WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 434: Dawn, or Twilight (14)
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The final decision belonged to the commander, Lieutenant General Rogers, anyway. He might reject it for departing from the original policy, but the Rogers Gyeoul knew was not that rigid. This was the man who had chosen to command from the ground instead of the control room of an aerial battery, because he refused to be cut off from the field. What Gyeoul had seen, the lieutenant general must have seen as well. Even if he had not, he would at least ask why before refusing.
Plans always died before people did, and as the person with ultimate responsibility, the lieutenant general's judgment could only shift with the flow of the battlefield.
'Considering his personality, he may already have fighter-bombers in the air.'
It took about an hour and ten minutes to send cruise missiles (Tomahawks) from the carrier strike group in the South China Sea to Ground Zero. That was why the missiles that had fallen earlier had been like a signal to begin combat. Even supersonic fighter-bombers would need at least twenty minutes to enter the airspace.
So if they wanted immediate fire support, the smart move was to have a flight of fighter-bombers waiting in advance.
The problem was that the weapons they carried had to be nuclear.
It was an optimistic expectation, but Rogers was capable enough to make it worth hoping for. There was even a slim chance he had already finished coordinating with the White House.
The wait was not long.
Not long after the soldiers had been warned and made ready, the nuclear drop warning finally sounded.
Some of the soldiers who received the warning, despite having been cautioned beforehand, panicked and ducked down without even enough composure to count the seconds remaining. They crouched too early, nearly creating a gap in their fire. Even the officers and NCOs who should have kept them under control lost their cool.
But no one could blame them.
"This is insane! It's a nuke! A nuke! I said it's a nuke! Everyone, press tight against the outer wall!"
The trembling voice belonged to Corporal D'Angelo. Even a veteran with long service sounded like this. Humanity's final weapon stirred that much vague, primal terror.
Everyone knew the mission force had nuclear weapons, but very few had thought they would actually use them. It was a side effect of the long, thorough preparation process. Well-founded confidence, then optimism beyond it. A vague expectation that things would work out. It was the other side of high morale.
Kyaaaaaak!
A Keshik took advantage of the gap in fire and thrust its head up over the trench. Reflexive return fire struck its face, and it leapt to the other side, trying once again to charge into the trench. At times like this, its long limbs were nothing but a hindrance.
At that exact moment, a tactical nuke detonated 2.5 kilometers away, five hundred meters above the ground.
Light murdered the night, and the roar murdered every other sound.
Gyeoul clamped his hands over his ears and endured the gale that swept through the trench. Even then, the blast traveled through his bones and dug into his brain. As a bonus, his vision turned white even with his back to the explosion and his eyes shut. His eyelids could not block all the reflected light leaking into the trench.
He had not ordered the soldiers to take shelter in the armored vehicles because the trench's earthen walls were thicker than the vehicles' armor. Strength did not matter. The key was the density and thickness of the shielding. As long as they were not directly exposed to the flash, exposure from initial radiation would be greatly reduced. Anyone who had been trained knew that.
The monster, meanwhile, took the murderous light and heat head-on, and its huge body cooked red in an instant. A moment later, the fierce hot wind peeled its skin away and sent it tumbling. It convulsed for a moment like a dog hit by a car. Then, flailing against the pressure pulling it toward the center of the explosion, it rolled down into the trench. Gyeoul drove his Bayonet into the crown of its head. The blade crunched in, crushing bone. As the tip churned through its brain, the monster's frenzy died down.
Gyeoul was the first to recover, and he took in the mushroom cloud blooming in the distance. Even in a nightscape without a scrap of moonlight, it had an overwhelming presence.
'And that is supposed to be low yield.'
Across many branches of the end, Gyeoul had encountered radioactive fireballs many times, but it was rare for him to witness a nuclear explosion from this close. Usually, that meant death.
Since the detonation altitude had been adjusted, there should be almost no fallout. But instead of fallout, other things had begun to fall. Carbonized bodies and scraps of flesh, caught in the air currents and pouring down like rain, painted an unreal vision of hell. They must have been closer to the hypocenter. Tiny things were mixed in too, pattering down. With their moisture gone, they were absurdly light. Each time they struck something, their discolored muscles crumbled dryly. It was hard to believe they had been alive just moments ago.
Even Gyeoul could not help finding it surreal. His ears were still muffled. Although the bomb had burst in the sky, the ground had shaken and made his organs ring. If that had been a ground burst, the vibration alone would surely have injured people.
Tatatatatang!
Machine-gun fire quickly resumed. During the first few dozen rounds, the line of fire swayed left and right like a drunk person's steps. But none of the mutants were intact either. Most staggered, tore apart, and screamed.
At any rate, they had earned a breather. Infection by Teratoma had a high chance of sharply cutting into morale, if only because it was so horrific.
'Even if we cannot avoid it, delaying it as long as possible would be best.'
To be honest, Gyeoul was afraid too. It was nothing new. By this world's time, more than a year had already passed since death became frightening to him. He was only leaning on old familiarity to press that fear down.
Gyeoul had also written a will before coming. This world would continue even after he died. Apart from his resolve to return alive, it was necessary for Anne's sake too.
Gyeoul steadied the people falling into panic with busy radio calls and angry shouted orders. They had to reorganize the defensive line right now. At the same time, he personally grabbed the back of a dazed soldier's neck and hauled him to his feet. His strength nearly lifted the man outright. His words naturally turned harsh.
"Stand up! Do what you were trained to do! Are you going to sit there like that until you die?"
The same rebuke had different effects depending on who delivered it.
The Teratomas that had entered the trench were still dazed after being thrown in every direction. In human terms, it would be close to a concussion. With additional inflow cut off, even briefly, they had to clear them away quickly to prepare for what came next.
Outside, across the slope swept by the shock wave, burned things thrashed without even being able to stand. Their limbs flailed as they screamed in pain, and each movement stripped loose skin from them in ragged flaps. One of them barely managed to get up, but it seemed to have forgotten even its instinct to go after humans.
"Ugh, uh, aaah..."
It was an individual with some intelligence. Its face said it did not understand what had happened to it. Blisters were already forming there, and blood dripped from its nose and mouth.
A soldier who saw the same sight aimed a gun.
"Goddamn it. This is fucked up!"
The gloom in the soldier's voice probably came from worrying that the same might happen to them. Even through the muffled hearing, a sharp gunshot rang out, and the large monster staggered as it bled even more. Normally, it would have ignored that level of gunfire. Right now, it could not even stand because it was vomiting.
Most of the small ones had been wiped out, and the rest that had escaped instant death flailed like insects thrown onto a griddle. Burning pain was not the worst pain for humans alone. With firepower that cooked down to the dermis even two kilometers away, it was only natural they would go mad from full-body burns.
"Hey! Get this out of here!"
Someone screamed, and the soldiers hurriedly cleared away the cumbersome things that had fallen into the trench. Occasionally, the ones still alive and twitching were shot with fire close to wild bursts. Everyone was shouting. Their hearing had gone dull.
"David Actual to all David units! Report any damage, over!"
After sending the radio call and looking around, Gyeoul saw no major problems within visual range. If they had taken the storm head-on, even the lighter armored vehicles might have been in danger, but every vehicle under the battalion was inside a vehicle fighting position.
「David 1 Alpha to David Actual! Reporting no damage from nuclear explosion!」
Starting with Alpha Company, reports came in from several companies in no particular order. They said the places he could not see were not very different from the places he could. Equipment with EMP resistance had withstood the aftermath of the nuclear attack.
At the same time, he notified them of adjustments to the intervals between companies, the points where support weapons would be redeployed, and the changed fire concentration points. The pressure in this direction would drop sharply, if only because of the radioactive contamination. As troop density increased, their ability to respond to Teratoma would naturally strengthen as well.
Having memorized the map and terrain helped even at times like this. Thanks to that, the optimal instructions came out right away without him needing to check the map. He still could not tell whether the sensation came from correction or actual Memorization, but at the moment, such details did not matter.
Amid all that, a transmission came from the sky.
「David Actual. This is Avalon JTAC (JTAC: Joint Terminal Attack Controller). Request battle damage assessment opinion from nuclear fire mission, over.」
It was a request that did not fit the situation, asking him to confirm and report how effective the nuke had been. But he could not ignore it. The approximate amount of necrotoxin generated would be calculated according to the damage assessment.
Gyeoul delegated it to the operations officer.
"Foster! I'll leave that to you. Collect the assessment and send the report up."
Normally, this kind of work was performed by dispatching a specialized team, but the officers of the 201st Independent Battalion had basic qualifications regardless of whether they were commissioned officers or NCOs. Gyeoul was the same. The Independent Battalion was special forces, after all. During the nearly year-long preparation period, it would have made no sense if they had failed to receive a mere two weeks of reinforced training and a few rounds of repeated practice.
"Understood. It seems the upper levels have a lot to think about."
Foster said it with a stiff face. Yes. If they were demanding this information in a hurry, that was what it meant in the end.
The hope that Lieutenant General Rogers had finished coordinating with the White House command room had been too optimistic and hasty after all.
Since there was a limit to observing Teratoma through thermal imaging from the sky, the opinions of front-line officers would have to take priority in the assessment. Including how much of a threat the small things posed.
It would be wrong to call this White House interference in the battlefield. Nuclear weapons were strategic weapons in the literal sense. If anything, letting them use five tactical nukes without further authorization already acknowledged a broad degree of discretion.
'Please, let them have been shocked.'
What Gyeoul was hoping for was not the White House, but the psychology of the cunning individuals.
'They probably have no memory of taking a nuclear attack directly.'
This was another effect he had expected from fast nuclear delivery. Nuclear weapons in the quarantine war had all been used in Asia, and San Francisco had been an undersea nuclear explosion, so it would have been hard for mutants to obtain accurate information. Even the sea monsters that encountered the aftermath probably had no idea what had happened.
So for the Alpha Tricksters captured by the Rangers, nuclear weapons must have been unknown territory.
A nuclear explosion was shocking even to someone who already had prior knowledge. If the cunning ones became wary of that power and stopped the plague army even briefly, it would be an enormous help to this side.
Though there was a high chance this too was nothing more than optimistic expectation.
Just as he was wondering whether to formally suggest it, the radio operator listening closely to the static-crackling radio shouted in a horrified voice.
"Sir! New nuclear delivery warning! Two nuclear shells in TOT fire!"
"TOT?"
TOT (Time on target) meant a firing method where multiple shells or bombs landed at the same time.
"Coordinates FH 3-9-6 2-5-7, FH 3-8-3 2-4-9! Seventeen seconds!"
For six-digit coordinates, the lowest number at the front and back was in units of one hundred meters. Since they were using nukes, more precise coordinates were unnecessary. Gyeoul instantly calculated the interval between impact points in his head.
'Only 0.8 kilometers?'
This brutality. Somehow, it felt like the sector assigned to the airborne troops (VDV). It seemed the plan was to completely block one side with severe radioactive contamination and concentrate their troops on the other side, especially toward the rough terrain. When Gyeoul applied the coordinates to the map he had memorized, the two coordinates were on open ground where the blocking effect would be large.
At the same time, they might also be intending to shock the mutants, just like Gyeoul had imagined.
"Incoming!"
The signalman shielded the radio and threw himself flat. Yura, who happened to be nearby, crouched down, covered her eyes and ears, and screamed.
"Brace for impact, everyone!"
Kuuung-
The heavy, immense blast made the hands over their ears feel useless. The ground rippled once like a wave. It was a sensory illusion. This explosion was fairly far away, yet it still did that.
Gyeoul opened his eyes in the fading light. The landscape looked like a recorded sunset being played back at high speed. The mushroom cloud that had risen first was disrupted by the shock wave, and the two newly formed clouds interfered with each other, twisting into grotesque shapes.
Compared to the first one, the detonation altitude this time was a little lower. Considering the yield of the shells, five hundred meters was a level where there would be almost no fallout, but below that, sleet made of ash would begin to scatter.
They had already used three of the five rounds they could freely fire.
Would the mutants move the way he thought? Would the base search finish a little faster? Would the radiation exposure be all right? Would the White House's resolve come too late...?
As multiple hopes and anxieties crossed, the moonless night was peering toward the boundary of early dawn.
Footnotes:
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