Howl: A World at War Novel (16 page)

It was up next, and Danny was going to conquer it this time. He lined up his shot and swung.

“
Just how bad was it?” Selene asked with a laugh. It had been a while since all of Black Wolf had been assembled at their headquarters, but they were all there making their last minute adjustments to their weapons and gathering ammunition. They didn't want to put any strain on White Tiger's supply situation if they could help it.

“
Took him nine shots to get it through the windmill,” Zach said. “The worst part about it was that every single shot was right down the middle. They all would have gone through if he could time it out right.”

“
Why do you have so much trouble with that one hole?” Selene asked him.

“
Because it's cursed?”

“
Only for you,” Zach said. “The rest of us got through in three shots or less.”

“
OK, maybe it is cursed for me.”

“
Danny's weakness. Windmills,” Selene laughed.

“
Well, I haven't seen any around here, so I should be safe,” Danny said. “Luck and skill will be on my side.”

They would need to be. Danny's force was prepared. Between Sacred Sword and the two ranger platoons he had over a hundred and fifty troops to work with. None of them were slouches, either. Sacred Sword was considered to be one of the top companies in the entire region; in fact, they were arguably the best pure fighting company in Hydra as well.

Besides the regular troops, they would have an assault gun backing them up on the coming battle.
Orcrist
was one of the first of the M11 Bulls specifically built for the infantry instead of the armored company. In the future they hoped to have at least two assault guns assigned to every infantry company, but for now Sacred Sword was going to be the test bed.

There would be air support as well. Raven Company was going to provide them with cover up top, using their fast attack runs to attack the enemy. They had yet another card up their sleeves. Hephaestus had built two U-1 Sparrows, and one of them was going to be in the air for them, tracking the positions of enemy troops and relaying the information down to them. It would fly high enough that machine gun fire couldn't reach it, meaning that unlike the choppers it was effectively invulnerable.

Despite all this, he felt nervous. This was going to be his first time commanding a force of this size in the field, and he was understandably tense right now. His troops couldn't afford to fail, and he was going up against the toughest opponent imaginable. The enemy had good leadership, excellent soldiers and was fighting on their home turf.

He had the suspicion that the Valkyries would have some sort of countermeasure for everything that Hydra could deploy against them. They had proved it with their hugging tactics in the earlier battle, and Danny was sure that they could do it again. He wondered just how bad the battle could be.

No, he thought to himself. Get those thoughts out of your head. Hydra was strong in its own right, and they had many tricks they could use against the enemy. It was up to Danny to make sure he implemented those tricks properly.

CHAPTER 14

On Top of the World

The view from up above was spectacular. Nora had been in the choppers before and though the sight was impressive. But that was nothing compared to what she was seeing now from the cockpit of a true airplane.

Hephaestus had managed to build two Sparrows in a short period of time. One was assigned to the northern front, where it would be used for observation and coordination. Aside from the aircraft themselves, Hephaestus had jury-rigged some tracking equipment, using vehicle mounted scopes and monitors. Using them, they could zoom in on a target on the ground. The images they could get weren't the clearest things, but they were better than nothing.

Nora was flying in the other Sparrow right now, along with a crew made up members from several different companies. There were the two equipment operators in the back, Dustin and Calvin from Hephaestus Company. Their role was to use their equipment to take photos of targets on the ground. Then there was her, acting as the commander of the whole thing. And finally there was the pilot Austin, a member of Jackal Company.

Nora activated her radio and addressed the others. “OK guys, we're going to follow the plan as discussed earlier. We'll start at the southern end of the city and make back and forth passes. Our aim is to try to get a general overview of the entire city. We can come back later if we need more details on certain areas.”

“We're going to need to make quite a few passes,” Dustin spoke up. “We want to be zoomed in enough that we can at least make out the targets on the ground, so that will reduce the amount of area we can cover in a single sweep.”

“
How many do you think?” Nora asked.

“
About twenty. It might seem like a lot, but it'll probably save us having to come back again,” Dustin said.

“
Austin, is that doable? Nora asked.

“
Yeah, we'll be fine, provided we don't have to do any extravagant evasive maneuvers. But since we'll probably be running for our lives if we do, then it shouldn't matter.”

“
OK, but let's not push it if there's any doubt,” Nora said. There was no way she was going to be responsible for losing their aircraft because they ran out of power.

“
Speaking of going down, why don't we have any parachutes?” Calvin asked.

“
Because we don't need them?” Nora said.

“
So what happens if we get hit?”

“
Hey man, do you really want to walk back to base? Because I'd rather pay the experience penalty,” Dustin said.

“
Might be something to look into, at least,” Calvin said.

“
Then you have a project for yourself.”

Austin laughed. “Man, you guys have no faith in me. I'll get you through safe and sound.”

“For some reason that's not too comforting.” Calvin said.

Nora smiled to herself. Their banter was calming everyone's nerves. Despite the fact that they really had nothing to lose, everyone had been nervous for their first real mission. Maybe it was because they were using something that was an unknown. Or maybe it was because of the defenses below. They thought that they would be ignored, but there was always a chance that they were wrong. If they were, then they were inside a big flying target with no defenses and no way out.

Whatever they were facing, they would have to bite the bullet and get on with it. Their recon work was far too important to delay any longer. Hydra was preparing an attack on the city, but there were still many questions to be answered. What was the effective enemy troop strength inside the city? They would need a solid number to go on before they made their move. How were the defenses organized? What was in each section of the city, and which sections would be more important to capture first? Did the enemy have weapons that could be used to bombard other parts of the city?

All of those questions needed to be answered before they could make their final plans for an attack. Nora thought that Selene's idea had potential, but it was in the planning stages at best. They would need a lot more information before they knew that it was feasible, and she was not about to go into it half-cocked.

Nora had one major concern: what would happen if their plan ran into a snag? Would they be able to adapt on the fly, or was their plan too reliant on timing? If it was the later then she wasn't sure it was sound strategy; they stood to lose a lot if something went wrong.

“
Alright, we're lined up,” Austin said. “I'll try to keep us flying in a straight line. If you guys could get a little overlap on the pictures then we'll have a little more room for error.”

“
Got that, and will do,” Dustin said.

There wasn't much for her to do now that they were in the middle of their run. Nora looked down out of the cockpit to the city below.

She had never appreciated the sheer size of it until now, but Indianapolis was huge. Its formidable walls snaked in various directions, guarding the city from attack. Where there were no walls there was water. Even from this altitude Nora could see strong points, towers that looked like they had artillery mounted on top. Those would have to be suppressed before they attacked.

But out of everything, she was most interested in the area contained within the walls. Everyone thought that Lerna Bastion was big, but it was dwarfed by the sheer expanse below. It definitely could fit in any one of the sections. There were building of every size below; houses, schools, offices, shops, malls, factories. She thought she saw a power plant in one of the sections, which might be very useful. It would be a coup for them if they could recharge fusion batteries there.

Hydra would have more space than they knew what to do with once they captured this place. Indianapolis stood astride the White River, so they would have easy access to boat transport. There were plenty of open spaces to base their choppers, and the highways around the city were still relatively intact. They would have everything they needed here to become the strongest power in the region. They might end up as the strongest power in the entire world.

It was so large. A thought crossed Nora's mind as the Sparrow came in for another pass. How were they going to govern a place like this? There was still plenty of space left in Lerna Bastion, and this was more than ten times the size of it. Would they be able to control the city? How were they going to govern something this size? And how were they going to defend it if someone else decided they wanted it and came calling with an army?

Maybe there were other options. Despite Ragnarok's best efforts, there were still hundreds of independent companies in the Old Chicago region, ranging from a few members to several dozen. That was one bright side of the entire war. Many of the smaller companies who didn't want to join an alliance were free to go about their business right now. Ragnarok would have tried to absorb them several months earlier, but now they were too busy. Ronin and Hydra were occupying their attention, and the smaller companies could thrive while the three big players pummeled each other.

The smaller companies might not be eager to join right now, but they probably would be more willing to listen if Hydra had more to offer. Other than strongholds, there were three commodities that were always in high demand in World at War; fusion batteries, ammunition and combat stimulants. That didn't take into account the technological advances that they possessed as well. Hydra had control of all three commodities to some degree, but capturing Indianapolis would put them over the top. It might be easy to refuse if all you were being offered was a stronghold and some bullets. It would be harder to resist if the alliance was offering to give you tanks and helicopters if you joined up.

But then again, that could mess with the current balance of the Hydra Alliance. Every incoming company would have a representative on the council under the current charter, which meant they could have over one hundred members by the time they were done. Getting anything accomplished would be next to impossible.

Maybe there were other solutions. They could offer to rent strongholds within the city at a discounted price, so many of the companies based in Old Chicago would come south. Maybe they could offer a partial membership, where they would be obligated to defend the city against attack in exchange for discounted prices on goods. Or maybe Hydra just needed to hire a horde of NPC guards. Whatever the case, there were a lot of decisions to be made on that front as well.

Nora sighed inwardly. Danny had once made the comment that World at War wasn't really a game solely about fighting; it was a game of politics. Military might and economics were just extensions of trying to put your political policy in place. And while that might not have meant much when you were in a company with only ten members, when you were in an alliance that line of thought meant a lot. Only the amateurs focused solely on the battlefield. The more experienced among them fought battles elsewhere; at the negotiation table, in the markets, through what they could plant in their enemy's mind. In a game that marketed itself as a pure fighting experience, there was a lot of subtlety and nuance to be found.

“
Halfway through. How's it hanging back there?” Austin asked.

“
We're doing good,” Calvin said. “A lot of good images.”

“
It's going to be a pain to input this all into a map table, though,” Dustin added.

“
Believe me, it's going to be a lot less painful than doing the recon on the ground,” Nora said. “We're not getting shot at right now.”

“
I'll refrain from making any jokes about Hephaestus,” Austin said.

“
Says the person who's flying the plane we built,” Dustin said sarcastically. “Talk about ungrateful.”

“
Hey, I do what I can.”

Nora looked back down over the city. This was so much faster than scouting on the ground, and that was going to be extremely helpful. Hydra was on the move. They had too much to do and too little time to do it.

“
Hats off to Hephaestus Company,” Gray said. “This info is better than anything that we'd be able to come up with, even if we had a couple weeks.”

Nora cycled through the holographic map table to make sure that everything had been entered correctly. It had been quite the process trying to get everything in place. First they had to photograph the entire city, which took more than an hour. After that they headed back to the airfield and landed, then unloaded their cargo. After that they needed to develop the photos, which took several more hours. After that was done they had transported them all south by ATV, and after that Nora had spent several more hours scanning every single photo into the table and arranging them into a map. It had certainly been a pain, but the results were well worth it.

Anna looked through the display when Nora was done. “Huh, you even have the heights of everything,” she said.

“
That's from the map table,” Nora said. “Probably why it cost a fortune. It asked me what time we took every single photo and calculated the heights by using the shadows and the angle of the sun. From what I can tell it's pretty accurate. They match up with what we've explored.”

“
That's actually pretty cool,” Selene commented.

Anna looked up at her. “OK Nora, you've been in the air, and you've seen the most of out of these photos. What do you think?”

Nora made a few swipes on the map table and zoomed in on the section adjacent to the bridge. “Well, there's a lot going on. I had Gavin, Terra, Lyla and Ethan look over the photos of this district while I was inputting the rest. If you look over here, that's the location of one of the antiaircraft guns that Selene's teams found. Look around the rest of the district and there's around twenty of them scattered about.”

She saw Anna make a face. Selene shook her head, and Gray whistled. She continued on.

“We've also found that there are a couple of towers in every district that have heavy artillery mounts. They're fixed so that they can only fire on targets outside the city, but they're heavier than anything we can get our hands on. I sent the pictures to Bryce. He thinks that they could wipe out our force here in a couple of shots.”

“
This just keeps getting better and better,” Gray commented.

“
There's also six barracks in the district,” Nora pointed out. “Going off the estimates we've gathered off of other barracks people have encountered, I'd estimate that there are between one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty soldiers in each one.”

“
So seven to nine hundred?” Selene said.

“
There's probably more. Your estimates might be right on target,” Nora said.

“
So is your plan even going to be possible?” Gray asked. “There's an awful lot that we have to deal with.”

“
I still think we can pull it off.”

Nora frowned. “It's going to take a lot of planning, but I think it's possible.”