WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 270: Valley of Death (16)

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During Operation Neptune Spear, when Osama bin Laden was killed, DEVGRU won a perfect victory against the terrorists. Swift and precise. Not a single person lost.

But Gyeoul was skeptical. Could they do the same today?

He had heard that back then, they had built a training site similar to bin Laden’s hideout and drilled there over and over for weeks. Of course, they had never obtained the hideout’s internal layout, but there had still been a thorough preparation process.

What about today? Their enemy was a regular army, and DEVGRU had been pulled in suddenly while already deployed on another mission. The situation was far different from back then, when they had gone in at their best. If there was one comfort, it was that far more personnel were being sent in with far better support than before.

Gyeoul’s position was still adviser. According to Hunt, he was “in the process of becoming important.” Tactical commanders wearing headsets sat in front of screens that shared the strike team members’ views, but they were advisers all the same. Every tactical decision was made in the field. This place merely assisted the field team and connected them to support.

‘They’ll need someone to put on the brakes in an emergency too.’

Nobody said it openly, but everyone was probably thinking the same thing as Gyeoul.

Since the early days of the quarantine war, there had been rumors about DEVGRU. They said that when DEVGRU killed special mutants, they left behind their own mark. That mark was a V-shaped gunshot wound carved into the corpse’s head.

It was what they called canoeing. Slang, because it looked like the trail left by dragging a canoe across the ground. If someone shot from the front at the right angle, the upper part blew away and left that kind of mark. The more familiar someone was with the power of bullets and the hardness of the human body, in other words, the more accustomed that person was to killing with firearms, the deeper the groove they could leave.

In truth, it had been famous even before the plague. There was even talk that they had done the same thing to bin Laden while the president was watching remotely. There were also stories that they collected those photos and compared one another’s technique. It was aggression that had literally slipped beyond control.

They were the state’s tools for killing. When people were used as tools, no heart remained. But to Gyeoul, Shangjiang Yang Yongbin was also a person who had become a tool. Only the function of a soldier remained, while every other part had been stripped away. That was why Gyeoul had thought the same thing before. People should not become tools.

“Begin as soon as you are ready.”

At the situation room controller’s message, the special operations commander replied.

[We are always ready.]

Drrrrrt. The objects on the table vibrated. Only after the ground shook did the blast roll in. It was the sound of the power plant’s outer wall and ceiling being blown open. A brief moment later, the roar of tank guns rang out. In the infrared footage, the shots appeared as white-gray flashes. Countless pixels scattered at the points the main guns had aimed at. Tiny bursts, hard to see with the naked eye. Just as Gyeoul had expected, they were shells that scattered small pellets. The darkness inside the collapsed outer wall glittered faintly. Tungsten grains were sparks crumbling the concrete.

[Red Team, contact with the enemy. Firefight in B3.]

The DEVGRU Major’s voice was terribly cold even while reporting the situation and pulling the trigger.

The enemy was wearing gas masks, so gas was useless. Grenades and flashbangs exploded. In the dust-choked darkness swept by light and thunder, friend and foe traded fierce fire. Two operators crawled forward in a rapid low crawl and disarmed booby traps. Their locations had been identified in advance.

Beeeeeeep.

A sharp electronic tone sounded, the kind heard in hospitals. Five graphs showing the strike team members’ heartbeats went flat almost at the same time. Their video feeds went out too.

“Must be EMP.”

The controller muttered, trying to sound calm.

As time passed, more monitors blinked out. More ECG lines went flat. But through the views and speakers of the operators who could still communicate, Gyeoul could tell that the strike team’s losses were not heavy. At least, not yet.

Whatever the Chinese forces had prepared, it was probably the best they could do under poor conditions.

The engineering corps’ armored bulldozer opened a path through the collapsed section. The hostages were expected to be beyond it. The controller checked the elapsed time and could not hide the anxiety. Gyeoul looked at the clock too. 23:27. It would be best if they arrived within the next three minutes. If explosives really had been strapped to the hostages, and if those explosives had time fuses, the timer reset interval was likely to be a simple unit that was easy to check. Fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, one hour, and so on.

Another DEVGRU team waiting under cover of the bulldozer breached with astonishing speed. They disarmed or detonated even traps that had not been found in advance. A Chinese soldier was visible, half caught in the collapse of the outer wall and floundering. It was impossible to tell where the soldier’s rifle had gone, and the helmet had been knocked off, perhaps by a stone. Blood ran from the soldier’s forehead.

[Don’t kill them! Take them alive!]

Bang! A piece of concrete burst just above the Chinese NCO’s head. The line of fire barely grazed the crown. Two operators came in after that and handled the Chinese soldier carefully. But that was less out of consideration to keep the soldier alive and more out of caution that there might be explosives tucked under the abdomen.

“Good. Even the testimony of a common subordinate is better than nothing.”

The tactical controller was preparing for Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s death. It was the worst case, but a likely one.

The DEVGRU Company drove in without hesitation. Chinese troops should have been stationed near the hostages, but there was strangely little resistance.

[Hostages secured! Survivors confirmed!]

The disarmed and bound U.S. troops and civilian technicians thrashed with their whole bodies when they saw the strike team. It did not look as if there were any traps there. The situation room erupted in cheers. The White House was the same. The president sprang to their feet so quickly that their face moved out of frame. Papers they had thrown could be seen fluttering down. It was still too early to celebrate.

A strike team member approached the senior-ranking prisoner, drew a Bayonet, and cut away the gag. The operator providing cover had a gun pressed to the prisoner’s head. In an ordinary operation, this would have been the moment to confirm service number, name, and unit, but here the situation room confirmed the prisoner through facial recognition.

[Sir, are there any traps or enemies disguised as hostages?]

[No. They just locked us up. Thank you for saving us.]

Hearing this, Hunt muttered.

“I thought they would have killed them all... Was that talk about the Geneva Convention not a joke?”

“He must have thought it wasn’t something a soldier should do. He looked like he despised barbaric things.”

Gyeoul’s words made Hunt let out a dry laugh.

“Oh, Lord. Look kindly upon that lunatic’s convictions.”

“...”

If Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s goal was what Gyeoul guessed, then it would actually have benefited Shangjiang Yang Yongbin to kill the hostages beforehand. But Shangjiang Yang Yongbin had not done so. Seeing as there were no safety devices such as time bombs, it seemed Yang Yongbin had not even considered it from the beginning. Perhaps, while carrying out one duty as a soldier, Yang Yongbin believed another duty as a soldier had to be kept as well. There was a kind of consistency to that madness. That was why it was difficult to dismiss Yang Yongbin as simply a mad person acting on whims.

“More than anything, I think he decided he didn’t need to go that far. The moment the attack began, he must have realized he had already achieved his objective.”

“Hmm...”

Hunt pushed away the heat of joy, thought for a moment, then nodded.

“I see. With the hostages’ safety and a sample that might be real on the line, the fact that we rushed the attack is itself proof that this side has no room to spare. Enough that we had no choice but to aim for a quick resolution, sink or swim. In other words, the reason he bothered keeping the hostages was to increase pressure on the government... and to add motivation for us to act... In the end, they were nothing more than insurance that let him judge with certainty whether his objective had been achieved...”

Toward the end, Hunt’s agreement became closer to a monologue.

So the end of this night would be Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s final moment. Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s objective had been fully achieved at the point the video spread, at the point, to borrow Yang Yongbin’s words, that American barbarity exploded. Now that the result had been confirmed as well, there should be no lingering regrets left.

America will collapse on its own. It felt as if Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s calm voice were speaking.

As time passed, the Chinese forces’ resistance weakened sharply. Less than ten minutes had passed since the strike team entered. More than a difference in skill, this was a difference in numbers, firepower, and equipment.

But the strike team’s losses were not small either. The success of the operation had taken priority over the operators’ safety.

[Situation room. Tango-Yankee has not been confirmed.]

[There’s no way he ran! Check the faces of the dead!]

They had pushed all the way in, only to be told that Shangjiang Yang Yongbin was not there.

[We found traces of something burned. Everyone put on gas masks and fall back.]

If the sample had been burned, they had to guard against biological contamination. Even a separated pathogen could be lethal. But from the strike team members, Gyeoul sensed sharp irritation more than tension. No matter how much of a hurry they had been in, if they had truly believed from the start that Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s sample was real, they would have gone in with far more thorough protection.

While the DEVGRU operators searched the corpses for Shangjiang Yang Yongbin, personnel from the Public Health Service Corps, wearing CBRN protective suits and oxygen tanks, entered the site. The footage transmitted from their view was in natural color.

[Is this... a piece of an ampoule?]

The thin shard of glass held up with forceps gave off a black, murky shine under the lantern light. A little of the glassy luster remained along the charred edge. When they gathered the pieces and fit them together, it looked roughly the same size as the ampoule Shangjiang Yang Yongbin had displayed in the video.

[Doesn’t look like it was burned just now... Damn it, so we really were played from the start.]

[We should take it back and analyze it just in case.]

[But the traces are strange if only the sample was burned.]

The person scraped up some sticky charred matter stuck to the floor, checked the viscosity with a fingertip, then looked to the side and gestured.

[Hey, let’s check this for a blood reaction.]

The medical specialist with rank insignia suspected that a corpse had been burned here. If that was true, there was a high chance it was Shangjiang Yang Yongbin.

The result that appeared on the disposable test equipment was positive. Human blood.

A little later, clearer evidence was found.

[Here, this way. Unidentified burned remains.]

The remains they found were fragments an ordinary person would have had trouble believing had once been human. But the experts recognized shattered human bones at a glance.

Still, it was only circumstantial. There was no decisive proof that it was Shangjiang Yang Yongbin. A DNA test also required a comparison sample. The strike team’s search was still ongoing. The engineering corps were digging through the rubble too, in case Yang Yongbin had been buried beneath a collapsed section. But there was such a thing as a hunch. The tactical controller took off the headset and tossed it down.

“Was our victory stolen from us...?”

Safely rescuing the hostages was not enough. More than the failure to acquire the sample, Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s uncertain end would leave a very long aftermath.

‘The rumors that he survived won’t stop.’

Regardless of the identity of the burned remains they had just found, Gyeoul believed Shangjiang Yang Yongbin was dead. Putting aside Shangjiang Yang Yongbin’s true intent, there had literally been no way out. But there was no expecting rationality from people who searched for a reason because they wanted to be angry, or from those who wanted to use such people.

“Major. There is one piece of good news.”

Hunt called to Gyeoul. Hunt had one hand shoved into a pocket and was using the laptop with only the other. When Gyeoul looked at the screen, he realized the intranet had been restored.

“...A bloodless entry into Seattle?”

“So it seems. There were sporadic engagements, but no organized or large-scale attacks at all. There may be a Trojan horse, but that can be sorted out over time.”

In the footage released by the Department of Defense, among a forest of decayed high-rise buildings, citizens of Seattle who had been isolated for a long time could be seen waving American flags and crying out toward columns of tanks and armored vehicles. It was played on mute out of consideration for the room, but their fervor burned hot even without sound.

The footage also showed troops who had crossed the city and finally reached Puget Sound, stopping to rest against the backdrop of sunset waves. The smiles on the lips of officers and soldiers contrasted too sharply with the atmosphere here.

“Yogi Berra said it. It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Gyeoul tilted his head at Hunt’s words.

“Yogi Berra?”

“Surely you know him? The greatest catcher of the New York Yankees?”

“...”

“Well, I suppose you might not.”

Hunt shrugged and gave a tired smile.

“From now on, it will be a struggle between hope and madness. I mean we’ll watch to the end and see which wins, the madness we were gifted here today, or the hope we build from here on.”

“I see.”

“I’m a pessimist in most cases, but this time I’m going to bet on hope.”

"Because there are still people like you, Major." Hunt gave Gyeoul a light glance. That gaze felt both cold and familiar.

========== Author’s Note ==========

#Jackpot

Mm... First, thank you to everyone congratulating me.

But personally... honestly, this is an event I wish hadn’t happened.

#Q&A

Q. no name: @Then where does the pure author recharge their childlike innocence?

A. Protein, carbohydrates, Weihenstephan, good books and fun movies, eating to support, Putin, and you readers.

Q. Calpis: @If you go any lower from here, you’ll end up eating the recommended menu at Korea’s best restaurant, Namsan Underground Cafeteria. If you eat it without sneezing once, it’s free. The seats are ropes hanging from the ceiling. Oh, you know you’re not supposed to eat with your mouth, right??

A. Didn’t that restaurant close? It used to be a place I visited often...

Q. Kyogre: @When you say, “Trust the author,” it looks to me like “Skarlochen will happen, in the afterlife,” and “Gyeoul will be happy, inside Trinity.” I suppose that means my faith is lacking? Haha.

A. Yes, you are really lacking. Disbelief is hell, disbelief is hell...

Somehow, distrust toward the happy ending seems to have become a meme that torments me. There’s no way you kind readers would do that...

Q. Baekjaknyang: @Every time I read author’s writing, I always want to lick author’s tentacles. I always enjoy reading it very, very, very much before leaving.

A. Thank you. But I don’t have anything like tentacles. My appearance complies with Korea’s broadcasting review regulations.

Q. LewdDemonF: @Once this situation is settled for now, will Gyeoul go to a cold neighborhood, or to the White House or the pentagon-shaped apartment?

A. Who knows? The mainland reclamation isn’t finished yet. More importantly, that’s a question about future developments. You mustn’t ask.

Q. Iribless: @South America must be shock and horror in all sorts of ways. Are warlords running wild and alligators and infected fighting to eat each other in the Amazon?

A. If I answer this seriously too, I think it’ll become a spoiler... hehe.

Q. BlitZkrieG: @Last time, you showed a conversation about getting rid of a typhoon with a nuclear bomb, and while watching the news today, I saw that there really was an opinion in America that they should detonate a nuclear bomb inside a typhoon.

A. To get rid of something like Irma with nukes... just how many would they have to pour in?

Q. Qvex: @I think this really is a novel that even adults can read fine, like The Little Prince. It doesn’t have the common worldbuilding errors of fantasy novels, and the developments make sense... If it didn’t have the protagonist’s munchkin element, it would be an ordinary literary novel. But the munchkin element provides vicarious satisfaction and various kinds of plausibility, so you probably can’t give it up.

A. Ossuary is an ordinary web novel, after all. I’m glad there are people who enjoy reading it.

Q. Bahoe: @Do you like devils, or do you like Satan?

A. I wish both would fail...

Q. Nyar: @You’re definitely serializing around three times a week... so why does it feel like you aren’t? Suddenly childlike innocence is sprouting wildly inside me and I want to do (... ... ... ... ... ...) to author... I think someone asked this before, but there was a question asking whether the reason for naming Gaeul and Gyeoul was to express something like humanity’s last conscience? Something like that. For me, I suddenly wondered whether it was comparing it to spring and summer passing, then autumn (reality) - winter (afterlife)...? If not, maybe because Gyeoul contains spring, he means the final hope? I keep having all sorts of thoughts like that. Am I going too far...? Maybe you named them without thinking about anything...

A. Somewhere, I saw people saying that I don’t even serialize once every three to four days...

It seems many readers live on planets with different rotational periods.

As for Gaeul and Gyeoul’s names... Early in serialization, I once made the mistake of calling Gyeoul by a different name. That was because in the first concept, Gyeoul’s name was not Gyeoul. I didn’t change his name for no reason.

Autumn is both the season when roses bloom and the season when they wither. The subtitle The Season When Roses Wither means autumn.

Do you remember how Gyeoul gave Gaeul green clothes, and the Chairman thought it was strange that only that color suited Gaeul so well? The meaning of a green rose is noble love that does not exist in this world.

Parang, who was born in summer, does not have the name of a season. That is because Parang was not mature enough to become a season.

And Gyeoul has no spring. Whether it ends as winter, or whether spring comes to find Gyeoul... you should trust the author’s kindness and childlike innocence.

Q. jskk: @I’m recharging my childlike innocence while reading this in the military. Thank you for the good writing. If it isn’t a spoiler for the story, could you tell us about what percentage of the ending the current part is at, if the ending is 100%? I’m curious whether I’ll be able to see it finish before I’m discharged, haha.

A. It seems to be around 60 to 70% along.

I will tell you a sure way to see the ending before you are discharged. That is the path of a professional soldier...

I’m sorry. Please spare me.

Footnotes:

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