Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 9===

Three men carrying submachine guns with a caliber of over 5mm came to one section of the “cityscape”. They were there to eliminate Heivia and Royce who had fled.

The “cityscape” was primarily a collection of tents and RVs, so it contained little that was sturdy enough to use as a shield in a firefight.

However, there were some exceptions.

For example, the area the trash was collected in.

A number of mining dump trucks made of steel were parked on the outskirts. For a fee, the trash from the area was gathered there. Afterwards, it was taken to a proper incinerator in one of the actual cities.

As the dump trucks were the type usually used for mining, they were as tall as a three story building. The tires were taller than a person and a twisting staircase was needed to reach the driver’s seat. With a number of them lined up, the area was essentially surrounded by steel.

In the midst of it all, repeated short gunshots rang out.

The garbage men ran off, but the three men paid them no heed.

“(Kicker, Nexa. We need to escape afterwards, so we can’t spend more than 5 minutes here. We need to finish this!!)”

“(But that guy has a rifle. His range is too great!)”

“(I’ll fire like crazy to keep him in place. You two circle around behind the dump truck and shoot him!!)”

Suddenly, the sound of the gunshots coming from behind the dump truck changed. The noise was much higher-pitched and more cheap-sounding than before.

(He switched from his rifle to his side arm?)

As soon as they came to that conclusion, the three men moved forward to take the offensive.

“(He’s out of ammo! We can overwhelm him now…)”

A strong, deep gunshot rang out and Nexa’s head was smashed to pieces.

“Wha-…?”

While still in shock, two more bullets blasted into Kicker’s gut and chest, knocking him to the ground.

The gunshots had most certainly not belonged to a handgun.

They had been the louder gunshots of the rifle that had supposedly run out of ammo.

(Shit! Did he purposefully switch over to his handgun despite having rifle ammo left to throw us off our guard!?)

The last remaining man tried to fall back, but it was too late.

With the advantage of numbers lost, the range and power difference between an assault rifle and a submachine gun was just too great.

Heivia Winchell silently drew closer without allowing even the slightest chance of a counterattack.



“You were right,” said Heivia to Royce as he looked through the contents of the handheld device he had found in the armed men’s belongings. “They’ve prepared a chemical combustion warhead. It’s a bomb that mixes together naphtha, various fuels, and some chemicals to create flames that cannot be put out with water and spreads those flames 3 to 5 kilometers in every direction.”

“It’s basically the same thing as a Molotov cocktail. I’ve seen videos of it online.”

“The warhead appears to be handmade, but the cruise missile it’s loaded in and the mobile launcher are both Oceanian. The military regime had tanks and fighters deployed to areas around the country excluding where they had the Generation 0.5, so there was no lack of such items.”

“The Craft Salamander III?”

“Sounds like some bland convenience store cream pasta, doesn’t it? Well, weapon names have to be brought down to a level where even an idiot gets it. The point is to show off your obvious hostility,” said Heivia as a cruel smile came to his lips. “The maximum range should be 1500 km. I believe it has a terrain calculation guidance system.”

The one remaining question was how they planned to destroy an Object with it.

Even a direct hit from a large hydrogen bomb would not destroy an Object’s armor. Also, chemical combustion warheads were anti-personnel weapons. Heivia did not see how one could destroy an Object.

Royce answered that question.

“Most likely, their target is not the Object itself.”

“What?”

“Basically, they just have to make the Object unusable. And they can do that without attacking the thick armor of the Object. They can accomplish their goal by targeting the much more vulnerable human beings.”

“…Are they after the Elite?”

It was not entirely impossible, but Heivia was still skeptical.

Anyone could tell there was a danger of an Elite being targeted when outside of the Object. That was why they always had a special unit of bodyguards with them and were constantly accompanied by an armored vehicle with a perfectly air tight interior in case of firefights, explosives, or chemical and biological weapons.

Even if a cruise missile loaded with a chemical combustion warhead was headed straight for the Elite, she simply had to climb aboard that armored vehicle the instant it was detected. That would negate any damage from heat or smoke.

“No,” replied Royce. “Their target is the maintenance soldiers. It does not matter if they do not have any particularly important duties or information. The chemical combustion warhead can cover several kilometers in every direction with flames. If the maintenance soldiers are gathered in a single place, a large majority can be eliminated. If hundreds of maintenance soldiers are lost all at once, the Object can no longer function. Even if it still has a pilot and a commander, the Object cannot function without those at the bottom who keep it running.”

“So they’re stopping it by destroying the Object’s surroundings rather than the Object itself, hm?”

However, something bothered Heivia about that.

(That isn’t too different from our idea to destroy that computer in the Loyauté district.)

That gave Heivia a bad feeling, but he continued the conversation.

“The crucial Elite and commander are one thing, but the unit can hardly have bodyguards for every single maintenance soldier. They might actually have a chance if they really are trying to crush them all at once.” Heivia thought for a bit and then changed the subject slightly. “Since they prepared the mobile launcher and cruise missile, they are probably planning to detonate it in midair.”

“I would assume so. If it is not detonated in midair, its effects would not spread as far. …But I only know what I was able to find on military websites.”

“The Craft Salamander III,” said Heivia. “From the range of the missile, and the locations of the city and the maintenance base, they will most likely be targeting the maintenance base zone and the cityscape spread out around it. …Hah. It seems they aren’t directly targeting anyone from your Information Alliance.”

“So? What I must do remains the same.”

“Why would you help protect a Legitimacy Kingdom military facility?”

“I have both business and private reasons for that.” Royce wiped sweat from his face. “As a journalist, I cannot simply sit by doing nothing as a threat like this approaches the people of Oceania. If spreading information would increase the danger, temporarily holding it back is good manners, but that does apply here. However, spreading the information now would not give people enough time to evacuate, so I feel I should use the information I have received in a different way in order to avert this catastrophe.”

“And what is your private reason?”

“I told you my daughter has been deployed to Oceania, remember? Preserving the concept of the clean battlefield will help preserve the safety of my daughter. I cannot have that concept lost due to some terrorist attack.”

“I see,” muttered Heivia.

He could trust a real reason like that much more than some sterilized “for the greater good” reason.

“We need to find out where the launcher is located,” said Heivia in a low voice. “If we know that, we can try to attack before the missile is launched or intercept it if it has already launched.”

“Fine, but we have no time,” said Royce to make sure Heivia understood. “From the fragments of information I picked up over the radio, their attack is going to begin soon. It is probably because the majority of the group is preparing the attack that we had so few pursuers.”