You'd heard some of the other officers joke, when the legalities were explained, that it was the only reason officers carried swords anymore. They'd smiled and laughed about it. It made you sick.
Your hand touched your sword hilt. For a brief moment, it felt like your limbs were on autopilot, that you had no choice but to follow procedure, even when you knew procedure was wrong, was disgusting, was against every fiber of your being. It was so, so easy to just go along.
But then you stopped.
One of the things your tutors had pressed into you, over and over, was that there would be times in your life where you would feel as though you were standing before an oncoming train, and the natural response of the body was to freeze, to shut down, for your brain to stop working and for instinct to take over. You weren't sure if you believed those theories that humans evolved from apes, especially given the way the proponents of such things tended to believe they were the most evolved, but it fit with the primal instinct that could take over in such times.
Your tutors, and your mother, and your instructors at the academy, all of them stressed that in these situations, you had to fight that instinct and keep your mind going, that any plan was better than no plan. You cast about for something, anything, to latch onto in the brief few seconds where it wouldn't look suspicion, and you thought of the corrupt ministers and nobility in your stories, always with a scheme. A scheme.
Your spin straightened, your face hardened, reinforcing the mannerisms you'd practiced your whole life. Poised, aloof, above this petty shit, above the questioning of these people who lived in dirt and weren't far removed from it.
"Petty Officer, unhand her this instant." You said, authority behind your voice. He let go of her like she was a hot stove element, and she collapsed to the ground like a puppet with the strings cut. "How
dare you. This battery needs to be ready for action at
any moment and you interrupt my inspection with
this?"
Step one: Get Min-Seo out of trouble. You could get by just on authority for that one. The fear you'd cultivated in the men paid off in one glorious facial expression etched into Kudo's features, and you stalked towards him, pulling your scabbard from your belt and carrying it in your hand like you'd strike him with the blunt edge. Not that you
would, probably, but seeing him flinch was good enough.
Now, step two was making sure that this wouldn't become resentment among the men, that they wouldn't try to take "justice" into their own hands or suspect you of working against them. The solution seemed as natural as breathing, and it was simply to imply your own corruption. Skimming a bit off the top was just a privilege of the office, after all.
"You think I wasn't aware of this, of anything that happens in this battery?" You said, walking a circle around him. Your every word made him cringe, it was thrilling. You leaned in close, as though sharing something confidential, well aware that Kudo would not be quiet about it. "I let the woman have her compensation in scrap brass, you
idiot."
Compensation for what, left unspoken. He'd come to whatever conclusion worked best on his own.
"Do I make myself clear?" You asked, that perfect imperious tone to your voice.
"Perfectly, ma'am." Kudo squeaked.
"Excellent." You glanced to Min-Seo and tilted a head to dismiss her, and she scrambled away. You wondered if she had even taken any brass, or if that was simply a fabrication. Either seemed possible. You were going to have to talk to her later, and that was going to be complicated, but one thing at a time.
You finished the inspection, your mouth feeling increasingly dry, then you retired to your room, sat on your bed, and put your head in your hands. It felt like you'd just put your body and soul through a grueling march, and you wanted to sleep, or maybe throw up. You replayed the incident a few times in your head, trying to think if there was a better way of doing it. You thought about the world where you'd failed to consider it, failed to come up with a plan at all, where you'd pulled your sword and killed a civilian over nothing.
You thought about reality that such a thing would not give many of your fellow officers pause, and it left you cold.
But you had a job to do, so you picked yourself up, pinned a loose hair back in place, screwed your hat to your head, and went back out.
---
Not twenty minutes later, your orders arrived, by a pair of men on bicycles. They saluted as they rolled to a stop near you, and one of them, tall and bespectacled, glanced at the form on the board around his neck.
"My compliments from General Horikoshi. You are to move your battery up to the line to CP Maple for further direction!"
You nodded acknowledgement, and the two soldiers rolled on back to the road and out.
"Get those guns up to the road! We're moving forward!"
Finally. The offensive must be on, and if they were moving you up, it was a success. Command Post Maple was right up at the front line, and if you were pushing farther than that…
This might well be the end of the blasted thing, and you could get back to sea.
"Come on, you dogs! Pull!" Kown yelled, the men rolling the guns out of their pits and hitching them to horses. The quartermaster was yelling at his own men who were running back and forth loading up their wagons with supplies and ammunition. You spotted a saddled horse and made your way to it, riding practice from a lifetime ago leaping back to your mind.
"Sailor, is this horse spoken for?" You asked the attending sailor.
"Not as such, she's a spare-"
You climbed the saddle and peered down on the man.
"Thank you, sailor. To your gun."
The man ran off, and you put the horse through its paces briefly as the guns rolled down to the road, then you took to the head of the column, pulling your hat off and stringing your helmet to your head. Leading troops into battle on horseback… you were a naval officer and you loved it, but there was something to this, a historical weight that was important. The princess leading her troops into battle. If you had a bow and spear, you would be just like the ancient empresses in the stories.
Your revolver and sword would have to do.
The worst part of moving through Joseon was the hills, especially because it seemed you were always going up them and never down. But finally, you broke over the hills that had blocked your battery's view of the front and the whole vast battlefield unfolded before you, and the grainy monochrome photographs and descriptions from relatives in the Army could not do it justice.
From horizon to horizon, and as far as you could see, there was a wound in the earth. A bleeding, ugly gash torn open and held open by the constant pounding of artillery fire, with trenches and dugouts cut as winding mazes throughout. The horizon was a blur of smoke and ash, and the smell that reached you now, which you'd been sheltered from by the hills, was one of the most foul things you could imagine, and you'd spent months on a submarine. A mix of human misery, death, and the waste of war.
Here, just here, the world was ending.
A battery of artillery carved into the hill nearby fired again, the reports joining the constant barrage all around you, and you soothed your horse as you pushed down the hill to the command point, maybe a kilometer away. All around were soldiers and wagons moving in both directions, a crowded and chaotic scene, and you found yourself having to press your way through. You weren't quite sure where you were supposed to go from this point and finally you dismounted your horse and found somebody with sufficient rank pins to salute at the post.
The man, a lieutenant-colonel who looked very harried, returned your salute without so much as an incredulous blink at your presence. It was refreshing to meet someone who just didn't seem to give a damn that you were here.
"Lieutenant?" He asked. "What can I do for you?"
"Sir. I've brought my aircraft destruction battery forward as ordered, but I'm unclear as to where I'm supposed to go from here." Were you supposed to drag the guns out over that mess of craters and stinking death?
"Right. Come here--" He led you further into the command post, which was dug deep into the side of the hill. You emerged into a low room lit by flickering electric lights powered from who knew where. There was a bank of telephones here and men sat at them, answering incoming calls and relaying orders from the men in the room. There was a map spread out over the central table, small labeled models representing various units that were moved about as more reports came in. The man elbowed his way between two junior officers, tugging you with him so you could bend over the map. He jabbed a finger down at a rise, a low hill labeled 'Hill 231.' Lower than a lot of the surrounding hills, but perfect for your purposes. It was dead in the middle of the no-man's land between the two trench lines marked in blue and yellow.
"Establish your battery here on Hill 231. Dig in and send a runner back once that's been accomplished. We expect a Caspian counter-attack soon, so we need to be ready for their scouts and other aircraft. Clear enough, lieutenant?"
You stared at the map and tried to overlay it onto the scene you saw as you came in from the hills. There were no landmarks left, there was nothing left but the undifferentiated brown-grey ooze that permeated the whole affair. Still, your orders were to reestablish the battery out there, somehow.
"Yes sir, thank you sir." You saluted again and turned to leave. The officer seemed to forget you had ever been there as he turned to accept a note from an exhausted looking soldier smeared in mud who had come hurrying into the room. You slipped past and headed back out into the open air, privately relieved to no longer be stuck under the earth.
You lead your horse down one of the few clear paths you could see over the trenches, across some of the bridges and through the cold mud. Overhead, shells were still thundering, and you could see the buzz of a small blue airplane passing over the line. Speed, you knew, was of the essence: the Caspians would re-establish their positions and guns eventually, and if you weren't dug in, it would be disastrous.
"Do any of you see anything that looks like it could be a hill out there?" You asked your NCOs.
"Not particularly, ma'am."
"Kwon, have the men keep their shovels ready. We're to dig in immediately once we reach our new position." You ordered.
"Of course. Do we, um, know where that position is ma'am?"
"I have a rough idea." You lied smoothly. You were going to push forward until you felt you were far enough and dig in to the first patch of firm ground you could find, because if anyone could read the map they'd given you, they probably weren't in the Navy. Now that you were in among the front itself, not even past the second line of trenches yet, you were already profoundly turned around. You ended up pulling out your compass, checking the relative angle of your section of the front, and simply following that.
As soon as you left the road, the going got worse and worse. The ground was churned into a quagmire by shells and the tromping of feet and the men were clearly unnerved by the sight of the dead, which were everywhere. You'd be lying if you weren't unsettled yourself. An Akitsukuni soldier lay face down, sprawled forward with his rifle still clenched tightly in his hands, cut down in mid advance. A young officer, a junior lieutenant younger than you, sat upright in a shell hole, a hand pressed inside the open buttons of his sky blue uniform jacket that was soaked with a rusty red stain of blood. His head was resting back against the dirt behind him, eyes staring vacantly up at the sky. His other hand held something else, a scrap of paper or a photograph. You didn't want to get close enough to see what it was. On your rough path, there was what you took at first for an empty boot, then discovered to your horror that there was still a foot and part of a leg still inside.
You were pulling your horse away when, suddenly, the beast let out a horrible, pained screaming sound and went limp under you. Before you could react, you found yourself sliding off the saddle and hitting the mud all at once, your leg pinned under the creature as it thrashed and whined. It was pressing you down into the mud, face first, unable to move or escape.
It only lasted a moment before you felt hands gripping your jacket and pulling, and you finally came loose, rolling over and pulling the mud away so you could breathe. Your boot stayed under the horse, which was rapidly bleeding from a wound in its neck. You hadn't even heard a gunshot.
+2 Stress
You went to stand, but Kwon put a hand to your shoulder.
"Stay down, ma'am. Somebody might have been aiming for you."You looked over to the top of the hill, if this was a hill, and nodded.
"Might just be a stray bullet from the front." You muttered. You knew well enough that bullets (and shells, and rockets…) kept going until they hit something or lost enough momentum to stop so either option was just as likely.
You checked to make sure you still had your equipment, then looked to the dying horse. "Somebody put her out of her misery." You said, and a man shuffled over with a rifle to do just that. You fetched your map from your pack and lay the compass onto it, hunting around for any sign that you might be in the right place. There was supposedly some buildings visible from here, but you couldn't see them. The mud was streaming downhill a bit, so you were on some kind of elevation.
You didn't particularly want to press over the hill if guns were trained on it, and as best as you could work out, which wasn't well, you were deep enough into no man's land that nobody could question that you'd done your duty, even if your position wasn't exact. If you did need to make adjustments, you could do so once the lines were properly reestablished and it was safer to move around.
"I think this is our hill. Get dug in, and somebody get me my boot back." You ordered, and all around men sprung to action, sinking shovels into the mud and shifting it as best they could. The nearby detonation of a few stray shells got them working faster, and soon you had some relatively shallow pits to lower the guns into, as well as some craters that had been expanded into holes and a makeshift trench. About a foot of water rested in the bottom of all them. Somehow you missed the miserable patch of dirt you'd been living in before. At least there were some trees and greenery there.
Somebody brought your boot back, and you winced as your foot squelched into it, then you dropped into one of the gun pits with a splash. "Petty officer, get these holes bailed out as best you can." You ordered. Being soaked by seaspray and rain was one thing. Standing in a foot of cold, muddy water was a whole new level of misery.
"I'll do my best, ma'am, but they fill up almost as fast as we bail them out." Another man said something about the water table, and you weren't sure what that was, but it didn't sound promising.
Over the next hour, the horses were sent back, as best an estimation of back as you could make, and the holes started approaching some kind of usable. A good thing too, because not long after, the artillery started coming down hard, shrapnel rattling overhead, and you were grateful for the water-filled holes. Not all your men were so lucky: two of them were caught by a blast while trying to lower an ammunition crate into a pit, and they pitched into the water wordlessly. Neither survived long enough to evacuate. Not that you were really sure where they were supposed to be evacuated to except back the way you had come.
Then, the artillery started being joined by something else. The sound of feet, crackling rifles, the distant staccato of machine-gun fire. A few men in blue coats and soft caps came over the top of the next rise forward, tumbling on the way back down, and two of them got back up. The last lay still.
"What's going on up there, man?" You called out, as the two men stumbled up and past your position.
"We're pulling back! The attack's failed!"
You looked to Kwon quickly. You'd received no such orders.
"We're holding this position, soldier, get back here!"
But they were already running. Another man came over the top, and this one slid into the pit beside you on his way out. You grabbed him by the arm to keep him in place.
"Who ordered this retreat?" You barked, in your best drill instructor voice. The man, pale and with blood splattered across his cheeks, shook his head.
"There's nobody left up there to give that order, sir!" As he spoke another group of blue-clad infantry crested the hill, maybe thirty men in better order. They paused, aimed their rifles back the way they had come and fired off a ragged, cracking volley before they turned to scramble back further. One of them carried a sword and pistol, though considering the amount of mud everyone was covered in, it was impossible to really tell anyone's rank at this point.
The man came up short as he spotted you standing in your (formerly) pristine white uniform, then looked up and down your position.
"You can't stay here," was all he said as he clambered over and dropped into your hole with a wet, splashing squelch. He was young, maybe a little older than you and wore a thing moustache on his upper lip. The sort of young man that you'd expect to see in a clerk's office, not in an army uniform. "The Caspians are going to counter-attack--this is all I have left of my company and we need to pull back to the start line."
"What the hell happened?"
"We thought we had their positions suppressed, but they'd just pulled everything back to their reserve lines and let us pound their trenches flat. It was a killing field." He said wearily. "No cover, out of range of our guns, we walked right into it. Literally walked." He shakily reached into his jacket to pull out a gilt cigarette case and lighter, but couldn't get his trembling hands to light the damn thing. Helpfully, you reached out to take the lighter and held it steady for him. He nodded his thanks, stared at you for a moment.
"Oh, Spirits, you're a woman. You're
the woman. I didn't realize they sent you out here," he said after a moment. Then offered you the cigarette case, as if remembering his manners. Mechanically, you reached out and took one, taking a few tries to light it. The mud on your hand had already dampened the flint.
"Anyway. My men are pulling back--we're leaving in five minutes once I have a smoke." His men had collapsed into your position and were smoking themselves or swigging water from their canteens. All of them looked tired.
"Our orders are to stay in this position. We were supposed to dig in on Hill 213..." You said, not really sure what else to say.
"Hill 213?" He looked at you incredulously. "Hill 213 is a kilometer that way." He pointed back the way you'd come to where another muddy rise lifted upwards. "This is Hill 191. You're too far forward."
"Either way, I haven't received orders to retreat. Besides, I can't just leave my guns here. It will take time to get the limbers back up here, can't you order your men to stay with us and help us get the guns back at the least?"
"Forget the guns. Spike them if you can, but they'll slow you down, get you all killed. The guns are replaceable. Good men, not so much. Bringing your horses back up'll take too much time." He paused. "I don't know if my men will obey any order except to get back to our original lines right now. Though... "
He glanced up to the top of the rise he'd come over, clearly thinking.
"If I did have to pick a spot to make a stand, this is it. Come."
He pulled himself out of the pit and offered a hand, but you were already most of the way out yourself. The two of you crawled the to top of the hill, glancing over.
There was the battlefield. All of it, stretched out before you. You could see the Caspian gun positions as little flares as the pieces fired and a ragged line of mustard yellow moving through the trenches. You could see everything. Small groups of blue and little single splotches were hurrying or limping back and you could see that line of mustard yellow starting to clamber out of its trenches, tipped with steel.
[ ] Spike the guns and run.
[ ] Limber the guns and get out of here.
[ ] My orders are to hold this position. We're holding this position. Are you in?
