WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 194: Under Black Water (12)

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Ugh! Gyeoul ducked his head. A humid blast of hot wind tore past him. Clatterrrr, splash! He thought he heard chains spilling down and waves breaking apart, and then the massive cargo ship began an impossible turn with a roar. Joanna instinctively spun the wheel. In that brief span, the speedboat changed course three times, accelerated, and overtook the cargo ship.

The scenery flashed past. In the evaporated fog, the bow of the large cargo ship looked gruesome. It had been smashed open and was burning. Its inner frame lay exposed, the depths inside glowing red-hot. That meant a powerful explosion had punched straight through it.

The sea split ahead. The sharp exhaust of a jet engine skimmed over the speedboat.

Shwaaaaaaak-

Gyeoul covered his ears a beat too late. Throbbing pain. Muffled hearing. If not for the physical reinforcement from his combat skills, his eardrums would have burst. Right after that, the fog not far behind them was dyed sunset-red. Kwa-kwaang! A tooth-rattling blast followed the trail of light.

An anti-ship missile attack...

Stunned, Gyeoul sent frantic hand signals toward the cockpit. Evade, evade! His sensory correction throbbed again and again, flaying his spine with too many warnings to track at once. Every direction it pointed was a narrow, dangerous safe zone. Each time they barely dodged, supersonic anti-ship missiles skimming low over the water whipped past them one by one.

To make matters worse, naval gunfire poured down.

Pa-pa-pa-pang!

Columns of water shot up in a line. Heart-chilling shellfire tore through the nearby darkness one burst after another. Orange explosions flashed above and below the water. Several ships sailing alongside them went wild. Blind evasive maneuvers tangled together, colliding and shattering into disaster.

Avoiding all those collisions was luck beyond skill, but,

[Careful!]

Joanna screamed. As they scraped along the starboard side of a wrecked ship, an anchor that had not been fully raised swung toward them. A heavy, sharp hunk of metal weighing dozens of tons, swaying several meters above the waves. Gyeoul had sensed it coming and slipped aside by a hair, but the speedboat itself could not.

Kwaduduk! The impact tore away the aluminum alloy. For a brief moment, the speedboat's bow lifted toward the sky. With nowhere to brace himself, Gyeoul rolled and fell toward the bridge.

[Aaagh!]

Through the radio receiver came screams as people slammed hard into things and rolled.

Splash, kwaaaa! The speedboat, barely saved from capsizing, accelerated with its engines still at full output. By the time the two people in the cockpit recovered, they were cutting across the front of the former People's Liberation Army fleet advancing in formation.

'I see. Of course there's no way out through the bay entrance.'

Gyeoul understood what was happening at Golden Gate. It was an all-out confrontation between the People's Liberation Army trying to escape the bay and the U.S. Navy trying to stop them. The speedboat had charged right into the middle of that battlefield.

Here, civilian vessels were nothing but obstacles and decoys.

On top of that, the Chinese military had nuclear torpedoes. The weapon mentioned at the meeting. Was it called 「Storm」? He did not know which Faction owned it, but there was no guarantee it would not be launched in an extreme situation.

Gyeoul grabbed the machine-gun mount again.

"We can't get out through Golden Gate! We need to land! Head for land! North of the Golden Gate Bridge!"

Since Alcatraz was already behind them, Fort Baker on the north side of the strait was close. There was a wall built from stacked containers there, so at least it should be safe from the mutant horde coming from inland. Gyeoul pointed the way after making that judgment, but Joanna shouted back in despair.

[The radar, the radar is gone!]

Only then did Gyeoul look behind him. Beyond the cracked bulletproof glass, Joanna and Talbot's hair whipped in the wind. When the hanging anchor had speared through the speedboat, the radar mast and the upper half-deck had vanished whole. Now the only observation tool this boat had was the human eye.

"Calm down! Don't miss my signals! We don't have far to go!"

He had the map in his head, supported by 「Map Navigation」. About three kilometers remained to the small harbor where the Filipino sailors had stopped, Horseshoe Bay. Just a little longer. If their miserable luck held for just a little longer, they could make landfall. Gyeoul clenched his teeth and focused. Where would the next death come from?

"Hard to starboard! Hard to starboard!"

The warning from 「Survival Instinct」 rippled beneath the black waves. The nerve-tingling effect came with it. He could not sense underwater monsters from above the water, so the nature of the threat approaching from below was obvious.

A torpedo!

The incoming acceleration and their own forward speed combined, making the closing distance horrifyingly fast.

Leaving the straight path was not enough. Gyeoul shouted again.

"Cut the engines!"

No one asked why. Joanna moved quickly. Whoooong- The twin engines immediately died down. As inertia swept him forward, Gyeoul kept pressing the heavy machine gun trigger. Kwa-kwaang! Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwaang! Thick casings flashed up wildly in the color of the burning sea. It was suppressive fire aimed at three of the two pairs of monsters approaching through the wreckage.

Melville Rays ahead, torpedo behind.

"Now port again!"

The engines were off, but inertia remained. The rudder turned, and their heading changed.

The torpedo rushed past twenty meters behind the speedboat's bow.

The monsters, on the other hand, did not stop. He had meant to chase three of them off and make the last one flee as well, but it seemed to have already adapted to the heavy machine-gun fire. It even closed in without hesitation while taking direct hits. Multiple white trails drew a tightening circle. The moment Gyeoul lifted the grenade launcher,

Kwaaaaang!

A round white echo spread through the black sea. A torpedo had exploded not far away. Its target had probably been a warship, but what it hit was a large fishing boat. An enormous column of water surged up from the blast center. Sailors caught in the pressure wave shrank pitifully small at a dizzying height, then poured down with the seawater like hail.

Now there was no need for grenade fire.

"Start the engines!"

One shout was not enough. Only after he shouted again did the engines finally start. The combined 970 horsepower of thrust shoved the small hull forward. Then, teong! The bow struck a Melville Ray as it passed. The thing had been paralyzed by the aftereffects of the torpedo explosion. The movements of the others looked painful just to watch. It felt like watching worms twisting on hot asphalt.

'I hope that was permanent nerve damage...'

Just now, their miserable luck had truly held. Melville Rays grasped their surroundings through multiple sound waves. Torpedoes tracked sound sources. So it would not have been strange if the torpedo had chased the sea monster. There were even cases of whales being mistaken for submarines. The speedboat would have been torn to shreds by the indirect effects of the explosion alone.

Behind them, the battle between fleets grew fiercer.

The radio net filled with ragged breathing. The most breathless of all was Joanna in the main cockpit. Each moment at the wheel must have felt like grinding her soul away.

After overcoming several near-collisions, the beach appeared all at once. But the harbor entrance was blocked. Several ships that had crashed into the breakwater cast ruined shadows. As the speedboat raced alongside the wave-battered wall, pursuers climbed onto the breakwater. Coast Guard members who did not even know how to fire their dangling guns. Their panting breaths already carried the hunger of the plague.

[Even Fort Baker has fallen...]

The sorrowful murmur belonged to Talbot.

"Go north!"

Joanna silently set a new course. With the harbor on their port side, they headed north along the rocky coast. Still, not all the troops seemed to have been wiped out, because gunfire kept sounding from land. Coastal batteries that had once been World War II historical sites before returning to active service flashed past.

'What do we do? There isn't enough time.'

The current time was 03:48. If Kowalski's warning was to be believed, they had only 42 minutes left.

Of course, she had only said it was highly likely.

[Gyeoul! What about landing there?]

Gyeoul immediately recognized the direction indicated from the cockpit. On the side of a rock jutting out toward the sea, below a gentle cliff, a short, rough beach lay exposed. It was about eighty meters from the coastal road. It was not far from the base, but there was nothing there except a barometer, so neither troops nor a mutant horde was visible.

Only one lonely mutant that had tumbled down prowled near the water and roared.

Kraaaaaa-!

But it did not leap into the sea. Even now that Melville Rays had appeared, ordinary mutants still feared the water.

"Good! Any farther north and we hit the minefield! Everyone prepare to land!"

Bang! A single heavy machine-gun shot blew apart the infected human's head.

The boat avoided several reefs poking their heads above the water, then finally touched land. Kkadeudeudeuk. A sharp scraping sound came from below, but that no longer mattered.

Under Gyeoul's cover, Joanna and the intelligence agents stepped onto land one after another.

Once they climbed a twenty-meter cliff with a sixty-degree slope, they saw the lights of a vehicle convoy moving along the road between the trees. Several Humvees and one refueling truck. One Humvee had no one in the machine-gun seat. It looked less like an organized withdrawal and more like an urgent retreat.

"It looks like they're abandoning the base, but I don't know where they're going. I don't even know if the command structure is still alive..."

Talbot's trembling words were right. If they went up from here, they would only be blocked by the wall. There was no telling whether the convoy had anywhere to go. But since several vehicles were heading in the same direction, there had to be a reason.

'What was over there?'

Gyeoul searched his memory. The scenery he had seen when he first arrived on Corona Triumph, then moved around in the Ferrari. A garbage-filled white sand beach near the container wall. And a helicopter left among the trees. A helicopter?

Gyeoul spoke to the agents crouched in the brush.

"I think those people are trying to escape by helicopter. Anne, you remember, right? The aircraft parked just inside the wall."

The FBI agent looked flustered.

"Weren't those aircraft at the end of their service life?"

"They're betting on luck. Just because their service life is over doesn't mean they'll definitely crash. Right now, it's probably the best choice."

"But..."

She thought for a moment, but realistically, there was no other way.

"From here to the western coast is more than five kilometers even in a straight line. And since the route winds between hills, it would actually be almost seven kilometers. But we have less than forty minutes left. Even if we find another boat there, it will be too late."

A nuclear explosion across the whole bay would scatter massive radioactive fallout. They needed to get at least several dozen kilometers away from the blast center to be safe. If they had escaped Golden Gate on the speedboat, they would certainly have reached the outside of the affected area, but that regret was meaningless.

Radiation poisoning meant certain death. A helicopter at the end of its service life at least left some room for hope.

Joanna agreed.

"We have no time to waste. First, we should join up with the survivors."

"Good. Anne, take point. I'll cover the rear this time. Everyone else watch the flanks."

That decision came from the judgment that the base side was more dangerous.

The distance they had to cover on foot was about eight hundred meters. The agents hurried until their breaths rose to their throats. Not one of them was in peak condition. Joanna least of all, after being worn down continuously for the last twelve hours. Since she had already been cutting sleep for her supervisor duties, her fatigue had to be even worse.

Talbot and Agent Tucker supported her as she staggered.

Kyaaaaaak!

A group running along the coastal road filled Gyeoul's vision. It was a mixed crowd of U.S. Coast Guard, Army soldiers, and maritime refugees. Naturally, their speed differed depending on the host's physical strength. Gyeoul aimed at the knees of the fastest ones, then their pelvises.

Tuk! Tuk! Tu-duk! Tu-du-duk!

His single-shot fire was almost as fast as full auto, and not one shot missed. That was the result of deliberately investing in shooting technique. 「Firearms Mastery」 had now effectively reached the highest level.

The ones with wrecked legs tumbled and tripped the group behind them. Since he fired with calculation, dozens collapsed in a heap. Even so, the wave surging in behind them was larger still. In the end, the trampled ones died crushed flat with crunching, cracking sounds.

After securing distance with fire meant to induce crushing deaths, Gyeoul caught up to the agents ahead in one burst.

============================ Author's Note ============================

Q. PiguwangDambae-nim: In this novel, is Joanna supposed to be an icon of undiscerning love for humanity, the last conscience left on this earth? I find it hard to believe that someone who has survived that hellscape for years as a special agent would suggest putting even one refugee onto a small boat while watching refugees try to escape a sinking ship. Especially when she must have learned from emergency response manuals for all kinds of situations just how dangerous refugees' desperate struggle to survive, close to mass panic, can be.

A. Well... If someone knows that more than ten million people are soon going to die in a nuclear attack by their own country, could even a seasoned agent really stay that cold...? I actually think that would be the abnormal thing.

Especially when someone is mentally and physically exhausted, emotional agitation tends to grow while judgment grows dull.

If someone can stay cool-headed and rational in every situation, I think that alone would make them quite the superhuman.

Still, if it remains unconvincing, then that simply means I wrote the novel poorly. :)

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