WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 422: Dawn, or Twilight (2)
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On the third Thursday of August, Gyeoul was informed that the Ground Zero Vacuum, operation name 「Roaring Storm」, would begin sometime in January of next year. The news was also widely announced to the press. The exact date, however, was still undecided. It could only be set after observing the progress of auxiliary operations and the local weather conditions.
Still, they would choose a night with little moonlight to reduce visibility during the drop, so Gyeoul thought it would almost certainly be late January, around the new moon. If nothing changed, around midnight on the 28th seemed likely. That night would be black in the truest sense. The chance of an accident during the drop would rise as well, but accepting that risk was the better choice.
‘The best outcome would be withdrawing before a real engagement breaks out.’
As long as the drop succeeded quietly and in secrecy, it would be possible if they quickly finished searching the former Chinese military’s ballistic missile base. The cunning ones, precisely because they were cunning, would not launch a reckless attack while this side’s scale and details remained uncertain. With that level of intelligence, there was no way they would fail to understand the damage caused by feeding forces in piecemeal and wasting them one by one.
In other words, from the moment of the drop until dawn broke, there would be scattered probing battles for at least several hours. It had been similar when they dropped onto Mexico’s central plateau. After the first accidental engagement, the mutants in the area had held back for the time being. An armored force falling out of the sky in the dead of night was enough to make a Trickster cautious. The conclusion reached by Lieutenant General Rogers and the joint task force commanders under him was fairly persuasive.
And rough terrain did not work against humans alone. From the Trickster’s point of view, moving carelessly meant there were many folds in the land where radio waves would not reach. In other words, if they meant to command large mutant hordes, the cunning ones’ own range of activity would also be limited. Naturally, the number of individuals that could move to the front would shrink, and that meant the advantage of radio vision that pierced the dark would be offset to a considerable degree. The moment they grasped the full picture of the airborne armored assault would be delayed by that much.
The problem was whether the search of the old Chinese military base could be completed before dawn.
On the surface, it was a ballistic missile base, but even in America, former ballistic missile bases had often been repurposed or expanded for other uses. All the more so if it was a Chinese military base. According to the materials, America’s basis for classifying the site as a ballistic missile base was intelligence obtained in the 90s. For roughly twenty years after that, no one knew what changes the base might have undergone.
They had believed that among the surrendered Chinese generals and high-ranking officials, someone would know something...
Around the time the Department of Homeland Security’s 「End Documents」 were leaked, the theory that Morgellons was a Chinese military bioweapon had still been only a theory.
But since the Kramer administration took office, and since Lieutenant General Xieru’s execution was carried out, that theory had somehow become the official position of the U.S. government. Government policy was one reason, but several additional pieces of circumstantial evidence had also been discovered. There had been a forced internment camp for ideological reeducation near the facility. The suspicion was that the Tibetan dissidents imprisoned there had been sacrificed as subjects for human experimentation. In a country that sold the organs of death-row prisoners, it was something that could easily have happened. Of course, no further physical evidence had been presented yet.
After turning it over that far, Gyeoul sighed inwardly.
I hope it isn’t true.
If it truly was, Kramer would push even harder down the path Gyeoul had feared. Hatred and discrimination based on original sin. A shortcut to the outside world, swept along by muddy rapids. At the same time, it would be justified as the best measure for humanity’s survival. If that were only a pretext, it might have been one thing, but it was partly true as well, which made things even harder for Gyeoul.
Knock, knock, knock.
A restrained knock drew Gyeoul’s attention. The King of Spain, who had been sleeping curled up on his thigh, woke with ears perked. The dog did not bark. It only stared at the door, body tense. It was probably trauma from the days when the half-dead things had chased it around. Stroking its head, Gyeoul raised his voice toward the door.
“The door’s open.”
Two people entered. Jang Yeon-cheol and Min Wan-ki.
“Whew, nights in this neighborhood are chilly even in midsummer.”
Hearing Jang Yeon-cheol’s exaggerated complaint, Gyeoul turned on the fireplace with the remote. Gas flames lit beneath the fake logs. The crackling sound and smell of burning wood were convincing enough for something fake. Gyeoul gestured toward the fire with his chin.
“Sit down and warm yourselves.”
“Then I won’t refuse.”
The two department heads took the chairs on either side of the hearth. The dachshund twitched its nose and looked back and forth between the strangers and Gyeoul, then seemed to decide they were not threats. Its body relaxed, and it returned to its original position. Even so, it did not close its eyes. Even as it yawned wide, it stayed awake and watched the mood.
“So, how did you spend the day?”
When Gyeoul asked, Min Wan-ki only smiled broadly, and Jang Yeon-cheol nodded eagerly.
“It felt like I’d come to another world. A place that was a safe zone from the start really is different. It feels like nothing has changed compared to before the plague.”
This was a ski resort near Leadville. In summer, they converted the courses into a golf course and opened them. Besides that, they operated bungee jumping facilities, a kart racing track, a riding hall, a shopping mall, restaurants, and more. Perhaps they had felt the same thing Gyeoul had felt on his date with Anne.
Many members of the Alliance, including Jang Yeon-cheol and Min Wan-ki, had been able to come here for a summer retreat because Colorado governor “Large Chap” Chaffee had kept his promise to Gyeoul. Publicly, it had been announced as an event inviting military families. It was a pretty good name, since it made it harder for criticism to arise that refugees were being treated too generously.
For the Independent Battalion, it was a summer vacation they had never expected.
The soldiers were happy, at least.
Yet they did not show that happiness very strongly.
Jang Yeon-cheol pointed that out too.
“I was truly glad to see Little Captain and meet the others, but Captain Park’s expression wasn’t very bright. Everyone else also seemed somehow drained...”
Gyeoul shrugged.
“That’s understandable. They were waiting for the day this hardship would finally end, but now they’ve learned there’s still almost half a year left. They’ll need a little more time to recover.”
Jin-seok would be especially bad. Since there was something he had done, he would want only to fulfill his responsibility as soon as possible. Even when he answered Gyeoul that he would continue serving as Company commander for the time being, he probably had not expected that “time being” to last this long.
‘Honestly, I’m getting tired of waiting too.’
Unfortunately, Anne could not come today. Quite some time had passed since the coup, but somewhere on this wide continent, sparks that still dreamed of fire seemed to be lurking.
As Gyeoul opened and closed the lid of his pocket watch, making it click, Min Wan-ki asked him.
“Is their skill still lacking after all?”
When Gyeoul looked at him, puzzled, Min Wan-ki added,
“I spoke differently in front of the others, but from the moment the Independent Battalion was designated as special forces, I thought this was asking quite a lot. Could the operation be delayed because of that?”
Gyeoul wore a troubled smile.
“That isn’t it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, really. Even if it’s true that they want to send our Independent Battalion because it makes for good optics, the people upstairs haven’t lost their minds enough to delay the operation just for that reason. They’re trying to wear the mutants down with the cold, so the date was naturally pushed back. The failure of this operation would be nothing less than a disaster for the current administration.”
Maybe that was exactly why they wanted to send Gyeoul all the more. They might have post-operation damage control in mind, something like, “It failed even though Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul went! Who can we blame?” Even if it was absurd, it would have some effect on people who liked Gyeoul to an abnormal degree.
Min Wan-ki nodded.
“So you’re saying that, at least on that point, we can trust what was reported.”
“Generally, yes.”
The Tibetan Plateau, where Ground Zero was located, was so high above sea level that it was nicknamed the roof of the world, but compared to that altitude, the cold was not especially brutal.
Of course, that only meant it was mild for its altitude. The lowest temperature at the planned drop point fell to around minus 17 degrees Celsius. Taking the highland winds into account, the real-feel temperature had to be considered below minus 20.
The mutants endured that cold thanks to their own preparations for winter. When they began feeling the cold, the bastards worked hard to fatten themselves, even if they had to eat their own kind. Subcutaneous fat served as insulation.
Some kind of change also occurred in the externally exposed parts. Researchers had presented analysis showing that the properties of the tissue formed in their skin were similar to the antifreeze proteins found in some polar organisms. They had also discovered that mutant hordes isolated in regions that were not cold even in winter did not have this trait. That meant either at least one adaptation process was required, or there had to be a special mutant that spread the trait.
But either one alone made it hard to withstand true extreme cold.
In other words, if they somehow forced the bastards to burn calories, they could be forced to choose.
‘Withdraw before it gets too late and enter Metabolic Suppression, or consume more of their own kind and maintain activity.’
Eurasia also had individuals specialized in securing calories, like the Humpback, but no matter how much those bastards roamed around eating vegetation, there were limits in the season when all things froze.
The case where the Russian army wiped out a mutant horde through maneuver alone belonged to that category.
Min Wan-ki, still doubtful, asked again.
“Hmm. Then, in your eyes, Captain, what level is the Independent Battalion at?”
After a brief thought, Gyeoul gave a concise answer.
“They’re not lacking.”
They might not be the best, but they were not lacking. That was Gyeoul’s evaluation of the current Independent Battalion. There was no need to doubt its objectivity. Gyeoul had experienced the activities of many special forces units directly and indirectly, and deep down, he still did not want to send the Independent Battalion.
「Instruction」 had also played a role here. It was an intuition correction that told him what kind of training would be most effective at any given moment. This had helped in a meaningful way to improve the results of training.
If he included himself, they might even be second-best.
‘I’m glad the training period got longer.’
That thought stayed to himself.
“Not lacking, is it...”
Min Wan-ki murmured, then smiled broadly.
“I’m glad to hear a more generous evaluation than I expected.”
At those words, Gyeoul tilted his head inwardly.
“You’re glad?”
“Of course. You are not someone who would give empty praise about this sort of thing, so the Independent Battalion must truly have grown enough to meet Little Captain’s standards, and that means your chances of returning alive have increased by that much. I want to keep watching you in the future, and an Alliance without you, Captain, would not be a very interesting place to me. Less interesting than it is now, at least.”
Min Wan-ki’s eyes curved gently.
Setting aside the Alliance’s direction, this was a person who had said that building a stage for people and relationships from the ground up after everything had collapsed was deeply interesting. So he had enough reason to say this now. If someone other than Gyeoul had been the central figure of the Alliance, Min Wan-ki would have shown a completely different side to match that person.
Though he probably would not have smiled as often as he did now.
Jang Yeon-cheol knew him well enough to read the older department head’s real meaning, but at this point, he did not bother showing any displeasure.
Gyeoul asked Yeon-cheol,
“How did the people who came with you look? I hope everyone was as happy as I expected.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. Until early last year, they believed they would never experience something like this again. There’s no way they wouldn’t be happy. Regardless of their original nationality, everyone is very grateful to you, Captain.”
“For that, you look like something’s bothering you.”
“Mm, that is...”
Jang Yeon-cheol scratched his head awkwardly, then, after some hesitation, spoke carefully.
“It’s not an immediate problem, but I suppose I should say the Chinese refugees’ devotion is too blind...”
“Blind?”
“Mm, to exaggerate a little, it feels like looking at people from old North Korea.”
Jang Yeon-cheol’s explanation continued a little longer after that. There were many pauses where he narrowed his brow while searching for the right expression, but in any case, Gyeoul understood well enough what he was trying to say.
‘Lieutenant General Xieru’s legacy... maybe.’
According to Yeon-cheol, there had been signs of it before, but the more rapid change came after Lieutenant General Xieru’s trial was broadcast live. In her courtroom statements, she had maliciously represented the regime of the old homeland and acted like an insane nationalist and totalitarian, drawing a clear line between herself and the second-generation Chinese-Americans and Chinese refugees in America. In other words, she had made them another group of victims used by terrorist forces.
「It was only natural that the military, which inherited the noble mission from the previous leadership, escaped before civilians.」
「Those of Chinese blood should have offered their lives in revenge for the motherland.」
...
「All Chinese who did not answer our noble uprising and resist the oppression of the American imperialists are no different from filthy traitors.」
Her performance had far surpassed the level America wanted. Because it had also been what she herself wanted.
In the end, it would not be strange if the Chinese refugees who felt betrayed desperately needed faith in the Gyeoul Alliance as a foundation for unconsciously building a new identity of their own.
Gyeoul sank into thought. Since Jang Yeon-cheol played the role of smoothly mediating between people with different dispositions through his unique, somewhat simple-minded sociability, he might be more sensitive to these things than Min Wan-ki.
Min Wan-ki gave his assessment.
“I see it as a positive change.”
“People have limits, so if they try to throw away their entire past for a new beginning, they have no choice but to suffer growing pains. And the results are usually poor. The past is the identity of the people living in the present. People who have lost their identity cannot accomplish anything worthwhile. That is why people alone will not do. A person cannot bear the weight of people.”
“And yet you think it’s positive?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the person who will hold the center does not seem like a person. In a positive sense.”
Min Wan-ki looked at Gyeoul with pleased eyes.
Footnotes:
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