Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 10===

They couldn’t find them.

They had gathered their 8-wheeled armored trucks and searched the shortest route from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris, but Quenser and Heivia hadn’t found anyone suspicious. They were about to arrive at the entrance to Paris.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now!?”

The Legitimacy Kingdom military had surreptitiously set up a checkpoint they hoped wouldn’t alert the city’s people that anything was wrong and the soldiers there were shocked to see the potatoes arriving. It didn’t look like they had found the commandos and prevented their entry.

The Faith Organization had the upper hand.

“I’ll be borrowing this.”

“Wait, Major!? Hey, you there! Put together a bodyguard team immediately!”

Frolaytia grabbed a large anti-materiel rifle and hopped out of the truck, so her secretary-like aide quickly called in some of the surrounding infantry.

But there was a good reason for even their commander to join the search.

The Faith Organization commandos had to have some kind of target in mind. If the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers couldn’t catch up to them and stop them before the attack began, an ultra-long-range plasma attack capable of turning 20km to scorched earth would fall into the center of Paris.

Their mobile devices must not have been working with all their satellites shot down because fluffy blonde Elise Montana spread out a paper map before explaining the situation.

“We can safely assume the Faith Organization commandos are inside Paris. We can start by getting inside and raising the security level. Then we will request a siren be sounded to inform the people.”

“They would notice that!!”

“If they could attack right away, they would have done so already. They haven’t, which means they have some reason for waiting. Our top priority is to flush out the shadows lurking in the city. And no matter how much these spies have trained with VR goggles or in a fake city built out in the middle of nowhere, they will make a mistake if caught up in an irregular accident their training didn’t cover. So hurry.”

That last sentence was directed at the checkpoint guards who blocked the main road into the city. One of them nervously spoke into their radio and a deep, low noise began to play from all the disaster speakers installed throughout the city.

Heivia drove into Paris behind the wheel of an 8-wheel armored truck and used the side mirror (forcibly attached to make it street legal) to glance back at Frolaytia who was waving with the hand not resting an anti-materiel rifle on her shoulder.

“Our supposedly peaceful home country has an air raid siren going off and all four world powers are gathering Objects here.” Heivia impatiently clenched his teeth. “It’s exactly the same. We’re on track to be a repeat of Rome.”

“That’s probably what the Faith Organization wants,” calmly noted Black Uniform Charlotte Zoom, making Heivia wonder whose side she was on.

Meanwhile, Quenser frowned.

“But what’s keeping the Faith Organization from attacking now? We know they got into Paris ahead of us, so they should be free to act.”

“The Round Table.” Heivia sounded disgusted. “Don’t let the courageous name fool you. It’s actually a set of 10 underground shelters distributed across Paris. Board the elevators behind barriers cleverly hidden around the city and you’re in for a freefall straight down a 5000m shaft. I think it only takes 180 seconds to reach the bottom.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“Of course you haven’t. A smalltime regional king wouldn’t even know about it. Did you forget I’m heir to the great Winchell family? I know all sorts of dirty secrets about Paris. For example, the Legitimacy Kingdom only gives a crap about bloodline and history, so they never even tried to ensure the millions of commoners here would be safe. They just made sure a few dozen from noble bloodlines would be saved. God, just makes me want to punch them.”

Devastating losses would be answered with more devastating losses.

The Faith Organization no longer cared who was responsible. They just wanted to take someone else down with them.

If Rome could never be rebuilt, then they would do so much damage to Paris that it would never recover either. No, if they could pull it off, they would also want to cross the ocean and take out the Information Alliance’s New York and the Capitalist Corporations’ Los Angeles. So they had decided blowing away the surface of the city wasn’t enough.

Quenser couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“So…what? Are they in Paris surveying the city?”

“I bet they’re seeing where they can plant their explosives to do the most damage to their 10 targets and crush those VIP chickens under the collapsing bedrock. You love that kind of thing, don’t you?”

“Then they might be using elastic wave exploration,” groaned Charlotte Zoom. “You open a long, narrow hole in the ground with a metal spike, shove explosives inside, and create a powerful vibration underground. By picking up the reflected waves, you can figure out the quality, quantity, and deviation of underground materials. …And with that kind of delicate work, you want a peaceful city more than a pile of rubble that could trigger a secondary explosion at any time.”

The asphalt and stone pavement looked solid, but a hole several meters deep could be automatically created in just a few minutes using specialized electric-powered equipment. In a city, they would have to locate and account for any other vibration sources, such as sewers and boilers, but that wouldn’t require all that much more time.

Also, it didn’t particularly matter to Quenser’s group if that work was done correctly or not.

If the Faith Organization commandos ended up with a completely mistaken idea of where the shelters were located, they would still be ordering an ultra-high-temperature plasma blast from the distance. The emperor trembling in his new clothes deep underground might survive, but the more than 3 million people living on the surface would all be engulfed in flames.

“The Faith Organization can go to whatever hell they believe in. If it hurt that bad to see Rome drowning on lava, why would they want to force that pain onto us?”

“Wouldn’t you feel the same way if it was done to you? Not that sharing that experience is going to help us get along.”

All of a sudden, Quenser ducked down on instinct.

A fighter with a distinctive silhouette had just flown by directly above their armored truck. Several of them had.

They had lost air superiority over their own home country.

The Black Uniform woman’s eyes widened.

“Zig-27s!? Those were Capitalist Corporations fighters!!”

“Shut up! Quit explaining how screwed we are and do something to avoid it! Get outta the truck unless you’re interested in having your bones roasted to a nice crispy brown. The bombs will hit in 3!!”

Quenser was hesitant to jump after seeing the asphalt rushing by below, so his awful friend roughly grabbed his collar.

Heivia and the others opened the still-moving armored truck’s doors and hatch and forcibly rolled on out. They didn’t have time to escape indoors, so they got down on the street and covered their heads with their hands.

Aerial bombs dropped from almost directly overhead.

Red hot shrapnel broke all the nearby building windows. The truck was flimsier than a full-on tank, but it was still a sturdy vehicle. Nevertheless, its eight wheels flew off in different directions.

“Gahhh!!”

“Kh…this is our home country. What are our Objects doing?”

Needless to say, those fighters couldn’t have been flying overhead if any anti-air lasers were aiming their way, yet the Capitalist Corporations squadron of 4 Zig-27s made a sharp turn in the sky.

Elise waved something in her hand while down on the ground with her other hand over her head and her butt sticking up in the air.

It was a radio.

“N-no response.”

“…”

“Communications are down. But not because we’re being jammed. Th-the home country defense Objects were taken out at some point!! Something bad is happening out there!!”