Werewolf: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 4) (6 page)

“Which means we can also get the heavy support we'll need for the fight,” Neil said happily.

Nora responded with her own happy smile. “So this operation is going to make things a whole lot smoother.”

“Provided we can pull it off,” Liz said.

“Right. But the reward outweighs the risk by a lot,” Zach said. “If we take the ship, we take out one of the toughest obstacles in Green Bay. It also gives us more firepower and will improve our supply situation, and it lets us bring more of our troops to the battle.”

“Sounds like a pretty big swing in our favor to me,” Selene said.

Anna agreed. “OK, I'm going to grant my approval to the operation. Zach will be in charge, seconded by Robbie. Black Wolf and Raven are responsible for the capture or destruction of the enemy ship in Green Bay harbor.”

“Right,” Zach said.

Selene saw Anna open up her wrist menu. “OK,” she said, pressing a few of the digital buttons. “We'll need a name for the operation. Luckily they put the random generator in the game.”

“So what's it going to be called?” Robbie asked.

Anna looked at the line that popped up. “Lonesome Crow.”

Selene shrugged. “OK, works for me.”

“Danny, Blake, you there?” Zach asked over the radio.

The rest of the council had left, leaving only Robbie, Zach, Nora and herself present. Currently, they were trying to get into contact with their northern teams under the command of Danny and Blake.

The boosted set they were using theoretically had enough range, but even Zach wasn't completely sure that it would work smoothly. As far as they knew, their northern force was still en-route to Sturgeon Bay, and it was uncertain if their own boosted set was set up.

Selene watched Zach try again.

“Danny, Blake, are you there?”

“We're here,” Danny's voice replied after a few seconds. “Sorry, we we're taking care of a bit of an issue.”

“Anything we should know about?” Zach asked.

“Nope, we're fine,” Blake said.

“OK, so you got my reports, right?” Selene asked.

“About the ship in Green Bay harbor? Yeah, we got them,” Danny replied. “That's not going to make our jobs very easy.”

“Actually, we're planning to take it out to clear the way,” Nora said.

“With what?”

“We're going to board it and storm it,” Selene said. “What better way to take it out than to take it for our own?”

Blake cut in. “I'm assuming that you're going to be relying on us to get on board?”

Robbie spoke up from their end. “That's right, and it shouldn't be too much of an issue. We just need to get in close, match speeds and then have the teams climb aboard.”

“It's going to be a little more difficult than that,” Danny said.

Selene shrugged, even though they couldn't see her gesture. “Of course it is, but it's not like we can't pull it off. We've done tunnel fighting, trench fighting, amphibious assaults and airborne assaults. I really don't see how this is going to be any more difficult than those. We can all climb.”

“Raven's going to clear the decks while we're climbing, is that right?” Danny asked.

“That'd be correct.”

Blake interjected again. “What's the ship carrying for secondary armament?”

“We don't know,” Nora replied honestly.

“Then this could get very dangerous,” Blake said. “It's a good way to get us all shot down, if we don't know what we're up against. Plus, they might have the guns to blow the river craft out of the water if they get in too close.”

“We know,” Zach said. “We need more intelligence before we put the plan into action. But the plan is going into action. We stand to gain too much not to risk it.”

“What can we do?” Danny asked. “I mean, we'll be at Sturgeon Bay soon. We'll have a flotilla of river craft, plus four choppers from Raven. That gives us a pretty good scout force up here.”

“Maybe have them draw the ship out of the bay again?” Selene suggested.

“That's my thought,” Robbie agreed. “If we can get it away from the shore then we'll probably be able to do several flyovers to figure out what it's packing.”

“That means we have to go into the harbor, provoke it and then draw it out, which means staying within range of it,” Danny said. “You don't ask for much, do you? Anything else we should know about it?”

“It has a big gun,” Selene said. “Like, artillery size. It's not going to be very accurate, but I wouldn't want to be standing where the shells land. Or floating.”

“Thanks.”

“How much do you want us to provoke it?” Blake asked. “Are strafing runs OK?”

“We'll leave that to your discretion,” Robbie said, looking at Zach for approval.

Zach nodded in agreement. “Alright, try to figure out what the ship is packing, but make sure to balance risk with reward. I don't want to lose most of our equipment in the initial stages of Lonesome Crow.”

“Huh?” Danny asked.

“Oh, right,” Zach said. “The operation to take the ship is called Lonesome Crow.”

“Any special meaning to that?” Blake inquired.

“First name to pop out of the random generator?”

Danny laughed. “Sounds about right.”

“We have the ship's schematics here if you need them,” Nora said. “Call for them, and we'll send them. They'll tell you everything you need, minus what's mounted on it as weaponry.”

“And how it behaves,” Robbie said. “That's probably the most important thing we're missing.”

“What's everyone else doing?” Danny questioned.

“Anna's organizing the rest of the battalion for the trip up, as planned,” Zach informed him. “This operation is squarely in our corner.”

“All the glory, all the blame?”

“All of it.”

Selene spoke up with a smile on her face. “That's the way we like it, though. Triumphant victory, or crushing defeat. There's nothing for us in between.”

“Who dares wins,” Blake commented.

Selene nodded. “And we'll win.”

They had a long way to go before they could grasp that win, though.

CHAPTER 6

Solitary

Alone.

That was how Nora was going to spend her day. Cut off from the outside world, from her friends, even from the virtual world. The only reason she would log on today was if there was a dire emergency around Lerna Bastion. Otherwise, she was content to stay offline.

Nora hadn't played her cello in almost a week, and it was high time she did so. Not only for practice, but to simply allow herself to experience the pure enjoyment of it all. Music had been her passion for most of her life, after all, and ignoring that passion stripped a part of her away. She needed to be able to play to feel whole.

And so she sat alone in her apartment, playing Bach on her cello, perfectly content to be away from it all.

Nora's mind wandered while she played. To her, being out in the real world completely alone seemed like a significant change of pace from the activity of the virtual world. Inside, it was impossible not to be social. There were too many things to be done that required multiple people, and lone wolves were extremely vulnerable to the harsh dangers of the world. Players had to band together in groups, and that lead to friendships, relationships and the like. It turned the virtual world into a busy, bustling place.

But was it really all that different from what she was doing now? If she was playing World at War she might
perceive
that she was being social, surrounded by hundreds of other players, but in the real world, her body would be sitting alone in her apartment, just like it was now.

Was it all one big grand illusion? Was the social network inside the virtual world a true community, or was it all just a facade, cooked up to imitate the real thing?

Nora thought about it some more as she continued to play. It might not matter, in the strictest sense, whether the community in the game was a facade or not. To her mind, it was real, and that should be enough for her. After all, she had come to the conclusion that everyone projected a little bit of their soul through their in game avatar. If they could reach out and touch that piece of another's soul, then that was good enough to build some form of community.

But that could lead to yet another problem. As loath as she was to admit it, Nora felt a bit isolated from the rest of her friends in Black Wolf. Being left behind in the south had left a bitter taste in her mouth.

She wasn't angry. She couldn't be, because Nora knew very well that it was the right decision. They couldn't risk their powered exoskeletons on a secondary front. But still, it felt like she had been left behind, abandoned while the rest of them went off to do bigger and better things.

In all honesty, it was a stupid quibble. Her friends would still be there, and she had important things to do in the south. And anyhow, it was still a game. She could walk away at any time if it depressed her too much.

But yet, there was some good to her blues as well. No matter what anyone else said about the value of the virtual community, to her it meant a lot. Her camaraderie, her friendship meant something, and it was strong enough to transcend the boundaries between the two worlds. If she felt down, it was because she could care. And no matter what anyone else might think, she would take that as a good thing.

At the same time, being able to step outside the community was important as well. It allowed her to think about it from a different perspective, like she was doing now. That in and of itself was valuable.

Nora stopped playing and looked up when she heard her phone go off. She set down her cello and reached for it. There was a text message from Zach.

You OK?

Yeah
, she responded.

Any reason why you haven't gotten on today?

Just wasn't in the mood. I'll be back on tomorrow, at least.

OK then. XO.

Nora picked her cello back up and resumed playing.

The line. That line between the virtual world and the real one. She had talked about it many times, and had heard others talk about it even more. With the advent of the first virtual world came a slew of questions. What was the line? How much could it be manipulated? How much could cross it? And, could the line between worlds become blurred?

In her case, that question was very important. She probably would have never met Zach outside of the virtual world, and if she was honest, the roots of her attraction to him had been formed in the virtual world as well. Fate had intervened, and they had met in the real world soon enough, but without the virtual world it was very likely their relationship never would have happened.

But was it truly solid? Nora couldn't help wondering about that, despite herself.

How much of it was based on truth, and how much of it was based on a facade? Much of their interactions had been inside the virtual world, and yet they were completely different people from their real world personalities.

Zach was unassuming in the real world, often content to follow rather than order. In the virtual world, however, he was a dynamic leader and an excellent tactician and strategist.

Or take herself. At her core, Nora was purely an artist, doing things simply for their pleasure and beauty. In the virtual world, she had been all about business. The logistics, the nitty-gritty background jobs that no one thought about but were essential, those were her forte. And they went completely opposite of her real world personality. But why?

Was it roleplaying, being able to do something out of the confines of their normal boring life? Was it wish fulfillment, doing things that they didn't have the courage to try in real life? Or was it something else?

As much as they didn't like to think about it, they were sailing in uncharted waters right now. None of them had any idea what to expect, or what pitfalls might be lurking just around the corner.

It was times like these when Nora wished she wasn't so introspective.

“We missed you yesterday,” Miko commented the next day before their interview session.

“Would we really have seen each other at all?” Nora asked.

Miko thought about that for a minute. “OK, on second thought, no. But still, we missed you.”

“Yeah, and I definitely missed being around you guys. But spending a day outside the world being able to play my cello was pretty relaxing for me.”

“Can't blame you there,” Gavin said. “If you're not going to be doing anything inside the world, then why bother going in? Do something else.”

“What are you guys doing right now?” Nora asked them.

“We're trying to get more intel on the ship in Green Bay harbor,” Selene told her. “We've made a couple more runs trying to lure it out. We think we'll be able to do it just fine.”

“But that's only one of our problems,” Xavier said. “Even if we grab the ship, we still need to take care of Green Bay. And we need to have good intel to pull that off as well.”

“How are you guys doing on that?” Nora asked.

“Well,” Zach said.

“Minus my close call two nights ago,” Javy said.

“What was that?”

“Oh, I took a small landing party and hit the beach at one of the unguarded points. Well, unguarded being a relative term, because the garrison figured out we were there pretty quickly. We had to run for it.”

“And the ship chased them,” Danny said.

Javy nodded. “Yeah, that was a whole lot of fun. Having around a hundred troops after you, followed by the big ship in the harbor? I was surprised, some of those shells were landing very close to us.”

“I'd think that this was a job for Redd Foxx,” Nora commented.

Zach nodded. “Oh, they're doing plenty. Anna has everyone following a reconnaissance plan. Redd Foxx is doing most of the heavy lifting, but Spectre and Barghest are doing a lot as well. Myrmidon and Thorn are continuing their raids, and they're helping us to navigate the area as well.”

“Won't that give us away?” Nora asked. “I mean, you'd think that Ragnarok would notice that they're using more ammo than usual.”

“They haven't changes tactics,” Danny said. “They're still using single shots and bows and arrows from ambush positions. It's pretty effective, from what I've seen. Liz is pretty interested in it all.”

“I'd imagine.”

“And I've done some ranging by myself,” Miko said.

“Find anything interesting?”

“This is going to be a whole lot of fun, once we're ready to start raiding,” Miko said with a smile. “The whole area is covered in rough terrain. There's dense forests, swamps and a lot of lakes. Plenty of dangerous things inside those places as well.”

“How have you not gotten yourself killed?”

“Hunter skills,” she replied.

“Is that a stat boost or a passive effect?” Nora asked.

“Yeah, one of the ones that no one has never heard of,” Miko told her.

“Probably because no one ever bothers to use the leveling system anymore,” Javy said.

That was one significant change from the early days of World at War. In the beginning of the world, most players had treated it like a standard RPG. There were levels and stats, and increasing them allowed the players to access more abilities and perks. Not all abilities were restricted by the systems. Activities such as shooting and driving, for instance, could be learned like in the real world. There were no arbitrary ways to gain skill; players had to learn them by trial and error.

But a funny thing had happened along the way. Slowly but surely, the level system had been phased out by the players themselves.

Almost no one had noticed at first, and when they finally did they weren't sure why it was happening. Ultimately, it boiled down to the nature of combat in the game. Fights in World at War were decided by split-seconds. Anything that cost a fraction of a second in a battle could prove to be fatal. That eliminated many abilities; even though they were excellent tools, the time it took to activate them meant they were viewed as a liability rather than an asset.

Instead, marksmanship and fieldcraft had come to dominate the battlefields of the virtual world. The best shots, the best tacticians, those were the ones that would come out on top in a struggle.

And so, one of the cornerstones of the game had been rendered completely obsolete by the players. Somewhere, a team of developers was sobbing, Zach had said. Nora couldn't exactly blame them if that was true. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours had been sunk into the system, and within six months it had been relegated to a sideshow.

In a month, it wouldn't even have that significance. Once the 2.0 patch was released, the leveling system and all the associated perks would disappear.

The changes sounded significant, though for many of the players it wouldn't make much difference. Levels would disappear, along with abilities and perks. Players would learn skills through practice, much like the system currently in place for marksmanship. That meant, theoretically, anyone could learn to do anything, given enough time and practice.

But most significant of all, and the one change that was causing the most stir, was the fact that the class system would disappear.

To Nora the change was rather welcome. The class system had felt arbitrary, restricting players to certain roles. It was supposed to create balance, but more often than not it simply pigeonholed players. It also created odd limits; only certain classes could use certain weapons. This leave to odd circumstances where an assault couldn't pick up a heavy machine gun that was sitting right in front of them. It broke the immersion of the world, and to Nora, that was extremely harmful.

Some might argue that certain players would become overpowered with no restrictions, but she didn't think that would be a problem. They still had to learn how to perform certain tasks, and that would require time and practice. If someone wanted to have abilities in everything, they were reducing the amount of time spent on each individual skill. A player might be able to handle several different types of weapon well, but they would be no match for someone who specialized in a certain weapon.

The classed wouldn't completely disappear, either. They would be replaced with a system called loadouts, which was dictated by what a player carried. A player carrying an assault rifle would still be considered a soldier, and a player with a machine gun would be a heavy, for instance. But there were other combinations that went outside of the original classes. A player with a rocket launcher or a recoilless rifle would be an anti-tank, for instance, and one with a flamethrower would be an assault pioneer.

Some people would love the changes, and some people would hate them. For larger groups like Ragnarok and Hydra, they would make very little difference. They already fought in that fashion, and the patch would simply force everyone else to bring themselves up to speed.

But still, it was fun to think about. The world around them would be changing, all because of their actions. And it would change even more, depending on what they were able to pull off in the next few months.

“Any idea as to when you'll be ready to take on the ship?” Nora asked.

“We have no idea,” Danny shrugged. “We're getting good intel, but we're probably going to get only one shot at this. We want to make sure the plan is ironclad.”