“I'm fine with signing, but Ragnarok is going to come after us as soon as they find out,” she said. “Are we ready to handle that?”
“Remember, we have some leverage because we control the overdrive supplies,” Zach said.
Nora frowned. “But this would be choosing sides when we promised to stay neutral, and that might anger them quite a bit. At least, enough to come after us.”
“Have any of you ended up fighting Ragnarok?” Zach asked.
“There have been some disagreements, but other than the incident at Ronin Fortress, no. It's been mostly Ronin, Marauder and Archangel that have been fighting them,” Anna said. “We've made sure to not antagonize them.”
“Then this alliance is technically a neutral party, so they really can't complain.”
“But they have to know that we're biding our time until we have enough troops to take them on,” Gina said.
“Of course, and they're probably just biding their time until they can figure out how to make overdrive, and then it's curtains for us. But we have a good position to start with, at least.”
Gina nodded and put her signature at the bottom. “Well, here goes nothing. Let's figure out exactly what we have here.”
“Should we move everything down here?” Nora asked as she and Zach looked through the contents of an office. So far they had found a sizable armory and storage area in the basement of the building, to be used by the alliance as a whole. There was also what looked like a large board room that had been turned into a command post, complete with communications equipment. Now they were surveying the top floors, looking for anything of value.
“What do you mean by that?” Zach asked.
“Well, we're going to be operating out of here a lot more. So it stands to reason that we move everything in our main base down here.”
“But our base provides us with a good jumping off point. Plus, we can use it as a way station on the way to Old Chicago,” Zach said.
“Oh, I'm not suggesting that we up and abandon it. We should definitely keep our NPC garrison there. But we might want to find somewhere here to turn into a base,” she said.
“Ah, I like that idea better,” Zach said. “By the way, do you have dinner plans tomorrow night?”
“No, I wasn't planning on anything. Do you have something in mind?”
“Do you want to go to Belfast Manor?”
“Sure, that sounds good,” Nora said.
Zach opened up a desk and found something. “Ten credits. Great.”
“There's got to be something good around here,” Nora said. “Or the designers are just really cruel and made us all die for nothing.”
“Maybe it's not in here,” Zach thought aloud. “There was something over there that looked like a scrapyard of some sort. Maybe it's in there.”
“What are you thinking?” Nora asked. “I'm guessing that you have an idea as to what it is we'll find.”
“Maybe something mechanical? There were several buildings that looked like machine shops around here. Of course, half of them were destroyed in the fighting, and I don't want to go anywhere near most of them until we sweep them for mines.”
“Speaking of which, did you figure out what went wrong with the bomb?” Nora asked.
Zach grimaced. “There were twenty four shells in the crate that I wired together. Only four of them went off. And then I had to dig it up and disarm the rest. That was a ton of fun.”
“Maybe you should invest more in explosives,” Nora said.
“To be fair, I wasn't planning on having to fight on the front lines. Or on the enemy having a tank,” Zach said.
“I wonder if that was what President Starvos meant when he said that it would take around six months until someone was ready to take a major settlement.”
“This wasn't even that tough,” Zach said. “I mean, we had everything well in hand until the tank showed up. What happens when we attack somewhere with multiple capture points?”
“As good as we are now, we really need to improve a lot,” Nora said. “Plus, right now we need to focus on defending this place. Once we get the rest of our players down here we can go to work, but I'm concerned that we have no wall.”
“Could we make one?” Zach suggested.
“We'd need prefab sections to do that, and it's going to be really hard to buy them and then transport them down here,” Nora said. “Unless we can find another option. The only other choice would be to make one out of dirt, and that would take forever to dig by hand.”
“We have the buildings,” Zach said. “Even without a wall, they'll funnel troops into the streets, so we can set up choke points.”
“But that still means we have to be here and logged on to fight. Plus, Ragnarok could just rush us with all their troops, and there's nothing we could do about it.”
“I guess we're going to have to sell a lot of overdrive,” Zach said. His alert went off.
“Is everyone here?” Connor's voice asked when he took the message. He had patched in all the company commanders, Liz and Nora. Everyone responded yes.
“What's up?” Gina asked.
“Do you see my locator on the map?” Connor asked. “I'm in a garage of some sort. There's something that you all probably want to see.”
Zach closed out his menu and looked at Nora, who shrugged. They left the office and headed down the stairs toward Connor's marker. He was to the east of them, just off of the central point of town. They rounded the corner and saw what he was talking about.
The building Connor was in was indeed a garage. It looked like it had been used for construction trucks and equipment before the apocalypse had happened. There were a half dozen doors on the front and a smaller entryway on the left side of the building. An engineer in Grizzly's battledress was waving at them from the doorway.
“Hi, I'm Reese,” he introduced himself. Zach and Nora returned his greeting. “Are the others behind you?”
“They're coming,” Zach said.
“They're here,” Nora said, looking over her shoulder.
“What's so important, Reese?” Gina asked as her group walked in the door.
Reese motioned toward the garage bays. “See for yourself.”
Gina went first. “Oh wow,” Zach heard her say. They all followed behind; David first, then Anna and Liz. Zach and Nora brought up the rear.
“Is that what I think it is?” Nora asked as she looked.
“Yes, that would be what you think it is,” Reese said.
Zach looked at it in awe. It was a vehicle on tracks, similar to the tank they had fought earlier, but it had no turret and was open topped. He climbed up on one of the track guards. There were bench seats in the hold of the vehicle that looked like they could be removed. By his estimate, around ten people could fit inside, not counting the driver in front. It was unarmed, but it looked like there was space in front for a gunner and a weapons mount. And there were four more vehicles like it, lined up along the bays. It looked like there were spare parts in the sixth bay.
“Do they work?” Gina asked.
“Not right now, but it's because there's no power source,” Reese said. “It takes six fusion batteries to power, and I have no idea what type of range it'll get, but it should work regardless.”
“Even if they work, can we drive them yet?” Liza asked.
“I would think so,” Zach said. “Driving is a lot like shooting. You can take skill points to help yourself out a bit, but you'll need to learn how to drive just like in the real world. It's not like you take the skill and you instantly know how to do it like some other things.”
“That's for sure,” Nora smiled. “This is coming from the person who killed himself flipping his ATV 'cause he didn't know how to drive it the first time out.”
The others laughed. “We should probably be careful with them,” Anna said. “We don't have any way to make more, and we don't want to end up wrecking them because we have no clue how to drive them.”
“Actually, that's not true,” C
onnor said from the other end of the garage. “There's a schematic over here that Reese found. It's for the vehicles.” he emerged with a schematic in hand.
Zach met him and took a look. M14 Mule, the schematic read. It detailed the parts and the necessary materials to build it. But there were also a half dozen blank slots along the side of the drawing as well. Zach thought he could tell what they were...
“This is a modular schematic,” Zach said. “The basic schematic is for a vehicle called the M14 Mule, which is what we have right now, but it can be used for other purposes, I'm guessing.”
“You can see that?” Reese asked.
“Yeah, it's probably because of my machinist skill,” Zach said. “How high is yours?”
“It's level 1,” Reese said. “I'm more tailored to be a combat engineer.”
“Ah, that would be why. I'm level 2.”
“Do you have any idea what the other uses would be?” Anna asked.
“I'm guessing you can put different weapons on the front mount,” Liz said.
“Yeah, but I think we can do other things with it. I'm wondering if we can mount a cannon in the troop compartment,” Zach said.
“Make self-propelled artillery, eh?” David said. “That could be a good idea.”
“The problem is that we probably don't have the expertise to do it. Plus, we're going to have to get a lot of resources in order to build them,” Anna said.
“Yeah, this is going to require a lot of heavy machinery that we don't have,” Zach said. “We'll need to get a crane and a lift, at least.”
“Do we want to try to get help from Hephaestus?” Gina suggested.
“I think the better question would be do we want to offer Hephaestus a position in the alliance,” Nora said.
“Would they go for it?” Liz questioned. “They make a lot of their money selling to other companies, and Ragnarok is one of them.”
“Well, we do have a lot to offer them,” Nora said. “We have a huge amount of space in the town. They could very easily make a factory here, which makes them a lot more money in the long run. And they might be interested in learning how to build armored vehicles.”
“Plus, we have a really good working relationship with them,” David said. “Being a part of an alliance means that they'll have protection for their mining teams, and they can have their base in a protected fortress town.”
“Provided that we can get some sort of defense up,” Nora said. “I know I sound like a broken record, but we're going to have a hard time getting a wall up quickly. Though having these to transport the wall sections will help.”
“Do we really want to drive them up to Old Chicago?” Liz asked. “Overdrive or not, they'll still be a tempting target for anyone who thinks they're valuable.”
“Actually, I don't think we need to use prefab walls,” Reese said.
“What do you mean by that?” Nora asked.
“Well, I noticed that there's also a small scrapyard in the town, and there's some pretty solid stuff lying around. I think we can weld together some sort of dozer blade that we can mount on the front of one of the Mules. We can use that to make an earthwork wall and a trench. We can make it so that we can mount heavy weapons on top of the wall, and we can use the roofs on the outer edge as vantage points.”
There were nods of approval. “I think it sounds like a good idea,” Zach said. “It will certainly be less costly.”
“Well, it may not be necessarily. I also think we should put barbed wire up in front of the trench and then mine the trench itself,” Reese said. “That's going to cost quite a bit.”
“It's still going to be cheaper,” Nora said. “And it will be faster to put up.”
“Alright, I'm going to go see if I can find any good pieces for a dozer blade,” Reese said.
Zach got on his radio. “Selene, is your group still up at base?”
“We're getting ready to head out. Why?” she asked.
“Could you load up some fusion batteries? Like thirty of them?”
“What the heck do you need that many for?” she asked somewhat incredulously.
“Well, you'll see once you get here, but the big haul is five armored vehicles,” Zach said. “They take six fusion batteries apiece to power.”
“Dang, really? I'll try to bring them along, but I'm not quite sure we have that many left,” Selene told him.
“Just bring as many as you guys can,” Zach said.
“Got it. Wolf 1 out.”
Liz sighed. “We have a lot to do.”
“Then let's get to it,” Anna said.
CHAPTER 16
With Friends Like These...
“North Gate, this is Wolf Leader. My team is approaching, so if you could lower the gate that would be great.”
“I read your signal and your authorization, Wolf Leader. Will do.”
“Thanks Andre,” Zach replied.
The fortress town loomed ahead. Zach's team slowed down as they started to approach the gates. The town was now called Lerna, named after the lake where the hydra had dwelt in ancient Greek mythology. It was remarkable how much the place had changed in just two weeks. Hephaestus had agreed to join the alliance, bringing about forty members. They were merely average when it came to fighting, but their real expertise was in resource gathering, and especially crafting.
It was their crafting expertise that had turned Lerna from a sleepy backwater into what was probably the most fearsome bastion in the region. Engineers from Grizzly and Sacred Sword had modified a few of the Mules for construction work, but it was Hephaestus that had provided the bulk of the work and made the initial efforts so much better. The entire town was surrounded by a ten foot high wall made of packed earth, framed by bricks taken from destroyed buildings in the town. Below the wall was a trench, dug ten feet wide and six feet deep. Both sides were extremely steep, and there were mines strewn throughout. The side of the trench opposite the wall was ringed with barbed wire, with traps mixed in. The walls themselves were eight feet thick. They were designed as battlements, to give the troops on top some protection from enemy fire.
But the most impressive part of the defenses were the towers that guarded certain sections of the wall. The towers were two stories high, with a raised covering over the roof to protect the gunners from grenades. They had been made from huge piles of packed earth, reinforced by several layers of prefabricated wall panels, which were tough and sturdy. Anything short of several recoilless rifle rounds would cause almost no damage to one of the towers. They were armed to the teeth as well. There was a tripod mounted recoilless rifle on the roof, due to the fact that the gunner needed to be outside in order to fire the weapon. There was also a heavy machine gun mounted on the first floor, which fired out of a small view port. An additional machine gun was on the ground floor of the tower, firing out of another small view port. Anyone trying to kill the tower would either need to bring heavy artillery, or assault it at close range with grenades and flamethrowers.
And that would be a daunting task. Hephaestus hadn't built the walls in a straight line; there were parts that protruded further out with small bunkers and pillboxes mounted on top of the wall, and parts that slanted inward. That meant anyone trying to get close would be caught in a withering crossfire from the emplaced weapons on the wall, plus any troops there as well. And that didn't account for all of the machine gun nests mounted on the roofs of the buildings on the edge of town. All told, there were over a hundred weapons emplacements guarding Lerna. That meant over half the defenders would have one if they came under attack.
Zach stopped his ATV and waved the rest of his team on through. Ethan, Miko and Xavier sped by, heading for an alliance warehouse. They were carrying loads of fusion batteries, paid for by the overdrive they had sold earlier. Zach greeted Andre and his guard squad. They were from Grizzly, and had distinguished themselves as a part of Bear 5 in the fight to take the town.
“Have a productive trip?” Andre asked.
“Y
eah, overdrive is still selling like crazy. Marauder and Ronin are really at the throats of Ragnarok right now. It's too bad that they can't work together.”
Andre laughed. “You know, we probably want them to join us, but part of me wonders if that's such a good idea. All of us are getting along pretty well right now.”
“Right. I don't think that introducing a volatile element into all of this is a good idea,” Zach said.
“Yeah, that's what I was thinking about this,” Andre said. “We work well together, and we'll get even better with it as time goes on. I just think we need to be as strong as possible before we start adding people that might upset the balance.”
“Well, you guys were last minute additions and it worked out well. I can confidently say that the whole operation would have failed without you all. So, as long as we're careful it should work out fine,” Zach said.
“True enough,” Andre said. “Although I will say we were very cooperative newcomers.”
“That you were,” Zach said. “And we if we can find more like that, we'll bring them in.”
“Right. Well, I'll let you go make your delivery.”
“See you later,” Zach said. He glanced over his shoulder before pulling back out into the road and heading toward the center of town. The streets were relatively quiet. Most of the alliance was out doing various things; Anna was leading a reconnaissance mission to the south, David was providing security to the mining parties out to the east of town, and Connor and Selene were leading elements from Grizzly and Black Wolf in clearing another bunker in the forest to the north.
He pulled into one of the intact warehouses in the center of town. They wanted to use some of the others eventually, but it would take time and materials to repair the damage caused by the enemy tank, and that was better spent elsewhere at this point. Besides, they had enough room in the ones that were still standing to last them a long time.
“Glad you got them. We were starting to run low,” he heard Reese say as he dismounted his ATV. “The Mules were going through them pretty fast, although that's probably because we were pushing them so hard.”
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