Deployment Duty (2)
A trainee's day was always the same. Wake up in the morning and take a light run through the hill behind the camp for about an hour.
"Huk. Huk."
"Heok. Damn it! This never gets any easier, no matter how many months you do it!"
Correction needed: the run is only light for the Daehan man leading the pack.
"Just get over that ridge!"
"Yeah, once we're over that, we're at least halfway back."
"Come on, just a little more."
And so, from the very first breaths of morning, they went huffing and wheezing their way up the hill.
After the morning run, the next stop was the mess hall.
"What's this! You didn't wash up!"
"I'm sorry, sir!"
"Go wash and come back. Now!"
Skip the wash because you're too lazy, and you'd miss breakfast too.
Perhaps that was why the trainees had gotten noticeably cleaner over the past month.
*Splash*
"Eat up!"
At the serving line, the mess attendant was ladling out breakfast, piling meat onto the soldiers' bowls until it overflowed.
"Whew! That's too much, sir!"
It really was too much. No matter how delicious the meat was, eating this much every day felt like his stomach would burst.
*Splash*
"What's that? Not enough?"
And then the attendant would grin and pile on even more meat.
"Kuh! Thank you, sir!"
Balay sat down at his seat once again wearing a face that couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.
Were these people insane about meat or what? It was mountains of meat, every single meal.
"Ugh…"
"At first I was happy they gave us so much meat…"
"Now the smell alone makes me want to throw up."
The first week, they'd eaten with genuine delight. Ethiopia had become far more livable, but it still wasn't wealthy enough for this.
Even the nobles probably couldn't eat meat this well. The joy of devouring mountain after mountain of it had lasted exactly one week.
"Eat well and the muscle grows! That's how you get strong! Strength is everything! Everyone, eat up and build your strength!"
That was what they said — and then the instructors ate even more meat than the trainees did. The trainees exercised more, ate more, did everything more, which meant rebellion never even crossed their minds.
Though of course, that wasn't because they were afraid of being cut in half. Definitely not.
*Chomp chomp*
"Ughhuhk."
Breakfast, shoveled into his mouth between half-sobs of joy. Today it seemed something red had been stir-fried with gochujang.
"Hah… still, the spicy kick makes it taste decent."
"That much… I'll admit."
It did taste good. There was just too much of it.
"By the way, it doesn't seem like they're hunting animals every day. Where does all this meat come from anyway?"
"Who knows. Maybe there's a magic sack somewhere."
There was, in fact, one thing that would look like a magic sack to these people. The freezer.
The port sat in barren land where raising livestock or growing crops nearby was nearly impossible.
Fortunately, the steamships could run freezers, so the meat was loaded in mountains back home and shipped over.
"But haven't we changed a lot somehow?"
"Yeah. When I wake up in the morning, I've never felt this refreshed."
That was probably because after suffering all day and eating well, they could fall asleep the instant they lay down.
They had acquired the ability to sleep anywhere. By now, they could probably sleep soundly in the middle of a typhoon.
And their bodies had changed dramatically. Sleek but powerful — in professional terms, Real Compressed Muscle.
"Man, I want to get on a ship already."
"Doesn't you have to build a body like the instructors' first?"
"Ah… that might be a bit much."
Their very genes were different from birth, so that part was difficult. Still, a whole month had passed, and the trainees allowed themselves a flicker of hope.
But the biggest change of all was in their eyes. A fierce fighting spirit had settled there.
* * *
"Hoo. Hoo."
A tranquil study, gleaming ornaments scattered here and there.
In the room, a man leaned against the wall, doing push-ups — upside down, on his hands.
The slight belly had vanished somewhere, and Haile now had a sharp jawline.
"I should do more after breakfast."
"Hahaha. After meals, you rest. You have to let the food digest."
"Ah… right, of course."
Beside him, working out alongside him and keeping him company, was Yi Sun-woo.
Soft to the touch at rest, hard as stone when flexed — how could a sixty-one-year-old body possibly look like that?
"Looking at you, Admiral, I still have a long way to go. Haha."
"You'd probably have to be reborn."
"What was that? Yuahahaah!"
The two had grown very close over their workouts and their separate studies of military science.
They had the easy air of friends who'd bridged a decade of age difference.
"Shall we go eat?"
"Yes, sir."
"The soldiers have come a long way."
"They've worked hard for it."
Haile had been full of worries at first. The training was so brutal that he feared the men would all run away.
But if you endured the training, the food was delicious, there were snacks they'd never tasted before, occasional drinks to unwind with, and clean clothes handed out without hesitation.
So just as a man was about to bolt, he'd think, Huh? Maybe I'll stick this out a little longer? — and already a month had slipped by.
Strangely enough, not a single man had deserted, which left even Haile dumbfounded. The men of this hot country weren't usually this steadfast.
"Their eyes have changed too. I'd say it's time."
"Oh! Then it's settled!"
"Yes. It's time to take them out to sea."
They had been aboard ships over the past month — but only scrubbing decks and scraping grime off the hulls, on the grounds that they had to learn maintenance.
"We're boarding a ship!"
"Say what!"
"Uhhuhuk!"
"Yaaagh! Mother! Father! I did it!"
The moment one soldier, overhearing the news at the next table in the mess hall, shouted it out, the hall erupted in cheers.
Tears flowed — from joy or from sorrow, who could say — and the mood caught fire, though everyone still rose from their seats without wreaking havoc.
The fact that the assistant instructors glaring at them like lions eyeing prey felt terrifying was purely a matter of perception.
Clearly, the month of drilling had been thorough.
* * *
The minimum crew of a Horned Whale was 220, but the space aboard was so generous that carrying several hundred posed no problem at all.
Four hundred trainees and twenty instructors rode on each ship, and the lessons continued — how to work the sails, how to read and catch the wind.
"The trainees' dedication is remarkable."
"Yes. As this nation's first navy, laying its cornerstone, they were selected with the utmost care."
The trainees, huddled together on deck, didn't so much as blink under the blazing sun, hungry to learn just one more thing.
In the face of such attitudes, the instructors held nothing back, pouring out every trick they knew.
"When you're in the water and a shark comes at you, what do you do?"
"Drive a fist down hard on its snout, sir!"
"And if it still attacks?"
"Bite and tear at its snout, sir!"
"Good!"
Some of the lessons seemed a little odd, but they taught hard and learned hard.
And so it went — exercise in the morning, shipboard classes in the afternoon — for a week.
"We're pulling out slow, so keep the sails barely open, you dogs!"
"Yes, sir!"
*Flutter*
Fourteen Ethiopian Horned Whales were slowly easing out of the harbor.
For a while, they would circle the nearby waters, mastering the art of sailing.
*Smack*
"Your hands are too slow! Move it! You'd move like that even with a bullet through your head?!"
"No, sir!"
Under the affectionate smacks of the instructors, the trainees worked their way through the fundamentals of seamanship.
And for some reason, their rate of learning was astonishingly fast.
* * *
*Flutter flutter — creeeak*
For the first time in months, the Horned Whales were cutting through the sea, sails swollen full with wind.
"Puhaha. At this point, it's about as much as you can expect from a bunch of kids showing off, isn't it?"
"They're becoming worth a look."
The instructors' shouting had dwindled, and the trainees were starting to look like crews who could gather in a corner and crack jokes.
Pride glimmered in the eyes of the two admirals as they watched them.
"Gunnery training today, right?"
"Yes. Starting today, we float a target ship and circle it, firing at it."
A few days earlier, the instructors had gone ashore and towed back a ship from somewhere.
A ship none of them had seen before, stained with blood here and there, a little battered. Apparently scrounged up from somewhere for target practice.
They set it adrift, alone, in the middle of the sea. Now they would circle it and run live-fire drills.
"Mind yourselves when you load! Slip up and you'll lose a finger!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Load the shell!"
"Loading!"
*Clack — clatter — clack*
Opening the breech at the rear, seating the shell, closing it — every movement careful and deliberate.
This was the first live firing, and even the instructors watched tensely. Accidents with weapons were so horrific that surviving one was a stroke of luck.
Remarkably, these men had inherited breech-loading cannons outright, even if they were older models.
It could be called the second such case, after Qajar.
"Good! Take aim and fire!"
"Yes, sir!"
The trainees turned the cannons with care, eyes on the sights.
"Three left! Two up!"
Breech-loading or not, everything was manual. Shoving the cannon sideways, adjusting the elevation, driving in the wedges — the process unfolded with methodical caution.
"Good! Fire!"
"Firing!"
*BOOM!*
"Huk."
Africa didn't need cannons yet. For conquering the surrounding tribes, rifles were more than enough. Hell, armor with bows and spears would do.
The trainees had fired rifles before, but this was their first cannon, and the earsplitting blast startled them badly.
*Wheee — splash*
"You can't hit it even from this range?! Again!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Aiming" was a generous word. Unless you mounted the cannon on a proper carriage and built a fixed turret, you were essentially eyeballing it.
Then you checked where the shell landed, fired again — and in the end, the truth was simply that you got better by firing a lot.
There were plenty of shells, so they drilled relentlessly, firing dozens of rounds a day.
*KABOOM — boom — boom*
"Whoa! A hit! Another hit!"
"Haha. Well done."
Hits came more and more often, and they stretched the firing range ever farther. And the target ship began to take beatings from all sides.
*Grrrrrumble*
The rag of a ship, riddled with holes, began to sink beneath the waves.
"Hah… that was rough."
"Sob… is it over now?!"
With seamanship and gunnery behind them, the trainees had finally found their confidence.
"What are you talking about?"
"Sir?"
"Now we go out to the open sea."
"Huhhh?"
Until now they had only been sailing in circles in the waters off the port. They had only just learned to walk.
"You came out to sea, so of course you sail the open ocean! You think this is a playground for splashing around in some safe creek?!"
The instructor had given them some slack for a while, and he could feel the trainees' discipline going soft. Time to return to hard drilling.
"Everything until now was play! The real thing starts now! Sharpen up!"
Because the open sea was truly rough and dangerous.
"Eeeek!"
"Still far from ready?!"
In the instructors' eyes, the trainees still had a long, long way to go.
A new beginning was waiting for them.
*Rumble — BOOM BOOM*
"Uuurgh."
"Save me!"
"Kahaha! You have to weather wind and rain like this! Bunch of soft-bellied weaklings!"
Thunder and lightning, wind and rain, and vomiting — together at last. The joys of life on the open ocean.