EPThttp://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=376673
Army General Luo Shuren, Commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Forces in Korea, sat alone in his private office, sipping a strong cup of tea. The room was dark except for a bright pool where a bank of spotlights reflected off the situation screen. Shuren sat just out of the light, staring absently at the map he knew so well. Beyond the office walls, vivid action coursed through the hallways of the bunker, blood through arteries, despite the late hour. From his chair, Shuren heard the activty as half-smothered footsteps and voices passing up and down the corridor, resembling valley noises heard from a cloud-wrapped mountain.
And that, Shuren thought, is what war sounds like. Not just the whistle of rockets, the rattle of automatic weapons, and the shouting of men, but the haste of a staff officer's footsteps and the tapping of a clerk's keyboard. And, of course, the whirs and beeps of electronics. Perhaps, Shuren thought, this will be the last real one, the last great war fought by men aiming weapons. Perhaps the next big one would be fought entirely by means of machines that could think. Things were changing so troublingly fast.
But there would always be a next time, Shuren was certain of that. Even if they were foolish enough to throw nuclear ordnance across oceans, Shuren was convinced that enough of mankind would survive to organize new armies to fight over whatever remained. Man would remain man, and there would always be wars, and there would always be soldiers. And, in his heart, Shuren was convinced there would always be a China.
There was a flicker of light as the map updated itself. Shuren focused hard on a blurred collection of colors just south of where the Yalu River emptied into the sea. A Chinese mechanized division had found its American counterpart--an unwelcome discovery, Shuren imagined, for the American commander. Just like the fateful November over a half-century ago, China had stayed out of the peninsula until inaction would mean the end of North Korea as a state. And while the North Koreans were a pale shadow of their brothers to the south, to say nothing of the United States, Shuren knew that he and his army were more than a match.
To the south, the red bulge near Pusan told him the story of the first blow. The landings were going well. The port that had proven so useful for the Americans in the last war was now securely in Chinese hands, and the entire grouping was getting ready for a push north along the Gyeongbu Expressway towards Daegu and Seoul. They had not encountered meaningful resistance along the way--the Americans and Koreans had seriously underestimated Chinese amphibious capabilities. 80,000 Chinese troops were on the ground, cutting transport infrastructure, capturing supply dumps, destroying command and control nodes. Shuren could feel the fear in the commanders of the other side, now. He wanted them to look hard at this sudden threat in their strategic rear, and lose focus on the powerful blow soon coming in the north.
Junior Lieutenant Fang Xiaotian wiped at his eyeglasses with his fingers and ordered his driver forward. The view through the vehicle commander's optics allowed no meaningful orientation. Rapid flashes dazzled in the periscope's lens, leaving a deep gray veil of smoke in their wake. The view was further disrupted by raindrops that found their way under the external cowl of the lens block. American cyberattacks had severely degraded the Chinese satellite navigational system, reducing the geographic precision on his digital map to over 3 kilometers. Xiaotian felt as though he were guiding his reconnaissance track through the bottom of the sea.
The shudder of the powerful artillery bursts reached through the metal walls of the vehicle. Suddenly, the armor felt hopelessly thin, the tracks too weak to hold, and the cannon little more than a toy. Occassionally, a tinny sprinkling of fragmentation struck the vehicle, faintly audible through Xiaotian's headset and over the engine whine. He could feel the engine pulling, straining to move the tracks through the mud of the forest trail.
"Comrade Lieutenant, we're very close to the barrage," his driver old him.
Xiaotian understood that the driver meant too close. But the lieutenant was determined to outperform every other reconnaissance platoon leader in the battalion, if not in the entire 54th Group Army.
"Keep moving," Xiaotian commanded. "The crossing at the Yalu was much worse. Just keep moving and head straight through the smoke."
The driver obeyed, but Xiaotian could feel his unwillingness through the metal frame that separated them. For a moment, Xiaotian took his eyes away from the periscope and looked to the side, checking on his gunner. But Jiemin was all right, eyes locked to his own periscope. Three men in a rolling steel box. There was no margin of safety in personnel now; everyone had to do his job without fail. Xiaotian had never recieved the additional soldiers required to fill out his reconnaissance platoon for war, and he had no extra meat, no dismount strength, in his own vehicle. As it was, he could barely man the essential positions in each of his three tracks.
It was impossible to judge the exact location of his vehicle now. If everything was still according to plan, his second vehicle would be tucked in behind him, with Senior Sergeant Ming to the rear in an overwatch position. Xiaotian laughed to himself. Overwatch. You couldn't see ten meters. He glanced back at the topographic digital map, trying to orient himself based on the rough terrain features he encountered.
The trail began dropping toward a valley or ravine. Artillery rounds struck immediately to the front. "Keep going," Xiaotian said. "Get down into the low ground. This trail should follow the ravine for a while, so stay on it as long as the smoke holds. Fast now, move!"
Xiaotian sensed that they were very close to the enemy. Clots of earth and stone flew into the air, hurtling across his narrowed horizon. Xiaotian guessed that, if he moved off the trail, there might be mines, but that the trail itself would only be covered direct fires--which would be ineffective in the confusion of the Chinese artillery preparation.
"Lieutenant, we're catching up with the barrage. We're too close."
"Keep going. We're already in it. Go right through."
"Comrade Lieutenant..." It was Junior Sergeant Chen Jiemin, his gunner and assistant. The boy's face was pale.
"It's all right," Xiaotian told him through the intercom. "Just spot for targets. If we wait and try to sneak through, they'll get us for sure."
An unidentified object thumped against the vehicle so hard that the vehicle jolted, as though wincing in pain.
"Go faster," Xiaotian shouted to the driver. "Just stay on the road and go as fast as you can."
"I can't see the road. I've lost it."
"Just go." Xiaotian brushed his fingers against his glasses. he felt the fear rising in his belly and chest, unleashed by the impact of whatever had hit them.
As they pushed further along the trail, the artillery blasts seemed to swamp them, shaking the vehicle like a boat on rough water. Xiaotian realized that if they threw a track now, they were dead. In the thick smoke, the lights of the blasts seemed demonic, alive with deadly intentions.
"More to the left... to the left."
Alert lights popped on the corner of his viewscreen as one of the tracks buckled on the edge of a gully, threatening to peel away from the roadwheels.
Target, Jiemin screamed.
But the sudden black shape off to their right side was lifeless, its metal deformed by a direct artillery hit. The driver swerved away, and the tracks came level, back on the trail again.
Xiaotian broke out in a cold sweat. He had not seen the shattered enemy IFV until they almost collided with it. He wondered, for the first time, if he had not done something irrevocably foolish.
Fragments from a nearby impact smacked the external lens of Xiaotian's periscope, cracking it diagonally, as the vehicle reached a pocket where the wind had thinned the smoke to a transparent gauze. Several dark shapes moved out of the smoke on a converging axis.
"Targets. Gunner, right. Driver, pull left now."
It took Xiaotian a moment to realize these were tanks. But the enemy tanks moved quickly away, either uninterested in or unaware of Xiaotian's presence. The huge armored vehicles disappeared back into the smoke, black metal monsters roaming over the floor of hell. None of the turrets turned to fight.
"Hold fire."
The enemy were evidently pulling off of a forward position. The fire was too much for them. Xiaotian tried his radio, hoping the antenna had not been cut away.
"Knife Rest, this is Dagger. Do you hear me?"
Nothing.
The heaviest fire struck behind them now. But the smoke, mingled with the fog and rain, still forced them to drive without points of orientation. Xiaotian worried because he had once turned in a complete circle in a smokescreen on a training exercise, in the most embarrasing moment of his brief career. He could still hear the laughter and the old jokes about lieutenants.
"Knife Rest, this is Dagger. I have a priority message."
"Dagger, this is Knife Rest." The control station barely came through the sea of static.
"Enemy forces in at least platoon strength withdrawing from forward positions under fire strike. I can't give you an exact location."
"Where are you? What's your location?"
Xiaotian glanced at his viewscreen, hazarded a guess. "I'm in my assigned sector. Visibility's almost zero. We just drove under the artillery barrage. We're in among the enemy."
"You're hard to read. I'm getting a garbled transmission. Did you say you're behind the artillery barrage?"
"On the enemy side of it. Continuing to move."
There was a long silence on the other end. Xiaotian sensed that he had surprised them all. He felt a bloom of pride. Then the faint voice returned.
"Dagger, your mission now is to push as far as you can. Ignore assigned boundaries. Just go as deep as you can and call targets. Do you understand?"
"Clear. Moving now."
Xiaotian switched to the intercom. The smoke thinned slightly. His first instinct was to move for high ground so he could fix his location. But he quickly realized that any high ground would not only reveal his presence but was likely to be occupied by the enemy.
"Driver, follow the terrain, stay in the low ground. Just watch out for ditches and water."
He switched again, this time to his platoon net, trying to raise the other two tracks.
"Rapier, this is Dagger."
He waited. No answer. He tried again and still got no response. He swung the turret around to get a better view, straining to see through his cracked and dirty optics. Nothing. Misty gray emptiness.
"Dagger, this is Saber." Xiaotian heard Senior Sergeant Ming's voice. "I can't hear any response from Rapier. My situation as follows: moving slowly with the barrage. Can't see a damned thing. I lost you twenty minutes ago."
"This is Dagger. Clear transmission. Continue to move on primary route. Watch for Rapier, he may be stuck out there. End transmission."
His other vehicle might be broken down or mired. But, he realized, it was more likely that they were dead. He was surprised to find that he felt little emotion, and ashamed to experience how swiftly his thoughts turned to the implications the loss of the vehicle and crew had for him.
"Driver, get on that trail to the right. That one."
The vehicle eased onto a smooth forest trail that looked very well-kept. Xiaotian hoped to find a spot to tuck in for a minutes so they could clean off all their vision blocks and lenses and tighten the antenna. One barrage had already passed over the forest, and patches of trees had been splintered and blackened. The driver worked the tracks over a small fallen trunk. He drove the vehicle cautiously, with no desire to throw a track in such close proximity to the enemy.
"Lieutenant, I can barely see," the driver said. "Can I pop open my hatch?"
"No. Stop right here, I'll get out and clean the blocks."
The vehicle rocked to a standstill. Xiaotian unlatched the safety bolt and pushed up his hatch. The sudden increase in the noise level was striking. The weight of the artillery preparation was incredible, and the fires sounded much closer now. It was difficult to imagine anything surviving such an effort.
Just ahead, another trail crossed the one along which they had moved. The other trail was deeply rutted and black with mud, evidence that several tracked vehicles had already passed along it.
Xiaotian lowered himself back into the hatch. "Jiemin, load an anti-tank missile into the main gun. I don't think we're alone." Then he stripped off his headset and snaked out of the turret. The hatch ring and deck felt slippery with moisture and dirt, and he grasped the long, thin barrel of the 30mm autocannon to steady himself, crouching.
The armament appeared to be all right, with no metal deformities on either the 100mm main cannon or the 30mm autocannon. But on numerous spots on the vehicle skin, the paint had been scorched or the bolt-on armor had been gashed or even sheared off. One fender twisted into the sky. An external stow-box was gone, and the spare track pads were missing. The shovel was gone, too. The main antenna for the high-powered radio was nicked, but functionally intact.
Aircraft drifted above, their engines an occasional whisper. Big raindrops burst like shells on his skin. More rain was coming. Xiaotian hurriedly cleaned all of the optics with a rag, trying not to smear them too badly. Then he dropped back into the turret.
"The trail looks clear enough up ahead, but you can't see very far. The enemy has either passed through these woods or he's still somewhere in here with us."
"Maybe we should wait for a while, Lieutenant. See what the enemy does, you know?" Jiemin was clearly frightened. Xiaotian hoped the gunner would be able to shoot straight when the time came.
Xiaotian pushed up his glasses with his knuckles, careful not to get dirty fingerprints on them. "No. We have to get a fix on our location. And if we just site, the artillery will roll back over us. We're moving."
The truth was, Xiaotian was afraid to remain motionless, afraid to handle the stress of inactivity.
"Driver, can you see all right now?"
"Better, Lieutenant."
"Let's go. Nice and easy." Xiaotian wanted to make sure he spotted the enemy before they spotted his lone vehicles. He knew it would be impossible to hear moving vehicles until they were fatally close, due to the noise of the artillery.
The tracks dug themselves into the peat of the trail, then gripped and lurched forward. Xiaotian unlatched his assault rifle from the wall mounting. He expected to fight with the main gun and the autocannon, but he wanted to be prepared for anything. Then he stood up straight behind the shield of the still-open hatch, weapon at the ready, headset flaps left open so he could hear a bit of the world around him.
The vehicle pivoted into the rutted trail, tracks sliding and spraying mud high into the air behind them. The rain picked up, blurring his glasses. Xiaotian pocketed them. Nervously, he ejected a cartridge from his weapon, ensuring it was loaded and ready.
"Jiemin?"
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"How well can you see?"
"About 30 meters down the trail."
"If I duck down and start turning the turret, be ready."
"Got it."
Xiaotian heard the nerves in both of their voices. He was furious about the lack of soldiers to fill out his crew. He wanted all of the fighting power he could get. He wished his lost track was still with him.
Black vehicle shapes. Xiaotian squinted hard. Thirty meters through the trees.
The lieutenant dropped into the turret, not bothering to close the hatch behind himself. He took control of the turret, turning it, forehead pressed against the optics.
"See them? Fire, damn you. Fire!"
The autocannon began to recoil, steady rhythmic jerks that the other lieutenants lewdly compared to lovemaking.
"There. To the right."
"I have him."
"Driver, don't stop. Go!"
The reconnaisance track pulled level with a small clearing in the forest. The sides of two enemy command tracks faced them, drop ramps lowered towards each other. Two light command cars were parked to one side. A third track that had been hidden from view began to move for the trail.
"Hit the mover, hit the mover!"
Jiemin slapped a button on the control stick, and the anti-tank missile slid from the main gun towards the moving track, its white trail of rocket exhaust terminating in a bright orange fireball.
"Driver, front to the enemy. Jiemin, don't bother reloading another missile."
Xiaotian swung the turret again. The enemy fired back with small arms, although one man stood still, helmetless, as though he had never in his life expected such a thing to happen.
Jiemin's marksmanship was good. 30mm rounds raked the sides of the enemy tracks. All good, clean, flank shots, the sparks indicating that they were punching through the armor. The rear half of track that had made a run for it was engulfed in flames now. The driver's hatch popped open, and Xiaotian cut the man across the shoulders with the heavy machinegun.
The man who had stood so long in amazement slowly raised his hands. Xiaotian turned the machinegun on him, cutting him in two at the waist with a long burst.
The lieutenant was afraid he would miss one of the dismounted soldiers, and he left the on-board weaponry to Jiemin, standing up behind his shield with his assault rifle.
Just in time, he saw an enemy soldier kneeling behind a stump with a small tube on his shoulder. He emptied an entire magazine into the man, just as Jiemin brought the machine gun around to catch him as well. Without reloading, Xiaotian ducked down and primed one grenade, then another, tossing both towards the enemy vehicles. Then he dropped back inside. The explosions sounded flat, almost inconsequential, after the artillery barrage. Xiaotian realized that his hearing was probably ruined for life.
"Sweep the vehicles one more time with the machine gun. Driver--to the rear, ten meters."
"I can't see."
"Just back up, damn it."
The gears crunched, and the vehicle's tracks threw mud toward the dead and the dying.
"Driver, halt. Jiemin, I'm going out. You cover me."
He felt as though he would have given anything imaginable to have his authorized dismount scouts now. If there was a price to pay for the system's failure, he'd have to pay it. The idea did not appeal to him. He felt as though he were going very, very fast, as though he had the energy to vault over trees, but his hand shook as he grasped the automatic rifle. He didn't bother to unfold the stock. It was challenging enough to snap in a fresh magazine.
As he vaulted out of the turret, every second felt like an hour. He was painfully conscious of how fully he was exposed. As soon as he could, he swung his legs high and to the side, sliding down over the edge of the low turret, catching his rear end sharply on the edge of the vehicle's deck. He felt his glasses crunch in his pocket.
He hit the mud and crouched beside the tracks. Great clots of earth hung from the road wheels. Then he checked to the rear. Nothing. Forest. An empty trail.
To his front, the little command cars blazed, one with a driver still seated, a shadow in the flames. Between his vehicle and the devastated enemy tracks, Xiaotian could see three enemy soldiers lying in the wet, ankle-high grass. One of them moved in little jerks and twists. The other two hardly resembled human beings. None of them made a sound. Another body lay sprawled face down on the ramp of one of the command tracks, while yet another--the antitank grenadier--had been back against a small tree by the heavy machine gun. Bits and pieces of him clung to the branches, barely held together by the tattered remnants of his body armor.
The vehicle that had tried to escape burned with a searing glow on its metal. The type and markings made it American. Xiaotian kept well away from it as he worked his way forward, in case any unexploded ammunition was still on board.
Both of the stationary tracks bore Korean markings, and most of the uniforms were Korean. One of the tracks had its engine running. Xiaotian skirted the front of the running vehicle, half-crouching, half-crawling through the brush. As methodically as his nerves allowed, he maneuvered his way around to the enemy rear.
He halted along the wet metal sidewall of the running vehicle, feeling its motor vibrate. Above the idling engine, he could hear the warble of a radio call in a strange language. He wondered if it was a call for the station that had just perished. Someone moaned softly, almost as if he was snoring. It faded into a rattle. Then it was quiet again.
Xiaotian breathed in deeply. He felt terribly afraid. He could not understand why he was doing this. It seemed as though he was meant to be anyplace but here. He looked at the grenadier's contorted remains. Somehow, it had all seemed a game, a daring game of driving through the artillery. And if he had been caught, he would have been removed from the board. But the man slopped against the tree brought home the reality that being off the board meant going out of the game forever. For a short, yet timeless, moment, Xiaotian simply stared at the small red and blue circle on the rear fender of the far vehicle, as if it could provide answers.
He took a last deep breath, fighting his stomach. He pulled his weapon tight against his side and lunged around the corner of the vehicle onto the drop ramp.
He had forgotten the dead man on the ramp. He tripped over the corpse, flipping over the body and smashing his elbow. He landed with his mouth close to the dead man's ear, and, in an instant of paralysis, he felt the lifelike warmth of the body through the battle dress and sogging rain. The dead man had fine white hairs mixed in with the close-cropped black on the rear of his skull, and Xiaotian saw the dull metal fragment sticking out of the man's neck with superhuman clarity.
As soon as he could, Xiaotian pushed off of the corpse and twisted so that he could fire his weapon into the interior of the vehicle. But he knew that if anyone still had been capable of shooting, he would be dead already.
The running vehicle bore a stew of bodies in its belly. The accidents of the dying had thrown several men together as though they had been dancing and fallen drunkenly. The inside of the cluttered compartment was streaked and splashed with bright red wetness, and uniforms had torn open to spill flesh and splinters of bone. Xiaotian realized that the autocannon rounds had not had the force to punch out the other side of the track, and had expended their energy bouncing back and forth inside the personnel compartment, chopping the occupants.
In the track parked opposite, a lone, armless radio operator sat sprawled over his shattered laptop, microphone hanging limply from a coil cord. On the radio, a foreign voice called the dead.
Xiaotian was sick. He tried to make it to the trees, out of some elementary human instinct, but stumbled over the dead man on the ramp for a second time and vomited on the corpse's back. As he looked down at his mess the lieutenant panicked to see blood smeared over his own chest before realizing it had come from his embrace of the middle-aged body.
Xiaotian wiped the strands from his lips. He stared at the slow progress of his vomit down the angled ramp. He wanted to be home, safe, and never see war or anything military ever again. Then he stood up, wondering if his crew had watched his little performance. The thought of embarassment made him feel sick again. He realized, belatedly, that the man with his hands up had been trying to surrender, and that it had been wrong to gun him down. But during the fighting, it had never occured to him to do anything but shoot at everything in front of him.
The voice on the radio called again. Xiaotian imagined that he could detect a pleading tone. His eyes drifted over the silver epaulets on the shoulders of the corpse at the ramp. Suddenly, he braced himself. This was a command post. There would maps. Radio communications data. Military laptops full of useful intel.
Stomach twisting, Xiaotian stepped into the nearest enemy track and turned to his task.
Next chapter(s):
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=377267
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