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Didn't get time to reinstall the game yet, so here's a story in lieu of the next few campaigns:
Night came to Korea.
Lieutenant Colonel Zhao Jianmin braced in the helicopter doorway, drenched with rain. His headset perked with the worries and technical exchanges of the pilots. Their talkativeness grated on him, like junk-sellers in a flea market, but he kept his silence and watched the crowded trace of the highway in the wet, fading light. The formation of attack drones, gunships, and transport helicopters throbbed between the last green hills before the target area.
Jianmin knew helicopter pilots, and he knew their machines. He knew the fliers who never thought of themselves as anything but aviators, the amateur warriors, and he knew the stone-cold killers who just happened to know how to fly.
Far too few of the latter, he thought.
And he knew the warning sounds that came into a pilot's voice, requiring firm commands through the intercom. In Uzbekistan, the troopships had sagged through the air, swollen birds who had eaten too rich a diet of men. The mountains were too high, the air too thin, and the missiles came up at you like bright modern arrows. You learned to command from a gunship that carried a light enough load to permit hasty maneuvers. You learned to let the slow ships full of fresh recruits draw the enemy's fire. You learned to swallow your pride and hide in the midst of the formation.
If you were a good airborne officer, you learned a great deal about killing. If you had no aptitude for the work, or if you were not hard enough on yourself and your men, you learned about dying.
Jianmin forced his thoughts back to the present. The valley road beneath the bellies of the aircraft intersected the rail line. They were very close now. Jianmin knew the route along the Gyeongbu Expressway from the ground; he had traveled it just months before on mission training, disguised as a civilian assistant driver for an international shipping company. The highways and roads leading to Gumi had impressed him with their quality and capacities, and by the swift orderliness of the traffic flow.
Now those same roads were in chaos.
Intermittent ROK support columns heading east struggled against a creeping flood of refugee traffic. At key intersections, military policemen desperately sought to assert control, waving their flourescent batons in the dull rain. As the helicopters carrying the Chinese air assault battalion passed overhead, soldier and citizen alike looked up in astonishment, shocked by this new dimension of trouble. Some of the more disciplined soldiers along the road opened fire at the waves of aircraft, but the small-arms fire had no effect beyond excited chatter in Jianmin's headset. The gunships returned fire, nervous pilots devastating the mixed traffic with bursts from their Gatlings.
Jianmin let them go. As long as they didn't overdo it. Terror was a magnificent weapon. Jianmin had learned his lessons from Uzbekistan. War was only about winning. Killing the other one before he killed you. They killed one of your kind, or perhaps just made the attempt, and you responded by killing a dozen, or a hundred, of them.
Olive-painted transport trucks and fine, brightly colored Korean automobiles exploded into wild gasoline fires. Drivers turned into fields or steered desperately over embankments. Others smashed into one another. Jianmin's rain-drenched face never changed expression.
He knew the garrison slang terms that sought to degrade, to cut him and those like him down to size. "Uzbekistan mentality. Blood drinker. There goes Crazy Genghis." Name-calling that in the end only betrayed the nervousness, the awe and even fear of those who had not gone.
The destruction on the roads had a purpose. Purposes. Create panic. Convince the enemy that he is defeated. Convince him that further resistance is pointless and too expensive to be tolerable. And tie up the roads. Immobilize the enemy. It cut both ways, of course. But with any luck, the Koreans or the Americans would clear the roads just in time for the Chinese armored formations that would be on their way to cross Jianmin's bridges over the Nakdong.
They approached an interchange, where an air-defense unit was busy trying to move from their position on the overpass to chase after Jianmin's battalion. A burst from a Gatling ripped through the roof of a civilian bus on the freeway below. The bus fishtailed sideways and stopped, blocking the overpass exit. Jianmin did not see anyone climb out. He made a mental note: the air-defense column would now be trapped at the interchange.
You could not let the fate of individuals weaken you, he thought. It was imperative to learn to regard them as resources, to be conserved whenever possible, but to be applied as necessary. In Uzbekistan, and now in Korea, the missiles and the autocannon fire traced skyward, and sometimes, his ships burst orange and yellow in a froth of black smoke. No passenger ever survived the fireball.
But it was all right now. Jianmin had been prepared for the loss of up to fifty percent of his battalion going in. Fortunately, the air defenses had been depleted along the penetration corridor. He could not be entirely certain, but from what he personally observed, and from the pilot chatter, he believed he would get on the ground with over seventy-five percent of his force. Now it all depended on the air defenses at Gumi and what happened at the landing sites.
The rail tracks below the helicopter paralleled the main road, Highway 1, down into the sudden clutter of the city, crammed into the valley on both sides of the Nakdong River. Jianmin looked at his watch for one second, and now they were over the first buildings.
"Falcon, what do you have up there?" Jianmin spoke into the headset mike, switching the control to broadcast. He wanted a report from his battalion chief of staff, who was tucked into the first wave, just behind the advance party.
A moment of pilot confusion bothered the net, one transmission spoiling another. Then: "Eagle, this is Raptor Seven," the pilot of his gunship called him. "The rail yards are packed. You want us to hit the rolling stock?"
Jianmin could just make out the funnel-shaped expansion of the rail yards.
"This is Eagle," he said. "Only strike combat-related activities. If there's any vehicle off-loading, hit them."
"Zero observed. But I've got heavies. I'm taking heavy machine-gun fire." Without waiting for his orders, the pilot and co-pilot navigator of Jianmin's aircraft began to bank the big gunship away from the rail line.
"Damn it," Jianmin told them, "just go straight in. That's nothing. Don't break the formation."
The pilots corrected back onto course. But the formation had grown ragged.
The chief of staff, Major Ma, finally came up on the net. "One heavy on the northern bridge, Eagle. Clearing him now. Scattered lights. It's manageable."
Good. All right. Just put them down on the far bank, Jianmin thought.
"Eagle, Falcon." Ma called again. "Tanks further north. Poor visibility, but I count five, maybe six. Heading east. Crossing tactical bridges down in the water."
"Get the hornets working on them," Jianmin ordered, using the old Uzbekistan slang for the drone helicopters. "Raptor Seven, did you monitor that transmission?"
"Working them now, we're working them."
"Falcon, can they range the landing zone?"
"Not mine. Not without maneuvering back. Shit. Beautiful. We're hitting."
Jianmin yelled into the mike. "Troopships down now!"
Even with the headset cups over his ears, Jianmin could hear ordnance cracking, and dull thumps.
"We got 'em. Got one tank dead in the middle of the river, burning like a campfire. Two on the banks. Remainder are trapped, for now. We're all right."
Immediately to the right of his aircraft, Jianmin watched a troop transport fly directly into the side of a high-rise building, as though the pilot had done it on purpose. Another story that will never be told, Jianmin thought. He was used to occurences that seemed to make no outward sense during air-assault operations. Pilots misjudged, or briefly lost control, and aircraft smashed into mountainsides. The blast wave from this latest crash seemed to strip the rain from his face.
Fewer tools to do the job, he thought. Seize and hold the northern bridge at all costs. Seize and hold the southern bridge, if possible. Tactical crossing sites to be destroyed if they could not be controlled.
Jianmin's command gunship pulled to the right, entering its assault approach. "Don't shoot up the traffic on the main bridges," Jianmin ordered. "I want them clean."
"This is Falcon. We're on the west bank. Lead elements en route to the northern bridge," Major Ma reported. "I'm going in myself."
"Let's go," Jianmin told his pilot. Moments later, his own aircraft and two others split north, away from the element headed for the landing zone south of town and the southern bridge. The lead element had gone in on the far bank to the secure the primary bridge in the north. The plan called for Jianmin, his headquarters element, and two squads from the special assault platoon to jump from a rolling hover onto the roof of a hospital building from which fields of fire commanded the west-bank approaches to the primary bridge, and from where Jianmin could control the initial actions of his battalion. The other special assault troops had been designated to block to the northeast, but their chopper had flown into a building. Now the main highway from the north on the near bank would be uncovered. And Ma was facing tanks there.
The hospital came up fast, emerging from the gaps between the other buildings. Jianmin spotted the river. He fixed the bridge. The burning hulk of an infantry fighting vehicle stood at its eastern approach. Last random traffic crowded in an urgent attempt to reach the western bank.
Jianmin felt the press of events now. He had time for one more brief transmission.
"Raptor Seven, have the gunships clear to the north and west. Don't pull out of here until you've cleared those tactical crossing sites to the north, or I'll shoot you down myself."
Jianmin unhooked his safety strap, then glanced over his shoulder. His command party was ready to go. Terrified. Faces all nervous energy and fear in a volatile mixture.
"Slow now. Damn it, slow," he told the pilot.
He stripped off his headset and threw it forward. Then he pulled on his command helmet and unhitched his assault rifle. The helicopter moved in a slow, hovering forward roll along the flat roof of the designated building, just high enough to clear the assortment of vents and fans.
Always a bad moment, no matter how many times you did it.
Watch the vent. Watch the vent. Jianmin jumped through the door, one foot skidding on the wet lip. As he leapt clear he could already feel the pressure of the second man behind him.
He hit the roof with one foot leading, and the pain toppled him over and jerked him into a curled-up roll. Fuck, he thought, furious at his beginner's clumsiness. Right foot. Or the ankle. He couldn't isolate the pain yet.
Now. Now, of all possible times.
Jianmin hugged his weapon as if he could squeeze the pain into it, while the slow rain teased his neck below the helmet rim. A blast hurt his ears. He climbet out of his preoccupation with his misfortune. An antitank missile slithered off the launch rails of a drone above them, hunting a target off to the north. A few seconds later, Jianmin heard a clang and a roar.
Just don't be broken, Jianmin told his injury. You can't be broken, damn you. And he forced himself to roll over and cover his field of fire.
The roof was clear to the south. He heard friendly voices now. Shouted names. Zhang. Li. Wang.
A hand touched Jianmin's back. "Are you all right, Comrade Battalion Commander?"
Jianmin grunted and pushed the hand away. Disorganized small arms fire sounded from several directions.
The voice continued. "First squad reports that the upper floor is clear. No opposition. But the hospital is full."
It was Wang Xingtan, the deputy commander for political affairs, a little puppy dog who had learned to quote Mao and the current Party lords. Jianmin suspected that Xingtan even believed half of it or more. And he wants to be a soldier, Jianmin thought sarcastically. Well, Captain Wang Xingtan was about to get his chance.
Jianmin pulled himself up on his knees behind the low wall rimming the roof. The pain was definitely in his ankle now, and it was excruciating. Perhaps it was just a sprain, he thought. Sprains could hurt worse than breaks. Jianmin made a deal with his body. He would accept any amount of pain, as long as the ankle was not broken.
"Comms. Li," Jianmin shouted. "Comms, damn it. I need to talk."
The soldiers of the command section came scrambling along the roof. A pimply-faced rifleman swiftly leaned his weapon over the balustrade and fired a burst down into the street. He had not extended the stock of the assault rifle, and he had little control of it. But he crouched lower, almost a cartoon of a warrior, and fired a second burst. Then the boy hunkered behind the protective barrier.
Jianmin could tell that the boy had no idea what he was shooting at. In combat, it made some men feel good just to fire their weapons. And there were others you had to beat with your fists in order to get them to let off a single round.
Sergeant Li took out a small tablet PC. "The battalion net is operational, Comrade Commander."
Jianmin tapped his helmet-mike. "Now get the long-range dish up," he told his comms specialist. A gunship passed overhead, then another, flying off in echelon.
Where were they going? Jianmin knew the helicopters had not finished their area-clearing mission.
"Li. Put me on the air frequency. Hurry."
Sergeant Li messed with the tablet. Meanwhile, the battalion net came to life. Major Ma's voice. "Those sons of bitches are clearing off. The gunships are clearing off, and the drones are all out of missiles. Eagle, I've got more tanks down here."
"I know, damn it. I'm trying to get them now. I'll be off this net."
Heavy-machine-gun fire. Not Chinese. Another pair of gunships pulsed overhead. Jianmin tried to stand up, struggling to wave at them, to communicate somehow.
They were leaving. The bastards were leaving.
Once upon a time, Jianmin had been a captain.
At the heat of the parched valley, in the rocks, high above the treeline, the transports had set them down. The Uighurs had waited with superb discipline--savages, but with superb discipine. They had waited until the helicopters hurried off. Then they fired into the company position from all directions. The mountains had come to life, monstrous, spitting things. And Jianmin had watched his men fall as though in a film.
The helicopters always cleared off too soon. Afraid. And Jianmin had waited to die in a mountain desert pass in a worthless land. They waited all afternoon. All night. When relief forces finally arrived the next day, only eleven men remained from the entire company. Jianmin never understood why the dushman had not come in to finish them off. And when they took him back to the base, he left his ten subordinates without a word and went to the pilots' quarters.
He smashed the first aviator he saw in the face, then kicked the next one the groin, and attacked the rest, one after another, calling them cowards and sons of a thousand fathers. It took half a dozen men to get him under control. But in the end, he had only recieved a verbal rebuke.
He was already considered one of the crazies then, and they gave him a medal and leave as a reward for losing his company, and the helicopters continued to desert the combat area as soon as possible. But Jianmin had not cared anymore. He simply killed what there was to kill and waited to die. Yet foolishly, crazily, he had expected better here.
"Comrade Commander," Li spoke in a nervous, embarassed voice. "I don't have the flight frequency. They didn't give it to me."
Jianmin almost hit the boy. But he caught himself. It would not do any good. Suddenly, he relaxed, as in the presence of an old friend. Even the pain in his ankle seemed to diminish, for that was that. They were on their own. The way it was, back in the mountains. Now there was only the fighting, and nothing else mattered in the world. Jianmin felt the familiar rush of terror and exhiliration.
"Xingtan!"
The political officer looked at him obediently. Xingtan was the most annoyingly conscientious officer Jianmin had ever known. He did everything the Party told him to do and more. He didn't drink. He studied tactics because the political officer was supposed to be able to take over from fallen comrades in battle. He spent more time out on the ranges than the company commanders. And he had an attractive wife who cheated on him every chance she got.
Jianmin did not have much regard for political officers, in any case. But he despised any man who let a woman control him or bring him embarassment. And Xingtan had shown weakness. In formulating the plan of operations, Xingtan had protested against landing atop the hospital building, even though it was the only possibility to control the crossing site from the outset. Jianmin doubted the enemy would have any scruples about using the structure. But Xingtan had cited the laws of war and endless paragraphs of rubbish.
Jianmin himself had no special desire to use the hospital; it was a question of practicality. Now he was going to give his cuckold captain the opportunity to apply some of the military knowledge he'd been cramming into his narrow little mind.
"Xingtan, I want you to take the first squad and get down to the bridge. Clear out anybody who's still resisting. Leave one machine-gunner on the roof where he can cover your movement. I'm staying here with the radios until I find out just what we managed to get on the ground. Just clear the approach to the bridge and hold on until Major Ma comes up. And watche for tanks from the north. We'll try to cover the approach, but keep your eyes open. Understand?"
The political officer saluted. Jianmin slapped the hand down. "No more of that shit. This isn't an anniversary parade in Tiananmen Square."
"Comrade Commander," Li, the communications specialist, said, "the long-range net is operational."
Captain Xingtan moved out along the roofscape, gathering the first squad. Jianmin felt sorry for the men under his command; he did not know whether they would come back alive. He turned to the matter of informing higher headquarters of the unit's arrival at the objective. He felt in his breast pocket and pulled out a small booklet, then leafed through the pages. It was increasingly hard to see in the rain-darkened evening light.
Li waited to copy the message into his tablet. Jianmin gave him the code groups for safe arrival, approximate percentage of strength, main bridge intact, and combat action. Then he carefully buttoned the booklet back into his pocket.
The firing on the near side of the river had no logical pattern to it. Probably exchanges with bridge guards and perhaps a few military policemen or support soldiers. But the firing on the western side was much more intense. Ma had a real fight on his hands.
"Falcon, this is Eagle. What's your status?"
Ma's voice was compressed by combat. "I've got tanks all around me. They took out the last troopship as it was unloading. I've got at least a company of armor over here, playing hide and seek with us. Older tanks, I think they're M60s. Korean. Maybe reservists. But plenty of trouble."
"Any of your men closing on the bridge?"
"Not yet. Bao's working most of his company down toward it. But we've got a mess over here."
"Listen, I don't think the bridge is prepped to blow. Just my instinct.
"But Bao needs to get down there, no matter what it takes, before somebody thinks clearly enough to start fixing charges. I've got a good view up here, but I can't cover the entire span. Kick Bao in the ass. And let the tanks into town. It's easier to work them among the buildings. Especially at night."
"Right. Moving now."
Jianmin paused a second, then called up the ranking officer of the southern landing party. "Vulture, this is Eagle."
"This is Vulture. You're coming in weak."
"Just tell me what you have on the ground down there."
"No combat action. A bit of sniping. I have about a combat company, about half of the mortars. I think they put the antitank platoon down across the river by mistake."
"Battalion support?"
"They just kicked out cases of ammunition. We're sorting it out now. Half of them broke open. I think the handlers went down."
"Leave a detail to sort that out. You get onto the southern bridge as quickly as you can. Be prepared to reinforce the northern bridgehead. And I want an accurate account of who made it in with you. Get everybody under control before it's too dark."
"We're missing at least a company's worth of troops. And the air defenders."
"Engineers?"
"I haven't seen them. They might be over with the antitank platoon."
"Sort it out. And move fast."
A tank fired in the distance. Across the river. Ma was probably right. Reservists. There was nothing to fire a tank main gun at. It was the machine guns that did the work in close, unless they cornered you in a building.
Li scampered closer. "Transmission passed and acknowledged. Divisional staff sends their congratulations, Comrade Commander."
"They can save it. Round up your boys and find a good site on the top floor. We can't all stay up here. And I don't want to lose the radios."
Li moved out. Jianmin respected the comms specialist. The boy was an electronics buff from his school days, and could make a working antenna out of anything but ground meat. Li's radios worked dependably--something that was not always the case in Jianmin's career-long experience.
Jianmin unded the clasps and wet laces of his right boot. Then he pulled the laces in so tight that the discomfort of the constriction vied with the pain of the injured ankle. It was time to move. Jianmin sensed things bogging down. And they were so close. It made him furious that his men were not on both bridges already.
 
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Amazing blog, Shady.
HoI2 really fun game with Modern Day.
fantastic read, looking forward to more!
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That was a nice read indeed !
I don't want to imagine how much of a trouble it could be if every battle in Modern Day had its own story - and in 2 parts at least. And those details, I can almost see the game in front of my eyes.
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Jianmin gave instructions to the sergeant in charge of the remaining assault squad. Cover the approach road and the bridge. Then he started down the steps of the service stairwell, bracing hard on the hand railing as soon as he was out of sight of his own men. The pain was an unanticipated, unwelcome enemy.
Inside the hospital, there was another, separate, world. A nurse cried hysterically. And, despite the growing darkness, the corridors remained well-lit. The air was warm and dry. A few nurses and doctors stood defensively in the hallways besides stretchers bearing patients. A glance revealed that the hospital was overflowing with military casualties.
The crying nurse erupted into a scream. Jianmin turned on the oldest of the doctors, assuming he would be in charge. "Shut your little whore up," he told the man in Chinese. "And turn the damned lights out."
The doctor did not understand. He touched Jianmin's sleeve, jabbering in incomprehensible Korean. Jianmin pushed past him, and when the doctor did not let go, Jianmin shoved the muzzle of his assault rifle into the man's face. Then he turned the weapon on an overhead lighting panel and let go a burst.
"Understand?" Jianmin yelled. He shot out another sequence of lights. The other doctors and nurses threw themselves down on the floor. Jianmin yelled at one of his soldiers who stood idly by. "You. Get all of these people out of the hallway. And see that they turn out the lights in the entire building."
A machine-gunner and rifleman covered the main entrance on the ground floor. Jianmin ordered the rifleman to follow him, as much because he did not know how much longer his ankle could hold as to have a runner for communications.
Automatic weapons fire chased them between cars in the parking lot. The bridge was very close, but there was an open square just off of the main feeder road that had to be crossed to get to it. An enemy fireteam positioned on the far side of the main route covered the direct approach. The street itself had cleared of traffic now, except for burning or abandoned cars and the smoldering wreck of the IFV that had been hit by the drones.
There was no sign of Xingtan or the squad he had taken with him. "I'll kill the bastard," Jianmin promised himself, wondering where the political officer had gone. Jianmin was sorry now that he had not put more men down on the roof of the hospital. It had seemed too great a risk, and he had not even told his superiors about that small detail of his plan. Too many officers assigned to airborne and air-assault units still had not been to Uzbekistan. Too many of them were soft, and weak-willed, like Xingtan, and they might have objected to even the most limited use of the hospital. Jianmin felt as though he had enemies to overcome on both sides of the war.
"You go back," Jianmin told his rifleman companion. "Get up on the roof." Jianmin pointed to the southwest corner of the hospital building. "Up there. Tell Sergeant Xie I said to put suppressive fires on the far side of the street."
Before the rifleman could sprint off, a sudden wave of grenade and RPG blasts dazzled along the far side of the street, shattering the glass in the last intact storefront windows. Hard after the blasts, rushing forms took the enemy position from behind. In a matter of seconds, automatic rifle bursts cut in and out of the buildings, and enemy soldiers stumbled out of the shadows with their hands in the air, calling out in a foreign language.
The near end of the bridge was clear.
Captain Xingtan had taken the squad well around the enemy position and performed a textbook infiltration assault from behind. Jianmin understood at once, feeling simultaneous relief that an immediate problem was out of the way and a peculiar sort of embarrassment that the political officer had performed so well.
Jianmin caught the rifleman by the arm. "Forget what I told you before. Just go up to the top floor and tell Sergeant Li to bring the battalion comms kit down to me. Do you understand?"
The soldier nodded. There was fear in the boy's face. How much of it was fear of battle and how much was fear of the commander, Jianmin could not tell.
As the rifleman scrambled back toward the hospital, Jianmin raised himself for a dash across the street, weaving behind the partial protection of wrecked cars in case any enemy troops remained on the scene. Each step on his bad ankle meant punishment.
Xingtan had already sent a team forward onto the bridge. The action continued on the far bank, but there was no more firing on Jianmin's side of the river. Xingtan was excited, elated. His delight in his accomplishment made him look like a teenager.
"Comrade Battalion Commander, we have prisoners."
"I see that."
"No. I mean more. We surprised them." He turned to the alleyway.
"Sergeant . . . bring up the prisoners."
The night had grown fully dark around them. But the hot light shed by the burning vehicles revealed a string of eighteen more men in strange uniforms, all of them thirtyish, and some of them clearly not in shape for combat.
"They were up the road," Xingtan said. "I think they were trying to decide what to do. We came up on them... and we helped them decide."
Jianmin took a look at the line of Asian faces. "These all Koreans?"
"Yes, Comrade Battalion Commander. Reservists. This one is equivalent to a senior sergeant."
The prisoners looked pathetic to Jianmin. In Uzbekistan, when you managed to take the enemy alive, he showed one of two faces. Either the prisoner was sullenly defiant, or he blanked all expression from his face, as though already dead. Which he soon would be. But these men looked frightened, surprised, sheepish. They didn't look like soldiers at all, really.
"The others are American. The ones who were shooting back. We have four of them."
In the background, two tank main guns fired in succession. Across the low arch of the bridge, streaks of automatic-weapons fire cut the fresh night. The rain had slowed almost to a stop, and the damp river air carried the acrid smell of burnt ordnance.
"This town," Xingtan went on, his speech rapid with nervous energy, "you have to see it to believe it, Comrade Battalion Commander. when we were enveloping the enemy we came from back there." Xingtan gestured towards the dark alleyway. "Some of the historic buildings in the center of town must be four or five hundred years old. It's beautiful."
"This isn't a sightseeing trip," Jianmin cut him off.
"Yes, Comrade Battalion Commander. I understand that. I only meant we must take care to minimize unnecessary damage."
Jianmin looked at the political officer in wonder. He could not understand what sort of fantasy world Xingtan lived in.
"We must try to keep the fighting out of the historic part of the town," Xingtan continued.
Jianmin grabbed the political officer by his collar and slammed him against the nearby wall. In Uzbekistan, you stayed out of towns and villages when you were on your own. Villages were for the earthbound soldiers in their armored vehicles. When a village was guilty of harboring the dushman, it was surrounded with armor. Then the jets came over very high, dropping conventional ordnance, fuel air explosives, and chemicals. After the aircraft, the artillery and tanks shelled the ruins for hours. Then the drones would pick off any moving heat signatures. Finally, the mechanzed infantry went in. And there would still be snipers left alive, emerging from a maze of underground tunnels, like rats. Jianmin hated fighting in the towns and villages. He liked the open country. But there had been times when the worthless Uzbek People's Army officers had gotten their troops in a bind. And the Chinese airborne soldiers had had to go in and cut them free. It was always the worst in the towns. Towns were death.
The political officer made no attempt to defend himself. He only stared at Jianmin in bewilderment. Clearly, the two men did not understand each other.
Jianmin released the younger man. "Be glad," he told Xingtan. "Just be glad... if you're still alive this time tomorrow."
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Shady you're such an amazing writer. I'm really looking forward to more :D
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Ow, that second part was quickly put online. It feels a little bit more rushed, but Zhao clearly is a nice guy, love it.
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On October 21 2012 02:12 Lysteria wrote:
Ow, that second part was quickly put online. It feels a little bit more rushed, but Zhao clearly is a nice guy, love it.
lol this is sarcastic right? I'm trying to characterize Zhao as a knight-templar/war-psychopath...
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Ah hah yeah, it's sarcastic. I really liked the two posts tho. 
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Sergeant Li hustled across the cluttered street, carrying the long-range radio strapped across his shoulders. Despite the darkness, he found his way straight to Jianmin, as if by instinct.
Jianmin tapped his helmet mike. "Falcon, this is Eagle. What's your status?"
At first, Jianmin did not recognize the voice on the other end. "This is Falcon. Ma... the chief's dead. All shot up. We're in a mess."
It was Bao, the senior company commander. Jianmin had expected more self-control from the man.
"This is Eagle. Get a grip on yourself. What's the situation close in on your end of the bridge? Can I get over to you?"
"I don't know. We have the bridge. But we're all intermingled with American soldiers. And Korean tanks are working down the streets. Their actions aren't coordinated. But they're all over the place."
"Just hold on," Jianmin said. He released the pressure on the mike, then primed it once more. "Vulture, this is Eagle."
Nothing. Twilight static.
"Vulture, this is Eagle."
Only the noise of firing in the distance.
Jianmin turned to Xingtan. The political officer did not back away. There seemed to be no special fear in him after the rough handling, just a look of appraisal. "Two things," Jianmin said. "First, get the prisoners shut up somewhere so that one man can watch them. If you can't, kill them. Don't waste time. Then get down to the southern bridge and find Captain Tang. Just take a rifleman or two, you'll be safer if you're quiet and quick. If Tang has control of his bridge, take one of his platoons and work up the far side of the river. Don't let yourself be drawn into a fight that has nothing to do with the bridges. I want this bridge reinforced. If Tang has the antitank platoon with him, bring two sections north. And tell that bastard to listen to his headset."
Jianmin turned to his comms sergeant. "Come on," he told Li. "Stay close behind me. We're going across the river."
Jianmin took off at a scuttling run, limping, crouched like a hunchback. As he passed the walkway along the riverfront he fired a burst into the low darkness. There was no response, only the feeling of coolness off the flowing water.
No one fired at them as they continued over the dark bridge. It was a strongly built, four-lane structure that would easily carry heavy armored traffic. And they had it in their possession. Jianmin was determined to keep it.
The pain in his ankle seemed strangely appropriate now. Toughening. A reminder that nothing was ever easy.
At the far end of the bridge, a Chinese speaker called a challenge. Sergeant Li answered, and they were allowed back onto firm ground.
"Where's the commander?" Jianmin asked the guard.
"Up that way. Up the street somewhere."
Jianmin didn't wait for anything more. He didn't want to stop moving until he had found Bao. Until the situation was under some kind of control.
A few hundred meters up the road, a hot firefight raged between the buildings. Closer to the bridgehead, friendly positions had been established. Machine guns. Antitank weaponry. A boy lay prone between two piles of rubble, fiddling with a joystick.
"Do you know where your company commander is?" Jianmin asked the drone pilot.
The dark form shrugged, briefly raising its blackened face from the control screen. "He was here a while ago. But he's gone." Then the tone of the voice changed significantly. "Excuse me, Comrade Battalion Commander. I didn't recognize you."
"Where's your lieutenant?"
"Putting in an observation post down by the water line."
Too much time wasted already. Jianmin tapped his mike. "Falcon, this is Eagle."
"This is Falcon."
"I'm on your side of the river. Are you in that action up north?"
"Just below it. Along the main road."
"All right. I'm close. Watch for me coming up the street." Jianmin took off at a limping trot. "Come on." But Li tugged at his sleeve and held him back. Jianmin turned around. The drone pilot was yelling something indistinct.
Suddenly, a rippling blast wave shook the last scraps of glass from nearby windows. The noise of the firefight stopped. Jianmin turned around and started moving again. At the far end of the street, several buildings had caught fire. Occasional forms tried to crawl out from the windows and were promptly gunned down.
"Over here."
Jianmin rushed across the road, rolling once and throwing himself into an open doorway. His body already bore numerous scrapes and bruises, the inevitable wounds of urban combat, and along with the ceaseless pain in his ankle, made Jianmin feel like a wreck. But he knw the ordeal had hardly begun.
Sergeant Li waited for Jianmin to clear the doorway, then he followed quickly, unable to roll with the radio on his back.
In the pale glow from the flames up the block, Bao appeared as though he expected the sky to fall on them at any moment.
"Do you have any damned control of this mess?" Jianmin demanded.
"Comrade Commander... we're trying."
"Who's in charge up the road?"
"Lieutenant Min's directing the blocking action. Gu's putting in the positions along the bridgehead."
Directing the blocking action. What he meant was that the lieutenant was hanging on for dear life, Jianmin thought. He deliberately calmed his voice. "And what are you doing?" he asked Bao.
"This is my company command post. Between the bridge and the blocking force."
"Where's Major Ma?"
"He's dead."
"I know. But where is he? Where's the body?"
Bao didn't answer.
"I said, where's his body?"
"I don't know."
"You left him?"
"No, I mean he was dead."
"And you left him?"
"He was in pieces. We had to move. There were tanks."
"You left him," Jianmin said in disgust, arctic winter in his voice. It wasn't a matter of emotionalism. Jianmin considered himself a hard man, and he was proud of it. He had been the toughest cadet in his class, and the best martial artist in the academy. And he prided himself on his strong stomach. But the first time he had seen what the dushman did to the bodies of the Chinese dead, he had been unable to speak. The sight of the mutilated corpses had filled the bottom of his belly with ice. That was why airborne soldiers brought back their dead. And they never let themselves be taken prisoner. Because where other soldiers might expect mercy, the airborne infantry only expected to be used for practice.
Now Jianmin made no mental distinction between dead comrades in Uzbekistan and thsoe killed by Korean troops or Americans. It was simply a matter of military discipline, of pride, as routine as wearing a clean, well-fitted uniform on parade. Airborne soldiers brought back their dead.
"The tanks would have killed us all," Bao said, pleading against Jianmin's hard eyes. "We had to organize the position."
Ma had been a decent fellow. Another veteran. A professional. Ma had been in the terrible siege of Samarqand. And under his medals and ribbons, his chest was sewn up as though there were a zipper across it. Now he was gone.
"Ammunition all right?" Jianmin asked, in a controlled voice.
"We got our full load in. I think Tang's flight was hit a lot worse than ours."
"They had more targets," Jianmin said. "Listen. I sent Xingtan to fetch you another platoon. I want you to block the full one hundred and eighty degrees off the river. You can weight the defense to the north, but don't take anything for granted. Move your command post closer to the bridge. You could be overrun up here before you knew what was happening. And keep pushing out those observation posts."
A series of explosions crashed along the street.
"I'm surprised they're shooting everything up," Bao said. "Those houses are full of people, you know. You can't see them. But they're here. Six of them in this basement alone. They thought we were going to kill them."
"Keep the soldiers under control. How do you see the enemy over here? More Americans or Koreans?"
"Seems like a mix. The tanks are all Korean. I think we caught a Korean tank unit crossing the river up on the tactical bridges. But there was an American support unit tucked in near the landing zone."
"Well, the Americans won't care what they shoot up. It isn't their country."
"They're tough. Especially for rear services troops."
"We're tougher. Get this mess under control." Jianmin looked at his watch. "In ninety minutes, I want you to meet me in the lobby of the hospital across the river. Bring Xingtan, if he's with you. I'll get Tang up. I want to make damned sure that, come first light, every man is where we need him. We got the bridge easily enough. Now it's just a matter of holding it."
"For how long? When do you think they'll get here?"
A spray of machine-gun fire ripped along the street, punching into the interior wall above their heads.
"Sometime tomorrow." And Jianmin got to his feet and launched himself back into the darkness, with Sergeant Li trailing behind him.
Bao might not make it, Jianmin thought. But he did not know with whom he could replace him. Ma had been his safety man, his watchdog on this side of the river. Now Ma was gone. There was no one left he could trust.
He thought of Xingtan, the political officer. Xingtan didn't have any experience. But he would have to use him, if it came down to it. Perhaps Xingtan on the eastern bank, while he took personal command in Bao's area. Or wherever the action was the most intense. Jianmin hated the thought of relying on the political officer. But then he hated to rely on any man. He could only bear counting on Ma because they had both come from the same Uzbekistan brotherhood.
In the darkness, Jianmin saw a man rushing out of a shadowed alley.
The man saw him too; he called out in a foreign voice. Jianmin immediately shot him at point-blank range.
A return burst of fire from beyond the body sought him in the dark. Jianmin flattened behind the body of the man he had just shot and fired back. When the body moved, Jianmin drew his combat knife and plunged it into the man's throat.
There were several foreign voices now, calling to one another. Unfamiliar-sounding weapons began to fire around him. Even with the nightvision, there was nothing to see. Jianmin peeled a grenade from his strap, primed it, then lobbed it down the mouth of the alley. Following the blast, a second man began to scream.
As the fragmentation settled, Jianmin crawled into a doorway. The door was locked.
"I'm shot... I'm shot..."
Li. The radio.
Jianmin held still. His radioman lay sprawled in the street, his boots still up on the sidewalk. He repeated his complaint over and over, aching with the damage a foreign weapon had done to his body.
Jianmin watched the darkness, waiting for them to come out. As if on cue, the long-range net crackled with unintelligble sounds. Then an electronically filtered voice called over the airwaves in Chinese.
Come for it. Come on, Jianmin thought. You know you want it.
The radioman moand, face sideways, his radio teasing the foreign soldiers.
Take the chance, Jianmin thought. Come on.
Movement caught his eye. And then Jianmin was back in the hills of Uzbekistan, brilliantly alive. He didn't let the leading figure distract him. He searched the point of origin for the covering man. When he had him fixed, he put a burst of fire into him, then shifted his weapon to catch the forward man against the side of a building. The forward man returned fire as he fell, but it sprayed wildly.
Jianmin turned and kicked in the door. Then he scrambled to drag the radioman inside the hallway.
His hands grew slick with blood. It reminded him of dragging a wet, rolled-up tent. Bits and pieces of the boy seemed to be falling off as Jianmin dragged him. He had clearly caught a full burst. Amazingly, he still whimpered with life.
Jianmin peeled the radio from the boy's shoulders, flicking the blood off the mike.
"Rainbow, this is Eagle."
"This is Rainbow. Are you all right? We thought we heard a firefight."
"My radioman's down. Otherwise I'm fine."
"Got it." Then the divisional staff passed along a brevity code. They were to hold out for sixteen more hours. Jianmin made a mental note, then tapped his helmet mike.
"Falcon, this is Eagle. Sergeant Li is down. I'm about a block down from you, just off on one of the side streets. Can you get somebody down here?"
"We just packed up the command post. All ready to move out."
"Whoa!" Jianmin screamed. He twisted his body around so that his weapon just cleared the wounded boy, and he held his trigger back until the weapon clicked empty. The approaching shadow danced backward as the rounds flashed into it, crashing against a wall opposite the doorway. Jianmin hurriedly reloaded, then pulled out his infrared penlight, careful to hold the point of light well away from his torso.
It was an old man. With a hunting rifle.
Stupid shit, Jianmin thought. The damned old fool. But it had spooked him. For the first time in years, Jianmin knew he had been caught completely off guard.
Sergeant Li was praying. It didn't surprise Jianmin. Religious or not, he had known many a dying soldier to pray in Uzbekistan. Even political officers, professional athiests, were not above appealing to a hoped-for god in their final moments. Jianmin forced himself back to business.
"Vulture, this is Eagle."
"This is Vulture."
"What's your status?"
"We have the southern bridge. Intermittent fighting in the town on both sides of the river. The forces you requested are on the way."
"Casualties?"
"Heavy. The Americans ambushed us the first time we went for the bridge. But we cleared them out."
"How bad?"
"I've got about a hundred fifty left."
"In your company?"
"Including everybody. Never found the antitank platoon. They must have gone down. We have about twenty prisoners. About the same number of wounded."
"All right. Just get in the buildings and hang on. Keep the wounded with you. I'll send a doctor down from the hospital. Aim your mortars and drones to support Falcon. Establish a layered defense on both sides of the river, but don't worry about holding a full arc off the riverbank. Just cover the bridge."
"I'll do my best."
The radioman died. Jianmin could feel the difference in the room. When the radio went silent, it felt to Jianmin as though he were in a haunted place.
"Eagle, this is Falcon."
"Eagle."
"We can't find you. What's your location?"
"Never mind," Jianmin said, looking down at the boy's body. "I don't need the help anymore. Just watch for me coming in."
Jianmin sat in silence for a moment, marshaling his stregth. There was no sound close in. Only the ebb and flow of firing up the street. In the bowl of almost-silence, the pain in his ankle semeed to amplify, as though someone were methodically turning up a volume dial wired to his limb.
Jianmin rose onto his knees. With a deep breath, he caught the long-range dish on his shoulders. At the last moment, he remembered to go through the dead boy's pockets for the comms tablet. The screen was filmed with blood. He wiped the tablet and his hands on an upholstered chair, rubbing back and forth over the coarse material in the darkness. Then he climbed to his feet.
He toppled back down. His ankle would not accept the additional weight of the dish. As he fell the corner of a table jammed him in the small of his back.
Breathing deeply, trying to drown the pain in a flood of oxygen, Jianmin forced himself back onto his feet.
One step. Then another.
He stepped down into the street. No sign of Bao. Just as well, he thought. Up the road to the north, near what appeared to be a rail crossing, the buildings blazed, featuring the black hull of a ruptured tank in silhouette. There was firing down the first alleyway, as well.
The random bodies of the dead glistened and shone where eyes remained open or teeth caught the fluttering light. Jianmin felt no emotional response, aside from breifly noting where his own men had fallen. The corpses were abstractions, possessed of no inherent meaning now. He walked upright and slowly. Each step under the weight of the dish jolted currents of pain up his leg. He pictured the pain as a green liquid fire, racing up his nerves. It was impossible to move with any tactical finess now.
The growing fires lit the street more brightly than a full moon could have done. Jianmin switched off his nightvision. As he approached the network of unengaged positions by the bridgehead, no one challenged him. Instead, Bao and another soldier rushed out to intercept him.
"Are you crazy? Get down," Bao demanded. Belatedly, he added, "Comrade Battalion Commander."
"Help me, Bao. I have a problem with my leg."
Bao reached out, pausing at the last moment before touching Jianmin. Then he closed in, and Jianmin put his arm around the company commander's shoulders, easing his weight.
"It's all right," Jianmin said. "We have both the bridges."
"Let me take the radio. Here. Fu, help me take the radio from the commander."
"It's all right," Jianmin repeated. "Now we just hang on. I've been through this before."
Next chapter(s):
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=377133
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Someone's read Red Army, eh?
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On October 20 2012 09:18 Shady Sands wrote:
Night came to Korea.
Had it been away so long?
Lieutenant Colonel Zhao braced in the helicopter doorway, drenched with rain. His headset perked with the worries and technical exchanges of the pilots. Their talkativeness grated on him. Like junk-sellers in a flea market. But he kept his silence and watched the crowded trace of the highway in the wet, fading light. The formation of attack drones, gunships, and transport helicopters throbbed between the last green hills before the target area.
Zhao knew helicopter pilots, and he knew their machines. He knew the fliers who never thought of themselves as anything but aviators, the amateur warriors, and he knew the stone-cold killers who just happened to know how to fly.
Very convincing sentence.
Far too few of the latter, he thought.
Less convincing. Action >> introspection.
And he knew the warning sounds that came into a pilot's voice, requiring firm commands through the intercom. In Uzbekistan, the troopships had sagged through the air, swollen birds who had eaten too rich a diet of men. The mountains were too high, the air too thin, and the missiles came up at you like bright modern arrows. You learned to command from a gunship that carried a light enough load to permit hasty maneuvers. You learned to let the slow ships full of fresh recruits draw the enemy's fire. You learned to swallow your pride and hide in the midst of the formation.
Hooray parallel structure.
If you were a good airborne officer, you learned a great deal about killing. If you had no aptitude for the work, or if you were not hard enough on yourself and your men, you learned about dying.
Okay, enough chitchat. Blow something up.
Zhao forced his thoughts back to the present. The valley road beneath the bellies of the aircraft intersected the rail line. They were very close now. Zhao knew the route along the Gyeongbu Expressway from the ground; he had traveled it just months before on mission training, disguised as a civilian assistant driver for an international shipping company. The highways and roads leading to Gumi had impressed him with their quality and capacities, and by the swift orderliness of the traffic flow.
Now those same roads were in chaos.
You're abusing the one-sentence paragraph. There is no impact here.
Intermittent ROK support columns heading east struggled against a creeping flood of refugee traffic. At key intersections, military policemen desperately sought to assert control, waving their flourescent batons in the dull rain. As the helicopters carrying the Chinese air assault battalion passed overhead, soldier and citizen alike looked up in astonishment, shocked by this new dimension of trouble. Some of the more disciplined soldiers along the road opened fire at the waves of aircraft, but the small-arms fire had no effect beyond excited chatter in Zhao's headset. The gunships returned fire, nervous pilots devastating the mixed traffic with bursts from their Gatlings.
Passable.
Zhao let them go. As long as they didn't overdo it. Terror was a magnificent weapon. Zhao had learned his lessons from Uzbekistan. War was only about winning. Killing the other one before he killed you. They killed one of your kind, or perhaps just made the attempt, and you responded by killing a dozen, or a hundred, of them.
Zhao sounds like a real badass, at least in his imagination.
Olive-painted transport trucks and fine, brightly colored Korean automobiles exploded into wild gasoline fires. Drivers turned into fields or steered desperately over embankments. Others smashed into one another. Zhao's rain-drenched face never changed expression.
Now would be a good time, after all of this workup, to place this last sentence in its own paragraph. You build up the scene, deliver the impact, then move on with the story.
He knew the garrison slang terms that sought to degrade, to cut him and those like him down to size. "Uzbekistan mentality. Blood drinker. There goes Crazy Genghis." Name-calling that in the end only betrayed the nervousness, the awe and even fear of those who had not gone.
The destruction on the roads had a purpose. Purposes. Create panic. Convince the enemy that he is defeated. Convince him that further resistance is pointless and too expensive to be tolerable. And tie up the roads. Immobilize the enemy. It cut both ways, of course. But with any luck, the Koreans or the Americans would clear the roads just in time for the Chinese armored formations that would be on their way to cross Zhao's bridges over the Nakdong.
.... or we can reminisce some more. 
They approached ...
Hooray! Action. This is a thriller, right?
... an interchange, where an air-defense unit was busy trying to move from their position on the overpass to chase after Zhao's battalion. A burst from a Gatling ripped through the roof of a civilian bus on the freeway below. The bus fishtailed sideways and stopped, blocking the overpass exit. Zhao did not see anyone climb out. He made a mental note: the air-defense column would now be trapped at the interchange.
You're slowing down your action with wordiness and thought. This is not the tone of action. At best, you're painting a scene that is distraught with detail more than it is tense with uncertainty.
You could not let the fate of individuals weaken you, he thought. It was imperative to learn to regard them as resources, to be conserved whenever possible, but to be applied as necessary. In Uzbekistan, and now in Korea, the missiles and the autocannon fire traced skyward, and sometimes, his ships burst orange and yellow in a froth of black smoke. No passenger ever survived the fireball.
Too much education. You are speaking, not your character. You haven't demonstrated character beyond the word "Zhao."
But it was all right now. Zhao had been prepared for the loss of up to fifty percent of his battalion going in. Fortunately, the air defenses had been depleted along the penetration corridor. He could not be entirely certain, but from what he personally observed, and from the pilot chatter, he believed he would get on the ground with over seventy-five percent of his force. Now it all depended on the air defenses at Gumi and what happened at the landing sites.
Ahhhh, you're boring me to death!
The rail tracks below the helicopter paralleled the main road, Highway 1, down into the sudden clutter of the city, crammed into the valley on both sides of the Nakdong River. Zhao looked at his watch for one second, and now they were over the first buildings.
?
"Falcon, what do you have up there?" Zhao spoke into the headset mike, switching the control to broadcast. He wanted a report from his battalion chief of staff, who was tucked into the first wave, just behind the advance party.
What? Zhao finally does something? This is amazing!
A moment of pilot confusion bothered the net, one transmission spoiling another. Then: "Eagle, this is Raptor Seven," the pilot of his gunship called him. "The rail yards are packed. You want us to hit the rolling stock?"
Zhao could just make out the funnel-shaped expansion of the rail yards.
"This is Eagle," he said. "Only strike combat-related activities. If there's any vehicle off-loading, hit them."
"Zero observed. But I've got heavies. I'm taking heavy machine-gun fire." Without waiting for his orders, the pilot and co-pilot navigator of Zhao's aircraft began to bank the big gunship away from the rail line.
"Damn it," Zhao told them, "just go straight in. That's nothing. Don't break the formation."
The pilots corrected back onto course. But the formation had grown ragged.
Could you tell me what's happening in concrete detail, with description that shows how ragged the formation has become, rather than just telling me "some serious shit went down." I want to see the shit.
The chief of staff, Major Ma, finally came up on the net. "One heavy on the northern bridge, Eagle. Clearing him now. Scattered lights. It's manageable."
Good. All right. Just put them down on the far bank, Zhao thought.
Stop that!
"Eagle, Falcon." Ma called again. "Tanks further north. Poor visibility, but I count five, maybe six. Heading east. Crossing tactical bridges down in the water."
Yeah yeah yeah. More chit-chat.
"Get the hornets working on them," Zhao ordered, using the old Uzbekistan slang for the drone helicopters. "Raptor Seven, did you monitor that transmission?"
?
"Working them now, we're working them."
"Falcon, can they range the landing zone?"
"Not mine. Not without maneuvering back. Shit. Beautiful. We're hitting."
Zhao yelled into the mike. "Troopships down now!"
Even with the headset cups over his ears, Zhao could hear ordnance cracking, and dull thumps.
"We got 'em. Got one tank dead in the middle of the river, burning like a campfire. Two on the banks. Remainder are trapped, for now. We're all right."
Nothing happens.
Immediately to the right of his aircraft, Zhao watched a troop transport fly directly into the side of a high-rise building, as though the pilot had done it on purpose...
Hooray! Something happened.
Another story that will never be told, Zhao thought. He was used to occurences that seemed to make no outward sense during air-assault operations. Pilots misjudged, or briefly lost control, and aircraft smashed into mountainsides. The blast wave from this latest crash seemed to strip the rain from his face.
Stop that!
Fewer tools to do the job, he thought. Seize and hold the northern bridge at all costs. Seize and hold the southern bridge, if possible. Tactical crossing sites to be destroyed if they could not be controlled.
No, seriously. Enough with the inner monologue. If you do it one more time...
Zhao's command gunship pulled to the right, entering its assault approach. "Don't shoot up the traffic on the main bridges," Zhao ordered. "I want them clean."
Awesome. Zhao did something.
"This is Falcon. We're on the west bank. Lead elements en route to the northern bridge," Major Ma reported. "I'm going in myself."
DON'T BE A HERO MA!
"Let's go," Zhao told his pilot. Moments later, his own aircraft and two others split north, away from the element headed for the landing zone south of town and the southern bridge. The lead element had gone in on the far bank to the secure the primary bridge in the north. The plan called for Zhao, his headquarters element, and two squads from the special assault platoon to jump from a rolling hover onto the roof of a hospital building from which fields of fire commanded the west-bank approaches to the primary bridge, and from where Zhao could control the initial actions of his battalion. The other special assault troops had been designated to block to the northeast, but their chopper had flown into a building. Now the main highway from the north on the near bank would be uncovered. And Ma was facing tanks there.
lol noob.
The hospital came up fast, emerging from the gaps between the other buildings. Zhao spotted the river. He fixed the bridge. The burning hulk of an infantry fighting vehicle stood at its eastern approach. Last random traffic crowded in an urgent attempt to reach the western bank.
Zhao felt the press of events now. He had time for one more brief transmission.
"Raptor Seven, have the gunships clear to the north and west. Don't pull out of here until you've cleared those tactical crossing sites to the north, or I'll shoot you down myself."
Zhao unhooked his safety strap, then glanced over his shoulder. His command party was ready to go. Terrified. Faces all nervous energy and fear in a volatile mixture.
"Slow now. Damn it, slow," he told the pilot.
He stripped off his headset and threw it forward. Then he pulled on his command helmet and unhitched his assault rifle. The helicopter moved in a slow, hovering forward roll along the flat roof of the designated building, just high enough to clear the assortment of vents and fans.
No complaints.
Always a bad moment, no matter how many times you did it.
Boo, I'm done.
For a scene that should have a tense, dramatic tone, you're spare with the action. Your pov spends more time thinking back to the good old days when he shouldn't have time to think at all, except in significant moments of pause. When he does take action, it's not enough to mutter an unremarkable order to an unremarkable underling. You describe events as though they're taking place in a snow globe, and the reader is outside of the globe. If I lived in a snowglobe, every snowflake would be about the size of an SUV. That'd be some serious shit to write about, but instead all we get is, "it was snowing."
I like when things blow up. I like when characters blow them up. I'm on the receiving end of a long-distance radio communication with a very exciting battle, and all I can hear is static.
Think about the tone you're setting. Think about the pacing: where is the plot going, one sentence to the next. Repetition of delivery: excessive internal monologue, excessive description long after the scene should have been established... the plot is not moving. You haven't established character. You haven't developed the idea beyond the scene.
To build tension, you have to move the plot closer to some looming threat. I don't know what's at stake, so there is no threat. I don't know the characters, so I'm not concerned for their survival. If you're going to bring me in cold, you need to hook me with surreal detail so that I feel like I'm actually there. That requires concrete action and concrete description; tangible things that the reader can imagine. "Zhao tossed a grenade ahead and dove for the earth." "Bullets whistled overhead." "The smell of napalm lingered in the air; it smelled like victory."
One more thing. Your narrative suffers from passivity and uncertainty. Check your use of passive voice. Check that things aren't just "seeming" to happen. They either happen or they don't. The fog of war is better described by cacophony of surreal juxtaposition, not a literal fog over details. The reality of a chaotic world is demonstrated by perversion of the mundane. Draw contrasts. The fog is a dithered image of the black and the white, not streaks of grey. Life, death. Love, hate. Joy, fear.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.
It was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity.
It was the season of light; it was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair.
We had everything before us; we had nothing before us.
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+ Show Spoiler [mmp's critique] +On October 21 2012 16:04 mmp wrote:Had it been away so long? Show nested quote +
Lieutenant Colonel Zhao braced in the helicopter doorway, drenched with rain. His headset perked with the worries and technical exchanges of the pilots. Their talkativeness grated on him. Like junk-sellers in a flea market. But he kept his silence and watched the crowded trace of the highway in the wet, fading light. The formation of attack drones, gunships, and transport helicopters throbbed between the last green hills before the target area.
Show nested quote +
Zhao knew helicopter pilots, and he knew their machines. He knew the fliers who never thought of themselves as anything but aviators, the amateur warriors, and he knew the stone-cold killers who just happened to know how to fly.
Very convincing sentence. Less convincing. Action >> introspection. Show nested quote +
And he knew the warning sounds that came into a pilot's voice, requiring firm commands through the intercom. In Uzbekistan, the troopships had sagged through the air, swollen birds who had eaten too rich a diet of men. The mountains were too high, the air too thin, and the missiles came up at you like bright modern arrows. You learned to command from a gunship that carried a light enough load to permit hasty maneuvers. You learned to let the slow ships full of fresh recruits draw the enemy's fire. You learned to swallow your pride and hide in the midst of the formation.
Hooray parallel structure. Show nested quote +
If you were a good airborne officer, you learned a great deal about killing. If you had no aptitude for the work, or if you were not hard enough on yourself and your men, you learned about dying.
Okay, enough chitchat. Blow something up. Show nested quote +
Zhao forced his thoughts back to the present. The valley road beneath the bellies of the aircraft intersected the rail line. They were very close now. Zhao knew the route along the Gyeongbu Expressway from the ground; he had traveled it just months before on mission training, disguised as a civilian assistant driver for an international shipping company. The highways and roads leading to Gumi had impressed him with their quality and capacities, and by the swift orderliness of the traffic flow.
You're abusing the one-sentence paragraph. There is no impact here. Show nested quote +
Intermittent ROK support columns heading east struggled against a creeping flood of refugee traffic. At key intersections, military policemen desperately sought to assert control, waving their flourescent batons in the dull rain. As the helicopters carrying the Chinese air assault battalion passed overhead, soldier and citizen alike looked up in astonishment, shocked by this new dimension of trouble. Some of the more disciplined soldiers along the road opened fire at the waves of aircraft, but the small-arms fire had no effect beyond excited chatter in Zhao's headset. The gunships returned fire, nervous pilots devastating the mixed traffic with bursts from their Gatlings.
Passable. Show nested quote +
Zhao let them go. As long as they didn't overdo it. Terror was a magnificent weapon. Zhao had learned his lessons from Uzbekistan. War was only about winning. Killing the other one before he killed you. They killed one of your kind, or perhaps just made the attempt, and you responded by killing a dozen, or a hundred, of them.
Zhao sounds like a real badass, at least in his imagination. Show nested quote +
Olive-painted transport trucks and fine, brightly colored Korean automobiles exploded into wild gasoline fires. Drivers turned into fields or steered desperately over embankments. Others smashed into one another. Zhao's rain-drenched face never changed expression.
Now would be a good time, after all of this workup, to place this last sentence in its own paragraph. You build up the scene, deliver the impact, then move on with the story. Show nested quote +
He knew the garrison slang terms that sought to degrade, to cut him and those like him down to size. "Uzbekistan mentality. Blood drinker. There goes Crazy Genghis." Name-calling that in the end only betrayed the nervousness, the awe and even fear of those who had not gone.
The destruction on the roads had a purpose. Purposes. Create panic. Convince the enemy that he is defeated. Convince him that further resistance is pointless and too expensive to be tolerable. And tie up the roads. Immobilize the enemy. It cut both ways, of course. But with any luck, the Koreans or the Americans would clear the roads just in time for the Chinese armored formations that would be on their way to cross Zhao's bridges over the Nakdong.
.... or we can reminisce some more. Hooray! Action. This is a thriller, right? Show nested quote +
... an interchange, where an air-defense unit was busy trying to move from their position on the overpass to chase after Zhao's battalion. A burst from a Gatling ripped through the roof of a civilian bus on the freeway below. The bus fishtailed sideways and stopped, blocking the overpass exit. Zhao did not see anyone climb out. He made a mental note: the air-defense column would now be trapped at the interchange.
You're slowing down your action with wordiness and thought. This is not the tone of action. At best, you're painting a scene that is distraught with detail more than it is tense with uncertainty. Show nested quote +
You could not let the fate of individuals weaken you, he thought. It was imperative to learn to regard them as resources, to be conserved whenever possible, but to be applied as necessary. In Uzbekistan, and now in Korea, the missiles and the autocannon fire traced skyward, and sometimes, his ships burst orange and yellow in a froth of black smoke. No passenger ever survived the fireball.
Too much education. You are speaking, not your character. You haven't demonstrated character beyond the word "Zhao." Show nested quote +
But it was all right now. Zhao had been prepared for the loss of up to fifty percent of his battalion going in. Fortunately, the air defenses had been depleted along the penetration corridor. He could not be entirely certain, but from what he personally observed, and from the pilot chatter, he believed he would get on the ground with over seventy-five percent of his force. Now it all depended on the air defenses at Gumi and what happened at the landing sites.
Ahhhh, you're boring me to death! Show nested quote +
The rail tracks below the helicopter paralleled the main road, Highway 1, down into the sudden clutter of the city, crammed into the valley on both sides of the Nakdong River. Zhao looked at his watch for one second, and now they were over the first buildings.
? Show nested quote +
"Falcon, what do you have up there?" Zhao spoke into the headset mike, switching the control to broadcast. He wanted a report from his battalion chief of staff, who was tucked into the first wave, just behind the advance party.
What? Zhao finally does something? This is amazing! Show nested quote +
A moment of pilot confusion bothered the net, one transmission spoiling another. Then: "Eagle, this is Raptor Seven," the pilot of his gunship called him. "The rail yards are packed. You want us to hit the rolling stock?"
Zhao could just make out the funnel-shaped expansion of the rail yards.
"This is Eagle," he said. "Only strike combat-related activities. If there's any vehicle off-loading, hit them."
"Zero observed. But I've got heavies. I'm taking heavy machine-gun fire." Without waiting for his orders, the pilot and co-pilot navigator of Zhao's aircraft began to bank the big gunship away from the rail line.
"Damn it," Zhao told them, "just go straight in. That's nothing. Don't break the formation."
The pilots corrected back onto course. But the formation had grown ragged.
Could you tell me what's happening in concrete detail, with description that shows how ragged the formation has become, rather than just telling me "some serious shit went down." I want to see the shit. Show nested quote +
The chief of staff, Major Ma, finally came up on the net. "One heavy on the northern bridge, Eagle. Clearing him now. Scattered lights. It's manageable."
Stop that! Show nested quote +
"Eagle, Falcon." Ma called again. "Tanks further north. Poor visibility, but I count five, maybe six. Heading east. Crossing tactical bridges down in the water."
Yeah yeah yeah. More chit-chat. Show nested quote +
"Get the hornets working on them," Zhao ordered, using the old Uzbekistan slang for the drone helicopters. "Raptor Seven, did you monitor that transmission?"
? Show nested quote +
"Working them now, we're working them."
"Falcon, can they range the landing zone?"
"Not mine. Not without maneuvering back. Shit. Beautiful. We're hitting."
Zhao yelled into the mike. "Troopships down now!"
Even with the headset cups over his ears, Zhao could hear ordnance cracking, and dull thumps.
"We got 'em. Got one tank dead in the middle of the river, burning like a campfire. Two on the banks. Remainder are trapped, for now. We're all right."
Nothing happens. Show nested quote +
Immediately to the right of his aircraft, Zhao watched a troop transport fly directly into the side of a high-rise building, as though the pilot had done it on purpose...
Hooray! Something happened. Show nested quote +
Another story that will never be told, Zhao thought. He was used to occurences that seemed to make no outward sense during air-assault operations. Pilots misjudged, or briefly lost control, and aircraft smashed into mountainsides. The blast wave from this latest crash seemed to strip the rain from his face.
Stop that! Show nested quote +
Fewer tools to do the job, he thought. Seize and hold the northern bridge at all costs. Seize and hold the southern bridge, if possible. Tactical crossing sites to be destroyed if they could not be controlled.
No, seriously. Enough with the inner monologue. If you do it one more time... Show nested quote +
Zhao's command gunship pulled to the right, entering its assault approach. "Don't shoot up the traffic on the main bridges," Zhao ordered. "I want them clean."
Awesome. Zhao did something. Show nested quote +
"This is Falcon. We're on the west bank. Lead elements en route to the northern bridge," Major Ma reported. "I'm going in myself."
DON'T BE A HERO MA! Show nested quote +
"Let's go," Zhao told his pilot. Moments later, his own aircraft and two others split north, away from the element headed for the landing zone south of town and the southern bridge. The lead element had gone in on the far bank to the secure the primary bridge in the north. The plan called for Zhao, his headquarters element, and two squads from the special assault platoon to jump from a rolling hover onto the roof of a hospital building from which fields of fire commanded the west-bank approaches to the primary bridge, and from where Zhao could control the initial actions of his battalion. The other special assault troops had been designated to block to the northeast, but their chopper had flown into a building. Now the main highway from the north on the near bank would be uncovered. And Ma was facing tanks there.
lol noob. Show nested quote +
The hospital came up fast, emerging from the gaps between the other buildings. Zhao spotted the river. He fixed the bridge. The burning hulk of an infantry fighting vehicle stood at its eastern approach. Last random traffic crowded in an urgent attempt to reach the western bank.
Zhao felt the press of events now. He had time for one more brief transmission.
"Raptor Seven, have the gunships clear to the north and west. Don't pull out of here until you've cleared those tactical crossing sites to the north, or I'll shoot you down myself."
Zhao unhooked his safety strap, then glanced over his shoulder. His command party was ready to go. Terrified. Faces all nervous energy and fear in a volatile mixture.
"Slow now. Damn it, slow," he told the pilot.
He stripped off his headset and threw it forward. Then he pulled on his command helmet and unhitched his assault rifle. The helicopter moved in a slow, hovering forward roll along the flat roof of the designated building, just high enough to clear the assortment of vents and fans.
No complaints. Boo, I'm done.
For a scene that should have a tense, dramatic tone, you're spare with the action. Your pov spends more time thinking back to the good old days when he shouldn't have time to think at all, except in significant moments of pause. When he does take action, it's not enough to mutter an unremarkable order to an unremarkable underling. You describe events as though they're taking place in a snow globe, and the reader is outside of the globe. If I lived in a snowglobe, every snowflake would be about the size of an SUV. That'd be some serious shit to write about, but instead all we get is, "it was snowing." I like when things blow up. I like when characters blow them up. I'm on the receiving end of a long-distance radio communication with a very exciting battle, and all I can hear is static. Think about the tone you're setting. Think about the pacing: where is the plot going, one sentence to the next. Repetition of delivery: excessive internal monologue, excessive description long after the scene should have been established... the plot is not moving. You haven't established character. You haven't developed the idea beyond the scene. To build tension, you have to move the plot closer to some looming threat. I don't know what's at stake, so there is no threat. I don't know the characters, so I'm not concerned for their survival. If you're going to bring me in cold, you need to hook me with surreal detail so that I feel like I'm actually there. That requires concrete action and concrete description; tangible things that the reader can imagine. "Zhao tossed a grenade ahead and dove for the earth." "Bullets whistled overhead." "The smell of napalm lingered in the air; it smelled like victory." One more thing. Your narrative suffers from passivity and uncertainty. Check your use of passive voice. Check that things aren't just "seeming" to happen. They either happen or they don't. The fog of war is better described by cacophony of surreal juxtaposition, not a literal fog over details. The reality of a chaotic world is demonstrated by perversion of the mundane. Draw contrasts. The fog is a dithered image of the black and the white, not streaks of grey. Life, death. Love, hate. Joy, fear. Show nested quote +It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.
It was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity.
It was the season of light; it was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair.
We had everything before us; we had nothing before us.
Ah, okay. This is very helpful--I'm going to incorporate your advice for the next part.
E: Did you read the last section of the current story? It's got more action, if that's what you're looking for.
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I'm just looking at it technically. There's no reason your story can't be awesome 100% of the time. If it's not supposed to have action, you ought to provide some suspense to fill the gap; what you present looks like action but doesn't feel like action, so I'm not excited to read any further (there's nowhere to go but down).
Hold your punches.
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On October 22 2012 12:13 mmp wrote:
I'm just looking at it technically. There's no reason your story can't be awesome 100% of the time. If it's not supposed to have action, you ought to provide some suspense to fill the gap; what you present looks like action but doesn't feel like action, so I'm not excited to read any further (there's nowhere to go but down).
Hold your punches.
Check out the next part.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=377133
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EPT
