Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 9===

Once they tried it, it proved surprisingly easy.

They modified the large radio’s antenna so they could essentially point an invisible searchlight wherever they wanted. When they pointed it at the ground below one of the bull-like four-legged robots, the desert would explode amusingly easily. Perhaps because they knew these were not humans, Quenser and Heivia showed no mercy. They detonated the ground below the bulls again and again.

“Wow, it’s just like a shooting game.”

“That second one from the right’s machinegun is broken. It was hit by the blast or the shrapnel. Let’s avoid finishing off the damaged ones. We don’t have to fear them if they can’t fire on us, so let’s draw them in as much as we can.”

“Why!?”

“Once they approach, we can have them step on all the mines. That’ll give us a safe route.”

The bulls were as solid as one would expect of weapons placed on the border of their home country. The two idiots lured the few that had survived along a straight path and used the jamming to detonate more and more of the smart mines. They almost looked heroic.

The oasis was three hundred meters away.

At this point, charging into the enemy lines was better than sneaking around. Extra mine-launching missiles automatically fired from the oasis after detecting the lack of mines via radio, but Quenser and Heivia ignored them and rushed down the bulls’ path to the oasis.

Until, that is, something much more frightening interrupted.

It was the Antlion and the Baby Magnum.

The two Objects cut across the desert.

All of their assumptions were instantly blown away.

The mines were blown away like firecrackers below the Objects. The entire idea of a minefield was erased. The bulls that had just barely maintained their original forms were finally turned to scrap.

Meanwhile, a creaking came from the countless secondary cannons on one of the four arms the Antlion used to grab at the ground.

It was accurately targeting Quenser and Heivia, those bugs crawling along the ground.

The student’s throat dried up.

A moment later, light as pure white as welding stabbed into his eyes.

However, he felt no pain. In fact, the cannon fire had not come from the Antlion at all.

A few of the Antlion’s secondary cannons were torn away like melted candy.

Quenser knew only one person who could have done that.

“Princess!?”

He shouted into his radio, but the Baby Magnum was not unharmed. It must have taken a full main cannon hit because its left side had melted like ice cream. She still fired her anti-air lasers to say hi. They destroyed all of the mine-launching missiles meant to scatter smart mines from overhead. Meanwhile, the Antlion had lost its chance to fire. The two Objects left the battlefield and resumed their conflict in a different region of desert.

“This is no time to watch! Get running! If they fire a second or third wave, our safe route could be contaminated by mines!!”

This was their chance, so the two of them took off running.

They desperately calmed their panicking hearts and made their way to the oasis.

The desert was wide open, but they were not interrupted by sniper fire or machine gun barrages. The area really must have been focused on unmanned defenses. Either that or the heavy machineguns on the backs of those remote controlled bulls had been their prized weapons.

Fortunately, no more mine-launching missiles were fired.

They had likely decided they were meaningless with the Object around.

The two idiots dove into the sunflower field surrounding the oasis.

“This is terrible.”

The sunflowers were taller than Quenser and they were so thick they created a natural curtain. They had stepped in together, but he could no longer see Heivia.

“I can’t even see even two meters in front of me. Not even jungle battles are this bad.”

“Heivia. Hey, Heivia!”

The student quietly called for his awful friend, but the other boy’s voice only grew more distant.

They could still contact each other over the radio, but that would not help them meet back up since there were no landmarks. But he could not stay where he was, so he decided to continue toward the crashed plane that was their original objective.

It was stuffy and hot inside the sunflower field.

The humidity was unpleasantly high.

He parted the sunflowers on his own. The stalks had something like small hairs on them and they painfully scratched at his cheeks. He grimaced and then noticed the sinister silhouette of a scorpion at eye level on one stalk.

“Wah!?”

(Animal contamination!? Does that mean there are tons of spiders and snakes here too!?)

But he did not have time to be afraid of every little thing.

He heard a few gunshots muffled by a silencer. Quenser covered his mouth with his hands and crouched down on the spot. The bullets must have hit them because the leaves and stalks of nearby sunflowers were crushed, producing a grassy smell.

(A silencer? Dammit, Heivia didn’t have one of those!!)

He had let out a shout, but the enemy soldier had not shot him through the head or heart.

It was obvious what that meant.

(They’re nearby, but the barrier of moisture-filled sunflowers is deflecting their anti-personnel radar waves. They can only make a general guess at which direction to fire!!)

If he moved, the sound of parting the sunflowers would give away his position.

Just like the sounds he could hear moving right toward him.

His heart pounded in his chest and his mind focused on the Hand Axe plastic explosive in his backpack, but he would be caught in the blast too when this close. He thought for a bit and then reached for a pen-sized electric fuse in the pouch on his waist.

A moment later, unfamiliar boots stepped out thirty centimeters in front of him.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

He felt dizzy.

He was only a student, so he could not defeat a strong soldier in close-quarters combat. The advantage of a surprise attack would barely matter. A knife being more powerful than a gun at close range was only true in the movies, so he did not have the guts to face that soldier who held a carbine.

That was why Quenser relied on something else.

He tossed the fuse over without using any explosive. He threw it to the base of a sunflower near the enemy rather than the enemy himself.

It was the one with a sinister scorpion on it.

He immediately hit the switch on his radio. A blast louder than a firecracker broke the stalk and the giant flower fell toward the enemy soldier’s face. As did the venomous stinger.

“Bwaah!?”

As the enemy soldier swung his arms and legs around and made a lot of noise, Quenser snuck past him while still crouching. He did not need to rush. Slowly moving through the sunflowers was best.

A moment later, he heard a metallic sound.

He felt a squeezing in his heart when he saw a different carbine pointing toward his head through a gap in the sunflower curtain. There had been more than one enemy soldier.

And the gun did indeed have a silencer attached.

A wet sound followed.

However, it was not the sound of the student’s brains splattering on the sunflowers.

After sneaking up behind the enemy soldier, Heivia held his mouth with a hand and slit this throat with a large knife.

“Of course they aren’t going to send out just one guy on a patrol. Use your head a little.”

“It hadn’t been long since we got separated, so I assumed you would show up after hearing the fuse detonate.”

“Yeah, but the enemy will have heard it too. C’mon, let’s go.”

Heivia tossed aside the unmoving corpse and Quenser borrowed the silencer-equipped carbine before following.

“You’re not going to use that, so it’ll just get in the way.”

“It’s like a good-luck charm. Do you have any idea what it’s like to walk along the front lines without a gun?”

They carefully walked through the sunflower field when enemy soldiers or venomous creatures could be hiding anywhere. The constant green curtain made it easy to lose their sense of direction if they stopped paying attention.

“There aren’t any mines here, I see.”

“Mines don’t mix well with plant roots. Roots can lift up asphalt in some cases, right? They can trigger explosions, reduce the sensitivity, or whatever else.”

They were still worried about wire traps, but they never ran across any.

The sunflower field suddenly ended.

Instead of happening naturally, it looked like a line had been torn away in the donut-shaped field surrounding the oasis itself. The green curtain was torn up over a width of about fifty meters. This was the crash site, but there was no intact transport plane. It had split into three large hunks of metal and smaller pieces and wreckage were scattered everywhere.

Yellow tape cordoned off the area and plates with letters written on them were placed on the ground. Men in Capitalist Corporations uniforms were still working near the three major pieces of the wreckage. There were about ten per piece.

The two idiots crouched down right inside the edge of the sunflower curtain and discussed the situation.

“Where do you think the plane’s pilots are?”

“There’s no way they survived a crash like that. They’ll have been blown to bits. That busty commander must have realized we’d be more motivated if we thought they might still be alive.”

“Then what’s the Capitalist Corporations so busy searching for?”

“How should I know? We have no idea what was onboard or why it was shot down.”

This was not the world of a moving war movie, so they had no real attachment to colleagues they had never met. They would do their job, but they would also complain about it.

They argued some more, but there was no reason for them to actually defeat the Capitalist Corporations here. In fact, the enemy could send in an inexhaustible supply of reinforcements with their home country so close by. Trying to defeat them was wasted effort. If the pilots were dead, they could complete their mission by taking photos of the corpses to have evidence of their deaths.

But…

“Do you think we can slip past all those soldiers?”

“Let’s start with what we can get at. God, what a pain. In the end, it’s human eyes standing in our way.”

Fortunately, there was quite a bit of wreckage scattered about. There were three main pieces, but small container or car-sized pieces were everywhere. Heivia left the sunflowers in a crouch and Quenser followed. They approached a nearby dented metal container.

“Why couldn’t there be topless girls waiting at our destination? Instead it’s some mangled corpses. Can’t someone find something to give me some motivation?”

“Wait a second. What is this container?”

Quenser looked to the piece of wreckage they were using as cover. It was an air cargo container shaped like a two meter die and it was made of aluminum to cut down on the weight. The crash had blown the door off, so they could easily peek inside.

It was not carrying weapons, ammunition, rations, or even an officer’s condoms.

It was divided into layers by metal racks and it contained an ultraviolet light meant to replace the sun and a small air conditioner meant to keep the temperature stable. The glittering silver box had plants growing inside it.

“A plant factory?” Quenser frowned. “But why? I’ve heard they can get more than twenty-six harvests a year by changing the wavelength of the light, but growing plants in place of rations has to be terribly inefficient.”

“That’s not what this is. …This is bad, Quenser.”

Heivia stepped inside the container and reached for the wheat growing on top of a large plate on one of the metal racks.

However, the color was strange. The heads seemed to be surrounded by hard purple shells and they had swollen one size larger than normal. Even an agricultural amateur could tell this was some kind of plant disease.

“These are ergots. Unless this was an accident, the plant was intentionally infected. And how would it accidentally get infected inside a perfectly sealed container?”

“Wait, you mean…?”

Quenser’s eyes widened as he finally caught on.

Heivia looked annoyed.

“The ergot alkaloids extracted from these are used to make the ever-famous LSD. This is mass-producing some life-ruining stuff that even the people taking dangerous drugs and herbs are afraid to touch. I think it’s called Colorful Vanilla these days.”

“Why? Because the drug smells like vanilla?”

“No, because it gets you so high even pure white vanilla is filled with psychedelic colors.” The delinquent noble spat out the words while spinning his index finger next to his head. “Haven’t you heard of the Capitalist Corporations’ Home Treatment Proposal? There are so many addicts that the hospitals and prisons are about to burst at the seams, so this reckless new rule would greatly relax the standards for who can be treated at home. They’ll be attaching GPS devices to their ankles, but they’re really just leaving the addicts to their own devices. No one can know when some hallucinating bastard will attack people on the streets or go on a mass shooting. One of the world powers is on the verge of succumbing to a drug.”

“But if the ingredient for that Whatever Vanilla just showed up in a Legitimacy Kingdom transport plane…”

“Yeah.”

Heivia paused before continuing.

“Our idiots have gotten involved in a drug war. This was no coincidence. We’ve been performing an invisible carpet bombing of the enemy’s home country, goddammit.”