A wave of relief washed over Boris as he heard how Viktor had been raised. While he had been overprotective with Olaf in many ways, everything Olaf had achieved was despite that. Boris's son could be far worse as a consequence of being protected. Perhaps it was more a matter of how Olaf had been protected compared to Viktor.
Boris had protected his son by restrictions rather than by making him feel he was the best at everything. Perhaps he had harmed Olaf, he realized now. But he had not disconnected him from those around him. Had always made him feel equal, but only equal, to those around him.
He was left with the gloomy thought of what damage his method of raising his eldest son had done.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Olaf was tossing and turning. He was supposed to be asleep. He needed the rest if he was going to be in top form for tomorrow. He was the single Were going to the observation point, a spot the local partisans had found that was not patrolled or watched, yet overlooked the cave Raina based from.
He was worried his presence would give everything away. He could smell the wolf on all the Werewolves around him. They claimed that there was only the faintest bear scent about him, and then only when he was close.
Something niggled at his memory, though. He wished he could talk to Lilith about it. The less sleep he was getting, the more he wished it. Suddenly, it was like there was a burst of static in his head.
He writhed in pain. He was glad he had moved his sleeping place downstream of most of the others. His thrashing would have woken them, too.
Then the static broke, and a voice he recognized came through. <
Remembering how cranky she got when he spoke to her verbally in the cave, he answered in his head. “Lilith? How is this even possible? I thought I needed an implanted etheric transmitter to talk to you like this!”
<
Olaf mentally snorted. “I'm stuck out on a limb with a fragile alliance of my forces and local partisans against at least three Vampires, an unknown number of Nosferatu, hundreds of humans soldiers, and a tank. I have a single medium railgun, two hundred rounds for it, and rifles, pistols, and shotguns with a small handful of grenades for the rest. Call it an assault force of around two hundred and fifty, although that number is rising. Small groups of partisans are trickling into rendezvous points every couple of hours.”
<
“First, that's not what I was worried about right then. I was more concerned about my scent giving away that a Were was in the area to an old Vampire like Raina. I must scout her position before I assault it!”
<
“But they still react to me. Why do they react?”
Sighing, Lilith answered, <
Olaf frowned as he went over his memories. He could not remember being taught that. There was nothing there about relative strength and how it was detected.
<
Olaf thought about it for a minute or two, then decided, “No. Maybe after I scout. If he asks about me, you can tell him what happened.”
Olaf got up and went to the stream, grabbing his armor on the way to wash it at the same time. It might dry before they left to scout. While Olaf was cleaning, Lilith kept nattering to him.
Finally, she reached the point. <
Olaf thought about it for several minutes, then answered, “You were the most likely to give me a straight answer without telling me off. I know I’m taking a few risks here, but the lead Vampire, Raina, is a monster. She’s turning people into Nosferatu, then setting them loose on their families.”
<< Was my theory correct?>> Lilith asked with a sudden intensity, <
Olaf grimaced. He was glad as hell Stasia was not listening to this.
“No evidence either way. I will see how they are in battle.”
<< Be careful of the Vampires. They have better functioning nanites than the Nosferatu. Your blood will not have the same effect on them,>> Lilith cautioned before the link went dead. There was a short static in his head then silence.
‘Just like Lilith,’ he thought grumpily to himself ‘Gets the information she wants, then drops the line.’
It had been nice to talk to someone from home.
He still had a mission in the morning. After drying himself as best he could, he went back to the sleeping bag. To his surprise, he found himself suddenly awake, feeling more rested than he had since the shuttle crash, as the steel grey of pre-dawn hit the horizon.
He could get used to needing so little sleep.
<<<>>>
The group of local partisans and leaders scouting the enemy base left before dawn. Olaf was a little nervous as they crossed a beaten patrol path, despite repeated assurances that a patrol had passed the area yesterday. Apparently, Raina’s patrols stuck to a regular schedule, even if patrols were attacked.
They were more than forty kilometers from the ambush anyways. Any extra patrols shouldn't be here. The pattern the partisans followed previously was to strike and flee. To patrol closer would be pointless unless they had received word something was up. Half the group leaders were going with Olaf on this recon patrol. More had wanted to, but Olaf had very quickly put the brakes on that.
“We may be intercepted,” he started, then raised a hand to forestall any objections, “Even if we are not, some need to stay behind to keep on top of everyone. Keep the watch-posts manned, and the noise of the camp to a minimum. We are the largest group of partisans to form this close to Raina’s camp. Everyone needs to be reminded of that. With no leadership present, mistakes could lead to the discovery of the force.”
To his surprise, Stasia agreed with him. She felt that at least two-thirds of the leadership had to stay behind. Leading by example, she volunteered to stay back.
Olaf focused on the present. The local guide indicated they were reaching the overlook point. Even from five hundred meters away, he could hear sounds of a significant movement being prepared. Far larger than the loss of that single patrol would account for. Once they reached the site, he took cover and concealment. Looking down, he could see units forming up around the tank.
The tank looked fearsome. It was a heavily modified T-72 main battle tank. Although outdated at the Fall, it was still a viable weapon system. More so now, with the general lack of artillery. It would be a monster on a battlefield with nothing to challenge it. Only the railguns on the New Romanovkan shuttles would stand a chance against it.
Olaf brought a pair of old-fashioned field glasses to his face. Looking through them, he could get a better count on the number of troops forming up around the tank. More than two hundred and fifty.
It was slightly less than he had been expecting. Then again, there was the patrol that had been eliminated. That could account for the extra troops he had been exp
ecting to leave once his relief force was spotted.
The partisans were operating in terrain that only a madman or madwoman would send troops into. Operating in heavily forested mountains and hills was a good way to get the main battle tank bogged down and left exposed.
That tank left Olaf with a hard decision to make. The railgun he had was salvaged—it was not a standard weapon carried by Boris's forces. While the artillery and mortars his original force would have could disable that monster, nothing in the force he had left behind could destroy it.
That left him with a dilemma. No matter the size of the force he managed to gather to assault this base, they would take casualties. Even if they managed to infiltrate close, the cave system that troops were rushing equipment out of to the force that was leaving would make that the case. The railgun would reduce their casualties on that assault.
Then he saw the main gun on the tank. That was no standard main gun. Red discharges arced along its barrel. The square shape of the barrel, everything about it, told Olaf that this was the weapon that had taken out his shuttle. That meant it probably had the same effective range as a Railgun. Line of sight.
Any force caught in the open by such a weapon would be massacred. There was no question about it. It would be able to fire before any shuttle could target it. And, while removing the railguns from a shuttle was relatively easy, his father may need all of them for the assault on St. Petersburg.
Removing them was easy. Putting them back on the shuttle was not. New Romanovka simply did not have the industrial setup all the way there yet. The new craft that had been designed were pure troop transports. They weren’t ready to be produced yet. But seating the railguns required a precision of machining that was destroyed when they were taken off. Olaf had only done it from his shuttle because it was a write-off.
Olaf swore. If that damned tank had been armed with a standard main gun, then there would have been no problem. Now, he was going to have to send his railgun team around the edge. He would have to make it five of his precious Weres. That was the only way to allow such a group to avoid any possible interception by enemy troops.
An additional concern was that the tank was obviously running on full electric motors. Had someone in the base cracked etheric generation? And how had they overcome the limitations that had prevented Boris from converting his tanks to the same? A large enough etheric generator to power a tank created a bubble around it that made any armament on them useless without turning the generator off. They were too small for the gunport methodology Bethany Anne’s team had made work.
Then again, the weapon that had struck the shuttle had simply ripped through the shuttle’s bubble. Perhaps a gunport was irrelevant. Or perhaps it was powered by a method that no-one else had thought of.
They would have to circle the base patrol perimeter, losing as much as a day's start on the force they were to follow. Weres should be able to make up a day over the week Olaf estimated should be between Major Petrova. It would have taken four or five days to organize a full movement of forces from a cold start.
Before he left to scout energy sources, they had assumed they would have time to plan any assault. The focus had been digging in the Fall-back position. Military forces able to switch operational footings suddenly was a myth.
Olaf switched his focus from the departing force to the base layout. There were two layers of razor wire. That was easy enough to circumvent with good troops. His twenty-five would split to cover that. Snipers up there could help, taking out the two dug-in machine gunners closest and covering the cave mouth. But three of the pits would not be able to be sniped from there. The range was too far.
He swore, and guilt flowed into him. There looked to be around a hundred men staying behind. His force numbered around three hundred. Without the sloppy patrols and the possibility to infiltrate snipers, any assault he could make would be suicide. As it was, without the railgun it would still be costly.
Grenades were rare among the partisans. They had an average of one each to the four standard grenades, two smoke, and one thermite grenade his men carried. Guilt welled up in him as he quickly estimated the casualty difference he would be asking of the partisans. Forty to fifty more casualties. At least ten deaths. But he had to weigh that up against the two hundred or more outright deaths the tank would cause if there wasn't a weapon available to Major Petrova to take out the tank.
Before they left the observation site, Olaf confirmed the tank was headed towards the highway. It was a logical choice. Travel along the edges of a road or the road itself would be the fastest way east. The local partisans had told him the largest beaten path out of the base met the highway.
He could only hope that his logic proved right.
<<<>>>
There was shouting as he put forth his plan. Several of the Partisan leaders were furious that Olaf was proposing to send away the railgun and a team.
Vassily was furious that they considered their own troop's lives more valuable than Olaf's troops. Petrova would be fighting the tank on low hills and plains—ground guaranteed to give the weapon greater range. Even if the base had smaller versions of that terrifying weapon, they would have better cover against it. If the assault failed, the mountainous terrain behind the base would allow them to fall back with minimal additional casualties.
Petrova's force would have to dig in. Falling back from whatever cover they could dig would be suicide. They would be lucky to escape with fifty percent losses. Considering that they would be infantry in the open, those losses would almost certainly be dead to that hell weapon.
Their attack would be safer since Olaf had spotted the communications post during the scouting mission. He volunteered to personally move in with the first wave to take it out. Behind the three bunkers, it was still more exposed than Boris or any of his commanders would have left it. A concrete bunker, there were enough explosives amongst the supplies scavenged from the shuttle to guarantee it would be taken out quickly.
It had been his volunteering to take the riskiest role in the assault that had turned the tide in the argument. Junior leaders respected it, saw their seniors as asking for him to betray his forces in their favor. They could respect someone who was willing to take personal risks that might make up the difference.
If it was set with a crush fuse, he could deliver the demo pack in bear form. In that form, he was confident this enemy would not be able to successfully target him. Throw it into the communications bunker then run like hell for the cave.
His platoon had objected. Heavily. The assault was planned for four days from now. They had more partisans than they could have hoped for. Surely, Olaf could take a less risky role, they thought. Only Vassily had not raised any objections.
When asked, he answered, “He’s the best man, with the best Wereform, for the job. Besides, as a bear, he’s fast. The job needs that more than anything.”
The large number of partisans had forced them to move farther away from the base, leaving a small team to keep an eye out for any changes on the base. Ten men, picked by Oskar and Stasia, with a single member of the small local partisan band. Their knowledge of the area around the enemy headquarters was critical to any success.
They were being treated like pearls without price in two ways. They were being put with assault teams and reserves. But to protect against any possible filth in their hearts, everyone was watching them carefully. None of them were allowed to even go to the latrine alone.
Other partisans had enforced that, not Olaf. That anyone could survive this close to the enemy base made them the highest risk for any breach of operational security. In Olaf’s opinion, the local group had taken the suspicion with a resigned but stoic acceptance. This was the best chance to remove the terror that had encompassed their lives for so long.
Supply was a problem. Many of the partisans came in with only a day or two of food. What was left from the shuttle reserve packs had been distributed, but with a ban on active hunting—lest the gunfire be he
ard—they were relying on snares to make a difference. Most of the partisan groups had bases, but in the field survived on whatever could be scrounged.
Some of the local edible roots were dug up. Snares were laid. Everyone knew they needed to take that base. Those who retreated east would only survive the week if the relief force defeated the enemy and continued forward.
The first two days would be Olaf briefing them on how to take on the Nosferatu they would almost certainly encounter. His remaining Weres were tasked with taking on the two known male Vampires. Raina was his, so long as he was still standing. If he fell, the plan was to fall back to the east. To link up with Major Petrova. The pilot, Vlad, was with the eastern reserve to make sure the partisans would be identified as friendlies. Pilots had a distinctive scent from their nanite package. Weres among the relief force would recognize it.
One of the concerns was that the Vampires might be able to act in the daylight. They would have to be on the lookout. No partisan had seen them and lived. The plan was based on the possibility that they were able to act during the day somehow. Possibly armored or with special clothing.
The plan was solid. While it was a risk of defeat in detail, that was countered by dispersal of Raina's forces. The number of men manning the bunkers had been confirmed to have reduced since the tank, and its infantry supports had been sent.
Her base was operating on a skeleton crew. The only disappointment Olaf felt over the whole situation was that both her confirmed Vampire supporters were present. She had to trust the leader of the tank force.
He had feared one would have been sent to look for the missing patrol.
His hope for one being sent with the tank force had also been unfulfilled. In the scheme of things, that made it an even break.
But perhaps the leader of the tank force was a Vampire. No-one had entered or left the tank while they watched. The smell, her stench, was so strong he could not even smell the other Vampires he had been told of.
Stasia had been a great help in gathering the support for his plan. There was a mixture of being well known and respected in the community and outright fear of crossing her, especially after how her father had died, that allowed her leverage.
Redemption (The Boris Chronicles Book 4) Page 13