Commando City: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 7) (21 page)

Danny glanced at the weapon slung over her shoulder. “I see you don't have your normal sniper rifle. Did you end up losing it in the drop?”

“No, I left it,” she said. “I had to swim across the river to avoid the patrols, and that thing wasn't going to hold up well. I stashed it in a safe location on the other side, so I'll grab it when we take the district.”

“Then where'd you get this rifle from?”

Miko looked at it, a stock rifle with no distinguishing features or customizations. Danny knew that most snipers liked to tailor their guns to their liking, making minor tweaks to squeeze out every last bit of performance.

“This came off an NPC sniper patrolling one of the streets,” she said. “Let me tell you, sneaking up on one of them is not easy. They don't have the aim of some of the players, but their awareness is off the charts. I daresay it's high enough to be cheating.”

“I really don't think we can claim that.”

“Huh, right. Anyhow, I grabbed this rifle and the ammo off her corpse and made my way toward you. As it turned out, I managed to stumble across you right as you were trying to get your head shot off several times.”

“Hey, there weren't very many choices on hand,” Danny protested. “It was either that or stay there like sitting ducks.”

“In any case, I think I scared them off. After I took out their sniper they probably didn't think they could find me before I picked them all off.”

“So, any other adventures on the other side?”

“Not really. Actually, one of the reasons I'm over here is to get extracted. They want me out in the forests trying to track down the airbases.”

Danny nodded. “Makes sense. They had us out there gathering coordinates.”

“Which means they're going to try to drop the hammer on Ragnarok soon. Guess that means you get stuck holding the line again while Selene goes out raiding.”

Danny grinned. “Yup, and once again I don't know who gets the worse job.”

“She doesn't have to fight the Valkyries and the NPC garrison at the same time, so I'd say she wins.”

“Huh, she does seem to get the easier jobs.”

“Well, what is it? Does she get off easy, or are you just complaining for the sake of it?”

“When would I ever do that?” Danny asked, taking a mock air of offense.

“Gosh, where do I begin?” Miko said. “Anyhow, you should probably stay on your toes. The garrison looks like it's getting restless, and they might attack at any time. Their patrols are active.”

“Joy,” Danny said in a resigned tone.

Then again, he didn't feel shocked at that tidbit of information. Anything and everything seemed to be going wrong in this district. What was one more obstacle?

T
he music flowed
.

Nora felt herself getting lost in the piece as she played. She didn't have to think about the notes, consider the fingerings or the position of her bow, listen for tone or anything else. She barely had to look at the sheet music. Instead, she let the music out, letting it meander where it wanted. No focus on technical ability or precision, none of that. Nora played purely for enjoyment, even though she was also sharpening her skills.

But at this point in her music career she didn't have to think about the technical aspect either. Having played for well over a decade certainly knew her way around the cello. She wasn't a student stumbling over notes and sound quality. Given enough time and practice she could master almost anything and play it flawlessly.

That wasn't good enough for her, though. Nora preferred to get into the piece, allowing the music to flow around her. She considered herself more of a performer than a technician: others might be better at certain aspects, but she could put soul into whatever she played.

And then there was the upside to her preference as well. It was easy for her to play for enjoyment, not caring about whether she was performing right or wrong. Nora just stopped thinking about it and let the music go where it wanted.

It gave her time to think about other things too. The events of the past week sat in a jumble inside her head, and she wanted to take some time to sort them out. Being outside of the virtual world doing something else would help clear her mind and maybe allow her to come up with a solution.

Their reconnaissance teams inside the district had been plotting the enemy dive bombers and their exit vectors for several days, compiling significant amounts of data that only promised to grow even larger. Ragnarok's air force had been busy over Jones Harbor trying to stem the tide and stop Magic Battalion from breaking through.

Nora didn't have a completely clear picture of the situation there, but from the few reports they had received it sounded like a ferocious battle raged, with no end in sight for quite a while. Ragnarok was throwing anything at their disposal at the attackers in an effort to salvage the situation. Both sides knew that this was the tipping point of the whole campaign. If Hydra managed to take Jones Harbor and Shorewood they would have over half the city, and the rest would fall. Ragnarok was taking too much of a beating to continue on like nothing was happening. If they lost then they might not be able to recover in time to prevent the capture of the entire city.

But desperate times made troops fight a lot harder, and Ragnarok wasn't made up of slouches in the first place. When backed into a corner they fought like demons, heedless of the odds, savvy, cunning, tough, vicious, stubborn. Forcing them out of a district would probably entail killing them all one by one, fighting house to house and street to street.

It was a lot like them, Nora thought to herself. Black Wolf had been backed into a corner several times and lashed out, causing their enemy horrific injuries in the process. She remembered how, even when cornered and taking grievous losses at Green Bay, they managed to lay a beating down on their assailants. Ragnarok would have won if it wasn't for the southern offensive drawing them away, but Black Wolf and Ghost Battalion as a whole would have mauled them in the process.

But now they were the ones on the offensive and Ragnarok the ones fighting tooth and nail to keep their possessions, or at least make taking them as costly as possible. This must have been what they had felt like at Green Bay, Nora thought wryly. They might have a huge number of resources at their disposal, but the enemy just wouldn't give up, and that was costing them dearly.

At any rate, the couldn't afford to go on like this. Something had to give, and if everything went right, that something was Ragnarok's dive bomber force. If Ghost Battalion could neutralize them they could take out their enemy's most versatile form of fire support. Rockets and artillery were plenty powerful, but it took time to get them into position and ready to fire. Dive bombers, in contrast, could be on the battlefield within a short period of time performing their attack runs. But once that was gone Hydra would't have to deal with bombs suddenly falling out of the blue, at least for a while. They'd have the upper hand, enough to possibly sustain them through the rest of the campaign.

Her mind continued to wander as she played. They needed to get the information, of course, but once they had it in hand they also had to ensure they used it properly. Nora believed they'd get one shot at a raid before Ragnarok reinforced their airbases and made anything short of a full-scale assault by an entire battalion impossible. Or, if they didn't want to waste so many troops in the rear they could scatter their planes to dozens of smaller airfields, preventing Hydra from destroying them all in one go.

There were other dangers. They needed the element of surprise, otherwise the bombers would simply take off and fly away when the attack started. Ghost's raiders might be able to destroy supplies and facilities on the ground, but as long as the actual planes remained in one piece the effects would remain limited. They had to destroy the machines, and the simplest way was to do it while they were stationary.

But how could they make sure that happened? They had no way to know if the dive bombers were on standby, powered and ready for takeoff at a moment's notice. Nora knew that Raven Flight did something similar when they were in especially dangerous combat zones, and she wouldn't be shocked if Ragnarok did it at well. After all, they had to protect a valuable asset.

Cutting their supply lines probably wouldn't work, because they had no idea where they were coming from. Plus, if Hydra started raiding them they would probably tip off their foes. Ragnarok certainly wasn't stupid, and if their convoys heading to the airbases came under repeated attack it wasn't hard to guess what was going on.

The only solution she could think of was to draw the dive bombers into a fight, then jump them right after they had landed and were running low on power. If they managed that the enemy wouldn't be able to flee, otherwise they'd probably end up crashing when their fusion batteries ran out.

But how could they do that, and how could they make sure they drew out most of the enemy force? Just a few planes wouldn't do. Nora and everyone else wanted to take them all out, or at least enough to render the force impotent for the foreseeable future. Something like that might be impossible, unless Ragnarok felt it had been backed into a corner and needed to use everything it had at its disposal. That might be impossible in their current position, because Ghost Battalion didn't have much fighting power at their disposal.

Even with the losses sustained during the fight for Shorewood they had plenty of firepower and troops, but all of those were scattered across the city. If they joined together and were able to use all their assets on hand they'd be formidable, but separated and hamstrung they couldn't do much to threaten the enemy. Ragnarok probably wouldn't take an assault on their positions in Shorewood seriously, not without a significant increase in the number of Hydra troops committed. And since a good portion of what they had on hand would need to go toward the raid…

It was times like these when she wished they had more troops. Ghost Battalion had a nominal strength only slightly lower than the other units in the alliance, but a significant portion of them were in Raven Flight. She definitely appreciated the transport capabilities and fire support they brought to the table, but they also didn't provide critically needed ground troops. Even with the recent increases in companies like Spectre and Barghest the battalion as a whole lagged behind.

Black Wolf was one of the problems. She hated to admit it, but they needed more members, even though that might mean a complete structural change. It had been the same way during the early days of the game, where they had to branch out from their initial ten to increase their numbers. No one doubted their skills, but they could only do so much with the ones they had on hand.

But right now they couldn't do anything about that. Once again their company was mired in combat, unable to do anything but fight for their lives. They had no chance of integrating new recruits at the moment, and even if they could she doubted anyone wanted to put them into the grinder right off the bat. Even experienced troops weren't lasting long during these fights, and she believed most novices would get themselves killed within a few hours, maybe a day if they were lucky.

No use wishing for something they didn't have and weren't going to get for quite a while. They needed to win with what they had on hand at the moment. Somehow, some way they needed to get all the pieces to fit together. But how? They couldn't draw out the enemy bomber force without a serious attack, and they didn't have enough troops at the moment to pull it off. Unless…

Nora stopped playing and set her cello aside as a thought popped into her head. Of course. With the Shorewood District so quiet Ragnarok had been using their dive bombers in an attempt to bolster their defenses in the Jones Harbor District. She knew they had rocket artillery and smaller guns at their disposal, but dive bombers could place heavy bombs on target with pinpoint accuracy, which made them extremely valuable.

Despite their efforts, however, Magic Battalion was making progress, and the bomber pilots were becoming more wary. Hydra had recently taken a much greater interest in antiaircraft weaponry and had started manufacturing Mules with rotating gun mounts in the back. With either four or size .50 caliber machine guns apiece, they could shred anything that crossed their path. And while they might have a hard time tracing fast-moving planes, dive bombers had extremely predictable flight patterns. Gunners on the ground could aim at a specific point and let loose, since the pilot couldn't pull out of their attack run once they were committed.

Magic had shot down two bombers and damaged several more, and that seemed to make Ragnarok wary. They still conducted missions over the district, but their pilots seemed to lack the same sense of arrogance they had in the past. Now that they knew Hydra could reach out and kill them they were beginning to take the appropriate precautions.

Still, if they Ragnarok could be forced in a corner they would have to commit everything at their disposal or risk losing their advantage. The military council's bold gamble was beginning to pay off, and it might permanently put the campaign in their favor. Eventually there would be a tipping point, a time when victory became inevitable. Nora didn't know exactly when that might be, but the more districts they took the closer it came. Their enemy knew that as well, and she imagined they'd do everything they could to prevent it.

A single attack wouldn't draw them out. Not even close. Ragnarok was smart enough to keep a reserve in place in case the unexpected happened. But if they were hit everywhere at once they might have no choice but to commit everything.

And while Ghost Battalion might not have enough troops to make that happen, the rest of the alliance did. Magic Battalion was already engaged and fighting hard. Dragon had sustained heavy losses in their fight for the St. Francis District, but they could provide support to an attack, especially with artillery. Rogue and Knight Battalions held the ground west of the city stretching for miles into the wilderness. Even a limited feint from them could send the enemy into a panic, or at least force them to redeploy troops to meet the threat. And then there was them.

Ghost Battalion might be split up, wounded, under-gunned and in need of reinforcements, but they could still put up a fight. They might not be able to do much alone, but acting in concert with the rest of the alliance they could certainly draw a considerable amount of attention from one of the enemy's best units.

That might be it. If they could hit Ragnarok forces simultaneously at several places, they could force them to commit all their resources to the fight. That would give them the opportunity they so desperately needed, and it might also open up some other possibilities for them. At the very least, Magic might be able to take the rest of the Jones Harbor District.

And if they managed to do that as well as destroy the dive bombers, then they would win this phase of the campaign. Once Magic Battalion had control over the Jones Harbor District they could bring in supplies and reinforcements over the relatively safe land route, squeezing the Valkyries in a vice between them and Ghost Battalion. They would still have to fight to take the district, but NPC troops would be nothing against a well-organized force of Hydra veterans.

But she had to convince the others that her plan would work, and that would take some time. Nora thought about logging on for a minute, but she picked her cello back up and resumed playing. They needed to start planning soon, but right now she didn't feel like playing telephone with the military council. Let that wait for a bit.

Nora drew her bow across the strings and began to lose herself in the music again.

“
S
o you want
us to launch an all-out attack along the entire front to put Ragnarok on the defensive and force them to use all their reserves,” Anna summarized. “That's quite the bold plan you have there. Some people might call it reckless.”

“As opposed to trying to take three districts within the span of a week?”

Liz snickered. “She's got you there.”

“Why just me? It wasn't all my decision.”

“I don't remember hearing you putting up a ton of resistance to it either.”

“Whatever. Anyhow, this is going to take some doing. We're going to have to convince the rest of the council, and they might not be receptive to it. I don't know what kind of losses Dragon took at St. Francis, so Cody and Bryce might be opposed.”

“Cody never turns down opportunities to punch Ragnarok in the mouth,” Nora argued. “And if we can get a good one, then we should take it. They have to know that.”

“Right, but it's going to be hard. I can't exactly pound the table for you when I'm stuck here.”