Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 6===

And so they ended their cooperation with the movie shoot that had been so very, very boring that some had suspected it was a stress test. Soon thereafter, Quenser and Heivia were thrown out onto the battlefield.

They were stuffed into small ten-man hovercraft that raced across the sticky and squishy marsh.

The entire area was covered in brown mud, but it lacked the distinctive rotting stench. The snow was melting for spring, but the number of active microbes may have been low.

“It doesn’t look all that impressive from above.”

“Stop it. This isn’t just some tidelands. Fall in there, and you’ll sink up to your chest right away. As stupid as it sounds, you wouldn’t be able to crawl back out if you got even one leg in there. Dying in this nasty mud would be a real tragedy. No microbes will get close, so you’ll be pulled out as pristine as a mummy in a pyramid and displayed in a museum or something. Look.”

Heivia pointed in a random direction with this thumb.

A flat surface of brown mud continued as far as the eye could see and even beyond the horizon, but protrusions with artificially straight lines poked up here and there. Something had sunk into the mud there. Those were the results of tanks and armored trucks trying to cross the swamp or other trucks attempting to save the crew.

Not a single tire or tread was visible. Quite a few were nothing but metal roofs just barely poking up above the mud, but there were probably others completely submerged that they could not see.

“It’s like a snowy road; you won’t slip as long as the tires are moving,” said Heivia while the warm wind on his cheeks almost made him forget this was the Arctic. “That’s why people let their guard down. They realize they’re not sinking and decide they can make it where everyone else failed. And then when they slow down a little to turn or something, they start to sink. I don’t know whether these are from the Legitimacy Kingdom or that copied weapons factory, but this place has swallowed up a ton of lives.”

Quenser and the others were using more than just one hovercraft. Forty to fifty of them were crossing the marsh in a large reverse V formation.

The sky was just as unusual as the ground.

The clouds were thick enough to weigh down on them as mental pressure, but there were some other objects in that sky that clearly did not belong. There were hundreds if not thousands of them. As far as the eye could see, spheres about a meter across floated in the gray sky like a wall or curtain. The giant eyeball drawn on each one made the scene all the more psychotic looking.

Quenser did not look pleased.

“Are those the invisible bombs we were briefed about?”

“How about you try to think for yourself before asking? It should be obvious that those simple spheres have no stealth capabilities whatsoever. I’m guessing they’re barrage balloons mass-produced using the same tech. They’re just balloons with bombs attached. They leave less room for aircraft or missiles to fly through and the antiaircraft guns fire through the gaps. They make an aerial wall.”

Heivia actually sounded shocked at the enemy’s methods.

“That’s why we can’t do any surveillance or bombings from some ridiculous altitude like 25 or 30 thousand meters up. To get up that high, the aircraft sacrifice precise handling. If they flew into an area of sky filled with bombs, they wouldn’t be able to avoid them and they’d be blown apart.”

“I see,” was all Quenser said.

Only an Object or the giant machines inside an industrial complex would excite his mecha heart.

The student then spoke up, sounding entirely carefree despite both land and air being blocked off on this battlefield.

“What’s the point of this battle anyway?”

“A sea route through the Arctic Ocean. Polar bears are on the verge of extinction thanks to global warming, but a bunch of idiots are going nuts because they see a business opportunity.”

“Didn’t they say we’re getting rid of everyone in the way of a development base for that new sea route and an underwater oil field? But can’t they just say we’re driving out some guerrillas or terrorist? And besides, I doubt they can transport materials and heavy machinery to the coast through this mud, so can they really maintain a port?”

“I doubt they’re actually planning to build a port. Terrorists are criminals, not soldiers. Looking ‘civilians’ in the eye and slaughtering them with an Object sounds bad, so they came up with an alternate reason. The specific reason doesn’t matter as long as they can eliminate the risk of that new sea route being filled with mines.”

The Volga District, a safe country, was insistent on obtaining that Arctic route, so they had sent out a battalion to drive away an Information Alliance Object station in this battlefield country. For them, this mission was only a detour, so they did not want to get too serious about it yet did not want to be stabbed in the side either.

“And we’re stuck dealing with odd jobs again. Honestly, what’s the point of going to a battlefield without an Object?”

“Stay vigilant, Quenser. You don’t want to die on this ridiculous odd job, do you?”

“You think we’ll be attacked here? How? Infantry can’t walk through the mud and the Rafflesia thermobaric antiaircraft guns can’t fire horizontally. Even all these tanks and armored trucks are sunk in the mud. They wouldn’t have any way to-…”

He never finished his sentence.

One of the tanks supposedly sunk and stranded in the mud suddenly fired its gun.

“Wah!?”

“Dammit, the thing’s still alive!? No, wait…”

Heivia revved the engine. The three giant propellers pushed the hovercraft forward and past the stranded tank.

As if to target them, the machineguns on top of the armored trucks and the tanks’ guns moved unexpectedly smoothly to aim their way.

“This was no accident! It was an attack formation from the beginning!! Dammit, now they can target us from all 360 degrees!!”

An explosion sounded and the hovercraft racing along right next to theirs was tossed into the air like a toy. The ten soldiers inside were thrown on top of the mud. They did not have time to hesitate, turn back, or collect them. The sunken vehicles were targeting Quenser and Heivia’s hovercraft as well.

“Smoke!!”

Heivia gave a shout and ten to twenty drink can sized cylinders flew from the side of the hovercraft in a fan shape. They created small explosions in midair and produced an unnaturally white wall of smoke. Something tore right through the cotton candy-like wall: improperly aimed tank shells.

Meanwhile, Heivia started preparing the shoulder-fired missile launcher hanging from a shoulder strap.

“What should I do!?” shouted Quenser.

“If you’ve got nothing to do, curl up in a ball!!”

Heivia shouted back, rested the launcher on his shoulder, and peered through the sight.

He aimed toward the closest tank that had let itself sink halfway into the mud. Its turret was rotating their way.

As soon as he fired, the hovercraft carrying Quenser’s group was destroyed. It flipped on its side and slammed into the mud. A moment later, the fired missile tore into the tank and filled it with explosive flames. Who could say how many tons the turret weighed, but the entire thing was lifted straight up like a manhole cover during a flood.

“Gaaaaaahh!?”

Quenser did not have time to check on all of that.

The flavor of iron spread through his mouth and a soft sensation enveloped his body. He was already waist deep in the mud and he could not move his lower body. No matter how much he twisted his hips or swung his arms, he could not move a single step.

And he was gradually sinking even further.

In all seriousness, he could easily sink down to the very top of his head and suffocate.

“Dammit…I need something!!”

He swung his arms around randomly and felt something hard with his fingertips.

It was a piece of hull stripped from the hovercraft. The panel of composite material was about the size of a hotel room’s side table.

He managed to pull it close and pressed both palms against it. He now had a handhold to keep himself from sinking. He forced himself upwards as if doing a push-up and got his upper body on top of the panel.

He paddled his arms and legs in the mud to somehow move forward as if on a body board.

“Heivia! And everyone else!! Find something – anything! – you can use as a float! Otherwise you’ll sink!!”

Hearing that, the soldiers thrown out across the mud started moving. They used whatever they could find to remain afloat: hovercraft fragments, broken pieces of wood, plastic containers used for who knows what, etc.

Heivia also moved through the mud like he was using a body board and he shouted into his radio.

“Requesting datalink support!! Use the heat sources to tell which tanks can move and which are junk! And how about some help from the Object!? It can fire long range using the targeting data of our rifles, right!?”

“Our eyes in the sky are useless thanks to the clone satellite! Destroy them yourself!!”

“Goddammit! Isn’t it your job to figure out a way around that!? There are shells flying all over the battlefield! If one of those hits us, we’ll be blown to bits!!”

“If a false signal is mixed in with your support request, the Princess will fire her main cannon right on top of you. Are you sure you want that!?”

The surrounding soldiers tore armor panels from the destroyed hovercraft to use as floats, kicked at the mud, and escaped behind the tanks and armored trucks. But they could not trust those shields. The turret might turn their way at any moment and a shell with a lead attached could be remotely detonated inside it.

“Heivia, Heivia! Begging them isn’t going to help. We’ll have to do whatever we can on our own.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do!? How many tanks and trucks do you think are sunk in this mud? And I’ve already fired my missile!!”

Meanwhile, a hovercraft a short distance away was fired on by a sunken armored truck and the hovercraft fired its Crocodile Gatling gun back. Quenser and the others were being lured deeper into the attack formation. There was a risk of attack from the tank guns up ahead, to the side, and behind them. Staying still would be an all-around bad idea.

“I feel like a mudskipper.”

“Goddammit, I’m a noble, you know? There’s something wrong when I’m paddling through the mud with shells flying everywhere. …Couldn’t I be taking a leisurely trip across the water on skis or something?”

While it was far better than sinking into the bottomless swamp, dragging their entire body weight while crawling across the water was not easy. The viscosity made it even harder than crawling on land.

“Besides, how far are we going? There are tanks and armored trucks everywhere. Even if they can’t move around, their weapons and armor still work. We can’t stand up to that with the firepower we have on hand.”

“Heivia, don’t use your assault rifle. I don’t want some stupid punchline where it explodes because the barrel’s packed full of mud.”

“You want me to take on armored weapons with just the bullets!?”

“No, we have all the firepower we need in the sky.”

“What? Is Joan of Arc finally descending from heaven in bikini armor!?”

“Heivia, I try not to trust people who seriously talk about bikini armor, but are all nobles like that?”

The student sounded fed up.

“I’m referring to those creepy eyeballs.”

He pointed straight up while still lying down on the panel of hull.

“Did you call them barrage balloons? Well, hundreds or even thousands of bomb-equipped balloons are floating above us. Bring them down, and it’ll be raining bombs. Plus, the top is the most fragile part of a tank or armored truck. …Download the formation on your handheld device. We need the locations of our allies, of the balloons, and of the tanks and armored trucks. We avoid the ones above our allies and shoot down the ones floating over those armored weapons.”

“It’s true those eyeballs are arranged pretty randomly. And their altitude ranges from ten thousand meters to only five hundred. We might be able to shoot some of them down with just a rifle.” Heivia gulped. “But where the bombs land is still up to chance. With the wind and air resistance, they won’t fall straight down. We can’t drop the bombs on them that easily.”

“Yeah, if it was just one or two of them, it would probably be trickier than getting a hole-in-one.” Quenser smiled a little. “But we have plenty of chances. We just have to keep it up until we hit. I’m sure we’ll hit at least once if we shoot down a hundred of them. We just have to make sure we don’t drop any on our allies.”

“What a pain. So it comes down to a gamble, does it?”

The noble spat out the words.

But then…

“In that case, there’s no way we can lose. I’d never let some nouveau riche bastard steal my villa in a card game.”