WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 430: Dawn, or Twilight (10)

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Preparations for the attack moved quickly. They had to return to the defensive line before the mutants' main body came rushing in. Achieving the objective came after that. Gyeoul took part of the battalion headquarters staff and joined Charlie Company's dismounted combat group. The soldiers greeted him with every sign of tension.

Gyeoul looked them over. Though they had no armored vehicles with them, they had exchanged some personnel and weapons with the troops remaining in the rear, so in terms of firepower they were stronger than an ordinary infantry company. That was only natural if they were going to hunt special mutants. Their starched stiffness bothered him a little, but what soldier did not get tense before combat?

Before departure, the radioman checked communications with units at every level.

"Your signal strength, Lima Charlie, Lima Charlie. How do you read me, over."

[This is Samogon Actual. I read you loud and clear, David Actual.]

The answer came with a Russian accent. The radio procedure followed the American style. Communications went smoothly with every company of the Independent Battalion, the divided battalion headquarters, the airborne troops, and other units as well. The Tricksters, after being hammered by anti-radiation missiles all year, did not use jamming carelessly.

'They'll save that for the decisive moment.'

And a diligent commander's job was to make sure that decisive moment never came. For the mutants, a decisive moment would mean, at the very least, a situation where friend and foe were extremely close. Once all artillery support converged into danger close or firing into one's own position, those cunning things would pour everything they had into broadcasting filthy signals and try to paralyze the command system completely.

It was the sort of "doctrine" the mutants had established while waging war against humanity.

With what little time he had, Gyeoul shook hands with as many company members as he could see and encouraged them. His unexpected role as a battalion commander was already entering its second year. By now, Gyeoul could remember the names of everyone in the battalion even without the help of 「Memorization」.

Naturally, no one in the battalion disliked Gyeoul, officer or enlisted. That was separate from the invisible wall he had once dwelled on.

Only one of the platoon leaders seemed to be trying hard to hide his gloom.

"If we were a little more reliable, the Lieutenant Colonel wouldn't have come in person."

When the platoon leader muttered that, a colleague of the same rank standing beside him panicked and jabbed him in the ribs. At the same time, the colleague glanced toward Gyeoul, worried he might have heard. They were just barely within range of ordinary hearing.

When their eyes met, Gyeoul pretended not to know and smiled at him.

The platoon leader who had checked his reaction looked relieved, but from Gyeoul's perspective, the gloomy one was actually more to his liking. The other three platoon leaders were simply glad Gyeoul had joined them.

Junior officers from Japanese refugee backgrounds tended to believe that carrying out orders thoroughly was their only role. Beyond their experience in the refugee zones, he suspected cultural influence was at work as well. They were gradually improving, but it was still hard to expect active judgment from them. That applied to both platoon leaders and company staff.

Nor could he entrust the lives of the armored decoy team to that judgment.

Soon, it was time. Gyeoul held out his hand to the company commander one last time.

"I'll look forward to a good performance, Lieutenant. Let's meet again alive."

"I will do my best, Sir."

Charlie Company commander Lieutenant Arthur Matsudaira shook his hand with formal precision. The lieutenant was nervous, but he also carried resolve and anticipation. Gyeoul watched that anticipation for a moment.

'Still, he isn't someone who will act recklessly.'

Matsudaira, a fourth-generation Japanese American, had a great deal in common with Gavin Cheng, the commander of Bravo Company. He was an academy graduate with strong cadet grades, and he had only a faint awareness of his bloodline.

What had brought him under Gyeoul's command was a little different. Matsudaira had judged the Independent Battalion to be the fastest shortcut to promotion, then fought through fierce competition to get in.

For that very reason, he would never do anything that put him on Gyeoul's bad side. Apart from calculation, he also made no attempt to hide his respect for Gyeoul.

So what if he saw the Independent Battalion as a stepping stone in his career?

'As long as he stays faithful to his role.'

A leader's role was to affirm different kinds of people and complete the larger picture. If he started casting people aside whenever he disliked one thing about them, in the end, no one would be left.

It was the same as human relationships.

Shwaaaaaak.

The roar of jet engines, absent until now, crossed the star-distant celestial sphere. They were cruise missiles, Tomahawks, launched from the carrier strike group in the South China Sea. Several missiles detonated in succession, making the distant night flash. After the flashes came vibration, and after the vibration came the blasts.

Immediately afterward, decoys intermittently broadcasting meaningless radio waves were scattered as well. It was a measure to confuse any Tricksters that might be present. Naturally, this side had the means to filter those signals out.

This was the night they poured in everything they had prepared over the past year.

Gyeoul gave the signal.

"Let's go. 1st Platoon and 3rd Platoon move first."

Two platoons advanced, and the remaining platoon and weapons platoon followed behind.

Artillery roared without end and shells passed overhead. Amid it all, the footsteps of one company's worth of troops moving down the dark road were extremely careful and cautious. Until they reached the ambush position, it was better to avoid combat as much as possible. Everyone held their breath as one, to the point that even the crunch of snow underfoot grated on the ears. They feared that the sound of their steps might reach the disgusting Root underground.

The communications net updated information on the enemy without pause.

[Line Quebec, 5-3-0-1, 2-4-0-5, seven Gamma Keshiks carrying regular variants...]

Though the location was different, Gyeoul was looking at the same monsters too.

[Leaders halt.]

The voice came through with a hiss of static. The soldiers slowly lowered themselves and held their breath.

A group of misshapen special mutants with long limbs was passing in front of 1st Platoon, spaced loosely apart. They had emerged almost as if crawling up a low cliff, so the distance was far too close. The startled front line of 1st Platoon crept backward under their platoon leader's control.

The initial distance was about thirty meters. Until that became fifty meters, then sixty, the mutants did not turn their heads this way. It was thanks to the curtain of a moonless night.

"Damn it..."

A nearby soldier muttered the curse in a whisper. It was the soldier's native language, slipping out from shock. Their breathing rasped through the gas mask amplifier plate.

Honestly, Gyeoul's heart was pounding a little too. He was worried the withdrawing soldiers might make noise by stumbling or dropping their weapons. If those monsters, with narrow target profiles for their height and arms and legs each three meters long, had charged in a mass frenzy, at least one rifle squad would have had their limbs torn apart. Even if they won, the operation would of course be disrupted.

The real Keshiks detected by infrared sensors were even more grotesque than the videos and materials he had seen beforehand. Their bodies seemed to retain heat well, with most of them showing purple. The way they scuttled along on their long limbs made them look like giant insects.

Click.

Gyeoul knelt and adjusted his night vision, turning off the thermal color conversion by temperature. His vision switched to pure light amplification. It became a little darker, but it showed their pale shapes more clearly than before. It also revealed details that had been hard to make out in the mottled image.

'They really are carrying other mutants on their backs.'

It was a detail he had missed in the earlier drone footage, since all he had seen then was converted thermal imaging.

The things clinging to their backs were also on the small side.

No doubt this was the cunning ones' idea. They would know that when fighting humans, being smaller was sometimes an advantage. A small body was good for using the night too.

Fortunately, the little ones' legs were not the reverse-jointed legs unique to Scampers. They were only immature bodies with dense muscles. One of the things he had worried about most when Tricksters were released onto this continent, something like convergent mutation, had not happened. If the strengths of the mutants in the Americas had been carried intact to the Chinese continent, things would have become extremely troublesome. Deadlers, Whippers, things like that.

Kiiiiii.

At the rear of the large monsters' group, five individuals abruptly stopped. They sniffed while looking in different directions. For a moment, unease rose in him as he wondered if they had noticed something. The instant they let out hostile shrieks, every monster that had already passed would turn back.

Sure enough, the radio call came right away.

[Do we hit them?]

Gyeoul answered quietly.

"Not yet. Paint them with guidance lasers and transmit coordinates to the mortar teams. Guided shell fire mission. Tell them to fire when I give the signal."

If combat became unavoidable, they would first drop mortar shells equipped with laser guidance technology, but not yet.

'If shells detonate now, they'll scatter in every direction. Some will rush this way too.'

He was confident they could wipe them out. But that was not the objective. Those monsters had to be trapped in the kill zone before they realized anything was wrong, along with most of their nearby kind.

A short but exhausting wait passed. Aside from the shell guidance lasers, beams from target designators mounted on rifles placed points of light on the mutants' bodies, like stars scattered across them. Those green dots trembled slightly with the shooters' heartbeats. At the same time, the anti-tank weapon gunners finished preparing to fire with their assistant gunners.

Luckily, the five Keshiks never noticed them.

After watching them move away, the company started moving again. The traces left by the monster group that had dragged its legs past crossed countless boot prints in the darkness.

From the rear came gunfire distinct from personal weapons, along with echoes of artillery. Gyeoul estimated the shape of the battle by occasionally watching strings of tracers bounce off the ground and vanish into the air, and by the glow of shells.

'As expected, they're spending our ammunition while keeping enough distance to avoid fatal damage.'

This, too, was the wisdom of the cunning ones. Experience built on the countless deaths of ordinary mutants.

Even after that, moments that drained the soldiers' strength repeated. They brushed past mutants large and small at close range, relying only on darkness and silence. The mutants blocked their path again and again.

When there was a reasonable distance, they guided in artillery, smashed through, and passed. In rare cases where only small ones lingered, designated marksmen killed them silently.

'Still, at this rate...'

They were advancing more smoothly than expected. Gyeoul's decision to choose the route himself was paying off. His excellent sensory correction pierced the darkness more efficiently than infected instinct or advanced equipment.

How much longer had they walked like that? A platoon leader reported to Gyeoul.

"Sir. We have reached the ambush point."

Gyeoul nodded. He had known from the terrain even before receiving the report. It was a hill with a steep slope on one side and a gentle one on the other. The gentle side sloped toward the defensive line, so if the mutant horde entered this way, they would waste stamina on the approach and be hammered by fire at the same time. Unless the cunning monsters had gone insane, they would not use this place as the mutant horde's entry route.

As expected of a hill on a barren plateau, half-weathered rocks were scattered everywhere. Ever since he had studied the terrain information beforehand, he had thought they would make good cover. Considering the Keshiks' tendency to throw anything and everything, including regular variants, when the distance was great enough, no more favorable ambush point existed.

"Each platoon will establish a perimeter. I will personally decide the support weapon positions."

Gyeoul designated the positions for the high-speed grenade launchers and light machine guns one by one. If they wanted optimal killing efficiency, it was better to rely on tactical 「Insight」.

'Though lately, I can barely tell the difference by feel.'

It was a sensory confusion Gyeoul had often felt recently. The once-clear boundary between his original senses and his senses as corrected by the system was growing more and more blurred. It was an illusion he had never felt in the last twenty-six apocalypses. Gyeoul shook his head and cast aside the stray thought.

'I'll let the platoon leaders handle the ordinary riflemen for now.'

He could correct anything he disliked. It was also a chance to test the platoon leaders' abilities under real combat conditions. If they had a good eye, they would place the riflemen according to the killing ranges of the support weapons Gyeoul had chosen.

In front of the perimeter, several lines of Detonation cord were laid and firmly fixed using terrain features and stakes. Their primary role was to serve as physical obstacles. Gyeoul expected that on such a dark night, simply tripping the enemy inside a concentrated field of fire would be enough to cause confusion.

Detonation would come next.

Inside and outside the Detonation cord, the Claymores each soldier had brought were laid out.

"Hurry! The decoy team will be here soon! We don't have much time!"

The platoon leaders quietly urged the work on.

Footnotes:

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