WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 412: Wind from High Places (10)

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When the Independent Battalion reached its final destination, Oaxaca International Airport, the Ranger Company had fortified only the airport’s main building and the parking lot where the towed guns were deployed. They had not had enough manpower to extend the defensive line all the way to the runway. Isolated in ruins like the wasteland, they welcomed the arrival of reinforcements.

“You must have had a hard trip.”

After receiving a light salute, Gyeoul held out his hand to the Ranger Company commander.

“I’ll be in your care for the next three days, Captain.”

“Not at all. I should be the one saying that. Would you like the situation report right away?”

There was no urgency in Captain Graf’s manner. It did not look as if anything needed immediate attention, so Gyeoul shook his head. The column of two whole airborne regiments had not even finished coming in yet.

“No. I don’t want to make you do the same work twice. I’ll gather the airborne officers and head to the situation room. Where should we go?”

The Captain pointed toward the front of the main building.

“Inside there. Grab whoever you see at the entrance and ask.”

“I see. Then first...”

Gyeoul trailed off and looked back at his staff officers.

“Foster.”

“Yes.”

“Come with me and check the facilities and supplies first. See if anything differs from the information we already have.”

“Understood.”

After temporarily assigning security zones by company, Gyeoul went looking for Bravo Company’s 2nd Platoon’s first vehicle. It was the armored vehicle that had run over and killed the Whipper disguised as a rock during last night’s engagement. Under the clearing sky after the rain, the personnel who had dismounted to stretch tensed when they saw the battalion commander approaching. Among them was the platoon leader, Sun Xian.

“What is the matter, Sir?”

“Be at ease. I’m only here to check the armored vehicle’s condition.”

“Uh, there are no particular issues...”

“I mean this. This.”

Gyeoul pointed at the scratches on the armored vehicle’s outer surface. They were marks left by the dying Whipper’s last struggle. He was curious how much force had been behind the appendages it had thrashed around so wildly. Gyeoul ran a gloved hand over the scratched hull. He had already read detailed reports on Whippers, but no amount of documentation could match seeing it for himself.

‘Hmm. Deeper than I expected.’

Even accounting for the fact that the material was aluminum alloy, softer than iron, the gouges were deep. They looked like marks left behind by a bug gnawing its way past. The force was nowhere near Grumble’s punches, but it was far stronger than a Trickster’s whip strikes. Since the Infection Protrusions had been altered into rows of sawtooth-like structures, it would have been stranger if they were weak. The basic ballistic protection of the new combat uniforms likely would not be enough to stop them.

Still, it was close to impossible for a Whipper to do serious damage to an armored vehicle. The proof was in the marks: only a few were deep. The rest were nothing more than ugly bloodstains. The altered Infection Protrusions, which would have been more accurately called infection wedges, must have snapped off when they failed to withstand the impact against the armor plate. Probably within the first strike or two.

After finishing his inspection, Gyeoul looked toward the still-chaotic access road and asked Sun Xian and the soldiers.

“How does everyone feel after your first real battle? Do you regret choosing to stay?”

“No, Sir! We don’t regret it!”

The answer came at once, in one voice, and Gyeoul smiled faintly despite himself.

Before joint training had begun, Gyeoul had given them the chance to opt out of the Ground Zero Vacuum as well. At first, he had only meant to confirm the wishes of the former independent company, now Alpha Company, whose members had enough experience that transferring them out would have been acceptable. After thinking it over, though, he realized that would be an extremely dangerous thing to do. Gyeoul had thought this.

‘They must not start distrusting me.’

If word got out that he had only asked Alpha Company personnel whether they wanted transfers before a dangerous mission, the other companies would obviously interpret it as Gyeoul favoring only the subordinates who had been with him from the beginning. Or as him caring only about ethnic Koreans. With the mood between companies already delicate, if suspicion spread toward Gyeoul, the one link connecting them all, the entire Independent Battalion would stop functioning properly.

Perhaps Gyeoul’s smile had made Sun Xian anxious, because Sun Xian stressed the point again.

“It’s true! If anything, we’re proud! It feels like we’ve finally become real soldiers!”

Judging from that tension, Sun Xian seemed to have taken the offer to leave in a different sense.

‘Did it look like I was screening them?’

There was reason to be wary. There were plenty of people who could replace them. In the refugee zones, enlistment was considered the fastest path to raising one’s status. And the Independent Battalion was a fence everyone admired. Given how sensitive Chinese people were to the fence of relationships, there was a very high chance they had misunderstood Gyeoul’s intent.

They may also have grown even more sensitive after seeing Alpha Company’s empty spots from Washington filled with local personnel. Perhaps they thought all the good things might be taken by Americans. The truth was simply that circumstances had not allowed anything else.

“Was there something lacking in our performance during the earlier battle?”

Sun Xian’s question, asked after a pause, gave weight to Gyeoul’s guess. Gyeoul softened his expression naturally and reassured Sun Xian.

“Of course not. For a first real battle, everyone did very well. As your commander, I’m satisfied.”

“Because I failed to understand what you meant right away...”

“What are you talking about?”

“That monster pretending to be a rock. You saw through it immediately and told me to run it over, but even though I knew there was a monster specialized in camouflage, I still hesitated for a moment.”

“Ah.”

So Sun Xian had been worrying about that all this time. Gyeoul swallowed a bitter smile.

“Don’t worry about it. Anyone would have hesitated from that order alone.”

“But-”

“Sun Xian. I’m satisfied with you as a soldier. I believe you won’t disappoint me in the future either. And you want to be someone different from who you were before, don’t you? At least as my subordinate. Right?”

Tap, tap. As a superior, Gyeoul patted Sun Xian on the shoulder. It was reassurance, a request, and also a warning not to disappoint him with habits born from a dark past. If Sun Xian became a new person, he would accept them. But the habits from the White Paper Ship days had to be thrown away completely. If not, he would cut them out without mercy.

‘If the fear is already there, I might as well use it in a good direction.’

That was what Gyeoul thought. Some people could not be changed with goodwill alone. Even in Chinese-style guanxi, someone who gave without thinking was nothing more than an easy mark.

Sun Xian swallowed dryly.

“I will do my best to meet your expectations.”

“Good. I promise I’ll repay you with trust too. I’ll be watching.”

When Gyeoul turned his gaze, the soldiers each tried to show him faces full of resolve. Some overdid it so much that they looked awkward, but Gyeoul did not let it show and gave each one a brief word of encouragement. As he had once reminded himself before, some truths began as lies.

After that, he looked around the other platoons of Bravo Company, and sure enough, their reactions were mostly similar. At least 1st Platoon Leader Wang Kechai was less tense, since there was no past holding Wang down. The company commander, Gavin Cheng, a second-generation Chinese-American graduate of West Point, also said the 1st Platoon leader was the most reliable.

Gavin Cheng seemed deeply uncomfortable with the fact that so many of the subordinates were former gangsters.

“To be honest, it was a little hard to adapt at first. Maybe it was because I viewed them with prejudice, but I always felt a certain distance. And I didn’t want to play along with their little attempts to get close by going on about compatriots... Well, it’s fine now. It was my burden to handle as company commander.”

Even so, the complaints were not especially strong, because the U.S. military itself had long struggled with the quality of its manpower pool. This was a problem that had continued long before the plague spread. In the Middle East, U.S. soldiers had even hunted civilians for fun. The infamous Kill Team incident.

The person who reacted most sensitively to Gyeoul’s question, meanwhile, was 3rd Platoon Leader Li Ailing.

She looked straight at Gyeoul and said firmly,

“You told me to become your person. To abandon my father and my past.”

“...”

“If you meant that, don’t ask me this kind of question again. This is not how you treat ‘your person.’ Just use me. I will go where you tell me to go, do what you tell me to do, and kill the bastards you tell me to kill. Without question. In exchange, I will have the things you allow me to have under your shade. That is my share. I won’t let anyone take it from me.”

“What if I end up using you like a disposable item, Ensign?”

“If I thought you were that kind of person, I wouldn’t have become yours in the first place.”

Gyeoul read ambition in her eyes.

The mood in Charlie Company, where the majority were Japanese, was different again from Bravo Company. If he had to define that air in a single phrase, it was close to the relief of belonging to an order. The first real battle they had finally fought had also had a positive effect. It felt like they had passed through a rite of passage. Most of the soldiers feared leaving the organization or engaging in deviant behavior right now more than they feared the uncertain possibility of death. Since it was hard to expect anyone to step forward and express an opinion, Gyeoul told them they could request a private interview at any time.

Last, Delta Company, made up mostly of former Korean soldiers, now seemed to have fully acknowledged Gyeoul. Since President Woo Jung-young had carefully selected them, none of them wanted to be left out of the operation. At least outwardly. Gyeoul opened the door for private interviews with them as he had with the other companies, but he did not expect much.

In any case, Gyeoul had done his part as commander.

Whether there were misunderstandings or other circumstances, the choice belonged to each person.

“Sir.”

On the way to gather the airborne regiment commanders and receive the briefing, Major Singh handed Gyeoul the longsword. It was the item he had tied down in the armored vehicle’s tool compartment because it was cumbersome.

“Ah, thank you. I’d forgotten.”

Gyeoul smiled, accepted the sword, and wore it at his side. The reason he had decided to carry the sword despite its inconvenience during an airborne operation was to make the entire battalion, except for Alpha Company, recognize that Major Singh was one of his close aides.

‘If they can see a visual connection, it’s bound to have some influence.’

It might have been needless worry, but hierarchy in the military was ultimately still a relationship between people. Gyeoul did not want the soldiers to unconsciously look down on the deputy battalion commander because of an unfamiliar religion. The position of deputy battalion commander itself was normally easy to overshadow with the battalion commander’s presence.

The Ranger Company commander’s briefing had little substance, as expected.

“Even something minor is fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s only your personal opinion. Do you have any guess at all as to how the battalion previously stationed here was wiped out?”

Captain Graf of the Rangers shook their head at Gyeoul’s question.

“We were very tense at first as well, but we haven’t received a single proper attack so far, so we’ve been finding it strange. The mutants must know that defeating us in detail would benefit them. If they meant to try something, they would have done it before the reinforcements arrived. I think we just need to keep strict watch for three days.”

“Did you check for Whipper ambushes?”

“Of course. We fired on every suspicious bit of terrain and every structure at least once. The airport is clean, inside and out. We’ve also placed traps and unmanned turrets in the sewers.”

“...”

Gyeoul studied the map and aerial photographs in turn, then pointed to one location.

“This area here is strangely intact. Is there a reason?”

“Ah, that’s the district where the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption is. Above it, Santo Domingo Cathedral is intact too. Maybe they’ll smash everything else, but not important cultural heritage.”

Gyeoul had asked just in case. The cathedral in central Oaxaca was five kilometers from the airport. It was an hour away on foot. He had only checked because there were so few clues.

Captain Graf made a suggestion.

“How about inspecting the remaining traces in person?”

When Gyeoul looked back, Colonel Davydov agreed on behalf of the airborne troops.

“Let’s do that. We can look over the defensive positions and perimeter while we’re at it.”

Gyeoul was the first to rise from his seat.

Footnotes:

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