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Read the last chapter here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=382314
The sounds of combat action reverberated in the middle distance. When large-caliber shells stuck, the roughly erected tentage sheltering the area between the vehicles of Luo Qipeng's command post shivered, jouncing the maps lining the canvas walls. The radios sputtered with grim updates.
"Try to raise corps again," Qipeng said to the staff at large. "There are drones. We've been promised drones." He half remembered a hurried memo from the corps commander.
Qipeng suspected his staff had begun to work in spite of him, struggling to carry out his orders to block every key intersection and to establish a hasty defense. They had been caught, and caught badly. The brigade, the entire corps, was a splendid offensive weapon, well-structured to fight meeting engagements. But they had moved too swiftly, brigades out of contact with one another, and with gaps between battalions within the brigades. Now they were paying the price.
Yet, even if all that were true, the failure remained his, Qipeng decided. His guts burned with an acid sickness, his flesh rubbed so raw it hurt to sit, and the feverish dizziness made it difficult to stand. He should have turned the brigade over to someone more capable.
But to whom? Where did duty end? What would his father have thought? Perhaps, even, that he was a coward. A Luo brought low by bad digestion. In any event, it would have shamed the old man, and Qipeng would not do it, no matter what the cost.
He thought of Nancy, of all the things he had to tell her. They often talked together, yet it seemed to him now that the most important things had never been said.
"Where are the drones?" Qipeng asked, almost yelling.
"Comrade Brigade Commander, we can't reach the corps."
"Try manual Morse."
"Comrade Brigade Commander, we've tried everything. I could try to relay through Fourth Brigade."
"Why didn't you tell me we have comms with the Fourth Brigade?"
There was no response. Qipeng looked around him. Several staff officers stared at him.
"What is the situation of Fourth Brigade?" Qipeng demanded.
"They are... being overrun. To the east of us, Comrade Brigade Commander. You heard the report as it came in."
Qipeng tried to make sense of this. The east was the wrong side, he remembered that much.
"Report on subordinate units," Qipeng demanded. "We will form a counterattack force." He desperately tried to remember the formulas, the rules, how the manuals insisted it should be done. But he only remembered faces without names.
And Nancy. Nancy enjoyed nakedness. She wanted to live where there was always sun and no one needed to wear any clothing at all, and Qipeng pictured that place as Bali, empty of everyone but the two of them. Beaches. Sun.
"Report," Qipeng insisted. His belly cramped again. Qipeng doubled over on the chair, feeling noxious gas escape his hindquarters and the world begin to spin. He would need to go outside soon. But he struggled to wait until the last possible moment, punishing himself. He would not abandon his post.
"Comrade Brigade Commander"--the chief of staff placed his hand on Qipeng's shoulder. He shook him slightly. Qipeng found it difficult to respond.
"Colonel Luo Qipeng!" the chief shouted at him.
Qipeng looked up at him, finally. He was unshaven. Officers needed to shave, to set the example. Qipeng remembered his father, carefully working the straight razor up and down his neck in the morning light.
"Your father is on the secure radio. He wants to speak to you. Can you talk to him?"
His father. Qipeng rose quickly, a bit too quickly, as though he had been caught making a mistake, letting the old man down.
The chief of staff helped him across the command post to the vehicle containing the secure radio sets. An operator pulled up a stool for Qipeng, but Qipeng would not sit. Not in the presence of his father.
"Your call sign is 'Python,'" the operator reminded him. "The front commander is 'Cyclone.'"
Python. Cyclone. Qipeng took the microphone, steeling himself.
"Cyclone, this is Python."
His father's voice to him, instantly recognizable even through the horrid reception. "This is Cyclone. Report your situation."
Qipeng sought to order his thoughts. "This is Python..." he began. "We are in heavy combat. Enemy units have penetrated..." He forced his speech to behave, to conform to military standards. It required an enormous effort, the greatest of all his conversations with his father. "We have been penetrated by enemy armored forces attacking on a minimum of two axes. We have suffered heavy casualties in the advance battalions, especially to enemy attack drones and helicopters. Our current course of action involves the establishment of a series of local defenses, oriented on retaining control of vital intersections. We are attempting to channel and slow the enemy's attack."
The voice on the other end was slow in responding. Did I mess up? Qipeng wondered. He stared out the open rear of the vehicle, straining to read the situation map's details from an impossible distane, desperate to offer his father whatever answers he wanted.
"Python, this is Cyclone. Your decision is approved. Continue local defensive ations. Do all that you can to break the enemy's tempo of movement and to disrupt his plan." The voice paused, and Qipeng thought for a moment that the transmission had come to an end. He nearly panicked. He wanted to tell his father... he knew there were important things to say, but how could he say them, in front of all these other people?
"You must hold out," the voice came back, and Qipeng imagined that he could detect a note of human warmth in it now. He realized with perfect clarity what such a breach in his rigorous personal discipline must have cost the old man. "You must hold out. We will support you -bzzzt- every available sortie of ground attack aircraft. You may expect relief by our forces in twelve to eighteen hours..." Again, a pause. "Can you hold on?"
Qipeng straightened his back. "Cyclone, this is Python. We will do our duty."
"I know you will do your duty," the distant voice said, receding into static. "I know that all your soldiers will do their duty. And you will have all the support the People's Republic has to give you. Good luck." And his father formally ended the transmission.
Qipeng stood still. He felt as though a critical link had been severed, not just in a military context, but in his life. He wanted to hear his father's voice a little longer. Anything not to let go of the old man.
Voices picked up around him, calling in nervous haste. The chief of staff yelled for the ranking forward air controller. Yes, sorties. Aircraft. We'll hang on, Qipeng thought.
Captain Kang Zongqi was literally scared shitless. After the last mission, he had spent precious minutes on the ground changing from his soiled underwear into a fresh pair. And yet, he would go on doing his technical best to kill the enemy until the enemy killed him. The losses on both sides had scoured the skies of the masses of aircraft evident, despite the poor weather, on the first day of hostilities. Now the air efforts were concentrated against key points, and there were great expanses of nearly vacant skies.
Zongqi's altimeter registered his aircraft at barely 80 meters above the ground. He would have liked to fly even lower, but the number of losses to power-line strikes had been appalling. There were too many towering pylons in South Korea, with their long, ropy lines set like nets to catch the very best pilots.
He had lost his wingman on a run against the highway overpasses between Cheongwan and Sangju. He had hit his target, but the strike did not seem to do any significant damage. His lieutenant went down and the bridge stayed up--it was an enormous structure--and the enemy retained its use.
It took all of Zongqi's experience to fly the aircraft now. He had a terribly difficult mission this time--close support of ground forces in a running battle, with no clear front line. Pilot training for close air support was never really adequate, but Zongqi was a professional, and he did his best to improve himself on the simulators. But the voice commands there never had the panic, the confusion, encountered on a real battlefield.
"Zero-Five-Eight, Zero-Five-Eight, I've got you on my radar." It was the corps air control post. "Is your wingman hugging you tight? I can't discriminate."
"Polaris, this is Zero-Five-Eight. No wingman. Solo sortie."
"Roger, Fifty-eight. I'm vectoring you on an azimuth of two-four-five from your known point. You are about to become army property."
The ground rushed by under the belly of the aircraft, and the treetops seemed to surround the fuselage. Zongqi's tired mind fought to maintain control, to make everything hold together.
"Roger, I have the known point."
"You're in the box, fifty-eight. Passing you to the tactical controller."
A new voice came up. "Roger that, Polaris. Fifty-eight, this is Orion Actual. Orion Three will be your forward controller. Do you copy?"
"Roger that, Orion Actual. Fifty-eight is on heading two-four-five. Waiting for voice from Orion Three."
Zongqi hated this kind of mission. The tactical air controller had not even bothered to specify a target type. Now Zongqi had no idea whether he would be directed against tanks, or infantry, or artillery positions, or an enemy command post, and any one of those targets would be near-impossible to spot from a fighter-bomber hurtling over the earth at Mach 1.2 and under a hundred meters of altitude. Orion Three would have to do his job perfectly, or the mission would be wasted.
Everything went by incredily fast. Below him, lines of military vehicles crowded the roads, and clusters of equipment burned by in the fields where units had deployed. In most cases, it was impossible identify whether they were friend or foe. Columns of smoke marked a nearby engagement, islands of fire soon developed into an archipelago along the trace of the main highway. Zongqi then flew right through an artillery barrage. The aircraft shook and nearly pitched into the ground.
"Orion Three, this is Fifty-eight. I'm climbing. Tell me when you have me on visual." Zongqi pulled back on the stick, hoping that none of the air-defense troops, either Chinese or enemy, would knock him down.
"Fifty-eight, I have you on visual," the forward air controller called. "Slow down."
Fuck no, Zongqi thought.
"Marking own troops with green flares," the controller said, rushing the words. "Danger close, hit the far treeline, just hit the goddamn treeline!"
Just in front of his aircraft, Zongqi caught sight of two flares arching into the sky through bllows of black smoke.
"Visual on your markers, danger close confirmed, here we go."
Zongqi banked slightly and dove, aiming his aircraft through the V of the flares, and searched beyond the smoke for the treeline in the last quick seconds. He thought he had it, hoping it was the correct one. Terrain features rushed up so fast he could not see any enemy vehicles at all. He saw nothing but a fringe of trees.
He half heard the controller verifying he was on the correct heading as he cast off his ordnance, eight thousand kilograms of anti-armor bomblets and incendiaries. Ground-attack aircraft had stopped doing initial orientation passes on the first day of the war.
Behind his tail section, the entire Earth seemed to shake. He came out in a hard turn, heading back home. A new patch of smoke obscured his vision.
Kill them, until they kill me, he told himself. Kill them, until they kill me... kill them...
Qipeng's stomach rebelled. The pang hit him so violently that it bent him over the radio set, and he feared he would shit himself on the spot. He hurried for the entrance flap in the canvas.
The chief of staff touched him. "Colonel Luo, can I help you?"
"I'm all right," Qipeng said, pushing by. "I'm all right. I'll be back in a moment."
He tripped over a tent stake, then picked himself up with difficulty. Then he advanced further, hopping over the deep ruts carved by tanks and other combat vehicles. He looked around, trying to spot the perimeter guards. He did not want anyone to see him.
His intestines bit him again, struggling to empty themselves. Qipeng staggered. He touched a tree trunk for stability, then forced himself to march a little longer, to put a few more low shrubs between his act and the field command post. Finally, he found a thick grove just beyond the command post's clearing. He lowered himself against the trunk of a tree in his agony, straining to crouch on burning calves.
He knew he had failed. He had failed at everything for which he had spent his lifetime preparing. Now his father was trying to rescue him. He had even corrupted his father.
Qipeng stared, sweating, up through threes. The sky shone a hot, magnificent blue. He wheezed, waiting for his body to finish punishing him. He felt that all of his strength was at an end.
The roar of jets came up fast, flying very low. It was big, rushing, noise, commanding in its power. The jets, he thought. Already. His father had sent him these gifts.
But then the forest was burning around him. How? It made no sense. He was on his side as well, lying in his filth. Then another blast picked him up and slapped him against a tree. He sagged, his mouth crying in pain though he felt nothing except... tumbling. Yes, tumbling, he was tumbling in the waves now, playing with Nancy. It was Thailand, and the sea was salty and warm, and the sky was a splendid cloudless blue. And the sun. The sun came closer and closer. And he rolled in the sea. It was too rough for Nancy; he called to warn her. And the enormous sun came closer still, colliding with the earth.
Qipeng opened his eyes. Everything around him was on fire. The trunk and branches were burning. The forest floor, too.
His hands were burning. The rags around his ankles were burning. He scrambled to his feet, waving his arms--now simply bloody torches--but one of his legs was missing, and he fell face forward into something wet, but on fire. A tree branch had torn out his guts, and now they were burning as well.
"Nancy!" he cried out, or thought he cried out. "Father! Not like this, God, not like this--"
  
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"Wang Shaxi, report to regimental command."
It was Dragon Ten again. The voice over his headset jolted Shaxi awake. It took him a moment to register the lack of a callsign, or even a rank, and his heart sank. So he was a war criminal, after all.
The Seventy-Seventh Mechanized Division, Shaxi's parent unit, had taken command at Gapyeong. The bridgehead had taken on the character of a small military city. Air-defense systems crowned the surrounding hills. Five bridges floated in the Bukhan River at intervals of several hundred meters, ready to augment the 4-lane highway bridge or replace it, should the enemy finally succeed in their efforts to drop the prize span in the water. Antennas poked out of windows and rooftops, as a half-dozen divisional and regimental command posts jostled for space. On the northern bank, artillery batteries vomited their steel hail into the sky; Shaxi had lost count of the endless barrages of rockets and shells they had sent forth. And above them, dozens of drones drifted back and forth, like deadly flocks of migratory geese.
Shaxi stepped into the shattered remnants of what had once been a bank. The divisional commander had set his command post in the underground vault, surrounded by sacks of now-worthless Korean currency. His face was stern.
"Shaxi, sit down." He glanced at his divisional chief of staff, who had his arms crossed. A third officer, unfamiliar to Shaxi, huddled over a laptop, uninterested in the conversation. "We read your report. Don't worry about what happened with those refugees. This is war, not a vacation."
And so that was it? They had called him here just to tell him everything was okay?
"But we do think you're the right man for a job. We... just relieved your regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Min, and we think that you should assume his role. You have an immediate task ahead of you."
Shaxi blinked twice. This quick?
"We have reformed your forward detachment with the remnants of the 331st Regiment--you know, the one that was in heavy combat two nights ago, prior to the commitment of your regiment--into a new mechanized regiment, and you are to join a counterattack against the left wing of the Korean II Corps."
Shaxi had heard the rumors drifting between him, the air-assault lieutenant colonel, and Captains Xia and Pang. The Korean II Corps, together with the American 1st Marine Division, were leading a full-scale operational breakout from the Seoul pocket to link up with the American III Corps at Chuncheong.
"You will be augmented with elements from the Five Hundred and Eighteenth Drone Regiment. These are new-model attack drones, and we've assigned an officer--" the division commander nodded towards the laptop boy "--to help set them up for you. The 331st Regiment will join you in the counterattack, and the 115th will function as a second echelon. Your counterattack will begin in--" The division commander checked his watch "--two hours. Good luck."
Shaxi had no doubts about the reality of the mission. The refugee attack had made him a political liability, and now he was to redeem himself by somehow disrupting the attack of an entire Corps with a mere regiment. He saluted and prepared to leave. A voice held him back.
"One more thing, Shaxi. Here is your new uniform--" a staff officer held out a pair of lieutenant colonel's shoulderboards "--and your new callsign is Genghis. Good luck."
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Fuck. Why did he have to die? I felt so sorry for him throughout the story! Thanks for the writings though - it is, as always, a pleasure to read!
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Shady normally I really like your blogs, but I have to tell you I haven't been reading these stories - it's too depressing, because given the backdrop (your Hearts of Iron campaign) I know the "bad guys" are going to win.
What I mean by "bad guys" isn't what you're probably thinking right now - I am American, but it's not the stupid knee-jerk "china bad west good" stuff, nor is it the teamliquid "china bad Koreans good" stuff.
The thing is, in your campaign and in these stories, China under your control started World War Three with the desire of conquering the world/creating a global hegemony. It's basically unjust aggressors versus overwhelmed defenders, and while I'm really really interested in the logistical/strategic side of things in your normal blogs about HoI, when you personalize it like this I just keep feeling bad for the people who are getting attacked and disliking the Chinese officers.
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On November 17 2012 23:39 strongandbig wrote:
Shady normally I really like your blogs, but I have to tell you I haven't been reading these stories - it's too depressing, because given the backdrop (your Hearts of Iron campaign) I know the "bad guys" are going to win.
What I mean by "bad guys" isn't what you're probably thinking right now - I am American, but it's not the stupid knee-jerk "china bad west good" stuff, nor is it the teamliquid "china bad Koreans good" stuff.
The thing is, in your campaign and in these stories, China under your control started World War Three with the desire of conquering the world/creating a global hegemony. It's basically unjust aggressors versus overwhelmed defenders, and while I'm really really interested in the logistical/strategic side of things in your normal blogs about HoI, when you personalize it like this I just keep feeling bad for the people who are getting attacked and disliking the Chinese officers.
TBH, I do share your viewpoint to a certain extent. (Consider how every single Chinese field-grade officer profiled in this work of fiction, with the exception of the designated hero Shaxi, has died.)
This work is not what I hope China will do. Nor does this tale presuppose that a war is either imminent or inevitable--indeed, if Chinese, Japanese, and Korean politicians continue their recent conciliatory movements, there are substantial grounds for careful optimism--and it should be clear from the events described in these pages that war is not getting any more attractive an option for solving political problems as military technology improves.
Authors are marvelously privileged in that they can kill tens of thousands while only spilling ink instead of shedding blood, but the paper war in which we engage is only a comfortable shadow of the horror of modern warfare. This is ultimately a work of fiction--a cautionary tale on one level, a creative investigation on another.
If there is a conscious message between its covers, it is not that there will be a war between the differently uniformed collection of brothers on either side of the East Asian seas, but that, should such a war occur, it will be fought between men of the same flesh and blood, with their own talents, ambitions, and dreams.
Thankfully, I believe that the great majority of them will resemble each other, in their desire to simply get on with the business of living.
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Lieutenant Colonel Wang Shaxi, newly minted commander of the 331st Mechanized Regiment, watched the attack from the forward observation post southeast of Gapyeong.
His superior had been as explicit as possible. The rapid breakout, led by the 1st Marine Division, had opened a hole between them and the slower-moving Korean II Corps. His regiment was to descend into the fray, to slow them down. After checking the map, Shaxi decided on a plan. The terrain unfolded onto Highway 60, the Gyeongchun Expressway; he would breach the highway line, fording the Hongcheong River, and then establish short-range rocket and drone positions atop the hills northeast of Yangpyeong, where they could threaten forces using the Gyeongchun or Yeongdong Expressways to break out from the Seoul-Suwon pocket.
Shaxi reviewed the estimated enemy positions and road schedules in his handheld tablet again. The figures suggested a twenty-minute window in which this particular stretch of the Gyeongchun Expressway would be held by a single Korean battalion, but if he was off by fifteen minutes on either side, he would run straight into a trail brigade of the 1st Marine Division or the lead division of the Korean II Corps.
He had appointed Captain Pang, now Major Pang, to flank the enemy from Chunghyo-ro, and informed the other battalion commanders to prepare for a frontal assault from Hudong-ri. He did not want to waste time, to make the mistake of his predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel Min.
At the briefing, his officers had worn incredulous looks. Xia, also newly promoted, had asked repeatedly if Shaxi was serious about wedging his lone regiment between a division and an entire corps. They had all given up so much, he wanted to tell them, and now they were on the verge of finishing the job. Shaxi realized that none of his tanker's training had prepped him for giving grand speeches, and he simply nodded in response.
The earth twitched beneath his feet. The artillery preparation had begun, concentrating all available fires on the known or estimated enemy positions. The broad, low valley filled with light, as though a bizarre morning had arrived ahead of schedule. Shells crashed and sputtered, ripping into the horizon by the thousands. Shaxi could not understand how men survived such shelling, yet he knew that some of them always did. It was, at times, amazingly difficult to kill the human animal.
The streaking dazzle of a multiple rocket launcher barrage rose from the left of the observation post, breaking in mid-air into tens of thousands of cluster bomblets that rained on the highway line like molten hail. Then the canopy of scheduled illumination began to unfold, with lines of flare rounds bursting in crooked ranks, hanging in the air four to six hundred meters apart like a trail of christmas lights.
Shaxi watched Xia's battalion deploy, his newly-blooded veterans flooding over the near crests in company columns that soon spread further into columns of platoons, all the while maintaining good combat speed. On the valley floor, the platoons further fanned out and the combat vehicles came on line. Shaxi could easily pick out the positions of the company and battalion commanders, of the staggered ranks of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and the air-defense weaponry trailing to the rear. On the trail of the maneuver battalions, the drone trucks snooped along, launching their light attack craft for direct-fire support. Then, at the very rear, ammo trucks and little clusters of ambulances followed. It was one of the most complete maneuvers Shaxi had ever seen, and it suddenly translated into timelessness for him.
He had never grasped it before, but now he saw in the surging lines the perfect modern version of the old dynastic armies marching out in their ready ranks, the men of Guan Yu or Yue Fei. The only difference today was that the rank and file wore layers of composite armor in place of the colorful uniforms of old. In a moment of skepticism, he told himself that there was really no comparison between these squat, ugly steel bugs scuttling across the valley floor and the antique brilliance of horse archers and heavy cavalry. But it was the same--he could not deny it now. It was exactly the same, and the revealed truth of it burned into Shaxi. What ever changed about war? he asked himself. Then, beside him, he heard Rena ask, what ever changed about mankind?
The Korean gunners and tank crews began to find targets, even with the Chinese artillery and drone rockets still crashing upon them. Shaxi had to admire the Koreans. He doubted that many men, especially those who had not previously known war, would even briefly attempt to stand their ground in the face of such a downpour of high explosives. Here and there, one of Shaxi's vehicles convulsed into a tiny bonfire or slowed, crippled, from the advancing ranks. Shaxi returned to his insistent vision. It made so much sense he could hardly believe it--the way he used to picture men falling away at the first enemy arrow volleys, only now the men had been made a part of war machines.
Upon reaching the fifteen-hundred meter line from the highway, his tanks briefly halted, not content with suppression fired from the move. Commanders' lasers and tracer bullets danced towards targets selected for platoon-level volley fire. The ranks of steel rippled with muzzle blasts and recoils. Then they began to march again, picking up speed as they closed. Shaxi could almost hear the drumbeats and the clipped, shouted commands issued under sweat-drenched beards. Forward, closer, charge...
The artillery shifted to a deeper targeting line as Chinese vehicles approached the highway. Shaxi watched, pained, as more and more of his vehicles fell out, some ending their journeys with volcanic explosions from which no survivors would emerge. Hundreds of green and purple parachute flares hung in the sky at once, and the battle took on a burnished hyperreality, as though the entire world was made of neon. The advancing lines wavered as individual tanks or platoons sought ways around local terrain impediments, but the classic, magnificent formations never broke.
As the last artillery lifted a new presence appeared over the battlefield, to the accompaniment of dozens of pink starbursts. This element could not be fitted so neatly into Shaxi's historical model. Six pairs of heavy attack drones and helicopter gunships rode in through the neon sky, coming from the right. The ugly aircraft had a presence both horrid and magical, spitting dozens of rockets into the enemy lines like flying dragons, or slowing into targeted missile-attack runs. Then they disappeared over the waves of Chinese vehicles.
The attack made the crest, and the vehicles continued down into the next valley. A radio set in the observation post squealed and coughed with Major Xia's requests for more illumination, even as another station chirped with Major's Pang's confirmation that they had completely penetrated the Korean position. A spontaneous cheer went up from the group of officers, clerks, and signalers assembled at the observation post, but Shaxi could only shake his head at the wastage in the valley and on the far slopes as the last flares sputtered into oblivion.
He turned to the regimental chief of staff.
"Faster. Drive faster. The enemy has to know where we are now, and they'll try to crunch us before we get into the hills. We can't stop on this damned road. Inform the division commander that we're in. I'm getting in my tank to join the regiment on Yongmunsan. Wish us luck."
The final part of the story is here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=382770
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EPT
