Getting Stronger in Marvel with Warhammer Simulator Chapter 417 416: Sokovia: The Second Battle

Thor and Tony ca back to the base within the hour, and the rest filtered in behind them over the following stretch of ti. Nobody required much rest. They sat down, ate what was available, and moved directly into the next planning session.

The situation was clean in its outline. Every Hydra installation across Europe had been removed. What remained was the primary fortress, embedded in the small country of Sokovia, and Baron Strucker.

The complication was geography.

The smaller bases had been set in remote locations: deep terrain, sparse population, the natural buffer of distance and wilderness between the engagent and anyone who happened to be nearby. Strucker's fortress was not like that. It sat close enough to Sokovia's city that the distinction between military target and civilian proximity was going to be a practical problem rather than a theoretical one. Even a fast engagent, even one conducted with every effort to contain it, would produce blast patterns and structural damage that the surrounding population would feel.

Nolan turned the problem over in his mind for a while, then put a proposal on the table.

David would take control of Sokovia's communications infrastructure: network systems, broadcasting equipnt, the ergency alert channels that every governnt maintained and few populations actually trusted until they had reason to. Once that was in hand, a ssage would go out under the country's own authority, citing an imminent geological event and directing people away from the city's neighbourhoods. Not a perfect solution. Strucker would notice the evacuation and begin readying his forces. But a prepared Hydra was preferable to the alternative, which was a populated area in the middle of a firefight.

Tony's response was imdiate agreent. Thor nodded with the straightforward enthusiasm of soone who had never found the concept of protecting civilians philosophically complicated.

Doom said nothing, which was as close as he ca to a formal endorsent of soone else's plan.

Tyberos shifted his helt slightly, and Nolan saw the movent for what it was: a thought being weighed and then set aside. He could reconstruct the general shape of it without difficulty. In the Imperium, the calculus of a civilian population near a military target produced a different kind of arithtic than it did here, and the Carcharodons had spent enough ti operating in the spaces between Imperial support that they had not developed strong opinions about where the line was drawn. Not cruelty, exactly. More the accumulated pragmatism of a Chapter that had learned to solve the problem in front of it and not the problems adjacent to it.

Nolan filed the observation and moved to the logistics.

The Defence Force companies loaded into transport vehicles before the sun had finished setting, moving on pre-planned ground routes that crossed the border quietly and put them in position outside Sokovia without announcing themselves. The Intelligent Control Corps followed by air, Thunderhawks running low and dark with navigation lights off. By the ti the outer camp had been established at the agreed border coordinates, the sky above Sokovia was a deep grey shading into black.

The country was smaller in person than maps suggested. The terrain confird what the intelligence files had said: mountainous, the majority of the population living in conditions that generous descriptions would call difficult, the kind of landscape that a man like Strucker would find useful precisely because no one with better options would choose it.

Nolan sent Doom in first, ahead of the main elent, with a Defence Force team and instructions to be quiet about it.

Doom returned after dark, the green cape carrying the night's cold, one arm extended with a bald middle-aged man suspended from it in pyjamas decorated with a small yellow fruit pattern. The man's expression conveyed that the evening had not unfolded in the way he had planned when he had gone to bed.

Nolan took off his helt. The gesture was intentional: face visible, nothing threatening in the imdiate posture.

"You can call Kain Mark," the man said, with the tone of soone trying very hard to sound calm while dangling from a tal arm. He took a breath. "Friends. I would ask that you consider very carefully before starting any kind of conflict on Sokovian soil. We have no mineral resources of note. Our fiscal capacity is limited. Even if you are holding , the president, the remaining governnt structure will not cooperate with demands for revenue, and"

"Do you know what Hydra is?"

The president's eyes moved in a way that was not quite an answer and not quite a denial.

"Who are you, exactly?"

Nolan glanced at Doom.

Doom raised one hand. The spell he cast was simple: a compulsion toward honesty, toward compliance with direction, the kind of working that left no permanent marks and produced no lasting harm. The president blinked twice and then beca considerably more cooperative.

Nolan asked his questions. The answers confird what he had already suspected: the president of Sokovia was not a Hydra asset. He was simply a man who had the misfortune of running a country that Hydra had decided was useful real estate.

He handed the president to David with instructions: go through the ergency broadcast process, use every channel, put the warning out in the president's own voice.

At midnight, every electronic device in Sokovia that could receive a signal received one.

"People of Sokovia, I am your President, Bruno Kain Mark." The voice was steady, unhurried, the particular cadence of a prepared statent. "I am sorry to disturb your rest. However, based on advance monitoring by governnt departnts, a sudden seismic event is expected to affect our holand imminently. In order to minimise casualties and damage, please evacuate in an orderly manner away from the city's residential areas imdiately. This is not a drill."

The ssage cycled on repeat. In the streets outside, the city's administration scrambled to get people moving, governnt workers materialising on corners and intersections to manage the flow, doing what they could with what they had.

The evacuation was proceeding.

Then the gunfire started.

It was coming from the neighbourhoods adjacent to Strucker's fortress, close enough that the sound reached the camp periter clearly. Nolan looked up toward the city's skyline and turned to David.

"What is happening there?"

David's eyes pulsed blue as it accessed the reconnaissance feeds from the servo-robots running aerial circuits over the city.

"Hydra soldiers are blocking the evacuation routes, my lord. They appear to be taking hostages from the civilian population. The destruction of the other bases has reached them. They know we are here."

Nolan looked at the people around him.

His eyes went to Tyberos first, and the calculation took less than a second. Sending the Chapter Master into a densely populated residential area to clear Hydra soldiers from among hostages would solve the tactical problem imdiately and comprehensively, and the civilian casualty figures would be very high.

"Thor. Tony." His voice was direct, no preamble. "Go into the city. Kill the Hydra agents and get the civilians clear. As many as possible."

He turned.

"Tyberos. Take the guards and hit Strucker's fortress from the front. Your objective is their main firepower attention. Buy ti for the evacuation to complete."

He found Doom.

"Lead the Defence Force in from alternate approach vectors. The Intelligent Control Corps provides fire support. We crack the fortress open from multiple directions simultaneously."

The camp was already moving before the last order finished.

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