WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 433: Dawn, or Twilight (13)
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「We might as well arrange for fallout to come down right over our heads.」
Major General Zverev said,
「To put it in extreme terms, we only need to stay alive until the moment we accomplish the operational objective.」
In other words, it did not matter if every soldier was poisoned by radiation, so long as the mission succeeded.
「Madness from the Cold War.」
Lieutenant General Rogers's dry comment could have been a sigh or a sneer.
Against countless tiny things, however, every existing strategy and tactic was useless without exception.
Weapons were no different. Against Teratoma, any automatic weapon that was not explosive became effectively useless. Even if they calmly aimed and shot them one by one, the ammunition consumption would rise beyond anything they could sustain. Cold weapons might actually be more effective.
So what other countermeasure could there be?
An enemy had appeared far beyond anything they had prepared for. Once any command beyond improvisation became meaningless, Rogers had no other alternative to offer. In that moment, as joint commander of the task force, half the job had effectively been taken away.
「As of now, I will grant authority to request nuclear delivery to commanders of Independent Battalion-level echelons and above.」
Rogers made the decision.
「But do not forget that this is strictly a last resort. In principle, you will stop them first with other means, such as thermobaric munitions. I leave the judgment of when that stopping action becomes impossible to the commanders responsible for each sector. Though the ammunition stocks are more likely to run dry before then.」
Even though it was too obvious to need saying, Rogers stressed it because of concern over the aggressive tendencies of the Russian airborne troops commanders.
'Madness from the Cold War.'
Gyeoul had encountered the same idea in officer education. In invasion plans for Europe drawn up under the assumption of full-scale nuclear war, the Soviet Union had intended to wipe out the enemy with nuclear weapons, then send armored forces straight into that same point. Judged purely by efficiency, there was no better way to break through a defensive line.
At the same time, the Soviet command considered it acceptable for those troops to be exposed to radiation. After all, they would still be alive until the offensive ended. That had been the position of the Soviet high command.
It was almost exactly the same attitude as Major General Zverev's proposal.
「Then I wish each of you luck. May God bless us all.」
The battle, already nothing but chaos no matter where one looked, had begun. Lieutenant General Rogers's voice, acknowledging that fact, still had no rise or fall in pitch.
It was probably Rogers's own way of staying in control.
Gyeoul steeled himself the same way.
'All I have to do is fulfill an officer's first and last duty.'
A coolness that never wavered, no matter what happened. Or, at the very least, the ability to maintain an outward appearance of composure. In other words, to serve as the weight holding the entire unit steady. This was a commander's most basic virtue, and depending on the situation, it could also become the hardest one to uphold. As long as this virtue remained, even a unit facing annihilation was less likely to collapse from within.
In that respect, very few commanders were better than Gyeoul.
Teratoma numbers increased exponentially with time. Though he could not see the whole picture, Gyeoul felt it as a rising Threat Level across the dark mountain range and plateau. It was different from a clear, tangible threat. If he had to describe it, it was closer to the revulsion of the entire far side of the night writhing as one.
'As if every patch of darkness I can see is one single monster...'
The corrections were overactive enough to make him dizzy. Keeping his mind sharp amid that flood of overflowing senses was another battle in itself.
“Damn it! We need flamethrowers here!”
Evans ground their teeth. The shout came right after Evans irritably crushed a Teratoma clinging to their forearm. Bloody hair and ugly teeth fell from the hand Evans shook as if in a seizure. Individually, they were weak enough that even people other than Gyeoul could kill them with grip strength alone.
As the communications officer said, flamethrowers would have helped.
For a very short while.
“Danger Close! Thermobaric munition impact warning eighty meters farther down the battlefield! Time of flight... nine seconds! BLU-96!”
At the radio operator's transmission, the officers screamed.
“Nine seconds? Fuck! Are you kidding me?”
“Get down! All of you, get down!”
With huge monsters closing in on the front of the trench line, ignoring the enemy and getting down was no easy order. Gyeoul kept bursting Keshik eyes until the last possible moment, then leaned against the inner wall of the trench as if collapsing. The aerial bomb that 「Survival Instinct」 warned him of was a massive premonition of death cutting across the sky. It began with a small boom. Then.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-boom!
Powerful explosions followed. A violent gale swept across the ground outside the trench. Fine dirt and gravel poured over Gyeoul's head. His vision, which had flashed orange for an instant, darkened further, then returned to normal only after his eyes adjusted again. Gyeoul spotted a Keshik that had rolled down into the trench.
Krrgh, grrgh...
The monster spat up blood. Pieces of organs were mixed into it. Its long limbs had been twisted into a mangled mess, sharp bones tearing through the flesh. There was no movement beneath its bulging skin, either. The small lumps of flesh that had rolled in with it were the same.
Good. The blast from a thermobaric munition killed every living thing within its range through full-body fractures and ruptured organs. Against that force, even Teratoma that had burrowed beneath the skin of a larger monster could not survive.
The trench, blasted open with Detonation cord and cleared with shovels, had become a reliable shelter for something built so quickly. Whether from Keshik stone throws or friendly bombing.
“Additional impact warnings! Time of flight to Line Echo, five seconds! Line Gamma, seven seconds! Eleven seconds!”
The radio operator barely managed to announce only the expected impact times, with no room to distinguish munition types. Everything falling now was the same kind of bomb anyway. Attack squadrons launched from carrier strike groups in the South China Sea rained down thermobaric munitions so heavily that not only the mutants, but even the soldiers were near delirium.
'We're still fine!'
As long as munitions with wide-area killing power remained, the nuclear warheads would not get their turn.
Though how long that situation would last was another question.
Even with three carrier strike groups providing full support, there was a limit to the number of thermobaric munitions they had. The same went for incendiary bombs, the next preferred option.
“First, reinforce the wired network!”
Gyeoul shouted to Captain Evans.
“Once nuclear detonations start in earnest! Wireless communications may suffer interference!”
It was work they had to finish while they still had some breathing room. The fog and radio interference created by residual radiation could sometimes be strong enough to kill radios entirely.
Ka-ka-ka-kang! Rifles with their suppressors removed rang out sharply. One of Gyeoul's earliest orders had been to remove suppressors. Stealth had long since gone out the window, and suppressors trapped sound and heat together. No matter how cold the weather was, preventing overheating mattered in a prolonged fight.
Shrieks rolled in like waves.
The mutants approaching the defensive line were uncontrolled chaos itself. The trench lines they should have dug had become tangled and distorted into a maze halfway through, straying far from their original purpose of approaching while avoiding lines of fire. The ones that burst out from them had bulging bodies and looked even more hideous.
Kweeeeeek!
Sometimes they tripped over stones as they charged, screaming. Yes. Screaming. Not hostile roars, but a chorus of screams wrung out by pain. Since their flesh was being eaten away in real time, how could it not hurt? The one Gyeoul aimed at right then hobbled toward him at a speed worse than walking, then collapsed after being shot. It scratched its whole body like a terminal cancer patient in convulsions, and beneath the flesh torn open by its nails, he could see things popping out in sharp little bursts.
They could not waste bullets on every single one.
Larger special mutants were no different. The moment Teratoma clung to them like aphids and burrowed into their flesh, the mutants became carriers of the new plague, regardless of size or type. Driven mad by pain, they charged blindly like frenzied bulls.
The number of Teratoma jumping into the trench rose just as much.
On a battlefield like this, even officers had no choice but to serve first as individual combatants.
Gyeoul simply kept moving, impressing his presence on the officers and soldiers. The fact that the command staff was alive and intact was a comfort by itself. It was the same as believing that the unit's command system was being maintained. He also meant to personally confirm where the line was in danger, where reserves needed to be sent, and where there was enough room to replenish the reserves.
In a situation like this, reports alone could easily create a gap between the field and the judgment made from it.
Jin-seok, whom he encountered along the way, asked with a pale face.
“Sir! How much longer until the base search is finished?!”
“It's divided by section!”
In the middle of speaking, Gyeoul struck a Teratoma clinging to Jin-seok with his rifle butt. With a crack, the crushed lump of flesh splattered wetly into a corner of the trench.
“Looks like it will take a little longer!”
“Damn it!”
Jin-seok seemed to be holding back more curses.
The sturdy pressure doors and blast doors dividing each section of the underground base. They had originally been measures for security and isolation, but now they were nothing but obstacles. With automated security devices and even emergency facility incineration systems tied into them, of course dismantling them was taking time.
'Here too, for now...'
Half the squad, one person from each team, was clearing the inside of the trench. Through the thermal imaging of the night vision goggles, Teratoma were still easy to distinguish. But they would soon hit their physical limits too. They were moving so frantically it almost looked like a comedy scene.
The earth shook.
After the bombing and blast rippled through the opaque night, Gyeoul checked the situation outside the trench line. Then he frowned and put on his night vision goggles. Until now, thanks to 「Environmental Adaptation」 and various firearm proficiencies, he had observed the battlefield with unaided eyes even at night, but now there was something he needed to confirm. He adjusted the night vision so that heat sources were divided by color according to temperature.
As expected.
The fragments of things that had been alive moments ago were scattered across the barren ground as hot light. Tiny heat sources swarmed toward that light. It was the sight of shattered plague bodies, and their thick scent of blood, calling in another plague. The Teratoma clusters, rushing in after smelling death spread everywhere, picked up the flesh strewn around them to replenish calories, and even secured the mass needed for reproduction. How else could he interpret heat sources that trembled for a while, then split in two and hopped away separately? They were horrifying monsters that not only transformed the living tissue of infected targets, but also divided themselves.
'In the end, is every method besides nuclear weapons nothing but a stopgap?'
It was not useless. Even now, it was providing enough stopping power, reducing the numbers they had to deal with immediately, and the losses during replication had to be substantial too.
Even so, the scene before him remained bleak.
It might be better to request nuclear delivery in advance, while they still had strength left.
Gyeoul could easily imagine the chaos in the White House command room as it wavered under a storm of requests to use nuclear weapons. He had to take into account the time it would take for a decision to be made.
Nor was it desirable to exhaust every weapon effective for wide-area killing now, such as thermobaric munitions, incendiary bombs, and cluster munitions, only to lose the ability to respond to new variables later...
The moment of choice was drawing nearer by the second.
“Aaaagh!”
A human scream echoed. Even amid a battlefield filled on every side with the painful harmony of mutants, the human voice stood out clearly. Gyeoul, passing nearby, caught the soldier as they fell. Corporal Zhang Kuntao of Bravo Company hurled curses at the distracted soldiers.
“Don't look here! Eyes front, you turtle-headed bastards!”
The soldiers suppressed their fear and turned their heads.
“Ugh, ugh, it hurts, urk. It hurts so much, please save me! Uwegh.”
Creak, creak. The soldier, unable to hold themself up, desperately clutched Gyeoul's protective suit. They kept dry-heaving, then let go and ripped off their gas mask in seizure-like motions.
“S-so tight! I can't breathe!”
“...”
Gyeoul stood up and aimed his rifle at the soldier, who was muttering as if out of their mind.
Uweeegh.
In the blood the soldier vomited, there was a strangely colored lump of flesh. Not a piece of organ, but a living, writhing Teratoma. Kang! Gyeoul eased the soldier's pain with a single shot, crushed the Teratoma underfoot, and shoved an incendiary grenade into the soldier's mouth. Deep enough to reach the back of the throat. Then he quickly retrieved the dog tags and ammunition, pulled the grenade's safety pin, and threw the entire body out of the trench.
It was a body whose inside had already begun to squirm beneath the protective suit.
Everyone who came here had written a will before the operation began. Along with a little hair to place in their coffin if they died. It was in case their bodies could not be sent back. No one had imagined that this would be the reason retrieval became impossible.
Gyeoul took the radio.
“Avalon, Avalon. This is David Actual. Nuclear delivery request pending, over.”
「...David Actual. This is Avalon. Nuclear delivery request confirmed. Send coordinates, over.」
Avalon, the airborne battery, did not pointlessly ask Gyeoul to reconfirm the request.
Footnotes:
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