WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 192: Under Black Water (10)

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When Gyeoul returned to the boat, he found Joanna on the deck. She had meant to cover him with the mounted heavy machine gun. Had she been doing that the entire time he was gone? He appreciated the thought, but it had been dangerous. If a Melville Ray had come back, she would have had little chance of surviving. To her, it was a completely unknown enemy.

Luckily, there was no sign of the sea monster approaching. Gyeoul and Kowalski hurried aboard.

Joanna greeted them with deep relief.

"I am glad you are safe. Both of you."

"I told you to wait inside. What were you going to do if something happened?"

"Then I suppose I would have died doing what I had to do."

Joanna took the mild scolding calmly. Gyeoul could feel no small amount of debt in her answer. She had plenty of other motives too. After sensing those emotions, Gyeoul brought up something else.

"Agent Kowalski was Team Leader Chadwick's collaborator. I thought you should know in advance."

"I had my suspicions, but I see it really was true."

She did not sound especially surprised. She must have reached the same conclusion as Gyeoul. Kowalski was the one who looked flustered instead.

When they entered the cabin, Talbot, Tucker, and Kelly brightened at the sight of them. With their reunion at his back, Gyeoul raised the emergency axe toward the locked onboard weapons locker. Clang! The agents flinched at the sound of the lock falling away. He had not shot it off because he was worried about ricochets.

Right now, Kowalski was the only one without a weapon. Gyeoul picked up a grenade launcher and gestured to her.

"Pick something you are used to. You may need to protect yourself."

"I-Is that all right?"

"What are you going to do? You do not have the confidence to get out alive without me anyway."

It was a layered judgment. If not for the tears Kowalski had shed in the situation room, Gyeoul would have kept a much closer eye on her. Her twisted patriotism might come before her desire to survive.

Even then, harming Gyeoul would be another matter entirely.

As the subtle conversation passed between them, the other agents seemed to understand the context. They had already heard the meaningful remarks about Chadwick. Agent Kelly covered for Kowalski.

"We will make sure the Lieutenant has nothing to worry about."

"Please do."

Even as Kelly said that, the way she and Agent Tucker unconsciously kept their distance from Kowalski suggested that neither of them was likely under suspicion. It was too early to be certain. In any case, Gyeoul had saved them, and they were in a position where they would have to rely on him one-sidedly until daybreak.

"Agent Talbot. Come to the cockpit. Gyeoul, can you take the machine gun?"

Joanna's request came from the front.

"I am not confident driving a boat... Would it be better if I took the gunner's position instead?"

Talbot mumbled, and Joanna spoke again.

"We do not have time to argue! Do you want to get caught in the Pequod's sinking? The only thing you need to touch is the throttle lever, and other than that, just watch the instruments. Heading and radar. I will steer!"

"If you are more confident in your shooting than Gyeoul, I will reconsider!" That one sentence allowed no further argument. From Joanna's perspective, Talbot was also the agent she could trust most.

Since sea routes were one axis of Mexico's drug trade, Joanna seemed to have experience at the helm. How skilled she actually was remained questionable, but right now, there were no other options.

"Is there nothing for us to do?"

At Agent Tucker's question, Joanna looked at Gyeoul through the doorway, and Gyeoul shook his head. If they dragged them out onto the deck, it would be good enough if they were not thrown off the violently bouncing hull.

"No. Stay here. Fighting is my role. We also need people who can respond if we start taking on water."

"Taking on water... Do you think that will happen?"

"Maybe."

This boat, a Coast Guard patrol boat modified for special purposes, a 47FT MLB, had an aluminum hull. It was not hard enough to stop the teeth of a monster that could bite through steel. As long as they kept moving, the chance was low, but as long as it was not zero, they had to prepare.

When he came out to the cockpit, Joanna started the boat. She pressed a pair of green buttons on the console to the right of the wheel, then pushed up the two levers that controlled both engines' output. Power flowed through the boat and lights came on everywhere, but in their current situation, the lights were nothing but lures that would draw monsters in.

Joanna must have had the same thought, because she pressed a button on the upper console. The cockpit darkened at once. It was the Dimmer Switch for covert nighttime enforcement.

Only the lights of the electronic instruments blinked in the dark. Among them, even Gyeoul could recognize the low, shrill red signal. Collision warning. The precision navigation equipment made in Japan was warning them of five ships that posed a collision risk if they continued on their current course.

Noisy from the very start. Joanna wrenched the wheel hard.

Enduring the pull of inertia, Gyeoul gave an order before stepping out onto the deck.

"It will be hard, but go as fast as you can, and never stop! Make it harder for them to attack!"

"Understood! I will do my best."

Even after the course change, the collision warning kept ringing. The conventional compass in front of the cockpit was spasming. The conventional compass and the electronic compass were pointing in different directions. The latter, which received satellite signals, was accurate. The needle of the conventional compass was wavering because of the enormous ships running wild beyond the fog. Those overwhelming steel hulls disturbed the nearby magnetic field just by existing.

"I will tune the radio frequency! We may need to trust Gyeoul's sixth sense more than the instruments!"

Joanna shouted, already overwhelmed by the various instruments blinking like mad. GPS coordinates had an error of at least five meters, even for military use. They might have to slip through that five-meter gap. Gyeoul checked the receiver status, nodded, then opened the door and stepped outside.

Because they had picked up speed, the wind on the deck was strong. Trash struck the hull in rapid clatters, and the boat rocked violently as it cut through the current. At only twenty tons, built with high-speed performance as the priority, stability was practically nonexistent.

Holding on to the heavy machine gun, Gyeoul began the skill adjustment he had been hesitating over.

'I need 「Heavy Weapons Mastery」 now.'

The efficiency of 「Firearms Mastery」 applied to the heavy machine gun, an M2HB, was only thirty percent. The eight-shot grenade launcher was a little better at sixty percent. Even so, he could operate them at the level of a decent expert, but if Melville Rays attacked in a group, things would become dangerous fast. There were people he had to protect too.

His abilities kept leaning toward combat. He needed to become able to respond to varied situations and environments. Separate from his efforts to prevent the world setting from collapsing, he had to prepare for what came after order disappeared.

Gyeoul set aside his lingering attachment and spent every available experience resource. He learned 「Heavy Weapons Mastery」 at the edge of the expert realm. Then he strengthened 「Firearms Mastery」. On a speedboat racing while turning like mad, firing a fixed weapon, he needed to be able to expect a hit within the first three shots.

The speedboat circled around the side of the Pequod's lifted bow. Only now did he see the other side. Through torn nets, a drifting submarine came into view. Its hatch was open, but no one could be seen.

Behind it, a ship that had to be fifty thousand tons was sinking. Its front half was already below the surface.

'That must have hit the Pequod.'

If not for that ship, Gyeoul and Joanna would have failed to escape in the end. They had done their best, including blowing up the Trickster's corpse, but in the end, luck was what saved them. This world setting never ran out of bad luck.

The smell of leaking oil grew thicker.

Gyeoul spotted three white trails approaching through the oil slick, sent an evasion signal to the cockpit, and immediately aligned the heavy machine gun's sights.

Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom-boom!

Flashing light. Heard up close, the sound of the heavy machine gun was closer to explosions. The roar echoed across the fog-thick sea. Seven large-caliber bullets smashed through the waves and plunged into the water. Their points of impact were right in front of the monsters' heads. He missed. But he had missed on purpose.

'They still lack experience.'

These special mutants had only just appeared, so they would be immature in many ways.

As expected, the bubbles drawing white lines changed direction sharply. The trails vanished toward the fog beyond the waves. They did not know that even large-caliber bullets would have a hard time piercing water and harming them. Water resistance, skin tough enough to defend against rifle fire, streamlined bodies. They did not know how far those things could protect them.

Gyeoul himself needed time to adapt every time his skill level changed.

Bwaaaaaaang.

Enormous movement approached. Gyeoul aimed the grenade launcher with one hand. His target was the sea they had just passed through, the clumped oil slick. Thoom! The incendiary grenade, corrected by both major weapon mastery skills at once, converged exactly along the line Gyeoul had drawn in his mind.

Boom! Fwoosh.

The sea caught fire. Intense hot wind swept away the thick sea fog, and the shockwave rushed all the way to Gyeoul, who was dozens of meters away. The bow of the speedboat, shoved from behind, plunged into the water for an instant. Naturally, Gyeoul, who was behind it, was drenched head to toe in foul-smelling seawater.

Hopefully this would disrupt their 「Search」, even if only for a moment...

「Crisis Detection」 gave his nerves a sharp warning. Gyeoul raised his hand by reflex. Evade, evade!

[Hold on tight!]

Joanna's sharp warning rang through the receiver. Half-wrecked fishing boats burst out from the space where the sea fog had been pushed aside. Had the radar failed to pick them up? Or were there too many things around them for it to mean anything?

The sharp evasive maneuver, turning left and then snapping right again, buckled Gyeoul's knees. The pressure of the violent turn was inertia measured in units of gravitational acceleration. Without the superhuman correction from 「Movement」, he would have flown over the railing.

Bwaaaaaang! Boooooo!

Ship horns of different pitches sounded from both sides up ahead. Whiiiiiing! The twin engines' RPM rose. When he looked back while gripping the heavy machine gun's handles on his knees, he saw Joanna pushing the levers with her teeth clenched. Talbot stared into the ash-gray darkness ahead with his eyes wide open. From the fog lit by the infrared searchlight, the faint red finally revealed itself as the anti-rust paint of a large cargo ship and a cruise ship.

Massive weights that overwhelmed the senses approached from both sides.

Craaaaash.

Beneath the bows colliding off-center, the speedboat passed through the narrowing waterway.

Gyeoul twisted his body by instinct. Crunch! A sharp piece of debris falling from above stabbed into the spot where his foot had been. Smaller fragments poured down after it, pattering against his ballistic helmet. Several sharp cuts followed. More small wounds opened on his right arm.

The last heavy piece of metal had to be punched away. It hit with enough weight to make his bones and wrist tingle. Even his ballistic-material glove tore. A little deeper, and his fingers might have been injured.

[Are you all right?!]

"Yes, nothing wrong! Focus on driving!"

He kicked away the fragment stuck in the deck and looked behind them. In the scenery where the flames had driven off the fog, the Pequod was still visible in the distance. That meant nearly forty kilometers remained to the Golden Gate even without obstacles.

[Lieutenant! And Supervisor Gibson! This is Kowalski! I have something to tell you!]

A new voice cut into the radio net. She seemed to be using the radio attached to the cabin.

"What is it?!"

Boom-boom-boom! Three large-caliber rounds fired in bursts drove away the fishy-smelling monsters again. At the same time, the hull shot up over the waves to avoid the stern of a ship jutting out like a reef. Ah! Kowalski's groan, mixed with static, came through. She did not seem badly hurt, because her message continued right away.

[We must leave the bay by 0430 at the latest to be safe!]

"Will the nuclear attack happen then?!"

[I am not certain, but there is a possibility!]

Gyeoul started to ask why she had judged that, then stopped. If that was how it was, then that was how it was. There was no reason for her to say it for nothing. He could hear the details later.

He checked the time. Current time, 1:42 a.m. Less than three hours remained until the time Kowalski had mentioned. If they could get out of the bay in a straight line, that would be plenty of time, but that was obviously an unrealistic expectation.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#47FT MLB

I will mention one point about accuracy. The boat that appears in the main story does not originally have a .50 caliber heavy machine gun mount. It only has a light machine gun mount, an MK16 Mod-8 Stand, on the 1.5-story deck above the cockpit, beneath the radar mast.

That said, it is not because it is too heavy to install. Even the much smaller 8-ton Defender boat operates heavy machine guns... In the story, the setting is that they added a new mount to the foredeck for fire support.

I will upload part of the cockpit console from the manual to the story settings. I think it will help as a reference while reading.

#Q&A

Q. Gliese581-nim: @(omitted) In a previous Q&A, you mentioned that Afterlife Insurance has an S grade. Is S grade the highest grade? Seeing how it deals with state secrets, I guess S grade is not simply about wealth or deposited funds, but requires ties to politics, influence, and state power?

A. Yes and no. Because this is an era where wealth is power.

Q. Siroki-nim: @It feels like Joanna keeps steadily and continuously pushing Gyeoul into dangerous situations. Gyeoul is a soldier and not even part of their organization, but she went out of her way to tell him about something like the secret experiment, making it so he had no choice but to go along, and this time she brought up the rescue signal too... Why does she go out of her way to tell him when she knows Gyeoul's personality? To share her guilt? To push the decision onto him so she does not have to bear responsibility? To be blunt, she is saying, "I cannot do it, but you handle it for me." Since when was she so conscientious that she acts like this... It looks like she found one master key and is poking it into everything everywhere. The result turned out well, but still... I really dislike her.

A. Haha. I can see how it might feel that way. It is a lot like the feeling after playing The Walking Dead Season 2. Clementine! Help over here! Clementine! Kill that guy! Clementine! How could you do that!... What are they doing to a twelve-year-old...

Jokes aside, it is because Gyeoul is a hero. In a case like this, even if you know in your head it will not work, could you not still hold on to that hope of, maybe...? A hero is hope, after all.

Please do not hate her too much. :)

Q. Calpis-nim: @Khh, I can hear childlike innocence being charged. Therefore, please accept this coupon full of childlike innocence, and then inject our Gyeoul with super soldier serum! He will become Captain America!

A. Gyeoul is already superhuman-level, really. He is as popular as Captain America too, and just as many people place their hopes on him.

Footnotes:

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