AO Is Clear
The air in Balkh Province always carried the faint taste of sand. The hot, dry sun blazed down from the sky with its usual merciless intensity. At least the dryness made the shade somewhat bearable, but soldiers were a breed that had to work under that sun regardless. One rifle. Six magazines. Two fragmentation grenades. Two light infantrymen with neither machine guns nor grenade launchers. The headcount was far too small to dignify with the grandiose label of an “operation,” but with the Forget-Me-Not Unit already whittled down to almost nothing, only five combat-capable personnel remained. There was no other choice.
“Company commander, is that an IED too?”
“No idea. So don’t touch it.”
Anything outside the barracks could be an IED. Discarded cans, dolls with stuffing spilling out, roadside stones, utility poles—even the brats kicking around a tattered soccer ball could be IEDs. It would have been better to simply face the enemy and trade gunfire. Instead, every visible object was a potential threat to their lives. That constant pressure gnawed away at the troops’ mental endurance and filled them with doubt about the mission itself.
“Company commander, how long do we have to keep doing this shit?”
“No idea. So we just endure.”
“Fuck, is there anything you actually know?”
“No idea. If you think too deeply you’ll lose your mind, so don’t overthink it. Just spout some dumb jokes. That’s how you survive out here.”
“Goddamn…”
— BOOM!
The rock the sergeant had kicked exploded. Or, to be precise, the string tied to the rock with tape was pulled, yanking the pin from the grenade that had been buried beneath it. The blast swallowed the sergeant whole and left behind nothing but a few chunks of meat mixed with sand. Shrapnel rattled against body armor and helmets. A burning sensation flared above one eye, and warm blood streamed down, blurring vision.
“See? I told you not to touch it, and you just had to. You some kind of thug?”
It had been a war without justification from the very beginning. The root cause of this conflict was a man the CIA had once cultivated long ago, all in the name of containing the Soviets. After his death, the True Taliban who inherited the martyr’s will set out to prove exactly why this land was called the Graveyard of Empires. American war expenditures skyrocketed. Of course the Taliban suffered overwhelmingly higher casualties, but if the death of dozens or even hundreds of them could remind even a single American soldier of Allah’s greatness, it was considered a profitable exchange.
As Prussia had proven long ago, wars were not decided by kill ratios but by domestic support. The American public, having already seen the chief terrorist eliminated, no longer wanted to watch their young men dragged into the Graveyard of Empires. Yet the U.S. leadership could not tolerate any stain on the reputation of “the world’s strongest America,” while the local Taliban could not tolerate the army of the Antichrist lingering on the sacred soil of the great Arab nation.
In the end, America mobilized “various means” to boost war support, and the Taliban mobilized “various means” to show the world how cruel and brutal the Antichrist’s army truly was. Naturally, those means included us—the ones who had been building schools and wells in remote Afghan villages for the sake of peacekeeping.
There was no grand reason behind it. We simply happened to be in the region chosen by a random dart throw. Strange Easterners began appearing one by one in civilian areas, and soon several religious leaders were found as cold corpses. No one knew who had ordered the killings, and attempting to find out was deemed unnecessary. In any case, both sides had found an excellent pretext.
The rebel commander who had once shared soju with me, claiming it couldn’t be liquor since he’d never heard of it, swung a blade at my throat. The little boy who had been reciting multiplication tables in the school we built hid explosives under his clothes, played basketball with my men, and turned into chunks of meat right before our eyes. It had all been a fabricated operation to create justification; we had no way of knowing the real reason we were fighting. We simply clashed with that tiny rural village without understanding why.
Of course, our story was used by newspapers on both sides to condemn the other. Our affiliation had been changed without our knowledge. The name tags and dog tags sewn into our uniforms had been erased. All of it had happened under the banner of protecting world peace, so it was a rather fitting end for a unit named the Peacekeeping Force.
---
My head hurts. My stomach churns. Every breath brings the lingering stench of alcohol that stings my nasal passages and pours fuel onto the burning migraine inside my skull. I can’t remember the last time I got this drunk. Distillation techniques haven’t been invented yet in this era, so liquor isn’t particularly strong. Most grown men who fancied themselves drinkers usually filled their bellies long before the buzz could truly hit them.
The scenery from that day—the one that always visited me in dreams—once again tormented my mind. Even when I tried to cut off the thoughts, the pounding headache refused to obey. I could feel my body slowly stiffening. Explosions that shouldn’t be audible rang in my ears. Blood rushed to my head. Out of habit I groped beside the pillow, but my rifle was already gone. I was wearing unfamiliar silk robes of a style I had never seen. The building I lay in was made of logs I didn’t recognize.
Even the dagger I always carried at my waist was missing. I snatched up a nearby poker, snapped it in half to make an improvised blade, and quickly scanned the unfamiliar environment. It looked vaguely familiar, yet every object outside the barracks was a potential threat to survival. I was certain I had seen this landscape during a briefing once.
Ignoring the throbbing in my skull as best I could, I used the moonlight streaming through the window as illumination and carefully opened the door.
“Ah, Brother…”
— Clang!
Enemy. I had to slit the throat below the Adam’s apple before she could scream, but she must have received considerable training in close-quarters combat. She drew a long blade and blocked my surprise attack. Long hair, prominent chest—she was a woman. The language sounded like Chinese, though I couldn’t place the specific dialect. I had no idea why the People’s Liberation Army would be blocking my path, but those bastards pulled shit like this every other day. In this hellish land, anything was possible.
She looked to be in her mid-twenties. Her weapons were two long swords… Long swords? In the twenty-first century? Is this bitch crazy…? In any case, without a gun there were always options, but the situation was far from ideal. Whatever had been done to this body, I had lost a great deal of muscle mass. Proper CQB would be difficult. Running through unfamiliar buildings to wage guerrilla warfare was too risky.
I extended the dagger in my left hand to measure distance while my right hand circled behind my back to mislead her sense of range. I bent my knees slightly, ready to spring at any moment, and waited for her eyes to close.
“Brother, have you lost your mind?! Sober up, please!”
One step left, immediately springing my knees while lowering my waist as much as possible, then one step right. I twisted my hand and swung the left blade that had slipped out of her line of sight—
— Clang!
“Hey! Brother! It’s me, Chan!”
She reacted. No—she knew my technique. Her twin blades were longer than my improvised dagger; if we fought at full range I would clearly be at a disadvantage. For now I still held the initiative thanks to the element of surprise, but in melee combat the advantage could flip with the tiniest mistake. With my shorter reach, once I lost the initiative it would be nearly impossible to regain it.
Think. Narrow alleyway. The walls looked too solid to hide explosives in. My muscles had diminished, but so had my overall body weight. If I moved more three-dimensionally… No. Another enemy had appeared behind me. Fortunately he seemed unarmed. Mid-sixties. Male. East Asian. Tall. Unarmed. If I dealt with him first, the swordswoman’s morale might waver…
Forget-Me-Not Six, AO is clear. Operation area secured. Old master, let the crazy bastard sleep.
My body froze. It was extremely rare for local rebels to know English, and the odds of them knowing my Korean callsign were even lower. That meant this was friendly. It had to be friendly. If the callsign had been compromised, it would mean my own people had betrayed me. Therefore this old man was an ally. The fight was over. I had already died there long ago. This place was definitely not that hell.
---
Gongsun Zan, drunk beyond all reason, had stumbled out of his quarters and swung his blade at Liu Bei, who happened to be patrolling at that exact moment. Had it not been Liu Bei—who had once learned swordsmanship from him—the technique would have been nearly impossible to counter. His blade was pure malice condensed into the intent to kill. Even though she knew his patterns, she still had to pour every ounce of concentration into his movements at every single moment.
The midnight sword fight only ended after the noise woke their master, Lu Zhi, who spoke a few words. Gongsun Zan collapsed on the spot, face-down in the dirt. Liu Bei’s heart was still hammering wildly, the pulse echoing past her chest and into her ears and temples. She let out a long sigh and rubbed her chest, then prodded the fallen Gongsun Zan a few times with her scabbard to make sure he wouldn’t rise again. His body rose and fell with steady breathing, so he didn’t appear to be dead. Still, the frustration from his sudden attack made her jab him a little harder than necessary. He showed no reaction.
“Master, what exactly did you say to him?”
“I don’t know either. Apparently it’s some kind of incantation that can stop him if he goes berserk… The pronunciation was so awkward it took me a long time to memorize. This is the first time I’ve actually used it, but… the effect is certainly reliable.”
Back when he had studied under Lu Zhi, Gongsun Zan had taught his master the safeword he used to call off his subordinates—the one tied to his callsign. There was no way people of this era could be familiar with English and Korean pronunciations from two thousand years in the future, but for Gongsun Zan himself those words were absolutely unforgettable.
The sound of clashing blades in the middle of the night had been loud enough to echo throughout the entire fortress. People awakened by the sudden commotion began gathering one by one. It wasn’t unheard of for generals to get drunk and cause trouble, but a sword fight in the dead of night was rare enough to draw attention. Once the sentries confirmed that Lu Zhi—the overall commander of this defensive line—Gongsun Zan, the supreme commander, and Liu Bei, the governor of Pingyuan, were all present, they simply asked for a brief explanation before returning to their posts.
Cao Cao stared down at the unconscious Gongsun Zan with a rather complicated expression.
“Lady Liu, does Gongsun Zan usually act like this when he drinks?”
“…This is the first time I’ve seen it. In fact, I’ve never even seen him drink enough to get drunk before.”
“That makes sense. I’ve never seen him drunk either… From now on he’ll have to drink in moderation.”
“Is the option of not drinking at all not on the table?”
“There’s a higher chance of a dog quitting shit. …Killing a friend isn’t exactly something you can endure without liquor, you know.”
Yuan Shao had been a traitor, but he had also been a friend since they were snot-nosed brats. The reason Gongsun Zan drank was probably different from Cao Cao’s own, but he could roughly understand.