Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 1===

“Soldiers! I know you must be tired, but this is an emergency.”

Frolaytia spoke from the dais at the front of the briefing room.

“The Information Alliance’s Second Generation Rush has set up a blockade. Now none of the transport ships with humanitarian aid from the Legitimacy Kingdom or anywhere else can reach us. This was just after the four world powers – including the Information Alliance – announced their intent to provide disaster relief. This violates international law. Their position should only grow worse, but that does not solve the more immediate problem. We must gather food as an emergency measure. Search through the half-destroyed Second Venice and check the warehouses, containers, supermarkets, convenience stores, shopping malls, bars, restaurants, and hotels. Go wherever you think you might find food and water and then retrieve it.”

“If the evacuated people learn about this, they’ll fight us for it. They’ll claim it belongs to them.”

Heivia sounded annoyed, but Frolaytia did not seem to mind.

“With the power out, the food in the city will spoil before long. The food would be too much for the citizens to eat before it rotted, but we can preserve it in our large cold rooms. Listen, this is not our food. Do not forget that we are merely storing it for redistribution. If you eat any while gathering it, that will be considered looting and you will be punished when discovered. Now get moving!”

Frolaytia clapped her hands twice to encourage them all.

None of them were particularly excited about this, but they had already released their own rations and their storerooms were empty. When they could not expect breakfast in the morning, they could not slack off, so they silently obeyed their orders.

With the Rush ruling over the surrounding sea, they could not use transport helicopters. If it targeted them with anti-air lasers, they could not avoid them.

And unfortunately, their military vehicles could not drive through Second Venice thanks to the canals.

“We have to go on foot!? We’re just like some volunteers cleaning up litter!!”

“I think someone forgot what soldiers are for at some point.”

Heivia complained as they marched out into the late night ghost town now that the rain had stopped, but Quenser remained somewhat calm.

“I had kind of thought Oh Ho Ho was on our side. I mean, yeah, she’s an Information Alliance soldier and she’s the person piloting the Second Generation at the cornerstone of this war, so maybe I should have seen this as a possibility.”

Catherine was clinging to Quenser’s waist.

She had cut her bikini strings with the knife in the boy’s survival kit, so she had changed back into the blue special suit of a Pilot Elite. Catherine had done the work on her own inside a changing room, but Quenser’s small cooking knife now had the rare quality of being “the one used to cut a girl’s bikini strings”. The student himself was back in the sweaty military uniform that had been hanging up in his room.

Incidentally, Catherine’s special suit had some additional elements that resembled a thin-collared blouse, a ribbon tie, and a short pleated skirt. It made her look like a student. Lineage and honor were everything in the Legitimacy Kingdom, so they liked to reveal one’s status and occupation through their clothing. What school had she been in before that bastard Flide snatched her up?

“Are you shocked about the Information Alliance, big brother?”

“I’m not sure. Well, maybe I am.”

Second Venice had temporarily fallen under Legitimacy Kingdom control, but there were a lot of facilities and equipment they could not control without removing the locks placed on them by the Information Alliance. The broadcast towers were one example and they had been transmitting a swimsuit G-cup idol’s cheerful online concert all day and all night long. It was being broadcast on all frequencies, so it amounted to jamming. Normal cellphones and smartphones without a military-grade control tower could not get word of the disaster out of Second Venice. And even if they did use some trick to punch through, it was obvious whose side the mass psychology would take when some random person’s face appeared in place of the world-class idol’s swimsuit.

There was a clear difference between those inside and outside the blockade.

Definite malice and hostility could be seen in the Oh Ho Ho’s actions here.

“I thought we might run into her as an enemy, but it’s true I never imagined it would happen like this.”

“Let’s stop talking about that Oh Ho Ho. If the Princess is listening in over the radio, this will only put her in a bad mood.”

The Baby Magnum still could not take part in a high-speed battle after the hit from a piece of the asteroid. The Princess could do nothing about the Rush. Even so, she was still plenty powerful as a stationary gun platform. She might be able to support them now that the civilians had been fully evacuated from half-destroyed Second Venice.

“Will the Princess have a chance to help out here? Do you think the Information Alliance has troops hidden in the rubble city?”

“I stopped trying to make sense of this after a transport ship protected by international law was blown away before my eyes. Anything goes in this war. If we’re attacked by little greys in backpacks instead of soldiers, I’m just going to roll with it.”

As they spoke, a large supermarket in the south side came into view. It was dark inside since the power was out, the windows were broken, and the shelves had fallen over. When they shined their military flashlights inside, it looked like a strange cave.

“Heh heh heh. Now I’ve finished ‘draw a portrait of a friend’ and ‘play basketball’. I’ve got a bunch of stamps now.”

“Oh, you’ve passed your daily quota while I wasn’t paying attention, Catherine. Did you make some friends at the base?”

“Look, big brother. The stamps cover more than half the card!”

“So you’re on the final stretch of the Civilian Acclimation Assistance System, hm? You’re real close to the safe country now.”

Catherine smiled like she was showing off a perfect score on a test.

Heivia peeked at the fresh foods section along the wall.

“The meat and vegetables look like a lost cause. I guess that’s just how it is in August.”

“We should be able to grab all the pre-packaged stuff and the cereal. And we should check the storeroom in the back.”

“Big brother, it’s nice and cool over here.”

There was still a chill in the meat processing room and storeroom in the back. No one had needed to open and close the thick insulated door, so it had kept the cold air in like a thermos. It had already been 48 hours since the asteroid exploded in midair, but time was still on their side.

“How are we supposed to carry all these cardboard boxes?”

“We’ll have to take a lesson from the ants.”

They stepped outside, pulled out a smoke bomb that let out colorful light and smoke, scraped the tip against the cap, and threw it out onto the end of the road. After contacting their fellow soldiers by radio, they noticed similar requests from the shopping malls and department stores in the area.

The Princess must have been monitoring them through a camera because she contacted them over the radio.

“You all seem to be having fun. It’s like a school camping trip.”

“I was always the type that hated volunteer work in the mountains so much I would vomit. So are you irritated that you’re stuck there? Try doing some stretches. But make sure to change into a white school swimsuit and give the stretches some real energy. Eh heh heh. That’ll bring some light to the world.”

“Quenser, could you not make me a part of your fantasies that make me want to vomit? Didn’t I tell you anything but a bikini isn’t even an option this year?”

Once they shared the location of the food, another unit could send someone to collect it, so Quenser’s group moved on to another store.

Heivia let out a cheer on the way.

“Oh, hell yes! There’s a soldier flying through the air using a water jet.”

“Where did they drag that leisure product from? Are they entering a store through a skylight because the other entrances were crushed?”

“Huh? They have an engine on their back, but they still need that water hose dangling down into the ocean like a tail, right?” asked Catherine. “It’s something like a vacuum cleaner, so I feel like it’s still missing something if it’s going to be a fashionable leisure item…”

Meanwhile, they ran into some other soldiers.

“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be gathering food? What are you doing at a hardware store?”

“The place is full of weapons: crowbars, shovels, hammers, chainsaws…everything. A nail gun could be used as a projectile weapon. We still haven’t set up any gun control, but I don’t want to imagine what happens if they begin rioting and bring out things like this. We’ll have to kill them.”

The fact that their fear was not of being attacked by the rioters may have been a unique side of the military.

Quenser sighed.

“But we can’t just destroy it all. With the blockade in place, we’ll have to do any construction with whatever we can find. We still haven’t built any real temporary residences.”

“Yeah, neither option is great, so we’ll have to retrieve them and store them at the maintenance base for now. See ya.”

After leaving those soldiers, Heivia made an annoyed comment.

“Civilization keeps breaking down more and more.”

“The Information Alliance might actually want that. If they do have soldiers hidden in the city, they might be working in secret to turn the military and civilians against each other. I can see why Frolaytia wanted to retrieve the food right away.”

“Hm?”

“What if the Information Alliance hid small glass shards on or in the food out here? The food we retrieved would kill the civilians. Then they would just have to shout complaints while pretending to be civilians themselves. They’d say the Legitimacy Kingdom sabotaged the limited food to reduce the number of mouths to feed. They’d say we were tricking everyone for some population control.”

“Are you serious…?”

“Frolaytia told us not to swipe any of the food, remember? That may have been because she feared that possibility. She wants to retrieve it all and then do a thorough inspection because who knows what could happen.”

Quenser’s view had no actual evidence to back it up.

And misinformation had a way of spreading during disasters.

Which side was putting everyone in danger? The inability to answer that was what made a crumbling ghost town so frightening.

They went around to a few more stores and placed smoke bombs near the entrances, but after that, they were stuck helping carry it all back.

The rain had let up, so the midsummer sun beat down on Second Venice once dawn broke.

“Goddammit. It’s already past six. With how diligently we’re all working, I feel like something’s bound to blow up soon.”

“It’s nice having a thousand people working together. We’ve finished carrying most of the food.”

“But a lot of the food had gone bad already,” said small Catherine as she strolled along beside them. “What a waste.”

“I’ll ask our busty commander if we can retrieve it later to make compost. We might be able to manage some fast-growing vegetables, like a resourceful office lady growing her own salad ingredients in her planter.”

“And couldn’t we make batteries by sticking electrodes in the rotting oranges? Each one might not amount to much, but all of the fresh foods were wiped out. We could gather a whole bunch. Plus, the shelters will need power and I bet that would be more reliable than if one of them thinks he’s an amateur inventor and tries to build a generator.”

Naturally, they did not think they could grow enough to make up for the lost food, but it was better than nothing. Even if a bucket had a hole in the bottom, it could still hold a little water if it was tilted at an angle.

“Hmm. Wouldn’t that battery idea be pretty unsanitary? Would you be boxing up a bunch of rotten fruit and sticking it in the shelters? Wouldn’t that bring in a bunch of flies and roaches which would spread disease?”

“I guess it isn’t that simple.”

“If we need batteries, it would be safer to gather them from the motor boats floating upside down all around here. Their batteries have got to have at least some power left. And if we tear up a parasol just right, it can work as a propeller. Combine that with a bicycle light generator and we’ve got a wind power generator. I have no idea if that busty commander would give the go-ahead on any of that, though.”

At that point, Quenser felt a shiver down his spine.

(Wait… How long do I think we’ll be stuck here?)

A week? A month? ….Or a year?

They normally moved from battlefield to battlefield as a part of the Object’s mobile maintenance base, so they never stayed anywhere for long. But the Princess had been taken out and the Information Alliance’s Second Generation Rush was blockading the ocean. The usual rules no longer applied. He could not deny the possibility of being stuck here for an extended period of time.

And once they returned to the maintenance base, Frolaytia spoke to them.

“The MPs are measuring all of the food, but with this many people, it likely won’t last two weeks. Ten days if we’re lucky and seven if we assume there’s trouble and we lose some. And that includes the rations we already released.”

“…”

That provided a clear limit.

Before that caught up with them, they had to figure out what was going on in Second Venice, drive out the Rush, and remove the blockade. Otherwise, they would starve to death along with 130,000 civilians.

The delinquent noble grew pale.

“Wait, wait, wait! Isn’t there anything we can do!? Can’t they hold an international summit to gang up on the Information Alliance for breaking their treaties!?”

“This is the Information Alliance we’re talking about. They’re the world’s best at weaseling out of things. I guarantee we’ll starve before the ambassador their home country sends to the online summit has run out of excuses. But don’t ask me whether it would be them speaking or just an AI negotiator stringing words together.”

Quenser brought a hand to his forehead.

“Give us our orders. What do we need to do?”

“I wish you were always that eager, but to be honest, there isn’t much we can do. And we might not even need to bring this to a direct conclusion ourselves.”

The busty silver-haired commander winked.

“This isn’t a desert on the moon. It’s a Mediterranean resort. The Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization home countries are right in front of us. The four world powers have already announced they intend to provide disaster relief. That means the Rush has made an enemy of the entire world with this blockade.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes,” said Frolaytia. “An Object will be here soon. One on our side.”