Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 9===

A stun grenade was a nonlethal weapon that used intense light and sound to rob the enemy of their senses and mobility. It incapacitated them for a few seconds to a few dozen seconds. Normally, the enemy would be finished off using a gun in that time.

Heivia and Genelia had already leaned their bodies out the window by the time it went off.

That allowed them to avoid a direct hit, but a slight white afterimage was still burned into their eyes. But they did not have time to rub at their eyes. Fortunately, a scaffold-like space stretched out beyond the window and they used it to flee.

“This is bad. This is bad, this is bad, this is bad!!”

“Is there a corner anywhere around here!? If we just head straight, we’ll be shot in the back!!”

There was a corner not far away.

But before they could reach it, a masked Unicorn member stuck his upper body out the window behind them. He was aiming his carbine in their direction.

Heivia flicked off the safety on his assault rifle and brought his index finger to the trigger.

He fired a short burst of three shots.

And afterward, Heivia wanted to hold his head in his hands.

“I’ve finally done it! I fired on an ally!!”

“What are you talking about? You already strangled one of them. If we can’t bring their wrongdoing to light, you’ll definitely be headed to court martial.”

It seemed the man had flinched back so he had not been hit. After Heivia and Genelia made it around the corner, they heard return gunfire.

They continued running and began climbing up a staircase for workers that was more or less a ladder built diagonally. As he climbed, Heivia checked his equipment.

“I have three magazines and two grenades.”

“Aren’t those the smoke grenades from inventory?”

“This stuff is completely useless!”

“That would be why so much was left for us to use up.”

Sporadic gunfire came after Heivia and Genelia, but either the enemy’s foothold was not sturdy or they were afraid of the strong gusts of wind signaling a storm was approaching because their aim was not settled. Heivia and Genelia continued up and up.

“Did you find anything in the data?”

“The water resource business using clouds and the megasolar power generation business are in competition.”

“Yeah, both of those deal with the weather. If it doesn’t rain, the water resources people are in trouble, but if the sky is covered in clouds, the megasolar people are in trouble. So which one is Claire involved with?”

“Officially, she works with the water resource business. In other words, the people who create clouds. But…”

“But?”

“It seems there is someone who is investing in both of them. Their name wasn’t listed, though.”

“But if one succeeds, the other one fails, right?”

“There is no guarantee the money actually belongs to the person.” Genelia lightly licked her lips and continued. “In other words, southern Africa is a financial black hole. No matter which one you invest in, you will lose money in the end. 

It may look like there are times when you make money, but the more money you spend, the more it sucks out of you. But the ones paying will lose their cool and not realize what is going on until they have lost a huge sum of money. It’s the same thing that happens in corrupt casinos. Now, a question: How much damage could one do by convincing individuals and groups you want to weaken to buy into this financial black hole?”

“…So the problem isn’t Africa?” Heivia could feel an unpleasant sweat appearing on his body. “Claire lures influential people and corporations within the Legitimacy Kingdom into that financial black hole and the continued losses weaken them. It all plays right into the hands of the Capitalist Corporations.”

Modern wars were carried out with Objects. And so no one set out to raze a world power’s capital or to eradicate an opposing race of people.

Wars cost money.

By robbing an enemy nation of their money, they could be driven into a state where they were unable to wage war. If that was Claire’s goal with the financial black hole, her betrayal would do damage to the entirety of the Legitimacy Kingdom.

And in the long run, it could even do more serious damage than any clash between Objects.

“How can this be? This is a completely different form of war.”

“If Claire and Unicorn have become pawns of the Capitalist Corporations, we absolutely must make sure this information gets out. It could act as a splash of icy water for the clients who have lost their cool.” Perhaps because this could be classified as a scam involving huge amounts of money, Genelia seemed somehow excited about it. “So what do we do? No matter where we run, the Night Edge Platoon controls the peace and justice of the Cook Addition Islands.”

“The same cannot be said for the Objects protecting the islands. We need to find some way to get this information to them. Dammit. Will our radios be enough? We should have brought that satellite antenna with us when we fled.”

That was when they heard the roar of something beating against the air.

Something was approaching from one of the other islands. What they saw flying through the sky looked like a compromise between an airplane and a helicopter. It was a propeller-driven craft called a tiltrotor. The angle of the propellers attached to the wings could be altered by 90 degrees to provide vertical or horizontal thrust.

To put it simply, it was a medium-sized aircraft that could take off like a helicopter so it did not need a runway.

“That’s a transport plane…right? Is it going to drop down some soldiers?”

“No…This is bad,” groaned Heivia.

He had noticed the several gun barrels sticking out from the left side of the tiltrotor’s body.

“It’s a gunship!! It’s a fortress of the sky that uses its large size to store tons of shells. I think that’s a 150mm artillery gun, a 50mm howitzer, and a 30mm Gatling gun sticking out there. No matter which one it fires, we’ll be blown to pieces! Even if we hid under a tank, it would just tear the tank apart!!”

The main advantage of a gunship was its ability to continuously fire down on an enemy from the sky. The many shells in the large-capacity gunship would be fired like crazy while it flew in a large circle with the target in the center. By switching between the armaments roughly meant for anti-building, anti-tank, and anti-personnel, it could destroy anything inside its circle so the target had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. That was the kind of weapon it was.

“Wh-what if we flee downwards!? The thick layers of the building might protect us!”

“That’s what they want. They’re cutting off our escape from above so the soldiers coming up from below can capture us. No matter where we run, we’ll only find a dead end!”

“Then what do we do!? There’s no way we can shoot down that mid-sized aircraft with our rifles!”

“C’mere! I’ll do something about it!!”

Since it was trying to fly in a large circle, the gunship did not head directly toward Heivia and Genelia. It smoothly flew into position like a record needle.

It would soon begin.

The endless circular flight and rain of bullets powerful enough to blow away a storm would begin.