WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 438: Dawn, or Twilight (18)
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The withdrawn troops were received at sea.
No fewer than twenty cargo ships had been refitted for the day. Each had been fitted with a flight deck like an aircraft carrier's, giving them the capacity to handle many helicopter takeoffs and landings at once, and each had measures in place against biological contamination. Naturally, they had also prepared systematic radiation decontamination procedures in case tactical nukes were actually used.
The space inside the ships was to serve as lodging for the operation's personnel on the journey back to the U.S. mainland. There were islands nearby with airports, but they had deliberately been routed home by sea because the slow voyage would also function as quarantine isolation. Even if some kind of infection had occurred at Ground Zero, an outbreak aboard an isolated ship would be far easier to control.
At the same time, there were enough hospital ships to form an independent fleet. That was thanks to help from nations around the world, including many governments in exile. In truth, they had not been satisfied with rear support and had wanted to send actual combat units as well, but the United States and Russia had refused, citing supply-chain confusion and incompatible organizational structures.
In any case, the overall preparation had been thorough enough for those involved to say, "At this point, we've done all we can."
Even so, the withdrawal site Gyeoul was looking at now was incredibly chaotic. The required decontamination work and medical treatment had far exceeded the levels originally anticipated. In fact, every member of the operation needed a detailed examination. No matter how many hospital ships they had, it was not enough, and more confusion was inevitable just from transporting the soldiers to them.
"Spray!"
Shwaaaaak-
The pressure of the disinfectant (Decon foam) and decontamination water sprayed over their protective suits was strong enough to sting the skin. The Teratoma fragments that had frozen over them like frost on the way back were washed off all at once. The CBRN troops in charge of washing them were so meticulous that it bordered on paranoia. They had been shaken by the brutal state of those returning from the battlefield.
Even to Gyeoul, they looked as if they had just crawled up out of hell.
"Next! Personnel who have finished washing, this way!"
After hearing the CBRN officer's shout, Gyeoul finally took off his gas mask. His hair was drenched with sweat. Sweat shed in the cold did not dry easily.
Foamy disinfectant dripped from the dangling gas mask.
"Haa..."
Pain swept over his scalp, as if it were freezing in the cold sea wind, but for the moment, Gyeoul was content with the relief of breathing more easily. Similar scenes were everywhere, not only around him. When someone wore a gas mask for a long time, simply breathing drained their strength. For those who had fought for hours like that, ordinary breathing was something they needed desperately.
The sea meeting the sunrise was so clear it felt unreal. Its beauty was far too different from the terrible battlefield they had been in only moments before. Shouts rang out from every direction, but to ears grown used to gunfire, artillery, and hideous screams, the noise barely registered at all.
Guided by a nursing officer, the soldiers of the Independent Battalion entered the ship and stripped off their protective suits as if throwing them away. Many were so exhausted they needed help from others. While medics and chemical troops collected weapons, protective suits, and other equipment and placed them in biochemical waste containers, they handed each exhausted comrade a warm drink, a thyroid protective agent, and a blanket.
Gyeoul's share was handed to him personally by the nursing officer.
"Welcome back, Sir."
"Thank you, Ensign."
With the blanket around his shoulders, Gyeoul swallowed the thyroid protective agent first. Its main ingredient was iodine-127, which prevented radioactive isotopes of iodine from accumulating in the thyroid.
In a sense, it was a supplementary measure. A large amount of iodine had also been added to the last meal they ate before deployment. At the very least, the incidence of thyroid cancer would be sharply reduced. Considering that thyroid cancer was the cancer most commonly caused by radiation poisoning, that was no small comfort to the soldiers of the Independent Battalion.
"Please wait here until your turn comes for a helicopter to the hospital ship."
At the words of the nursing officer, who was still dressed in protective gear, Gyeoul tilted his head.
"They're not using boats?"
"The sea state isn't exactly good, and there's a limit to the number of patients they can accept at once over there. Even if we send too many people at once, they'll only end up waiting anyway. It's better for you to rest here, where there's more space, before you go. To save time, we're also handling simple measures like blood draws here."
It was a reasonable answer.
"Is anything bothering you?"
"No, nothing in particular... More importantly, if I'm going to be waiting anyway, I'd like to know the withdrawal status."
The withdrawal was still underway. Gyeoul could not stop worrying about the airborne troops (VDV).
The nursing officer stiffly shook their head, tense.
"I'm sorry, but it would be difficult for you to move around personally. There is a fixed quarantine process."
"But you can still give me a report, right?"
"Of course. I will report it at once."
"Don't rush. It would be a problem if that interfered with something urgent."
Gyeoul added that because of the nursing officer's rank, and because the chain of command itself was different. Even if the officer hurried for him, there was a strong chance the effort would go to waste. As it was, they were already overloaded with their own duties.
In other words, making a strong demand here would likely amount to using his rank to burden a subordinate who had no authority.
"Thank you for understanding. I will do my best."
The officer radioed somewhere and relayed Gyeoul's intent. A reply came back from the other side, saying they understood and that he should wait. But by the time the result was confirmed, there was no telling whether Gyeoul would still be here. Amid the chaotic post-operation administration, that sort of thing could happen easily enough.
'And... in the end, it's only my own suspicion, with no proof.'
All Gyeoul had was circumstantial evidence. Without physical evidence or testimony equivalent to it, it was useless.
Separate from those thoughts, Gyeoul gave a short word of encouragement to each member of the battalion. An officer's role did not end just because the battle was over. As their commander, he had to show a calm face to everyone worried about radiation poisoning, and show them that he was glad to have survived together with them.
'In any case, at least the fact that I can see Anne again makes me sincerely, truly happy.'
When he thought of her, his heart finally seemed to thaw. It had been the sort of battlefield where it would not have been strange for him to die. Gyeoul clicked the pocket watch in his hand. During the battle, he had felt the urge to take it out and look at it again and again, but he had kept it tucked in his inner pocket like a charm, so there had been no way to do so.
Of course, even if there had been a way, he would not have taken it out. It would have been ruined by Teratoma bodily fluids. The photo of his lover on the inside of the lid, finally before his eyes now, was a gentle comfort that made him realize it was all over. The day he would become her husband seemed to come clearly into view.
There was no point wondering whether such a feeling suited the situation.
It was beyond his control.
She would be the best wife in the world.
How long had passed since a nursing NCO drew Gyeoul's blood?
"Sir! The helicopter is ready."
As expected, his turn to board the helicopter had come before any response to Gyeoul's request.
"Grandma. I have to hang up for now. I need to go get examined. Yes, yes. I told you, I'm fine. The examination is just in case too. There probably won't be any major problem."
Yura, who had been forcing a bright voice, hurriedly wrapped up the call. The people waiting in line in front of the satellite terminal, officers and soldiers alike, showed their disappointment. They would all make contact eventually anyway, but they wanted to do it even a little sooner. When people crossed the line between life and death, anyone would ache for the voice of someone they loved. Whether that person was family or a lover.
Maybe it was a priority restriction caused by satellite capacity, or maybe it was a limit on how many lines could be monitored at once for security reasons, but the call function of the Net Warrior terminals had been temporarily blocked.
So Gyeoul wanted to stand in line too, but he managed, with great difficulty, to hold himself back. Every officer and soldier would have stepped aside and yielded to him.
"Commander!"
Before they boarded separate helicopters, Yura called out to Gyeoul.
"Do we still not know whether the operation succeeded?"
She was asking whether they had succeeded in securing the original form of Morgellons.
At the present moment, though, there was nothing definite to pass on. Gyeoul had no choice but to answer this way.
"We'll probably know soon. I think they'll need time to confirm it."
When he thought about why the announcement might be delayed, there were two major possibilities.
First, as Gyeoul had said, they were taking time to verify whether they had truly obtained the original form of Morgellons, or whether that original form had been altered.
If they hastily declared the operation a success and later had to reverse that statement, the fallout would be hard to handle. It was only natural for the military authorities to act carefully.
Second, the data secured along with the original form contained something politically sensitive, and discussions were underway over how to handle it.
That could be positive, or it could be negative.
Yura, who had been biting her lip, spoke in a sorrowful voice.
"Too many kids who were like younger siblings to me died."
Rather than saying that so many had actually died, it would be more accurate to say that those who died had died too horribly. The sight of someone vomiting tiny monsters from their mouth while their whole body crumbled in ripples was a nightmare that could easily remain as lifelong trauma. It was far more terrible than simply turning into a variant.
'No, maybe even one death that terrible is too many.'
As Gyeoul turned that over, Yura said the rest.
"If those deaths become meaningless, I think that will be truly hard to bear."
"..."
With nothing else he could say, Gyeoul answered only by nodding.
The helicopters carrying the Independent Battalion personnel headed to several different hospital ships. Distribution according to medical capacity took priority over maintaining unit organization. There would be no more fighting. It was only natural to treat them as patients before soldiers.
In Gyeoul's case, he received a comprehensive examination aboard the British Royal Navy's RFA Argus. Although it was a hospital ship, the vessel carried an excessive amount of defensive armament. In a world where the Geneva Convention forbidding the arming of hospital ships had become meaningless, there was nothing strange about that.
"When will the results come out?"
When Gyeoul asked, the British medical officer, a lieutenant colonel, thought for a moment before answering.
"Tomorrow at the earliest."
"And if they're late?"
"You should allow about two weeks. Are you very anxious?"
"I'm fine, but there's someone I need to reassure as soon as possible."
He did not know how much news from the battlefield had been released to the media. Before the operation, they had stirred up a commotion as if covering a sporting event, but the government had likely blocked information once things reached the point where they knew this was not something to show. Even if the blackout itself was interpreted ominously, they would not have revealed the raw state of the battle. Teratoma had been a disaster far beyond every prediction.
Anne, however, had jade-level clearance, which allowed her to read even top secret materials. As a senior supervisor, she would also have many connections. There was no way she had not been worried after sending Gyeoul away, so he had to assume she already knew the state of the battlefield where strategic nuclear weapons had rained down.
To reassure her, it would be better to attach a medical opinion.
Gyeoul himself guessed he would be fine.
'I never made any mistakes, and I didn't fight recklessly like the airborne troops.'
The ones expected to have suffered severe exposure were those who had been exposed to nuclear flashes in the chaos. It was hard to blame the people who made those mistakes. There had been countless desperate moments where warnings might not even have reached their ears.
The airborne troops, on the other hand, had actively pushed themselves into the range where fallout would fall. From the start, they had even requested coordinates that would make fallout land right on top of them.
And Gyeoul also had the effect of 「Toxic Resistance」. It was not enough to save him from certain death, so it was hard to measure precisely, but if it reduced radiation exposure, it was worth pinning some hope on.
The medical officer winked.
"I'll try pulling a few strings. Please wait without getting your hopes up."
Gyeoul hesitated for an instant and missed the timing to refuse. With so many people waiting outside the door, it was already over the moment he failed to answer right away.
The next morning, the first thing Gyeoul learned was not his examination results, but whether the Ground Zero assault, operation name 「Roaring Storm」, had succeeded.
「...I repeat. We have secured the original form of the Great Plague. With this, the end of the apocalypse is within sight. Our scientists will develop a vaccine, and they will ensure that no further explosive outbreak can occur on any land that remains within humanity's domain. Let us offer our respect and gratitude to the soldiers of the United States and Russia who won this great victory and returned...」
It was part of a major White House announcement, a presidential address to the nation by President Kramer.
Cheers broke out all at once from the fleet in the South China Sea watching it.
That, however, was the story of the soldiers belonging to the fleet. The people who had been on the actual battlefield were caught in a quiet, or gloomy, aftertaste.
Gyeoul heard that Major General Kapralov had failed to escape in the end. The major general's last words, as remembered by the final survivor of the airborne troops' 98th Guards Rifle Division, were apparently, "For fuck's sake. Get the hell out of here, you bastard."
With that, even if Gyeoul's suspicion was true, it had become difficult to criticize him.
American citizens, too, would see his merits as greater than his faults. He may have nearly caused a crisis by rejecting the command system in an urgent situation, but in the end, he had met an utterly heroic death as a patriot and as a soldier. It was a sacrifice someone had to make.
Before long, heavy snow was falling over the fickle winter sea. Gyeoul had heard that an unusual cold wave would arrive, but he had not expected to see snow falling over waters this far south.
Because every helicopter contaminated with radiation had been pushed into the sea, the flight deck, now neatly emptied, was nothing but a steel garden being covered in white. On one side stood a snowman made by the deck crew.
It would be cleared away soon, but for now, it was a still scene that calmed the hearts of those who saw it.
Leaning against the railing, Gyeoul looked at the season that shared his name and let out a quiet sigh.
Footnotes:
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