Captain Choi
"It's about time we got moving."
Every face locked onto mine. I looked back at them, one by one.
Sergeant Jeong. An outstanding soldier, but the permanent damage to his leg nagged at me. If things turned urgent, his mobility would be a problem.
Captain Choi. Just as fine a soldier, and yet...
"Captain, you're sure your body's really all right?"
"All four limbs still attached."
"I'm asking about your condition."
"Nothing worth bragging about."
That was him bragging.
"Shin-hye, how does the captain look to you?"
"Malnourished, if you ask me."
"I said I'm fine."
Captain Choi waved a hand at the empty air. Even the gesture had no strength in it.
"Anyone can see you're not."
His color had already been bad yesterday. In a single day he had visibly gotten worse.
"Even if the body fails, willpower can carry it."
"And the mind's intact, is it?"
"What did you just say?"
"Let's see, it was around here... Ah. Here it is. What was it you said?"
"...Nothing."
I dug emergency rations out of the bag and tried to press them on him in a hurry.
"Don't need them."
Useless.
"I'm not giving them away. I'll collect later. Every last bit."
I wasn't offering food because I liked the look of him. I was worried he'd wreck the escape.
"Everyone's just as hungry. I don't need them."
An-na and Shin-hye backed me up after that, but Captain Choi refused, stubborn to the bone. There was nothing to be done.
I could threaten to withhold my help with the escape unless he ate... but he isn't a man who'd fold for that. It'd only sour the mood. That stubbornness of his is going to put Jo An-na through plenty.
So much for the captain. Next...
Someone knocked on the office door. Thump. Thump.
"Ignore it."
Captain Choi kept his voice low.
"It'll be a runner with the routine report. Unless it's something special, he'll turn right around."
Open that door and we risked exposing the fact that all of us were gathered in one room. Anyone would find that suspicious. Fortunately, just as the captain said, the runner waited a moment and left.
Good. Next, then...
Jo An-na. A master with throwing knives, but set against a rifle that skill was nothing but a party trick. At least, being An-na, it made for a cute one. The fortunate part was that I'd found her a working handgun.
I passed her an automatic and a revolver, one of each, and she tucked them inside her jacket at once. Then she took up a blanket and draped it over the shoulders of Captain Choi where he sat.
"Oppa, you're shaking. Are you cold?"
His rough hand settled over her pale one where it rested on his shoulder. Sergeant Jeong whipped his head aside as if he'd seen something he had no business seeing.
Tsk.
Last, Jo Shin-hye. Unlike An-na, who lived here on a soldier's dependent status, Shin-hye had once been a veterinary officer — a soldier in her own right. Not combat arms, but she had taken proper basic training and had fired a rifle before. The only one of us in her thirties, and the oldest of the group. A calm came off her that only years could give. A reassuring presence.
"Let's move, Sergeant Jeong."
"Yes, sir, Postman!"
The escape preparations began in earnest, and everyone scattered to the tasks they'd been given.
Sergeant Jeong and I went to the sentries' ready room. Some twenty guards, due for the night relief, were getting themselves ready.
"A weapons inspection, sir?"
"That's right. All of you, hand them over."
At Sergeant Jeong's order, every man laid down his rifle.
"You've all heard the Postman here repaired the anti-aircraft gun nobody else could fix?"
"Of course, sir!"
"So I decided to ask him for a special check of your weapons as well. I know you clean them every day. It's just that it's been a long time since any of you actually fired one."
They nodded along with his explanation. These were guns that hadn't been fired for real in so long no one could remember the last time. They must already have been worried about what would happen if the things failed to go off when it mattered.
"What are you standing around gawking for? Get out there and run a lap."
"Sir...?"
"The Postman's working hard on your inspection. You thought you'd just stand around? At least show some effort and do a little PT."
"B-but we're supposed to guard our rifles like our own lives... Leaving them and walking off..."
"What, you think I'm going to pawn your guns?"
"That's not what we were thinking, but..."
"Fine. Then I'll run. All of your shares too. Twenty laps, and we're square?"
"Ah! No, sir! We'll run!"
Shameless acting, and not half bad. Sergeant Jeong — when he decided to perform, he performed.
"Hah! That'll do."
From there it was easy. Working over every firearm didn't take long.
"Good. No problems now."
I had properly broken the rifles. In this settlement, the only people awake and armed after dark were the sentries on the wall. If something went wrong, they would be the pursuit — a pursuit chasing us with guns that didn't work.
"Thank you for your trouble, sir!"
"Hardly trouble, for this."
"Well, I can't repair a thing, but breaking them — that I'm confident in."
"That so."
"Sometimes they break the moment I lay a hand on them!"
That was a talent in its own right.
"I'll head up onto the wall, then. See the rest of the work is done properly."
"Yes, sir!"
While I prepared the next step, Sergeant Jeong cleaned up the remainder of his end just as neatly. His job was to form a search party to confirm whether the so-called broken-down ration cart actually existed. That party, of course, would be the people escaping with me.
He arranged it so the detail would look as if it had been drawn from other soldiers inside the settlement. The part he was especially careful about was making it seem two servicewomen had been pulled for the job. Dress them in uniform all you liked — Jo An-na and Jo Shin-hye were obviously women. Fortunately the settlement had a fair number of female soldiers, so it was possible. We would hide their faces with helmets and gas masks, and to justify that we had also spread word of a strange smell near the ration cart.
There was exactly one person who needed no disguise. Sergeant Jeong himself. With that limp, no disguise in the world would keep him from being Sergeant Jeong, so the plan had him officially assigned as the search party's leader.
"Come on up."
Up on the wall, Captain Choi was already waiting, as arranged.
"Then I'll leave the inspection to you."
Time set aside to work on the anti-aircraft guns. Last time, soldiers had crowded around in a pack to watch the repairs. This time was different. On Captain Choi's authority, the others could be kept well clear.
Good. This is done too.
I had disabled the anti-aircraft guns on the wall above the main gate. Like the rifles I'd just worked over, these would not fire.
Handling them long enough to break them, I watched a blue light begin to turn over the guns — the state in which I could see the probabilities. With attunement like this, those odds would stay visible even at a distance until nightfall.
There was a reason for preparing this thoroughly.
So they told him to send the search party out in the daytime...
Captain Choi had reported to his superiors that the search would go tonight, and his commanding officer had refused. The order from above was to send them tomorrow, in daylight. That, of course, was a matter between the higher-ups and Captain Choi. The rank and file standing watch tonight knew nothing of it. The plan was to fool the sentries into thinking nighttime clearance had come through, and walk out. If the chain of command caught wind of it, there would be trouble — which was why I had worked over the sentries' rifles and the anti-aircraft guns. Get outside the main gate, and after that all we had to do was run. Not one of their weapons would function.
"Then I'll see you later."
Captain Choi answered with a small nod. That drained look still bothered me. He didn't seem about to collapse on the spot, but he was clearly in bad shape. If something went wrong mid-escape and anyone fell behind, we would have no choice but to leave them. I could only hope it wouldn't come to that.
The sun went down. When I returned to the captain's office, everyone was gathered except Captain Choi. Shin-hye and An-na had both changed into uniform, and Sergeant Jeong was drilling them through various postures so they wouldn't look out of place.
"We're missing one."
"Ah, Captain Choi stepped up onto the wall for a moment."
Sergeant Jeong answered as if it were nothing.
"Why there?"
"One of the anti-aircraft guns won't traverse, he said."
I had only broken them so they wouldn't fire. I hadn't touched the rest.
"Nothing to worry about, sir. It's a common fault."
"So it's being repaired?"
"Yes. Anti-aircraft repairs need the captain's authorization, so he went up briefly."
They would have no way of knowing the firing mechanism was compromised as well. You wouldn't catch that unless you actually tried to shoot.
The office's wooden door opened with a feeble creak. Captain Choi was back. His color had worsened another shade.
"Coming along all right?"
"Right now the biggest problem looks like you, Oppa..."
An-na said it with open pity, and Sergeant Jeong shot up from his seat and went to the captain.
"Captain, don't worry Miss An-na. You ought to eat a little more of something."
None of them were starving, of course. The rations were meager, but they ate every meal on schedule. The problem was that Captain Choi needed more nutrition than an ordinary meal could give him.
"I think so too. It could interfere with the escape, you know?"
Shin-hye said what I had been about to. Not that he would stuff it down just because we asked.
"...Everyone's hungry. I can't be the only one who eats."
Figured.
"You're a strong person, Oppa... You're just feeling poorly for a little while. Eating a bit more than the rest of us doesn't make you weak. Don't worry."
An-na looked as hurt as a person could be. Instead of answering, Captain Choi hung his head.
And then Sergeant Jeong, with no sense of the moment, added his piece.
"Staying like this is what makes you a weak man. Better to eat something more and get your strength—"
"What did you just spout?"
The air froze.
"We ought to go into the escape in peak condition, shouldn't we? Otherwise—"
"Otherwise — you want to say I'll be dead weight, dragging you down?"
Everyone was on edge. Natural enough, tense before an escape. That was fine. Right now, edgy was better. Put prickly people together and the teamwork falls apart, of course. But if each of them was playing their own game, their reactions would be that much sharper. Expecting teamwork from a crew thrown together like this had been hopeless from the start. Better they stay sharp, so that even looking out for themselves, they would do it well.
"Save the fight for after we're out. It's about time we left."
This wasn't the moment to be fighting, anyway.
"Postman! This isn't something to brush off. If even one thing goes wrong, we all die, don't we?"
"No."
Wrong. There was no way all of us would die. Not while I was here.
"If anyone screws up, the one who screws up dies."
I waited, in case anyone wanted to answer. No one did. They seemed to have caught my meaning.
If you want to live, do it right.
Even Captain Choi, who had just snapped, looked as if the anger had broken. Maybe he simply didn't have the strength to stay angry for long. I turned my back on him and, running a final check of my gear, asked,
"I heard you just went up on the wall. Anything out of the ordinary?"
"Of course not."
"Understood. We leave in five minutes."
The others followed Jeong-guk and began checking their own weapons. No one spoke. The office filled with nothing but the knock of gear against gear, and in that quiet Captain Choi's mind cleared, little by little.
And then, suddenly, he found himself turning Jeong-guk's words over again.
In truth, one thing had gone differently than expected. He didn't think it was all that important. He only briefly revisited the memory, wondering whether he had made some mistake.
"The anti-aircraft gun needs repair?"
"Yes, sir. The one at the far end is acting up again. It won't traverse."
Captain Choi walked toward the gun in question. He thought he was walking straight, but anyone could see him drifting sideways, until at last—
"C-Captain?"
He staggered, and only just caught his balance.
"Are you all right, sir?"
"All right about what."
"Ah... It's nothing."
He reached the gun at a slow pace, looked over the fault, and then spoke.
"Any problem besides the traverse?"
He didn't forget to check whether they had also noticed the part Jeong-guk had broken.
"No other problems."
Fortunately, nothing that would interfere with the escape. That was why Captain Choi had thought little of the matter. But there had been an unexpected variable.
"Good. Start the repair."
"The engineers aren't here yet."
"...Since when have you not been an engineer?"
"Ah, I'm still an engineer, sir! Only, starting today, anti-aircraft repairs are supposed to go to a dedicated specialist. You haven't been informed yet?"
Captain Choi suddenly remembered the runner who had knocked on the office door that afternoon.
"No. I was informed. That's right. I was."
"Um... Captain? You seem very tired."
"And?"
"Nothing, sir! Then we'll proceed as soon as the repair specialist arrives!"
No one had to tell him. The captain knew perfectly well his body wasn't right. But that wasn't what he considered the real problem. The real problem was that other people were noticing. With the escape so close, drawing attention could do him no good — and yet here he was, in poor shape, pulling eyes toward himself. It was bound to sit wrong. In the end, the only option was to get out of sight in a hurry.
"I'll be heading back, then. See to the repair yourselves."
"Is it all right if we handle it alone? Procedure says you should be present to—"
"I have other things to do. When the specialist arrives, have him touch only this one. Don't let him lay a hand on the other guns. If there's a problem, report it again."
"Yes, sir!"
After the captain left, the new man assigned to the anti-aircraft repair arrived. Except—
"...That's not an engineer."
What had arrived was not a soldier. No one had ever said a soldier would be coming. They had only heard that someone dedicated to the job would show up, and everyone had simply assumed it would be an engineer. The whole time he worked on the gun, he never once took off his mask.