Werewolf: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 4) (21 page)

“I won't tell them that you said that,” Danny commented.

Liz shrugged. “Well, it's true. NPC enemies have their challenges, but they don't even come close to what human players can do.”

“Yeah, I'd have to agree with that,” Danny said. “But still, I wouldn't say anything about that to them.”

“Well, they're not going to hear about it. Not unless you blab.”

“My lips are sealed,” Danny said with a grin.

Liz smiled back. “Good.”

Charon
continued on through the night waters.

CHAPTER 18

The Ghost Line

“Here.”

“Here?” Selene asked.

Gray nodded. “This is probably going to be our best bet. Just look at it from here.”

Selene climbed up beside him and looked out over the scene in front of them.

“OK, I'd have to agree with that,” she said.

The approaches to the western side of the city concerned them the most. The eastern side of Green Bay had a huge swamp to the south, which was impassible for vehicles and extremely difficult for infantry. Ghost Battalion had given up on moving through the area in anything but helicopters or boats.

But here to the west, the terrain was better, though not by much. There were swamps to stop the vehicles, but they were much easier for infantry to move through. And once they had cleared the initial line of marshes, the rest of the area was covered in forests. The terrain wasn't ideal for Ragnarok, but with their numbers it might not matter.

But Ghost Battalion also had their own advantage. There were only a few good spots to cross the swamp, so they could concentrate their forces at the choke points for maximum effect.

Right now, Gray and Selene were looking at one of those spots. The swamp thinned out at this point, and there was a clear stretch of land to cross. The ground was wide enough to support three or four troops at a time. A tank would probably be too heavy, but they might be able to get an ATV across, and Ragnarok was still using them as cavalry.

But the crossing could also be turned into a death trap. The north side of the area was covered in thick forest, set on top of a low ridge. Any defenders would have a height advantage and be able to hit the enemy with impunity. Cover would do Ragnarok no good.

“So, we place a platoon here?” Selene suggested. “That should be good enough to hold them off for quite a while.”

“Under normal circumstances, yes,” Gray said. “But I've got the feeling that Ragnarok's not going to play nice with us.”

“Wouldn't expect them to,” Selene agreed. “So, what do you think they'll do to force their way across? There's only two more crossings, and they're even worse than this one.”

The two crossings to the west were hemmed in on one side by steep cliffs, which meant the assault troops would need to climb while coming under withering fire from the opposition. Selene wouldn't relish the prospect if she were on the other side, and she didn't think the Ragnarok commanders would, either. It was a good way to get a lot of their troops killed.

So that meant the hardest blow was going to fall here, on the easternmost crossing. Knowing Ragnarok, they weren't going to mess around. If they ran into trouble, they were going to call down every bit of firepower at their disposal. And they had a lot of it.

“I'm worried about how the battle will go,” Gray said. “I'm almost completely certain that we'll throw back the first wave. But after that it gets dicey. If they do what I think, they're going to call artillery strikes down on our positions.”

Selene nodded. “And we really don't have any way to counter them.”

She hadn't been on the receiving end of very many artillery strikes, but she had seen the aftermath of Bravehart and Griffon's work. Artillery was devastating, and worse, Ragnarok had rocket artillery that could light up an area in a span of a few seconds. She
had
been on the receiving end of one of those, and Selene had no desire to repeat that experience.

“If they do that, there's no way we're going to be able to hold this spot for long,” she said. “Not without getting slaughtered.”

“Unless we really dig in,” Gray suggested. “It'll take a lot of time and work, but we should be able to make a defensive position here that will protect us from artillery fire.”

“I'm listening,” Selene said. “What do you have in mind?”

“We should dig trenches,” Gray said. “Dig one up here where we can see the crossing. That lets us fire on the enemy when they try to advance. But when they pull back, we should have a reserve trench with underground shelters further back.”

“How far back?”

“Maybe fifty to one hundred yards?” Gray suggested. “And we should have a couple of trenches running between the two. That'll give us time to run for cover between the time they retreat and the time the artillery stops falling.”

“Is one hundred yards really enough?” Selene asked.

“It's not great. I mean, we'll still be in the blast radius of the shells. But if we build the shelters right we should be fine, barring a direct hit. And the closer they are, the quicker we can move between them and the fighting positions.”

Selene looked over the forest behind them. “That's going to be a lot of work,” she said.

Gray nodded.”Yeah, it will be. So if we're going to do it, we'd best get started on it soon.”

“I'll radio Anna to see if I can get a platoon out here to help us. Maybe the Hephaestus team as well.”

“If you can get them, that'll be great.” He stood up. “I'm going to check out some of the angles from up here.

“Have fun,” Selene said. She activated her radio.

*              *              *

“Boy, you sure know how to pick the fun ones,” Zach commented as he shoveled dirt. “Why couldn't you have done this yesterday instead of today?”

Selene shrugged. “Because I wanted to give Danny a break?”

Zach laughed. “OK, he deserves one.”

Selene laughed as well, then went back to work digging out the trench.

About half of Black Wolf Company was online to help prepare the defenses in this sector. Paige's team had joined them and were directing the entire operation. Black Wolf provided the manual labor, moving dirt and cutting down trees.

The bunkers and trenches would be simple, constructed out of earth and trees. Currently a dozen Black Wolf members were digging a deep hole, aided by more of their comrades up top carrying the excess dirt away. Once the hole was dug trees would be layers over top, and then earth would be packed back on to create the roof. There was bracing to be done that Selene didn't understand. That was Hephaestus's job. But the bunkers would provide them with decent protection from enemy artillery fire, so long as they didn't sustain a direct hit.

They weren't reinforced concrete by any stretch of the imagination, but they were better than nothing. And they would need every advantage, no matter how slight, to tip the scales in their favor. Their enemy would crush them otherwise.

“Can you hold this section of line with just Alpha Wolf?” Zach asked.

Selene frowned. “With just Alpha Wolf? That's going to be hard. I mean, we'll do well against the first few waves. But eventually they're going to wear us down, and by that time we're not going to have enough troops to stop them.”

“So, no?”

“If our orders are to stay here and fight to the death, then we can hold them off for a good spell,” Selene told him. “If you want us to withdraw when we're being overwhelmed, that's going to be a heck of a lot harder. Impossible, even.”

Nora walked up. “Are you going over the battle plan?” she asked.

“Yeah. Please don't say that I'm supposed to hold this place with a single platoon,” she said.

“Well, we need to cover the other two fords. Spectre and Bravo Wolf will handle that. Redd Foxx will cover the western swamps. Raven's going to be doing their thing. And at least two of the three companies left need to be inside the city in case Ragnarok breaks through.”

“Would you rather have Barghest, Thorn or Myrmidon backing you?” Zach asked.

Selene stopped digging and leaned on her shovel. “Hmm, that's a tough one. The obvious choice is Barghest, because I trust Karen to have my back the most.”

“What makes it tough, then?” Nora asked her.

“We need to have good troops in reserve, which again, Barghest is the one I'd trust most,” Selene explained. “And it's not like I don't want to fight alongside the other two. I'm sure they'll do fine when the time comes. But then again, I don't know which one I should choose.”

“So, are you pawning responsibility for that decision off on me?” Zach asked.

“I suppose I am,” Selene said. She resumed digging.

“In that case, I'm going to put Thorn out here with you. They have experience fighting Ragnarok out in these forests.”

“Doesn't that apply to both of them?” Nora asked.

“Yeah, but from what I've heard they were the primary ambushers for their group,” Zach said.

“So, that gives us around seventy troops or so, when we're at full strength,” Selene said. “That's not great, but it'll do. We'll be able to make it painful, at least.”

“And that's really all you can do,” Nora agreed. “Our main defense is going to have to be at the walls.”

“Speaking of that, are we going to have the exoskeletons as backup?”

Nora frowned. “Unfortunately, no. Hydra Command ordered us to send them south on the next supply run, so they should be arriving sometime tonight.”

“That strips us of all our heavy support,” Selene said unhappily. “Didn't you argue with them, at least.”

“Long and hard,” Zach said. “But it didn't do much good. They don't want to risk the suits in what they consider to be a losing battle.”

“Great,” Selene said. This situation just kept getting better and better.

“They did let us keep my suit up here,” Nora said. “And given the amount of supplies we needed to run the entire platoon, there's no danger of running out of ammunition or fusion batteries.”

“Well, I'd say that's better than nothing.”

Nora looked around. “We have a few extra autocannons from the last supply run. We might want to assign them to this area.”

“They're going to be difficult to move, which probably means they're going to be destroyed in the first bombardment,” Selene pointed out. “They'd provide a lot of firepower, but I'm not sure they'll be the best choice.”

“You'll have heavy machine gun emplacements, though. Is that right?”

“Yeah, we will,” Selene confirmed.

“And it's not like the autocannons are much heavier than them,” Nora pointed out.

“It's not just the cannons themselves. It's the ammunition that has to go with them,” Selene said. “That's a lot of stuff to carry back and forth in a short amount of time, and I'm not sure we can do it. Not to mention that over half of our troops here are going to be from a green company.”

“Heh, green company,” Zach said.

Selene groaned. “Leave it to me to make an awful pun completely by accident.”

“Well, what if we positioned a couple of bunkers up here?” Nora said.

Selene gave her a half smile. “You know, someone who doesn't have a shovel probably shouldn't be making demands of the diggers. We'll probably have a mutiny on our hands.”

“If it's practical, I mean,” Nora said.

“Well, it should be,” Zach shrugged. “They don't even have to be full sized bunkers. A pillbox that's big enough for a two person crew is fine.”

“Those come last,” Selene said. “And those are a luxury. None of it matters if we don't live through the artillery bombardment.”

“Right,” Zach said. He frowned. “Well, I managed to put us in a pretty nasty mess again, didn't I?”

“You and everyone else,” Nora said.

“Well, this is primarily my fault, actually. Everyone else was just mad. I was the one that said we would fight to the death to hold Green Bay.”

“Well, I can't really disagree with it,” Selene told him.

“You might when the battalion gets pounded into the dirt,” Zach said with a frown on his face.

“I think that you're being way too hard on yourself,” she shrugged. “Do you really think we'd be here if everyone else thought this was a stupid idea?”

“Well, no.”

“And that's why you shouldn't be worried. One way or another, everyone wants this. I mean, what's the point of playing if we're not going to duke it out with some of the best players in the game?”

“At a huge disadvantage?”

“Heck, everyone likes being the underdog,” Selene said. “It means that no one expects you to succeed, so you want to prove them wrong. And it's not like we're guaranteed to lose.”

“I'm just worried about what happens after this battle. If we don't do it right, I might have just signed our death warrant,” Zach said.

“Because we're taking such a risk here?” Nora said.

“Where's the risk?” Selene asked. “We're in the north, up away from all the important fighting. None of us actually die if we're killed in battle. And sure, losing equipment will suck, but we can always replace that.”

“But that will take time,” Zach said. “And if we lose all of our choppers and boats we've lost our mobility.”

“Well, then we do things the old-fashioned way,” Selene said. “But I think this was the right decision. And besides, it's going to be the most fun as well.”

Zach leaned on his shovel. “We forget that a lot.”

“Like I said, what's the point of playing a game if you're not going to take on challenges?”