Commando City: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 7) (11 page)

Selene flapped her arms in desperation, trying to generate a bit of momentum to stop her wild rolls. It didn't completely work, but she managed to get enough control to slow her rotation. That allowed her to find her rip chord.

She grasped it and waited for the right moment in her rotation to open up her canopy. Once wrong guess and it would be all over.

She pulled.

Selene heard the sound of unfurling fabric, then felt a sharp tug as the shoot deployed and slowed her fall. Once glance up confirmed that everything worked properly. She saw no tangles and no holes in the canopy.

But that was one problem out of many. Another glance around the skies made her realize that few of her troops were falling with her. She counted only three or four in her immediate area, with more drifting down much further away.

The fighters had killed a substantial number of her platoon in the hold of their transport, and the resulting disintegration scattered the survivors even further. Even if over half of Alpha Wolf had survived, they'd be useless as an effective fighting force. Who knew how long it would take for them to reassemble?

And who knew how long they'd even last on the ground, Selene realized as she neared her landing. The sounds of intense gunfire filtered up toward her. She could see two units exchanging shots with each other, and one of them had friendly markers over them. That was probably Spectre's pathfinder force.

But then an awful realization hit her. She was coming down on the wrong side of the lines. And if anyone decided to look up in the next few seconds, she was going to become a bullet sponge.

T
he pallets started rolling
down the ramp as bullets tore into the Colossus. Nora crouched low, almost complete prone as she tried to avoid the hail of firepower coming at them. The plane's lack of armor was becoming very apparent, and they probably needed to do something about that before the next mission.

That didn't do them any good now, though. More bullets rattled the fuselage, cutting through bulkheads and severing critical systems and cables. As the first Gazelle fell off the ramp, the rest of the load suddenly stopped moving.

“Hermes, the cargo belt's not working,” Anna said.

“Probably a system failure,” he replied.

“Can you get it restarted?”

“Not without repairing the system.”

Liz made a face. “Figures that our only engineer got shot in the opening round.”

Nora tried to think of a solution.

“Hermes, can you put the plane into a climb so we can use gravity?” she asked.

“I can try,” the pilot replied. “Keep in mind, though, if we lose power in the middle of it we're going to fall out of the sky like a rock.”

“Do it.”

Nora braced herself against the deck as the Colossus lurched up into the sky.

“As soon as they're out, follow,” Anna order.

“Understood.”

She watched the first pallet start to move, slowly at first, but then steadily gaining speed. For a second it looked like it wouldn't make it from the conveyor belt onto the ramp, but then the combined weight and momentum of the Gazelle did the rest. The vehicle fell out the back, followed by the supplied pallet.

And then it was their turn.

Nora got to her feet and made a mad dash for the exit. More bullets tore into the Colossus, some barely missing her as she sprinted the last few feet.

With one final effort, she pushed off the ramp and leaped into the sky.

H
e didn't know
if it was good judgment or sheer luck, but Bravo Wolf managed to make their jump without any outside interference. No fighters came their way, and there wasn't even any incoming gunfire from the ground.

A quickly glance at his wrist menu map shed a bit of light on the answer. They were northeast of their designated drop zone, away from where the furious fighting was taking place. That meant they could get descend without much interference, but landing would be a much different story. One glance down told him that they were drifting toward ground crowded with all manner of obstacles and buildings. The only clear spaces to land in were the streets, but those would be a tough fit. One wrong move could send them slamming into the side of a building, a street light or a telephone pole.

It would have been relatively simple with a ram air parachute, but the main force wasn't that lucky. Even so, Danny tried to steer his parachute with his risers, though he could only affect his movement a slight amount.

The street loomed into view, and Danny directed his fall, trying to land right in the middle. It would leave him a sitting duck, but it didn't look like there were any hostiles in the area. Landing on pavement wouldn't be nearly as cushy as the grass fields in the wilds, but it was better than pancaking into the earth. He prepared to touch down as he made his final approach, almost textbook.

He failed to see the street light in his way, though.

Danny suddenly felt his momentum come to a dead halt, and then he started to swing back and forth. The force of the deceleration stunned him for a moment, making him black out for a second. When he came to he looked up and suddenly realized his mistake.

His canopy had become ensnared in a tall light post, suspending him a half-dozen feet above the ground. Worse, several of the parachute chords had become tangled around his right arm, making it impossible for him to free himself. Danny couldn't maneuver his left arm well, and he couldn't reach his knife either.

All it would take was for one enemy to come along, and here he was, hanging in midair like a piñata. Danny tried to grip at the straps with his left hand, but pulling himself up at an angle proved to be impossible. He could barely even touch the chords, let alone get a good grip on them.

“Well, looks like you're in a fix,” someone shouted up at him.

Danny looked down to see Xavier standing on the street below. Several others were fighting their way out of their harnesses and forming up.

“Um,” he said with a sheepish grin, “a little help here?”

S
elene was
five feet off the ground when a Ragnarok trooper suddenly looked up. She shouted to her comrades, and then gun muzzles started training up into the sky.

Not good. Not good at all. Selene's mind raced as she tried to come up with some way to defend herself. She couldn't use her assault rifle, and her pistol wasn't going to do much good against a crowd like that. But what else…

Her hand grasped something on her harness. Grenade. Selene quickly yanked the pin and lobbed it into the middle of the enemy force. Most of the Ragnarok troops below saw it coming and dodged out of the way, but at least that meant they weren't shooting at her. As soon as she hit the ground she dove for cover.

Bang!

Had it killed anyone? Wounded them? Stunned them? Selene didn't know, but it wouldn't matter if she stayed this way. She ripped her harness off as quickly as she could manage, then armed herself with her assault rifle and took up a defensive position in a crater.

One glance at her minimap told her everything she needed to know. She had just landed on the outskirts of the Ragnarok line facing the planned drop zone. Spectre was right behind her, about fifty yards distant, but in these conditions it might as well have been five hundred. Ghost Battalion had chosen this location for its wide open spaces, and trying to move through them was tantamount to suicide with such heavy firepower being thrown around. She could hear machine guns spitting rounds down range, punctuated by assault rifle bursts and an occasional crack of a larger rifle.

But she couldn't stay here either. A grenade flew in from above and landed right on top of her. Selene grabbed it and tossed it back, but she probably wasn't going to get lucky with the next one.

She had one choice. She had to run for friendly lines, even if the chances of success were next to nothing. Selene readied a grenade and prepared to toss it. Once it was out of her hands she'd make a mad dash for Spectre's position.

Three. Two. One.

Selene yanked the pin and lobbed the grenade toward the enemy position, then forced herself up and scrambled out of the crater. One good sprint and she'd reach relative safety.

Bullets whipped around her as she ran, completely helpless to do anything else. Sprinting was her best defense right now. Stopping or even slowing to fire back would only make her an easier target. The faster she ran, the less time the enemy would have to properly train their guns on her.

Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.

Selene was about twenty yards from friendly lines when something smack into her back and sent her sprawling. The world went black before she even hit the ground.

That could only mean one thing: sniper. Whatever the case, though, she was out of the battle.

You are KIA.

N
ora yanked
on her risers and made a smooth landing alongside Liz and Anna. A few seconds later she had her parachute undone and then moved to help them get the Gazelle unloaded.

They were relatively lucky. She had no idea where the first vehicle had landed, but they had come down in an open area with the supply pallet and the second Gazelle intact.

“We're going to have to find the others,” Liz commented as they finished their work.”

Nora looked down at her map. “Yeah, that's not going to be easy.”

They had landed far from the drop zone, near the southern end of the district. She didn't know where any of the others had touched down, but Nora doubted they run into them anytime soon. And with the maze of streets and enemy opposition, it could take a long time to link up. Forget hours, it could be days or even a week before they were able to cobble together an effective fighting force.

“We can't just leave this stuff here,” Anna said, looking at the remaining supplies. “We'll need it eventually.”

Nora looked at the back of the Gazelle. “Maybe we could jury rig something so we can carry them?”

“Once again, perfect time for our one engineer to get himself killed,” Liz commented. “Our best bet is probably to strap them down to the back. We can use the parachute chords for that, at least.”

Nora drew her knife. “OK, let's get this done, and fast.”

One thing still bothered her. When she looked on the map the readout still indicated that the Shorewood District remained under NPC control. That meant Ragnarok was probably trying to take the district as well.

And that also meant they had two groups of hostiles to face, all while disorganized, missing huge chunks of their force and lacking sufficient firepower. Nora wondered if they even had enough ammunition to last for more than a couple of intense fights.

But they were on the ground now, and she wasn't going to go down without a fight. Somehow, some way there were going to do something, even if they could only prove to be a nuisance to Ragnarok's designs.

The trio finished loading the last of the supplies and climbed into the Gazelle. Liz took up the driver's position, Nora climbed into the gunner's spot and Anna took the commander's chair.

“Here goes nothing,” Liz said as she turned the key. It took a second, but the Gazelle's engine roared to life. A moment later they sped off the pallet and into the streets of the district.

They could fight. Now it was just a matter of fighting effectively.

But there was no disguising it. Their mission was already a failure, and the best they could do was to go down fighting. Would that even make a difference? Nora didn't know, but what else could they do?

“
H
ow bad was it
?” David asked over the radio.

Zach grimaced. “Let's not dress it up. Argonaut was a complete and utter disaster. Only about half our force dropped, and we were coming under attack when it happened. They're probably scattered throughout the district and don't have enough ammunition for more than a few fights.”

“So rallying is out of the question.”

“It doesn't look good,” Zach confirmed. “I can't get in contact with anyone who made it to the ground, but from what I heard from the people who got killed a lot of them are very scattered.”

Ghost Battalion's current respawn point was the tower in the Cudahy District and it was seeing a lot of use today. Troops from Spectre, Black Wolf and Barghest had already come in, and he had a feeling they weren't done yet. Not with so many units scattered throughout the district, disorganized, lightly armed and face with a significant number of enemies.

He looked up as Selene entered the command center. “Eh, so you bought it too?”

“I came down on the wrong side of the lines and got shot in the back while I was trying to make a run for it,” she said unhappily.

“At least you made it to the ground. I got killed standing in the hold.”

“You still there?” David asked.

Zach activated his radio. “Yeah, I am. Anyhow, I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do anything. Most of us missed the drop zone, it sounds like. And even if we hit it, there's a bigger problem. Ragnarok's in the district.”

There was a pause. “I'm sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Ragnarok's there,” Zach insisted. “I don't know how or when that happened, but the pathfinders were confronted by them near the drop zone, and then the rest of us got jumped by fighters while we were still over the lake.”

“And you think they were already there?”

“I don't think they would have been able to get there quick enough if they weren't,” Zach said. “And I trust Neil's assessment.”

“Can I join?” Selene asked.

Zach nodded and patched her into the channel. “Selene might have a little more knowledge than me.”

“So, what do you think. Was it Ragnarok?” David asked her.

“Oh, definitely. It was their style, and I got shot in the back by a sniper while I was sprinting. Unless the NPC ones here have gotten really good, the only ones that could consistently pull that off are players.”

“Any idea what units?”

Zach and Selene looked at each other and shrugged.

“Neil said something about them being elite units,” Zach responded. “He didn't say which ones they might be.”

Selene nodded. “Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with them. It looked like a light infantry force. No tanks, not a lot of heavy weapons, that kind of thing. So that probably means someone like Ymir or Fenris. Or maybe even the Valkyries.”

If that was true, then the situation on the ground was even worse than he had feared. Black Wolf had tangled with Ymir and Fenris before, and had managed to pull through. They were tough fights, to be sure, but nothing they couldn't handle.

But the Valkyries were a different story, the one nemesis that haunted them all. Black Wolf had confronted their rivals many times, usually coming out the worse for wear. It would have been hard enough to take them on at full strength, but after suffering such crippling losses it might be next to impossible.

“So, Argonaut is a failure. That puts us in a tough position.”

“No kidding,” Zach replied tersely.

He wanted to say more. He wanted to ask why they hadn't been given proper air cover. He wanted to ask why they hadn't done more to try to neutralize Ragnarok's air superiority. He wanted to know what had made the council think they could pull this off on such short notice, why there weren't any distractions to go along with Argonaut, why they had been given a mission in a location where they couldn't even perform proper reconnaissance. It had taken them weeks to properly scout Eagle Creek, so why weren't they given the time to do that?

But those questions were academic at this point, and he didn't need to be butting heads with the military council right now. Not when they had to come up with some way to salvage this debacle, and not while Ghost's two representatives were still in the Shorewood District.

Instead, he looked down at the map table, mulling over their options. They could leave the others to their fate and regroup later. That meant taking crippling losses that would leave them sidelined for weeks, maybe even a month or more. They could try to mount a rescue operation, but that might be impossible. With so many of them scattered across the entire district it would be difficult to even find them all, let alone get them to someplace they could extract them.

Or they could try to fight their way back into the district, finding some way to organize, reinforce and resupply the troops already there. That might be the toughest challenge of them all, but it also promised the greatest rewards. No matter how the other two went, they would simply be trying to cut their losses. But if they could manage to pull off the third option, it could be a complete game changer. Even if they only kept the enemy occupied, it would deprive Ragnarok of one of their best units while the rest of the alliance went to work.

“You still there?” David asked.

“Still here. And thinking.”

The more he mulled over it, the more it appealed to him. No matter what, Ghost Battalion was going to take heavy losses would need to take time to recover. They might as well do something useful before that happened. Plus, he might have enough troops at his disposal to do something useful. They still had half of Barghest, along with all of Redd Foxx. When the various stragglers were added in they had enough troops to form two full companies.

Of course, there were problems with that. In order to form the new company they would have to mix troops from a bunch of different units, which might cause problems with cohesion. If they hadn't worked together much then they wouldn't be nearly as effective as a well-tuned unit. And with Anna and Liz in the Shorewood District, Redd Foxx was deprived of both their commanders. Could someone else step up to take their place, or would that be yet another thing to reduce their effectiveness?

And how were they going to get there anyhow? An air drop was out of the question, given the number of enemy fighters and the horrendous transport losses they had sustained during the earlier battle. Helicopters wouldn't be any better, and they had no land route.

That left them with one choice: the lake. But even that option was fraught with peril. From their previous experience with amphibious assaults, troops coming ashore were as vulnerable as paratroopers falling from the sky. They had to struggle out of the water and across an open beach before they could secure any kind of cover, and heavy losses were the norm. Since Ragnarok had engaged them around the drop zone it was almost certain that they'd be in a position to oppose a landing.

Questions, more questions, and few answers. But they had to do something, because the longer they deliberated, the smaller their chances of success became.

“Here's a thought,” Zach said, and explained his position to the other two.

“Yeah, that's not going to be easy,” Selene said after he finished. “It might be possible if we can coordinate with the troops already in the district, but who knows if they can even get properly organized into units, let alone fight well enough to take part of the shoreline.”

“It is a tempting idea, though,” David said. “Like you mentioned, it'll at least distract whatever enemy forces are there, and it's going to force them to make a hard choice. Either they stay and fight, which will weaken the other districts, or they withdraw to face us and hand over Shorewood to you guys.”

“We still have to deal with the NPCs,” Zach pointed out.

“Yeah, and I'm fully confident you can pull it off.”

Maybe, but that didn't solve their problems. Right now they needed a well thought out plan to have any chance of success, but actually getting to that point would be extremely difficult, especially with most of their leadership gone.

“What's the plan on your end?” he asked David.

“We're going ahead as scheduled. Even if you can't take Shorewood, we should be able to grab St. Francis, and Jones Harbor is probably a good bet as well.”

“Understood,” Zach replied. He paused for a moment. “I'll try to come up with a concrete plan as soon as possible. Until then, just we aware that Ghost Battalion might not be combat effective on any front.”

“Right. Thanks for telling me, and good luck.”

Zach looked over at Selene. “Can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Try to get all the platoon leaders you can. If there aren't any platoon leaders from some companies then go with the highest ranking squad leaders. Have them head up here.”

“Will do,” Selene said with a brusque nod. She quickly left the command center.

Zach noted that she seemed to be fuming, which didn't surprise him. Once again, she had been killed before she could properly engage the enemy. But Selene was in the same boat as everyone else, and no one was smiling today. Being on the losing end of such a disaster stung, especially when the reason for the defeat had caught them completely by surprise. How had the missed the Ragnarok presence during their initial preparations? Had they been too focused on the airborne landing to give other factors the necessary attention?

It didn't matter at this point. Ghost Battalion needed some way to avenge their defeat, and in order to do that they had to fight as a cohesive unit.

Once those preparations were finished, they needed to have a plan in place.

I
t took almost an hour
, but his section's ad hoc command staff finally assembled in the tower command center. Zach had been busy in the meantime, establishing communications with everyone he could in the Shorewood District. So far he had managed to find Danny's group, Spectre Company, parts of Barghest, a group under the command of Javy, and Anna's trio in one of the Gazelles.

That didn't give him much to work with, but he had a much clear picture of the situation, which he had plotted out on the holographic map table. Now, it was time to put that information to work.

“Alright, I'm going to cut straight to the point,” he told the others. “We got beat, and we got beat bad. But we still have forces in the Shorewood District, and we're going to try to have another go at it.”

“We're not flying, are we?” Gavin asked. He had been unable to escape the carnage and had gone down with the his transport.

“No. And we're not going to use helicopter transport either. Right now our best bet is to use our river craft for an attack on the shoreline. Oh, and before I forget, officers. Redd Foxx, I have instructions from Anna. Gray, you're temporary company commander until we link up with the rest. Gwen, you're taking over platoon command until then as well.”

He looked at the rest. “Redd Foxx is intact, but the rest of us definitely aren't. Fine. We'll make do. We have enough troops to form a full strength company, and we all have experience with the various missions we'll need to perform. Selene will be company commander of the force.”

“Understood,” she nodded.

“I'll leave the decision of organization and leaders up to you,” he told her. “Make sure we're capable of fighting effectively.”

“Won't be an issue.”

“So, what's our role in this?” Robbie spoke up.

“Pilots, as usual,” Zach said. “If we can't get helicopters over the city we can at least use you as crew for the river craft. That'll free up troops that we won't need to use as gunners too.”

“Are you sure that you don't want us to provide some air support?” Blake asked. “I know it's tough tangling with fighters, but we can't just sit back and hide all the time.”

Zach frowned. “Right, I know we have to take some risks. But bear in mind we just lost a ton of equipment, and it's going to take some time to replace it. At the very least we're going to need more assault rifles and munitions. And a Colossus takes as much time and material as four Bulls. Hephaestus is trying to get tanks in the field for Rogue right now, so I don't know how long it'll take before they can get to us.”

“Then I wouldn't risk the Typhoons, but the Hornets could get some use. They're a lot easier to replace.”

“But they're more vulnerable.”

“Not necessarily. It's hard enough to hit a stationary target from a moving aircraft. It's even harder to hit a moving one that's going a lot slower and is a lot more agile than you are. You only have a small window to get shots in, and most pilots have a hard time pulling that off.”

“Fine then,” Zach said with a nod. “Form up a section of four Hornets that'll see use over the Shorewood District. And no more than that. We can't afford to replace many, so we need to limit our potential losses.”

“Understood.”

He looked back at the rest of the assembled officers. “We're headed back to the Shorewood District as soon as we can get a plan together. Once that happens we'll be performing an amphibious assault somewhere along the shoreline, hopefully with support from our forces already within the district.”

“We sure don't get the easy ones, do we?” Gray said.

“No, and we need to make sure we're ready for it. As soon as we can get assembled we're headed for Waukegan to get some practice in. We need to make sure that our force can work together under combat conditions, especially since we're going to be facing Ragnarok.”

Not just that, but it would be their elite forces. Could they manage to fight them on equal terms with an ad hoc force, compiled from whoever they had on hand? Zach wasn't exactly optimistic about their chances.

But they were Ghost Battalion, and the odds never seemed to faze them. Again, what was one more crazy gamble among the others they had taken and managed to pull off?

Anyhow, they could count themselves somewhat fortunate. At least they would be able to concentrate their forces rag-tag as they might be. He felt sorry for the troops scattered by the chaotic drop.