking troops. Supported by both Nora's exoskeleton and Raven Flight they forced their way across the street and shattered the enemy resistance.
But now both of them were gone to replenish their ammunition, once again leaving the infantry to carry the day.
Zach didn't doubt that they could do it. In fact, he knew that they could do it. But still, losing their heavy support made him feel nervous. They were nearing the airfield as well, which pushed Zach's mood from nervousness into full-blown concern. Tangling with the boss was not going to be fun if they didn't have their heavy support with them.
Still, they could pull off a coordinated attack with the other two columns. And while Redd Foxx was in the same boat as them, Sacred Sword had heavy support in the form of assault guns.
The trouble was, he had no idea what kind of situation the others were in. Zach hadn't been able to keep track during the furious fighting. He hadn't been able to fully coordinate his company either. The needed to reestablish their lines of communication, and they needed to do it fast.
He opened up a channel. “Sword Lead, Fox Lead, come in. Sword Lead, Fox, Lead, this is Wolf Lead, come in.”
“I hear you Wolf Lead,” David responded.
“I hear you as well,” Anna added in.
“We've broken through on our front,” Zach told them, “but Nora is back getting reloaded, and Raven Flight is getting more ammo as well. We'll try to advance on the airfield, but we might not be able to do much without our heavy support.”
“Copy that,” Anna told him. “We're mopping up the last resistance in our area, an
d then we're going to launch our attack on the airfield. Gray is going to lead his platoon in from the south, and we'll attack from the southeast.”
“We're coming in straight from the north,” David said. “No games, no subterfuge from us. We're just going to smash through their line.”
Zach didn't doubt it. Sacred Sword had over one hundred troops there, backed by armored vehicles. All of them were elite.
“OK, we're going to push in from the east,” Zach told him. “Let's make sure that we're coordinated. Our force and Sacred Sword should attack first. That will draw the enemy toward our positions, which should leave the south far more vulnerable.”
“And it means that the boss comes after you guys first,” Anna replied with some satisfaction evident in her voice.”
“Looking forward to it,” David replied.
“We're wasting time,” Karen interjected.
“Right. Let's move,” Zach said.
“We'll contact you once we're in position,” Anna said.
“Same with us,” David replied. “Let's get this done.”
Zach and the rest of the force pushed forward, heading toward the airfield that was now less than a mile away. Resistance on the way was extremely light, consisting of only small fireteams retreating toward the airfield. The enemy in the district seemed to be broken, but Zach knew very well that it was the calm before the storm. They would be in for a real fight soon enough.
“We're in position,” Anna told him.
“We'll be there in a minute,” David added in from his end.
“So will we.” Black Wolf and Barghest were just two hundred yards from the edge of the city, where the airfield began. Silently, quickly they moved into position among the buildings.
“Black Wolf and Barghest are in position,” Zach said.
“Sacred Sword is in position as well,” David replied. “We'll launch our attack first. Make your move as soon as you hear gunfire.”
“Roger that,” Zach replied. He quickly relayed the orders to his subordinates.
BAM! BAM!
The sound of two loud, distinctive shots rolled in from the north. They were from Orcrist and Glamdring, Sacred Sword's assault guns. That meant the attack was underway.
Fang: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 3) Page 24
