WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 429: Dawn, or Twilight (9)

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Attempts to sever the subterranean neural network with artillery and bombing ended in practical failure. When soldiers dug into the blast centers, shells detonating on the surface proved useless, and only a few types of aerial bombs produced any results, and even those fell short of expectations.

It would have been better if the target had been an artificial structure. Against tough, flexible biological tissue, there was little hope of causing widespread damage through vibration.

Strange things were discovered while the results were being confirmed. They were heart-like organs hanging from the middle of the neural network like tuberous roots. They were likely a way to circulate bodily fluids through the sprawling neural network. Gyeoul wondered if somewhere in this network there might also be clusters of autonomic nerves independent of the main body. Some insects had multiple brain stems inside their bodies, after all.

Once it came to that, the front-line officers improvised by bringing in field generators (MEP-802A). They clamped jumper cables (booster cables) onto the nerve bundles and ran current through them at maximum voltage.

For the moment, this was the best option, but the range of nerve damage was not very wide. The snow-covered ground and the cold, damp soil beneath the frozen topsoil guaranteed a solid electric shock within a certain radius, but the farther the current traveled, the more widely it dispersed.

Major General Kapralov clicked his tongue.

「At this rate, even if we work for all the time we have, the best we can do is cut off the area inside the defensive line.」

Nor could they bring the nuclear airship down to an altitude the cables could reach. The aerial battery had to focus on observation and artillery support.

One staff officer suggested,

「What about requesting nerve agents from the mainland?」

They were talking about using biochemical weapons.

Gyeoul thought the suggestion was unrealistic.

‘Would permission really come through?’

Considering the mutants’ absurd adaptability, using biochemical weapons was always a matter that demanded caution. Getting approval would not be easy.

And even if approval came through, the current mission force did not have chemical weapons on hand. Transporting them from storage facilities on the mainland to Ground Zero would take a good half day or so.

A doctor from the CDC, attending the meeting as an adviser, was horrified by the staff officer’s suggestion.

「Absolutely not. If you inject a nerve toxin locally into a nervous system of that scale, then past a certain point, only sublethal concentrations will inevitably circulate. Meanwhile, large numbers of mutants would be exposed, creating ideal conditions for a toxin-resistant mutant to emerge.」

After speaking in a rapid burst, the doctor caught their breath and warned them.

「A monster that uses it as a weapon, like Mustard Amber, could appear. One wrong move and all of Eurasia could become land where humans can no longer live.」

Mutants whose identification codes were made up of two words, in other words, special mutants that caused biochemical contamination other than necrotoxins, were still limited to Anthrax Rosie and Mustard Amber. And even Anthrax Rosie seemed to have almost died out.

Lieutenant General Rogers summed it up in one sentence.

「So they say.」

Did Gyeoul really think Rogers had not considered what he had? Rogers had probably seen it as a worthless opinion from the start.

The bad news did not stop there.

「Large numbers of mutants are floating down from the upper reaches of the western and eastern rivers.」

Lieutenant General Rogers shared the footage captured by the drones. On the upstream riverbanks filmed in infrared, countless heat sources were jumping into the running water over a stretch of more than ten kilometers. From time to time, a rain of fire poured down over their heads. The mutants paid no heed to the death overflowing around them. The water’s edge was covered in corpses.

Every time the screen changed, similar scenes repeated. It meant this was happening in several places at once.

The general gave an assessment.

「It looks like the mutant horde we’ll be facing will be a little larger than expected.」

They had originally expected a maximum of a little over 100,000. If the number rose beyond that, how far should they look? 150,000? 200,000? Even with their overwhelming firepower, numbers like that would be difficult to face in rugged terrain.

Gyeoul had his doubts.

‘Even if they’ve developed resistance to the cold, not all of those mutants should be able to swim.’

Delicate movement like swimming was impossible for ordinary mutants.

‘Are other mutants pulling them out downstream...?’

No matter how he thought about it, the mutants had no other option. But the rivers around here were at least fifty meters wide, so they would have to accept massive losses in the process of retrieving them. The ones that simply drifted away would thrash and drown once Metabolic Suppression reached its limit.

Put another way, it meant they were trying to bite this side even while accepting that level of loss. As Esther had said, they were truly desperate.

This was surely a lesson carved into them by the mission force at Fort Liberty. Once humans built a solid position, the mutants’ chances of breaking through were slim, no matter how much attrition they were willing to accept. If Esther was right, the cunning ones had badly misread the intent of Rogers Joint Task Force. It made sense that they were hurrying to concentrate their forces.

Thorough preparation turning into poison instead. The irony was almost absurd.

Next came information that special mutants, mainly Keshik, were leaving the ordinary mutants behind and approaching at high speed. Their distinctive long arms and legs were easy to identify even on infrared footage.

With that, the time remaining until the vanguard of the mutant horde entered range abruptly shrank to less than half.

「Strange. No matter how urgent they are, they can’t be planning to launch an offensive with only those.」

At Major General Kapralov’s words, Major General Zverev gave a cold laugh.

「If they are, we should welcome it, but they can’t be stupid enough to waste important forces like that.」

The power of special mutants was maximized only when they were accompanied by a large group. Even if each individual was unusually powerful, if they could not split this side’s firepower, they would simply die for nothing.

「Obviously, the goal is to wear down our stamina and ammunition before the real attack... or to prepare things so they can begin the offensive as soon as the follow-up group arrives. Trenches, for example. They must have had plenty of success with those in South America.」

With the strength of combat-specialized special mutants, even winter ground would be dug up in an instant.

「Even so, they’re awfully confident. With the intelligence of whatever is behind them, they must have realized by now, after those pinpoint airstrikes, that we can read their movements perfectly well.」

「That means they’re also confident they can read our movements. Otherwise, they wouldn’t expose important forces to danger on their own.」

「That damned neural network again, then.」

The rapid exchange of opinions converged on a hypothesis Gyeoul had briefly considered in passing. If the subterranean neural network was more than a simple signal transmission system and also served as a sensory organ that detected changes in vibration or pressure, then the mutants’ confidence could be explained.

Gyeoul had not been the only one to reach that conclusion.

Brusilov, commander of the 217th Regiment, spoke with visible discomfort.

「If that’s true, mobile defense will be difficult. If we’re surrounded by those bastards while our maneuver routes are limited, losses among armored vehicles and tanks will be unavoidable.」

The center of Ground Zero, the former Chinese military ballistic missile base, was located inside a gorge cut into the mountain foothills. It was meant to secure terrain-based protection against nuclear attack. Because of that, part of the perimeter Rogers Joint Task Force had built lay along the winding ridgelines in that area.

These ridges had originally been full of forest, making them a battlefield utterly unsuited to armored forces. But nearly a year of bombing had devastated the mountains, so at least near Ground Zero, operating armored vehicles had become manageable enough. Aside from the tree stumps left here and there, there were no real obstacles blocking the lines of fire from mounted weapons.

And that was exactly where the limit lay. Destroying an old forest enough for vehicles to move freely through it was never easy. Therefore, the routes this side could use to push out were surprisingly limited, even taking into account the rough-terrain mobility of lightweight airborne armored vehicles. Since there were many obstacles, engagement ranges would be shorter too.

Armor was not a branch suited to mountain warfare in the first place. It had only been chosen as the main force for a mission where they simply had to hold the defensive line and buy time because of its excellent firepower and protection, and because of the psychological stability it gave the soldiers.

Gyeoul suggested,

“How about setting another lure, but in reverse?”

Lieutenant General Rogers asked expressionlessly,

「How?」

“Even if we assume the subterranean neural network is a kind of sensory organ, I doubt it can detect infantry moving on foot while the aftershocks of artillery and bombing are still continuing. The network is deep, too.”

Gyeoul thought of a spider. A spider detected prey caught in its home by the vibrations in its threads, but on a day of lashing wind and rain, it would not notice prey as small as a mayfly getting caught. Not unless it saw it directly or smelled it.

「In other words, deceive the enemy with armor as bait, then hit their rear with infantry?」

“Yes.”

「The armor is one thing, but the risk to the infantry is too high.」

The idea that movement on foot would be hidden was, in the end, nothing more than a guess. One wrong step, and they might be driving many lives to their deaths based on optimistic expectations.

「Still, wouldn’t it be worth trying with a few Company-sized units? Even if it fails, rescue would be possible, and if even that becomes impossible, we can reduce the defensive line in a hurry and hold out.」

Colonel Brusilov added weight to Gyeoul’s opinion.

「If we stay like this, all that remains is a brute-force contest. That was the original plan, yes, but since we now have to face far more enemies than we first assumed... reducing the number of special mutants before the full-scale war of attrition begins would be a great help.」

The mood turned positive. Even so, no decision came right away. The most important thing was still protecting the ballistic missile base search site.

「Good.」

Lieutenant General Rogers slowly nodded.

「Let’s try setting the board. What’s happened so far is one thing, but we don’t know what other variables may be added from here on.」

It was better to secure whatever advantages they could while they had the chance. That was the meaning.

The tension in the video conference rose slightly.

Because time was still passing even at that moment, roles were assigned boldly. Sometimes a flawed judgment was better than a late one. This was exactly that kind of situation. In any event, they still had time before the mutants truly came crashing in.

The Independent Battalion would send out one Company as well.

After leaving the video conference, Gyeoul briefed the battalion staff on the outline of the trap. Foster, the operations officer, voiced concern at the end of the briefing. It was because Gyeoul had said he would go with the dismounted infantry.

“Sir. No matter how dangerous the mission is, is there any need for you to go yourself?”

Major Singh backed Foster up.

“I should go instead. At least the soldiers won’t resent headquarters.”

They seemed to think Gyeoul’s intent in personally leading the strike team lay in the soldiers’ psychology.

‘True, it’s still too early to feel secure about trust.’

Each Company under the battalion had received plenty of training and had built up a decent level of combat experience as well. But despite working together as one battalion for nearly a year, there was still a sense of inferiority and distance based on background. This was closer to an invisible class consciousness.

In short, the people Gyeoul trusted most were the old independent company members.

To be honest, that was true. It was not that he deliberately favored them, but that the difference in actual combat strength was that large. The difference came inevitably from the different battlefields they had lived through.

In the same context, Gyeoul had chosen Charlie Company for the strike team because he judged that even if something happened, as long as Alpha Company held the defensive line, the ballistic missile base would not be endangered. Gyeoul was no different from the other officers in treating the protection of the base search site as the top priority.

So if Charlie Company suffered heavy losses here, ugly talk would easily spread beneath the surface. The same applied to Bravo and Delta Company.

The best way to prevent that, in other words, the clearest way to show trust, was for Gyeoul himself, the one responsible, to share the risk with them.

The armored decoy team commanded by Charlie Company’s commander would likely welcome Gyeoul’s participation too.

Footnotes:

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