WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 130

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Golden Gate (2)

The conversation kept stopping and starting again. It was a good way to pass time on the slow ship. April Pacific became a topic they deliberately avoided, including how that ship had met its end.

The setting sun painted the sea. For once, there was no fog, and the Golden Gate glittered true to its name, washed in gold. The waterway narrowed toward the bridge. Red cliffs curved along the northern side. The artillery positions built on the high ground stood out. More than a dozen field guns were aimed at the sea.

With his corrected vision, Gyeoul could even make out soldiers jogging along the ridgeline. They looked strained as they climbed. On the hill they were heading for, there were guard posts and a flagpole. The Stars and Stripes rippled in the wind, large enough to be seen from anywhere in the strait.

He could see the same flag on the southern side too. The U.S. military held both shores connected by the bridge.

How?

The question came naturally.

"Ann. Was there always a base like that? I do not think I ever saw it on the broadcasts, and I never heard anything else either."

The San Francisco Bay Area had been the epicenter of infection in North America. The U.S. military had been driven back hard from this place. So establishing a bridgehead here was symbolic. There was no reason for the authorities not to boast about it. The media, starved for good news, would have jumped on it too.

"There is a reason. It is still secret."

"Why?"

Joanna asked playfully.

"Want to guess?"

Hmm. Gyeoul furrowed his brow and thought. It would help if he could see the whole base: whether it had a runway, the level of its facilities, the size of the garrison, the types of deployed equipment. But from here, all he could see was the seaward side.

No, those details probably were not the point. He shifted his thinking. Joanna was not the type to play pointless games. If she told him to guess, it meant he could. Maybe she was testing him. Even if not, this was still a chance to make a good impression. She had already given him a small hint.

Still secret.

Was something not ready yet? Could he read that as meaning it would be revealed when the time came? Media blackout could only be about public opinion. Mutants did not watch TV. No evidence had been found that Tricksters understood human language. If they did, the front would already have descended into chaos.

The presidential election. Right, that too. Even Operation 「Manifest Liberation」 had been shaped by political conditions. Were they planning to reveal this at a decisive moment? People would definitely erupt....

He nearly said election strategy out loud, then stopped. The FBI agent watched him with interest.

"Did something occur to you?"

"I thought maybe election strategy, but even if that is right, I do not think it is the biggest reason."

"Why?"

"Because it would also be a problem if public opinion overheated and spun out of control."

"What made you think that?"

"There are too many people in this city."

The people he meant were not the sea refugees. He meant San Francisco residents still isolated in the city, still resisting even now. If news of this base got out, demands to rescue stranded civilians would be inevitable.

"Was the estimate 800,000? That is for the whole contaminated zone, but this is a major metro area, so at least 100,000 should be here. I doubt the base can even house that many. The resources needed for extraction would be huge too. You would need helicopters in large numbers. If that disrupts preparation for Manifest Liberation, that would be a problem. That operation is the most decisive factor in the election, right?"

San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, cities around the bay formed one megalopolis. How many helicopters would it take to move people in six figures? Military aircraft were not easy to maintain either. Given flight range, they would probably need forward deployment for a while. It would be a serious waste of strength.

The FBI investigator offered a counterpoint, still looking interested.

"Would that not reduce the burden on air supply?"

The U.S. dropped 5,000 tons of supplies into contaminated zones every day, enough to support two million lives. But the survivor population was only 800,000. And most of them still suffered shortages.

Because supplies were dropped by parachute. More than half landed where no one wanted them. Even in San Francisco alone, survivors were scattered like points across a huge city.

He had heard that the hardest cases were people holding out in a single building.

Lots of mouths to feed, but far too little drop zone.

Those were exactly the places helicopters should be used. Even from an airlift-efficiency standpoint, those were the places where people should be extracted. Gyeoul had always wondered. Was there a reason they did not? Were helicopters really that scarce? Or did they fear that rescue operations would thin defenders and let buildings be overrun...?

Gyeoul answered.

"Helicopters and transport planes serve different roles. You cannot replace helicopters just by saving transport planes. And Wooden Wonder is not a helicopter anyway. One is flying over there now."

DIY for patriots. The wooden transport plane featured on TV was crossing the skyline of the decaying city. Soon it dropped cargo from low altitude. The pilot circled around the opened parachutes, probably checking whether they landed properly.

The slow contrail shifted direction. Maybe the pilot was satisfied. Gyeoul continued.

"If you want to host helicopters in large numbers, the base itself has to change. Its entire facility profile would be different. If this base is set up for Manifest Liberation, would that not create problems? There are not even two months left. More than anything, once it starts taking in survivors, it will be hard for it to function as intended."

If they ignored rescue sentiment, approval ratings would obviously fall. So the only choice was to keep quiet about the base. After hearing all this, Joanna smiled softly.

"Good judgment. The more I learn about you, the more surprising you are, Gyeoul."

More than talent, your character is what surprises me. How can someone like you exist? She praised him calmly, and Gyeoul gave a half-formed smile. Enough embarrassment, enough pleasure.

Is this enough?

A faint anxiety rose each time he had to make an expression. It was because the FBI supervisor was so capable. The way she had analyzed the April Pacific madman so casually. Her knack for reading people.

People with deep 「Insight」 sometimes saw through fabricated emotions. He had experienced that in the first few world settings, then never again. But he was hollow these days. So hollow that he needed thicker smoke. Around a knowledgeable agent, he had to be careful. If she hit him with 「Perception」, he would lose her trust.

That was why he tried not to think about last night anymore. He was afraid she would notice the stone inside him. The Governor had prodded it too much.

Joanna leaned on the railing and looked over San Francisco.

"That is right. We are worried about a public-opinion stampede. There are other reasons too."

"What are they?"

"I will tell you, if you remember your confidentiality oath."

Gyeoul tilted his head, then pulled out his smartphone.

"Even if I wanted to leak secrets, I could not. You are monitoring everything anyway. Even if I told people around me, the impact would be limited. You can relax when it comes to me. I never planned to go around talking in the first place."

There was a signal in this area. Which meant a repeater for the military smartphone network, Net Warrior, was nearby. He had expected as much. In a place where the CIA and special forces were running joint operations, there was no way there would be no communications network.

What he had wanted was contact with the Gyeoul Alliance. But he could not. The signal was there, but communications were restricted. It was military comms, after all. Setting permissions by device would not be hard. In America, even tanks needed network credentials separate from ignition.

Joanna looked puzzled.

"If it is all right, may I see it for a moment?"

She handled the device and confirmed that most functions were locked.

"I am sorry. Even as FBI, I do not know everything. I did not expect this. Are the active applications all combat-support functions?"

"Yes. Ballistic drop calculator, coordinate calculator, video report system, fire-support network, things like that."

"It was not like this before.... Including the functions, so much changed after the Quarantine War. I am sorry. You must have been uncomfortable. I only meant to remind you that this is confidential."

"Pretty shabby treatment for patriots," she muttered. Gyeoul shook his head.

"No, not at all. Do not worry. This is probably the best option. I am more comfortable this way too."

Better than drawing unnecessary suspicion. As he said that, Gyeoul put away the phone she handed back.

"So what is the other reason?"

"It is an unofficial hypothesis, but it seems mutants are deliberately keeping survivors alive inside contaminated zones."

"Deliberately?"

"Based on reconnaissance so far, mutants do not actively attack survivor groups inside urban areas. Their numbers keep increasing day by day because of those moving north from South America, yet their aggression is actually decreasing."

"That is strange. It was not like that when they attacked bases."

"Exactly. If they attacked civilians at the same intensity as military bases, there should be very few survivors left in contaminated zones by now."

Gyeoul remembered San Diego from TV. Even North Island, the First Marine Expeditionary Force stronghold, was under relentless mutant wave attacks with no quiet days. Yet across the bay, civilians were still raising flags. No matter how armed they were, civilians were not stronger than the military.

He had felt that something was off. But it had never been important to him. It was just a story moving outside his stage. Until now, he had read it as selection and concentration. The instinct to strike stronger enemies while strength remained. It was irrational. Still, mutants were not something you could fully understand. That level of acceptance had been enough for him.

After thinking it through, Gyeoul nodded.

"The motive would be food."

"Yes. They scavenge badly dropped supplies, like ants keeping aphids alive."

"So they have grasped the causal link between supply drops and survivor groups.... Not surprising. Assuming that hypothesis is true, rescuing civilians would be extremely difficult."

There was no way mutants would let them go easily. Unless everyone was rescued at once, the process would become vulnerable, exactly as he expected.

"We have already tried several times."

Her face darkened. He did not need to ask the outcome.

The beautiful scenery ended abruptly.

The wind changed. It had been blowing from sea to bay. Now it reversed. A severe stench rolled in, fishy, sour, rotten, all tangled together.

The closer they got to the bay, the clearer the cause became. Ships of all sizes packed the inner bay. Countless anchored vessels formed a single floating city. Chains, nets, and ropes bound ship to ship. They were also the roads people used to move between them. The noisy clusters of national flags stood out.

Trash abandoned from the city had drifted all the way beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. There were many human corpses among it. Some might even have been mutants under Metabolic Suppression.

Tat-tat-tat-tat.

Gunshots cracked from several directions. In the shifting wind, someone screamed.

Watching the city heave on the waves, Gyeoul thought,

Nothing pleasant will happen here either.

============================ Author's Afterword ============================

Q&A

Q. PetalDot: Author-nim, do you like maesaengi?

A. I have never tried it. I heard it is like very thin seaweed.

Q. Omitted: You said you were quitting smoking... I can hear the sound of you gaining weight all the way over here. That is my imagination, right?

A. I have never touched cigarettes in my life. Are you perhaps confusing me with another author?

Q. RGZ95: @ If we give high ratings, the author will appear in our dreams and raise our San-chi, right? Tekeli-li...

A. Do you need San-chi too, RGZ95? Hmm. I do not think so...

Q. JustSoSoAnyway: @ Sadly, I am not number 46... If the author appeared in my dream, I would go gyaaak guaaak... what a shame

A. Heh. Good sleep is one of life's great joys. You do not need to meet me in a dream.

Q. Dohwawon: @ I guess they know the author comes looking for childlike innocence lifeforms... wait, what, you are an Ossuary fan normally, right??

A. Ah, how foolish I am... I had completely forgotten that among this novel's readers, there are no kind people...

Q. Bahoe: @ I heard that if you rating-bomb Naver, you can meet the author in Dreamland. Is that true?

A. If you keep using that method, the author will leave for Dreamland. Forever... T_T

Q. qgegegqe: What logic gave us number 46?!

A. (Average rating through 45th * 45 + X) / 46 = rating through 46th

Just solve for X. It is middle-school arithmetic. :)

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