Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 15===

Once they left the central computer room, they were again exposed to the threat of the Nitrogen Mirage. They could not predict when a nitrogen laser would blast right through the ship’s walls.

The number of attacks from the Information Alliance troops seemed to have reduced quite a bit from before.

“What’s this? Did she purge too many of them, so she doesn’t have any pawns left?”

They heard the quiet squeaking of an animal.

“…”

“Don’t look, old lady. It’ll only be unpleasant.”

Heivia and the others had already done a detailed search and Quenser made sure not to look in that direction. He could hear the sounds of small animals gathering around what was no more than meat. He could kind of tell why no one was left.

“I can imagine some of them couldn’t continue on or turn back, so they ended up in a shootout with the commanding officer that ordered the attack…”

“A normal Martini wouldn’t waste this many resources.” Wraith quietly clenched her teeth as the silence enveloped her. “I refuse to accept that a normal Martini would have such an extreme disregard for human life…”

Wraith’s role was the Stopgap Grim Reaper. When various factors had caused the chain of command to fail and a unit had been abandoned on the battlefield, she was sent in to prevent them from being destroyed before the next commander could arrive. At first glance, it looked like she was constantly watching losing battles and coldly ordering them around, but she was actually working to improve their situation and reduce the number of casualties. She could never bear Piranirie’s method of wasting her allies’ lives like machinegun bullets.

Had that Martini been broken by something inside her or from the external isolation?

Even if they knew the answer, she seemed beyond saving.

The ship was full of melted holes and seawater had flooded some places. While avoiding those areas, they made their way to their destination, mostly following Wraith’s lead.

“There it is,” said Myonri. “Is that the combat command?”

They approached a giant pair of double doors on the port side.

It bore no fancy decorations, but the walls and door were a lot thicker than elsewhere. The entire room was built to function as an emergency panic room.

They recalled that the destroyed bridge had been on the starboard side. This was not an aircraft carrier that needed space for a runway, so the positions may have been adjusted to balance the ship’s weight.

“That’s not a door we can pry open with a crowbar. And I’m too afraid of the ricochet to try to shoot it open with my rifle…”

As Heivia grumbled about the problem, Butler Frank casually raised his extra-large magnum created by modifying a revolving grenade launcher.

In the closed space, the cannon-like blast pounded on their eardrums and the lead mass the size of a drink can bounced around like a pinball.

While pathetically curled up on the floor like a pill bug, Heivia tearfully shouted at him.

“Are you trying to get us killed, you son of a bitch!?”

“It’s no use, Heivia. He must be the kind of pervert who only responds to blonde little girls who will dominate him.”

“Frank,” quietly warned the blond girl. …Oh? Quenser had a feeling that extra-large magnum had been aimed his way.

But regardless, that monstrous magnum could blow a fist-sized hole in the average steel door, but the CIC’s door only dented a little. This was not something they could open so easily.

But only a civilian would think that meant to give up. This just meant they had to try harder.

“Quenser, prepare some explosives. Check how many rods the door has and set up the explosives to break them all.”

“…”

“Quenser?”

Heivia frowned when his awful friend did not answer.

Instead of reaching for his backpack, Quenser glanced in a completely different direction and spoke quietly.

“I get why the sailor uniform girls aren’t showing up. Even if I don’t want to think about the answer. But this isn’t right. It isn’t right for things to be going so smoothly.”

“Wait…”

“Why didn’t the Nitrogen Mirage fire even a single shot while we took such wide detours? Piranirie has no reason to hold back at this point. That means she wanted to attack but couldn’t. I’m sure part of it is the ship barely holding together when it’s so riddled with holes, but that’s only secondary. There’s a more direct reason.”

“What? That sounds good and all, but I don’t see how it helps us here.”

“Piranirie tracked the location of all the game pieces using the cameras on the soldiers. And that goes for both enemy and ally. With all the Information Alliance sailors gone, she no longer has our location as we move through the ship. And she can’t exactly fire at random when she’s on the ship too. All she can do is sit and wait. …Until now.”

Heivia finally arrived at the most basic of conclusions.

He followed Quenser’s gaze and saw what the boy was looking at.

A military shotgun with a small lens attached was unnaturally sitting on the floor.

Piranirie had known they would reach this goal line eventually, so she had made sure she would know when they arrived.

“It’s coming… The Nitrogen Mirage’s nitrogen laser is coming!!”

“Wait, we’ll be fine. We’re right in front of the CIC!! It’s always fired from the side of the ship, so if we stay by this door to port, Piranirie will be in the line of fire too. It can’t skewer the ship from the side, so we’re safe while we’re-…!!”

Quenser cut Heivia off with a weak shake of his head.

The boy pointed not to the side of the ship, but to the front.

When he spoke, it sounded like he desperately wanted someone to tell him he was wrong.

“This is a 200m mass of steel. A shot down the length of the battlecruiser will vaporize us while only grazing the combat command’s door.”