WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 436: Dawn, or Twilight (16)

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What worried them most in the middle of the endless fighting was how quickly the subterranean neural network was being destroyed. That rate would also be the rate at which Teratoma spread through the network. Each individual nerve bundle was too thin, and too ill-suited as a mass, for Teratoma to multiply in. But the main body of the neural network mutant at the center would be another matter. With that kind of bulk, it could probably spit out dozens, even hundreds, of Teratoma.

If the destruction of the neural network had already gone past the forward zone and reached the distant rear, even a strategic nuclear strike would be hard to place any hope in.

Think about it. The best place for the Tricksters to crouch down and avoid radio tracking while maintaining control would be somewhere near the neural network mutant. That meant the first targets of the Teratoma spreading underground would also be the Tricksters.

Maybe not. Maybe the Tricksters would drive off the little things instead, or manage to slip away unharmed. They were monsters that could run current through their entire bodies, so their odds were not zero.

But it was a surprise attack. If the Tricksters went down helplessly, then from the mutants’ point of view, it would be the same as a sudden decapitation attack (cutting off the head first). There was no way hundreds of thousands of mutants would simply stop there. Only the body would remain, charging forward without even knowing its head was gone. The intelligent ones other than the Tricksters would command the horde according to the last will passed down to them.

Hoping even that body would be wiped out by Teratoma was not realistic.

Because the plague army and the Tricksters would naturally keep their distance.

If the Tricksters stayed too close to a large mutant horde, they would only raise the odds of getting bombed for no reason.

‘So it comes down to time...’

Gyeoul entered the engagement with anxiety pressing at him.

“Hey, fuck! That, that!”

Ensign Song Jeong-hun’s shout came out almost like a scream. The darkness in the direction he pointed wriggled ominously. Through thermal night vision, it would look like a mass of countless orange dots clustered together. One monster leapt off the body of another of its kind, then another leapt off that body, then another leapt off that body, layer upon layer upon layer, until they became a flood.

“How long has it even been since the normal ones showed up? And already!”

Boom boom boom boom! Concentrated fire from the high-speed grenade launchers tried to stop the rushing flood of plague. But it was like trying to break a wave with gunfire. Explosions burst across the surface, blood and flesh breaking apart in wet chunks, yet the huge, horrifying torrent did not weaken at all as it swallowed the mutants that had been approaching first.

“There are even more than before! At this point, we’d be better off coating the whole sector in radiation!”

Just as Ensign Song vented his frustration like he had been wronged, the flash and exhaust roar of jet engines cut across the starlit celestial sphere in a broad wedge. It was the fighter-bomber formation Gyeoul had called in at the optimal moment.

A moment later, four cluster bombs (CBU-87) fell in freefall arcs. Each cluster bomb split open like bamboo and poured out more than two hundred small bombs apiece. They were multi-purpose submunitions designed to tear apart anything, person or vehicle.

Bababababak!

In an instant, an area the size of four soccer fields was battered by a rain of explosions. Each submunition detonated its shaped charge and scattered fragments in every direction, and the zirconium mixed among the fragments burned fiercely for a short time at temperatures reaching 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That was enough power to collapse the wave.

A sickeningly savory smell mixed with the strong wind carrying the smoke. Even through his gas mask, Gyeoul could recognize that smell visually. The things that had survived the downpour of explosives and steel had begun feeding on the remains of their own kind. Airburst rounds from grenade launchers and mortar fire came down on top of them. Their side could only hope for mass loss during the multiplication process.

Naturally, there would be some enormous movement drawn in like bugs to the smell of diseased meat cooking.

Gyeoul had not judged weapon systems other than tactical nukes to be nothing more than stopgaps for no reason.

‘Proper incendiary bombs would be better for stopping power or whatever, but-’

They could not be used close to the defense line. Visibility would be cut off too badly. Not only on the ground, but even aerial observation would become difficult. It would be like laying down a thick smoke screen for the mutants, so one wrong move could trigger the collapse of the defense line.

So the things that burned were always on the far side of the mountains and highlands. The horizon glowed like a thin layer of molten iron, and billowing smoke hid the stars beyond the mutual aid line.

Even though, as weapons went, they would be better for thoroughly carbonizing Teratoma’s food.

Tactical nuclear weapons were effective in that aspect too. In any sector where a nuke had been detonated even once, the pieces of flesh scattered during combat would become excellent poisoned feed that caused internal radiation exposure.

That was why, no matter how much they tried to hold back, tactical nuke strikes continued in the end. Again and again, they reached moments where they simply could not hold unless they expanded the radioactively contaminated zone and shrank the defense line.

「Now! Every vehicle in the Company! Ram them!」

At Jin-seok’s order, the vehicles of Alpha Company surged out at once from their individual vehicle fighting positions. Even lightened, they were armored vehicles at their core. They had enough weight to crush a torrent whose momentum had been broken. Tracks carrying speed and mass were like conveyor belts grinding Teratoma to pulp.

At the same time, the things that popped up and stuck to the armor surface were peeled away by support fire from airburst grenade rounds. Grenade fragments struck the aluminum alloy and sent sparks scattering everywhere.

It was a measure taken while accepting the risk of damaging the vehicles’ external observation equipment.

As Ensign Song Jeong-hun had complained, this was not a proper battle.

Guuuuuuuh!

While the armored vehicles pushed out, a Keshik suddenly sprang up from a smoking pile of corpses and charged. It soon collapsed under return fire, scattering blood, but Teratoma burst out of its body like an explosion. By rotten luck, Gyeoul and the staff officers were passing by right then.

Even the well-mannered Major Singh swore.

“Bastard son of a bitch! Couldn’t even die cleanly!”

His sword flashed. The dulled blade beat Teratoma to death, closer to tearing than cutting. Gyeoul struck down two that sprang up in front of him with his rifle and elbow, then grabbed and crushed one that leapt from behind. At the same time, he stepped on another with his planted foot and killed it.

“Ugh, my gun...”

Sergeant McArdle shuddered and yanked the charging handle of the gun again and again. Each time, Teratoma blood and bodily fluid squelched along with bits of flesh. At this point, there was no guarantee it would fire properly. No matter how resistant a gun was to foreign matter, this was exactly the sort of environment where it was bound to cause trouble.

Soldiers were actually reporting weapon malfunctions one after another. Some even used up all their drinking water in a hurry to rinse their guns off, if only roughly.

The truth was, conserving it did not mean much either. Once the lid of a canteen was fully opened even once, the water inside was immediately exposed to radioactive air and dust.

Even Gyeoul’s protective suit was soaked in filthy blood, oil, and miniature-looking pieces of organs. The duct tape some soldiers had wrapped so carefully had gone limp like loosened bandages because of the slippery bodily fluids. If there was one advantage to this, it was that even Teratoma trying to cling to them slipped off more often.

If a third party had seen it, they would have said, literally, that they were fighting in hell.

In the middle of the chaos, Command Sergeant Major Merriweather moved among the soldiers, shouting until their voice went hoarse.

“Nuke! Nuke incoming! Get your heads down, you bastards!”

It was not this sector. But no matter how far away it was, if they were not about to die right away, getting down and taking cover even for a moment was better for their mental health.

A little while later, soft ash carried by the shock wave brushed past Gyeoul’s eyes.

‘How many was that just now?’

The task force had used up its own stock long ago. After Gyeoul, the airborne troops (VDV) used two, and not long after that, the airborne troops (VDV) and the U.S. military split the remaining two between them.

So every tactical nuke detonating now came from the carrier strike group.

Of course, even at the task force level, they were trying to minimize nuclear strikes.

One alternative to tactical nukes was a group of strategic bombers with their bomb bays packed full of conventional bombs. They would cut through the waist of the mutant horde with carpet bombing and block additional inflow, if only temporarily.

It was not their intention, but the Russian strategic bomber group was forcing the mutants to learn quickly through the tremendous noise audible from far away. Bombers that dropped fifteen tons of bombs each were appearing by the dozens at once. Their power was strong enough to feel like an earthquake from dozens of kilometers away. During the bombing, mutants could be seen losing their balance and falling even in places outside the direct destruction radius.

But considering the area that needed to be bombed, and factoring in the round-trip distance the bomber formations had to travel and their terrifying ammunition consumption rate, this too was only a temporary measure. Two or three rounds of carpet bombing used up as much ammunition as the total amount of various shells brought by an aerial battery.

At that moment, one piece of news they had been waiting for came in.

Evans reported with a stiff face.

“Sir! They say Tridents have been launched! Three of them!”

“Finally!”

Trident was the name of a submarine-launched nuclear missile with multiple warheads. By classification, it was the same kind of weapon Yang Yongbin Shangjiang had fired at the U.S. mainland. Gyeoul clenched his fist without realizing it. Late, if you called it late. Fast, if you called it fast. All he could do was hope it worked this time.

“Impact in three minutes from now... no, two minutes!”

Gyeoul took the tactical tablet and checked the impact points. Eight strategic nuclear warheads per missile, twenty-four in total, were set to fall simultaneously in a huge circle after leaving the atmosphere and flying in at twenty thousand kilometers per hour.

It was a very long two minutes.

The glow of the warheads from atmospheric friction was clear even from twenty-three kilometers away. Gyeoul and every member of the Independent Battalion could see bright lines drawn one after another across the far side of the starlit sky for an instant. An artificial meteor shower. It was a fantastical sight, absurdly out of place here, but each and every one of those streaks of light was a hydrogen bomb with twenty-five times the destructive power of a tactical nuke.

Then came the explosions.

Color returned to the black world. The battlefield became unfamiliar in an instant.

“Don’t zone out, keep fighting, you idiots! You planning to die sightseeing-”

Command Sergeant Major Merriweather’s rebuke was buried under a thunderous roar before Merriweather could finish.

For that span, even the gunfire of red-hot automatic weapons vanished. Shell casings of every caliber poured out silently. It was like a scene from a silent film.

The predawn dark quickly returned to its natural blackness. But until then, the afterimages burned into their retinas, the vast rising air currents surging from every direction beyond the watershed of rough highlands and jagged mountains, were an overwhelming sight that pushed humans and mutants alike into breathlessness.

Taking advantage of the mutants falling into a brief panic, command issued an order to gradually pull the defense line back.

In other words, they were entering the full withdrawal procedure.

‘Did they finally secure an intact specimen?’

Gyeoul was deeply curious about that, but this was not a time when he could leisurely request information.

If they held the existing defense line, gaps would appear for mutants to enter every time troops withdrew in stages. This was a moment that required delicate spacing between units, close cooperation, and luck beyond even that.

Gyeoul pushed his armored forces out once again to scatter the mutants’ attention, then rapidly redeployed the remaining infantry to the second line. The second line was a reserve trench line built in advance by the engineering corps directly under command.

“Move! Move! Grenade launchers over here! Hurry! Can’t you see those half-dead bastards charging?”

Officers and noncommissioned officers barked at the soldiers. Every placement converged with Gyeoul’s intent, based on plans they had built in every spare moment.

What he had not expected was the friction that arose in the middle of all this over the withdrawal order of each unit.

「Since this is almost over, I will dispense with courtesy. The role of guarding the rear until the very end should belong to us.」

Major General Kapralov’s words to Lieutenant General Rogers sounded less like a proposal than a notice.

「What in the world...」

「I am saying we should part on good terms. You Yankees get to pull yourselves out of this hell early, and we Russians get to make America owe us a debt. Good for both sides.」

「...」

「Of course, this must conflict with the orders you have already received. Your turn as the commander and Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul’s turn must be the last of the last. Did such a policy not come down?」

His attitude went beyond a guess. He sounded certain.

‘So that’s why they bothered calling me onto the command net at a time this urgent...’

It was the strong demand of the airborne troops (VDV) generals. It seemed they wanted Gyeoul to hear this conversation. Were they hoping he would side with them because he was tired of being used as nothing but a war hero?

They also knew Gyeoul’s political influence.

With gunfire and artillery fire growing fiercer by the second, the major general spoke with a strange emotion in his voice.

「That is a problem. A real problem. If you war heroes happen to die, the American people, buried in their own intoxicating tragedy, will never look straight at our sacrifice. We will be reduced to nothing more than extras. Even though the real main force of this operation is us, the Russian airborne troops!」

Gyeoul could not say he was wrong.

Why had the Independent Battalion come to this Ground Zero in the first place?

「You may laugh at our government’s attitude, trying to buy another country’s public opinion with the blood of its soldiers. However.」

Major General Kapralov declared.

「In the name of Mother Russia, the true protagonists of this battle must be us. So leave first without complaint. We will not see you off.」

Footnotes:

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