Rune Troopers: Self-Defense Forces Adventure - Chapter 2: Argentavis (Part 6)

The morning sun was rising.

At the rear of the Aegis destroyer “IBUKI,” there was a helicopter hangar and a flight deck space that extended from the hangar.

An SH-60K Seahawk, the IBUKI’s onboard anti-submarine patrol helicopter, was preparing to depart.

Unusually for a Self-Defense Forces aircraft, it was painted in white and gray, with the Japanese flag, giving it a kind of beauty, even though it was a military aircraft.

A man in a pure white uniform boarded the plane.

It was Kato, the Chief of Staff, who was to take command of the unit that was to be deployed.

Kaburaki, who had come to see him off, was also there.

After considering the future course of action in the wake of the bird incident, the decision was passed to form a reconnaissance unit and depart.

The decisive factor was that the radar of the Aegis destroyer detected a vast continent where the island of Guam should have been.

Clearly, this was not the sea area they knew. Reconnaissance was inevitable in order to analyze the situation.

At first, there was a proposal to conduct the reconnaissance mission by helicopter or by land alone, but Kato came forward to take the lead himself, forming a reconnaissance unit consisting of him and the ground force.

The final decision was made by the Commander, Kaburaki. He authorized this drastic operation because he believed Kato as his right-hand man.

He selected a platoon from the JSDF to escort him.

“That’s reassuring.”

They spoke close to each other’s ears so that their voices were not drowned out by the downwash and engine noise of the helicopter.

Kato laughed and tightened his chin strap to prevent his cap from being blown off by the wind generated by the helicopter.

On one of the destroyers sailing diagonally behind the Aegis, he saw a camouflage-patterned ground-based helicopter in warm-air operation and about 30 armed ground-based personnel checking their equipment beside it.

Kato recalled the pre-briefing.

As he recalled, the name of the officer was something like “Third Lieutenant Kuze”.

It was reassuring, not a joke, to know that he led a Platoon of thirty-two elite men to protect him alone. 

But his first plan was for them to scout the area with only those 32 men, so perhaps he was just an added bonus.

“Listen, don’t do anything rash, okay?”

“Yes, I know!”

He gave a thumbs-up.

Kaburaki chuckled. A normal Commander would have felt that he was in good hands with this guy. In fact, that was how Kaburaki felt when he first met him.

However, Kato, in the Maritime Self-Defense Force, which was often ridiculed for its adherence to tradition and self-respect, did not try to change his own character. 

In a sense, he had a backbone.

His lightness and flexibility of thought was something that has never existed in the SDF before.

Moreover, he was so excellent that he once destroyed the U.S. Fleet by himself in a joint Pacific Rim naval exercise.

A freak, a genius, or both.

That was Kato, a young officer of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

He was the only one who could adapt to this unusual situation and try to find a way out.

Kaburaki felt that it was not the place for a hard-headed old man like himself.

(What a different world……) He was still skeptical.

A winged girl and something black appeared in the officer’s quarters. And that huge bird with a person on it. 

He was trying to deny it somewhere in his mind but he was sure he had seen nothing wrong. 

That is because I am too old and have no room for new things anymore. Kato is different in this respect.

It was no exaggeration to say that only he could be entrusted with this mission.

“Thank you.”

Kaburaki looked at the young man who would lead the next generation of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.

“Leave it to me.”

Kato saluted with an unusually earnest salute and closed the side door. Kato, too, was impressed with Kaburaki.

A young Chief of Staff who didn’t even fit into the framework of the organization and a Commander who was sent over. There existed no such commanding structure in the world that was so strange.

As Kaburaki exits the flight deck, the helicopter ascends into the sky.

Three Ground Self-Defense Force helicopters departed from the destroyer and joined the Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter with Kato on board to protect it. 

These were UH-60 JA Black Hawks deployed by the Ground Self-Defense Force. The Sea Self-Defense Force’s Sea Hawk and the Black Hawk were both derivatives of the same model, in other words, they are like brothers.

Kato looked at the GSDF personnel flying with the Black Hawk.

The Black Hawks were called “Rokumaru” in the JGSDF. [TN: Meaning Complete]

Each helicopter could carry 11 members in addition to the two pilots, and 32 members of the Three Squadrons from Kuze’s Platoon. They flew in three separate UH-60 JA’s.

In the cabin, the 11 members sat on the floor facing each other. Although simple seats could have been set up, they were removed because they would have interfered with boarding and disembarking during operational activities such as this one.

The crew settled into the cabin in a shoulder-to-shoulder formation. The cabin, which was slightly wider than the bed of a light truck, was so loaded with supplies that there was no room to step on the floor.

The strength of the Black Hawk, however, was its ability to fly a distance of 1,200 kilometers even with this many people and supplies on board.

The ground-force personnel wore combat helmets, communication devices, bulletproof vests, sacks and protectors for their joints. They carried bayonets and magazine cases full of spare ammunition on their waist belts. In short everyone was fully armed.

Holding in their arms was a Type 89, 5.56 mm rifle. It was a domestically produced military assault rifle officially adopted by the Self-Defense Forces. Some of them held Minimi light machine guns as squad support firearms.

Kuze was also checking the radio for sensitivity and talking to his men, who were dispersed among the three helicopters.

“Look, our mission is aerial reconnaissance and in case of an emergency, escorting the NMRI officers in those white helicopters. I don’t think you’ll have to be on duty, but keep your eyes peeled. We carry a lot of ammunition, so be very careful with it.” 

“Each squad will check the safety devices at random. Don’t stick cigarettes or gum in the magazine. The bullets will tumble out when you stick your hand in. If you lose even one bullet, you will be written up.”

“All right, then, let’s have a safety chant!”

“Safety checks, stick to the basics, don’t lose them, don’t break them, don’t get hurt!”

Kuze informed his subordinates what was most important to him as an SDF officer and smiled wryly.

The SDF was an organization where even the loss of a single shell casing or the destruction of a single piece of equipment during a training exercise could result in serious problems. 

Moreover, both the public and private sectors were becoming more sensitive to accidents during training these days, when “safety first” was being called for.

This was the daily life of the SDF, an organization that was not only a military organization but also a civil service organization ……In other words, it was embroiled in one of the government bureaucracies.

Kuze sat deep in the front of the cockpit, relieved that the radio was working well.

If nothing had happened, he would have counted the same number of ammunition he had received, stamped his seal in the “nothing unusual” column on the paperwork, taken care of the weapons and returned them to the armory, asked his men to arrange for meals if they returned late, and that would have been the end of it.

That should be the way it should be.

Just as it was always decided that practical training should end in victory, this seemed unwavering.

Then, someone’s voice broke into the radio.

“No,no,no!”

“What is it, Junior Ichinose?”

It was Ichinose sitting across from Kuze.

Ichinose was one of the best marksmen in the unit. Despite what he looked like, his marksmanship was among the best in his unit. As such, he now carried an M24 anti-personnel rifle as a sniper.

Incidentally, perhaps because he disliked the dark image of sniping, which he associated with assassination, the SDF stipulated that snipers were deployed to protect friendly commanders from enemy snipers. 

The reason Kuze and Ichinose were so close was related to the fact that snipers were often close by the Platoon Leader’s side to protect him.

“By chance, what kind of things do you assume?”

The SDF often used the word “assume”. For example, during training exercises, they often asked what kind of warfare situation to expect, or how to attack a mere shack as if it were an enemy headquarters, or who would be injured or killed in battle, and how to respond accordingly.

“No assumption, the situation is unforeseeable.”

“What do you mean by “unforeseeable?”  So how do I know when I’m going to use this? If you brought it with you, you expect to use it, don’t you?”

“If that situation comes up, I will give you permission to use it at my discretion. Do not use the gun at your own discretion. Is that clear?”

“I understand……”

Ichinose was not satisfied with the situation. Not just him, his entire Platoon was like this.

This was the first time their Platoon was allowed to carry live ammunition outside of a training exercise.

Kuze felt an unpleasant sweat forming on his back.

Ichinose often spoke cheekily. But he often had a point of view that was true. Japanese people were often distracted from the true nature of things, but he would see it for what it is. 

Ichinose’s words, “Since I brought it here, I expect to use it,” did not strike him as a quibble.

It certainly was. No, it was not just the standard of use of these weapons. Japan, as a country that had organized an armed group called the Self-Defense Forces, must have assumed that they would use such weapons.

 But even if one were to ask the Japanese people, or even the politicians for that matter, about the specifics of that assumption, the answer would not come back.

The Self-Defense Forces and the Japanese people would not assume the fundamentals of what must be assumed. 

That was why Kuze himself could not answer Ichinose’s genuine question: ……

“If something happens, I will take the responsibility. So wait for my order.”

Kuze had no choice but to mutter this into the radio.

And that was exactly what he thought, if he ever encountered a situation where he would have to use a weapon, he would bear the dishonor of being the first one to fire a shot.

In an army where the country itself did not allow fighting the enemy, the first shot would become the worst disgrace.

He looked out the window.

The morning sun was rising high in the sky, as if to taunt them as they moved to the right and left.