Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 12===

The situation was as follows:

First, the JPlevelMHD reactor was extremely delicate when not contained in an Object. A careless firefight or explosion could trigger it, covering Rome in a sea of lava.

Second, between 100 and 200 passengers and crew had been taken hostage inside the stopped train. At least 5 pairs of guards surrounded the train and there were likely more. If even one of those was missed, they would almost certainly start firing in through the train’s windows. And the lack of guards inside the train suggested there might be a booby trap inside.

So Quenser’s group needed a plan.

The needed to come up with a way to take out the entire Bad Garage unit without giving them a chance to counterattack.

Maybe they felt out of place and maybe this didn’t feel like their job, but it was time to play the hero, at least for now.

“Will this really work?” asked Heivia.

“They’re all pointed in the same direction, but this is still an enclosed tunnel,” explained Quenser. “It will affect us to an extent, so find us somewhere to hide.”

The student unreeled a long cable. With their radios not working, they needed a wired detonation method.

Yes, detonation.

But they weren’t approaching the enemy, setting up bombs, and then slaughtering the Bad Garage bad guys with explosive flames and sharp shrapnel. That could easily detonate the reactor and any guards on the other side of the train could survive.

Quenser himself had hinted at what they were really doing.

They were inside an enclosed tunnel.

“Teacher.”

“The pressure calculations check out, so we’re all ready. What, our shelter is a supply closet?”

It was a storeroom about half the size of a school classroom.

Quenser finished laying out the long cable and stepped through the metal door’s threshold to approach Putana. He had to close the door on the cable, but that was fine as long as it could still carry a current. He closed the door gently to make sure he didn’t break the actual wire inside the thick cable. Fortunately, this wasn’t a macaroni-like fiber optic cable.

They couldn’t see anything now.

But the enemy’s location was irrelevant. If their attack covered the entire space, Bad Garage had no way to escape.

Their plan was to use a long-distance detonation.

They sent a shockwave down the enclosed tunnel like cleaning a bath pipe.

They heard a loud boom and the closed metal door bent inwards. The world seemed to shake around Quenser. The shockwave would always travel down the path of least resistance, but it still affected them somewhat.

Quenser couldn’t support his own weight and leaned against the wall while shaking his head to try and stop the ringing in his ears.

“Go, Heivia, Myonri!! The stun effect of the shockwave rattling their inner ear won’t last long. You have less than 30 seconds, so shoot them all now!!”

They had trouble getting the bent door open, but the pair armed with submachineguns still charged out into the tunnel. Quenser followed after them with Putana lending him her shoulder.

Whichever side of the train the guards were on, the shockwave and rapid pressure change would have stunned them. When an extreme pressure change filled an entire space, you couldn’t escape just by hiding behind an obstacle. And none of the Bad Garage unit had been inside the train. The hostages wouldn’t be affected since they were safely enclosed in that sealed space and a simple pressure change wouldn’t cause the reactor to explode.

The dull sounds of suppressed gunfire signaled the beginning of the slaughter. Heivia and Myonri unilaterally fired into the heads and chests of the soldiers lying unmoving on the ground, so the civilians on the train might have viewed them as the villains here. But it was game over if even one of those terrorists got up like a not-quite-dead worm. So many lives would be lost if they started firing on either the train full of hostages or the reactor.

Quenser chose to accept the people’s screams and disgust.

Putana continued to lend him her shoulder while raising her combat knife and firing one of the bullets hidden in its grip into the head of a soldier the other two had missed.

“Someone is pretending to be dead. I still sense someone’s living eyes on me!!”

The student’s inner ear had finally recovered.

He could walk without Putana’s support now, but the same applied to Bad Garage. If he could walk, they would have recovered as well.

A soldier tried to press some kind of switch with trembling fingers.

(They aren’t trying to show off their technological prowess to the military or the police and they weren’t trying to drive terror into the people by making something that can’t be disarmed. This shouldn’t be a complex puzzle of a bomb!!)

Quenser tore the digital timer from the round reactor. He threw it away just as Heivia’s submachinegun shot through the last remaining survivor’s head.

Blinding white sparks scattered across the floor. The thick metal rail had been melted by a great heat. A moment later and the reactor’s exterior would have been melted through and the plasma within would have burst out.

“Are we clear now!?”

“I think so. But the hostages are still trapped! The guards were staying off the train for some reason and we haven’t checked it for booby traps yet. It might blow up the instant we manually open the door!!”

Quenser cautiously checked through the window and then climbed below the train. There it was. Some colorful cords were tangled around the metal tank for the air compressor used to open and close the automatic door. It would indeed blow up the instant the door opened.

(Bad Garage wouldn’t have expected these hostages. The one on the reactor was simple, so they wouldn’t have had a bomb covered in a mess of cords like you see in the movies.)

He gulped and got to work. Bad Garage must have only cared that the hostages inside the train couldn’t deactivate it. He used a tester to check the current in the cords and then removed a clothespin-like clip to release the dangerous cord.

And he didn’t need to open all of the train’s doors. As long as one of them was safe, all the hostages could move between cars and escape from here.

Quenser operated the emergency release lever to force the door open from outside, gestured, and spoke in the Legitimacy Kingdom language.

“Take it slow and one at a time!! There’s a drop to the ground, so watch your step!!”

The people inside seemed nervous. They were afraid to approach the door, but they had no reason to stay inside now that it was open. They all hesitated while the small boy nearest the door nervously approached Quenser.

Quenser smiled and tried to be reassuring.

“Let’s get you all back home. So did we pull off the hero thing here?”

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Putana wrinkle her brow in doubt.

The square panel of a maintenance hatch rose up on the train’s floor near the boy.

“Teacher!! There’s more of them!!”

Something was thrown out of the open door.

The metal can was a stun grenade with the pin removed.

Any Bad Garage survivors would try to detonate the reactor.

They hadn’t seen any guards entering or leaving the train and they had found bombs on the doors, so they had assumed no one from Bad Garage was on the train.

Hadn’t Heivia said “probably” is fine, but avoid assuming something “must be true”?

“Oh, shi-”

If only they hadn’t all been focused on the one open door. A magnesium flash filled the tunnel and the entire Legitimacy Kingdom’s group had their vision and hearing knocked out.