WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 423: Dawn, or Twilight (3)

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A short summer passed amid constant training. Leadville saw its first snow in September and began to freeze in earnest in October. Snow that held the chill of night no longer melted completely even in the above-freezing daylight, and the mountain range grew whiter by the day. By mid-November, the low had dropped to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, minus 10 degrees Celsius. Autumn might as well not have existed.

The National Weather Service, meanwhile, predicted that this winter would be colder than usual. Last year had brought extreme heat. This year would bring extreme cold. As a commander, Gyeoul felt half worried and half expectant. The worry was over losses caused by the cold itself. The expectation was the hope that this bitter cold might become a positive variable during the operation. The season had been the opposite, but had they not succeeded in the Boar Hunt last year by making use of the heat wave? This kind of intelligence was humanity's strength, one the mutants did not possess.

The battalion's soldiers would not be surprised by Ground Zero's climate. The weather in the Colorado mountains, despite minor differences, resembled the Tibetan Plateau in many ways. Both were highlands deep inland.

Beep-

Under the desk lamp he had left on against the night, the open laptop let out a flat electronic sound. Running on it was a remote command program. The simulated tactical drills he had repeated through this program had helped Gyeoul adapt well enough to the role of battalion commander. Today's drill was based on a real battle that had taken place in Central and South America. It required the commanders assigned to the joint task force to make situational judgments at each phase, then verified afterward how accurate those judgments had been.

On the map filled with tactical symbols, eleven minutes had passed since the battle began. Judging from the observable enemy movement and the terrain in that area, he had a rough idea where the individual exerting the strongest control would be. But grinding the area down with limited artillery support would require covering too wide a range. The restrictions had been set tighter than reality in the name of strengthening command capability.

Even so, Gyeoul placed an artillery request on that area. Not for immediate fire, but for fire to be delivered when the commander called for it. At the decisive moment, he intended to force that cunning creature into cover and flight, making it lose control even if only for a short while.

A moment would be enough. In that moment, most of the mutant horde would charge like mad dogs into the prepared kill zone. The killing power of automatic weapons made a massacre within a single minute possible.

Gyeoul drank the tea he had kept in a thermos and waited for the right time. On the screen, dry solid lines, messages, and blinking symbols in motion showed the progress of the battle.

The mutant horde's offensive began. It came through the weakness Gyeoul had deliberately created. From the outside, it must have looked like an easy crack to drive into.

Click. When he pressed Enter, the artillery fire he had held back finally poured down.

As expected, even after throwing itself into the net of fire, the mutant horde continued its offensive. It was being shredded in real time at a frantic rate. Only when the horde was nearly broken did it pull back. The survivors were only a handful compared to their original number.

If he used the momentum to find and kill the Trickster too, he could receive a better score from the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) evaluator. But once Gyeoul repelled the offensive, he did not move his troops any further.

'This is only practice for the Ground Zero drop, after all.'

What Gyeoul aimed for was victory with minimal casualties. The operational goal on the Tibetan Plateau was also to strike quickly and withdraw, not to annihilate the enemy.

Perhaps the Trickster had been killed by the artillery strike anyway.

His gaze returned to the monitor. He did not know where on this map an enhanced variant Whipper might be hiding. In a forest, even thermobaric munitions and grenades lost effectiveness. With military dogs, movement itself would be possible, but if they tried to keep up with a fleeing Trickster, they would inevitably have to push too hard.

A little later, the program announced that the simulated battle had ended. The calculated casualties were only in the single digits. Compared to the real combat record, that number was less than one-third.

The evaluator was not satisfied. Even though a formal critique would come separately later, a message already arrived in an interrogating tone.

「Excessive passivity was visible in your force employment again today. You accurately calculated the enemy's observation range and used artillery fire to guide its attack into the kill zone. That much was good. But why did you not actively attempt to exploit the opportunity you created?」

The choice of words carried dissatisfaction. After thinking for a moment, Gyeoul sent a safe answer.

「Lt. Colonel_Han: Annihilating the enemy main force alone was a sufficient achievement, and exploitation will not be important at Ground Zero.」

It would have been nice if it had ended there, but the evaluator rebuked Gyeoul again.

「That is an inappropriate explanation. The presented situation was unrelated to Ground Zero. Therefore, you should have practiced the general principles of force employment. In other words, you should have made your judgment based only on the given conditions.」

That was not wrong. Gyeoul typed again.

「Lt. Colonel_Han: I understand what you mean. However, if I had decided to pursue at that point, I would have needed to open maneuver routes through the forest, and losses from ambushes were highly likely during that process. Would a linear maneuver route crossing the forest not also be easy to cut in the middle? I judged that it was not something that could be attempted when the available number of thermobaric munitions was insufficient.」

「Was it impossible, or was it difficult?」

「Lt. Colonel_Han: As a commander, it was impossible.」

「Once again, your opinion differs from mine.」

Once again. Gyeoul clasped his hands under his chin and tasted the unpleasant nuance on the tip of his tongue.

It had never been said openly, but judging from the evaluator's words and actions so far, the complaints they held toward Gyeoul fell into three broad categories.

First. That he was too protective of the refugee-born soldiers.

Second. That he lacked the proper mindset of a soldier.

Third. That he had the ability to produce better results but was holding himself back.

As for the first, he had no excuse if that was how it looked. But even if all his subordinates had been born American citizens, Gyeoul would have cherished them exactly as he did now.

'It's not because they're refugees. I respect them because they're my subordinates.'

That was how Gyeoul saw it, and this was related to the second complaint.

「There is no war where nobody dies.」

That was something the evaluator had said once, and it was also what they considered the proper mindset of a soldier. Those who wore uniforms naturally had to be prepared for death, and commanders should not focus only on avoiding the sacrifice of their subordinates. To some extent, it was common sense. From the evaluator's perspective, Gyeoul was a commander who clung far too much to the lives of each individual subordinate.

Yet that was a rather unfair assessment. It was true that he prioritized minimizing casualties, whether in real combat or simulated battles, but Gyeoul had never made light of the operational objective. In most cases, he achieved the given mission. The tendencies of other officers were not likely to be very different from Gyeoul's either.

So the third complaint was the root cause of all of it.

If he was that "Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul," then he should do better than this.

In short, the expectations had been too high from the beginning. It was the dilemma of a war hero.

Fortunately, there was not only one evaluator. Among the evaluation team made up of several people, this was only one particularly fussy member. Gyeoul did not take it to heart either way.

'It's not like they can remove me anyway.'

At this point, excluding Gyeoul from the operation was nonsense. His final evaluation would never be low, and even if it somehow came out truly low, the evaluators would be placed under greater suspicion than Gyeoul. From Gyeoul's position, even that belief was not exactly welcome.

When Min Wan-ki called Gyeoul a person who did not seem human, he had been evaluating Gyeoul's character. No matter how passionate a revolutionary might be, they were bound to rot after taking power, but Gyeoul alone seemed like an exception to that rule.

When Major Singh said Gyeoul was someone infinitely close to the name of a god, that too had been about Gyeoul's heart and personality. Singh did not literally believe Gyeoul to be a superhuman.

But to many people, Gyeoul had become an idol.

The problem was that such standing might be necessary to draw them out into the open. Min Wan-ki had said that a mere person could not bear the weight of people.

Whenever his thoughts reached this point, Gyeoul's consciousness always moved further along that same line.

Should he affirm Bom as a god?

The question dragged on every time, but always ended without an answer. Gyeoul sighed and closed the laptop. Then, after sitting blankly for a while, he opened a drawer and took out two letters. One was from Anne, and the other had no sender's name written on it.

It had been quite some time since he began exchanging letters with Anne. Apart from video calls, letters had their own romance. More than anything, he liked that he could always carry them around, like photographs.

「To my beloved Gyeoul.」

Even though it always began with the same sentence, it made him smile every time he read it. The sentence was the same, but the date was different, so perhaps the fact that it did not change was itself a joy.

「Today marks the 130th day since I last saw you.」

Gyeoul let out a small laugh. The letter contained words she had saved during their phone calls.

「130 days. Can you believe it? A whole 130 days have passed. Oh, I don't know how I endured those hollow days without you. How did I ever manage before that? Even if I hear your voice in the morning and see your face at night, in the end, I only get a brief comfort in that moment. The version of you on the screen is too far away. Far too far.」

「Lately, I have stopped touching even the liquor I used to like. Every time I get drunk, I miss your warmth so terribly it hurts.」

「In that sense, I think deciding to write letters to each other was a very good choice. Having the words you sent me always close to my heart, now that I have experienced it, is such a warm feeling. Is it the same for you? I trust I am not the only one who never gets tired of reading them again and again.」

「So it is a little embarrassing too. I am not that good at writing, and when I think of you reading this over and over...」

「Mm, today was Veterans Day. While watching the veterans' parade through the window, I thought of you again. Mm, of course I think only of you day and night, but either way, that was a slightly special kind of 'thinking of you.' The world of today exists thanks to their sacrifice, and I am still alive thanks to your devotion. Don't tease me and say those are not very connected. Like I said, I only ever think of you. I can't help my thoughts flowing this way.」

「Whenever I miss Gyeoul's body heat, the memory that rises most strongly is the darkness of the Pequod. In that darkness, you held my frightened hand. That is the warmth of you that remains most vividly in my memory.」

「As I already confessed, that was probably when I began to love you.」

「Thank you, truly.」

「It is a cliché, but meeting you was the greatest luck of my life. Even though I miss you like this, my life is more complete than it was at any moment before I met you.」

「Ah, I want to hold your hand while you are somewhere cold... When you return, it will be a new spring.」

「I believe that spring will surely come. The first spring we will greet as one inseparable whole.」

「Until then, let us miss each other just a little longer. The longer the gap between three o'clock and four o'clock, the greater the joy of four o'clock becomes.」

「I will end this letter here.」

「With a kiss from my heart. From your Anne, Joanna Gibson.」

「P.S.: My parents are extremely curious about Gyeoul. Since I told them I am seeing someone but have not told them who for a long time, I think they are worried in all kinds of ways. Every time I hear the concern in their voices, I waver, but I still don't plan to tell them until the day they meet you in person. I can't give up the sight of their shocked faces. It will be very fun. Don't you think? :)」

After reading the last line, Gyeoul could not help laughing under his breath once more.

Footnotes:

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