Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 15===

The most important factor was that Quenser and the others knew where Dorothy was. They could detect her location from the communication device removed from the military arrow and hidden in her clothes.

After detecting that she had been moved to the mid-sized cargo ship, Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax began to move.

“Honestly. This is no joke,” groaned Heivia. “We have no boat. We have no flippers or snorkels! We have nothing!! And now we have to jump into the ocean at night? We’re carrying rifles and missiles!! It’s all so damn heavy I just want to throw it away!!”

“The ship is leaving the harbor while you waste time shouting. Let’s jump in while we can catch up.”

They had left the dock controlled by Blue Bottle’s criminal organization and entered a block patrolled by the normal harbor workers. Instead of the main gate, they had cut a hole in the chain-link fence and snuck in. After slipping past the guards and cutting across the harbor, they threw themselves into the dark ocean at the tip of the harbor.

“Bwah! Dammit! They have a diesel engine. Can we really catch up to them like this?”

“The sea chart here is complex,” replied Sewax while skillfully treading water. He seemed to have no problem with being in the water, so his camera must have been waterproof. “A lot of rubble from Object bombardments has been swept into the ocean. This is worse than reefs. To safely reach open sea, they have to travel back and forth in an S-shape. If we swim along that route, the cargo ship will approach us.”

“The Information Alliance is in charge of security here and I hear they’ve blocked the sea routes with smart mines that distinguish between friend and foe. I don’t know if they’ll react to a human-sized mass, but try to be careful.”

After swimming through the dark sea for a while, the cargo ship came into view. As it travelled along the narrow safe regions, it did indeed approach them.

“Wait, wait, wait. It’s pointing searchlights everywhere.”

“They’re probably actually relying on radar, but human nature makes them want to see everything with their own eyes. But it’s dark below the lights. The bright light will cause their pupils to contract incorrectly. As long as the light doesn’t directly illuminate you, they won’t see you,” explained Sewax.

“Heivia, do you have the rope ready?” asked Quenser.

“Just as you asked, Mr. Knight! Once again, I prepare the food and you get to eat it!!”

As it approached, the cargo ship’s hull rose up like a cliff. It also tilted out toward them, so it would be impossible climb by hand.

Heivia and Myonri spun around ropes with claws attached to the end and used the centrifugal force to throw them straight up. After making sure they had solidly dug into the deck’s railing, the two soldiers climbed up the cliff and onto the ship.

The cargo ship itself was a giant mass with a large volume.

As Quenser and Sewax waited in the sea for their signal, they were tossed around by the artificial current and forced to cling to the ropes.

And then something heavy fell down from above.

Quenser looked down at what had fallen next to him and found the corpse of one of the criminal organization’s guards. The man’s throat had been slit.

With a look of disgust, he brought his radio to his mouth.

“You show no mercy, do you?”

“If you have time to complain, climb up. Sharks are sensitive to the scent of blood.”

But Quenser was only a student, so he could not climb what was essentially a building wall using only a rope.

Quenser glanced over at Sewax who quickly surmounted the wall on his own, but he needed Heivia and Myonri to pull his rope up.

“C’mon. I’m a noble and you’re a commoner, so I shouldn’t be pulling you up like this.”

“More importantly, how much time do we have?”

“They’ll figure out they’ve lost someone once the periodic report comes, so we have at most ten minutes. We have no time to spare after losing some time thanks to a certain idiot!”

Myonri looked down at her handheld device while covering the small screen with her hand to keep the light from escaping.

“Dorothy is at the front of the ship.”

“Let’s do what we can. There’s no way we can seajack this thing in ten minutes.”

After Quenser and Heivia formed a pair and Myonri and Sewax formed a pair, the two pairs travelled through the piles of containers on deck while covering for each other.

As an unpleasant sweat dripped down his face, Heivia muttered to himself.

“Don’t use your gun. Rely on your knife. Don’t use your gun. After a single gunshot, you’ll have to jump into the ocean.”

Fortunately, the large number of containers (which were likely there as decoys to hide the human trafficking) provided a lot of cover. The four of them carefully travelled toward the bow of the ship while making sure they did not run into any guards.

And suddenly, they heard the roaring of the wind.

Except this was no normal wind.

“(Get down, you idiot! Don’t move!!)”

Heivia whispered quietly, grabbed the back of Quenser’s collar, and got down on the deck. Ahead of them, Myonri and Sewax pressed their backs against metal containers and held their breath. Their faces were obviously covered with an unusual amount of sweat.

Quenser belatedly realized what was going on.

What he had thought was the wind was actually a disturbance in the air caused by the movement of a great mass. It was similar to when a train rushed by a subway platform.

A sealed tunnel was one thing, but not much could do the same on the open sea.

This was the symbol of war.

It was the trademark of the era that could destroy every other weapon on the battlefield.

In other words…

[[Image:HO_v07_106.png|thumb]]

“An Object!!” he groaned while lying on the deck.

Even the mid-sized cargo ship towered above the ocean surface like a cliff, but the Object was on an entirely different level. Its spherical main body was around fifty meters tall and equipped with over one hundred different cannons. Despite the cargo ships’ immense size, it looked like a plastic miniature next to the Object.

Its presence was overwhelming.

Its sense of intimidation was overwhelming.

The sense of danger it radiated was overwhelming.

Everything about it was overwhelming.

“They’re from the Information Alliance,” said Heivia as he almost lay on top of Quenser and looked like he was about to cry. “These are second generation Objects from the Information Alliance. I think that’s the Simple Is Best and the Catapult Cargo. This is no joke. There’s no way we can take on an enemy like this.”

Heivia listed two names.

The meaning of that fact arrived along with despair as Quenser forced his neck around to observe the situation.

The cargo ship was passing between two Objects that were patrolling the dark sea. As he looked up at the towering armor and countless cannons, it somehow reminded him of a thick green tunnel made of trees.

If any one of those cannons was fired, Quenser and the others would be blasted into pieces too small to even make fish food.

But at the same time…

“We were right,” he muttered. “Even if second generation Objects are specialized toward fighting other Objects, they would have detected us if they were making full use of their sensors. But they aren’t attacking and they haven’t contacted Blue Bottle to send out his men.”

“That means this ship is not being checked. If they scanned it, they might detect all the people stuffed in the containers. The data would remain in the Object’s recorder and it would be a pain to alter it.”

But that did not mean they could move around freely.

Objects were the rulers of the battlefield. They were a non-standard monster with no natural enemies that could freely devour all other life forms before them. It was as if they had been born due to some kind of bug or mistake.

No one was stupid enough to stick their own arm in the beast’s mouth to see whether it had been tamed or not.

No one wanted to be the pitiable guinea pig.

Quenser and the others held their breath and watched the two Objects slowly move away from the cargo ship. Even then, they did not move. An uncomfortable sweat grew below their uniforms.

It came down to their intuition rather than logic.

Once the Objects were several hundred meters away, Quenser finally let out a long breath.

That was still plenty close for the second generation Objects to attack, but he still felt the relief of being in the clear.

Heivia used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face as he got up off of Quenser.

“Try to remember what it is we’re fighting, lady killer.”

“Now that we’re here, we have to go through with this regardless.”

The four of them began moving at the same time.

Myonri jogged ahead from one pile of containers to another. She then pointed at the first level of containers with her thumb.

“Dorothy is in here. What should we do?”

“We might as well use this chance to rescue as many of them as we can. Quenser, set up your trick as planned!”

The four of them all moved in different directions.

Heivia and Myonri grabbed the metal lever.

But then Myonri frowned.

“Wait a second. I just noticed something.”

“What is it? I don’t see any tripwires.”

“It isn’t that.”

Myonri let go of the lever to open the door and traced her finger across the string of letters printed on the metal door.

“This is a refrigerated container. This thing is basically a gigantic freezer.”

“Why the hell would they throw an 80-year-old woman in there!?”

They forcibly pulled the lever and opened the door.

As soon as the metal door opened, chilly air seemed to cut at their cheeks. Just as Myonri had said, the inside of the wall was covered in white frost.

And…

A small figure was lying on its side in the fetal position.

And it was just the one person.

“What the hell…? What the hell!? I thought Blue Bottle’s group was working in human trafficking? Why are they freezing them from the get-go!?”

“Wait! Don’t carelessly pick her up! Her exposed skin might be frozen to the container floor!”

Fortunately, Myonri’s fears were unfounded. The old woman’s hair seemed frozen, but her skin did not stick to the floor.

Heivia picked up Dorothy and carried her out of the container.

“They might have been trying to simulate hibernation,” said Sewax as he read the writing on the container.

“What?”

“There are cases of people surviving without food or water for over a month in cars buried in snow. Only one in nine survive, but their ‘merchandise’ can survive the long trip if the conditions are artificially recreated. It has better odds than leaving it up to luck after throwing them in a hot and stuffy container with water and salt.”

“I see. So that’s why they put them in separate containers.” Myonri let out a groan as she thought about this demonic plan. “It’s the same as anesthesia. The temperature is carefully calculated out based on the person’s weight, so they all need their own container.”

“So what? This isn’t going to work 100% of the time. For one thing, humans aren’t meant to hibernate like a bear! If they force it, it has to fail and cause frostbite or hypothermia in a lot of them!!”

“True, but there’s a countermeasure that’s popular among people stranded in snowy mountains. If you warm the outside of the body with lukewarm water and eat food, it will cause an increase in body temperature.”

“I guess a normal water bottle would be warm enough on a warm night like this. I only have disgusting rations for food, though.”

“If they’re conscious enough to complain about that, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Heivia and Sewax’s discussion must have brought her back to her senses because Dorothy slowly opened her eyes while her skin was oddly cold.

She looked like someone who had just woken up in the morning, but the situation was completely different.

For one thing, she had not been sleeping. Her mind was muddled enough for her memories to be a bit vague.

“That…soldier…?”

“Yes! That’s right! We’re here to save you. There’s nothing more to worry about.”

“Are you…the one named…Quenser?”

“Sorry, but there are even better guys than him in the world.”

They could not force her to do anything more.

Heivia frantically pulled out a ration that resembled a tasteless and odorless eraser and a bottle warmed by the warm night and his own body temperature.

And then he heard a noise.

Someone was peering out from behind a pile of containers. Heivia did not know who it was, but he made up his mind when he saw the shoddily-made assault rifle in his hand. He was a criminal organization guard on patrol.

He was only seven meters away.

The assault rifle hung from his shoulder on a sling belt, but he was not holding the rifle. He held a different weapon.

But it was not a handgun or a knife.

It was a glittering black sphere about one size bigger than a golf ball.

All of Heivia’s hair stood on end when he realized what it was.

“A grenade!?”



In that instant, Sewax held up his heavy camera as if pulling a handgun from its holster and he stared through the viewfinder.

(Oh, I’m dead.)

Time seemed to flow strangely slow, but he did not try to hide or cover his face with his arms. He stood stock still and continued to keep the armed man in the center of the small world cut off by his camera.

He held a Gr-021, the grenades used by the old Oceanian military government. They were rumored to be cheap copies of the Information Alliance’s grenades. They had a kill radius of five meters and an injury radius of twelve meters. The soldier may not have known how to use it properly because he was liable to be caught in the blast that killed using shrapnel rather than the explosion itself.

If the guard holding the sphere relaxed his grip, pulled out the pin, and released the safety lever, over two hundred metal grains would fly in every direction with deadly speed exactly five seconds later. Man, woman, adult, and child alike would be turned to mincemeat.

Even so, Sewax operated his camera as if it were his mission.

He wanted to take a photo that would change the world.

War would never end no matter how many hundreds of bullets were fired. The people whose bank accounts grew every time the money-devouring Objects were sent out would continue applauding in dark rooms as more blood was shed. To truly end it all, the people’s hearts had to be moved outside of what the people in charge had to gain. That was something bullets could not achieve. No matter how great a tragedy was, it would resound in no one’s heart unless a battlefield cameraman recorded it.

He had wanted an opportunity to do just that.

It did not matter if it would take the lives of a few people here. It did not matter if that danger applied to him as well. He would not regret the loss of an arm or a leg. He was willing to lose half his body if that was what it took. If he could bring home the picture that would change history and bring peace, he would proudly say he had won.

As the person who had once relied on bullets in this very country, he felt this was something he had to do no matter what.

But…

Even so…

(Is that really okay?)

Through the viewfinder, he saw Heivia crouched down while frozen in place. At his feet was a small old woman who lay groggily on the ground after being rescued from an extreme low-temperature environment.

If they died, it would likely shake some people’s hearts.

If he stored that shocking bloodshed in the small memory of his camera, he could use it to convey the truth of the battlefield.

(But is that really okay!?)

There was no point in saving just a few lives. It would mix in with all the other boring news and reach no one, so it might as well not exist. Information that reached no one was no different from information that vanished from the face of the earth. At that very moment, the people within safe countries thought the world was a peaceful place. They truly believed it. And yet the war in Oceania had yet to truly end. To ultimately end war, those people’s help was needed.

And so…

To stop the tragedies, Sewax hoped for a tragedy to occur. That contradictory mindset led him to hesitate over whether to accept or reject this situation.

And…

He finally made his decision.



A metallic sound of impact brought Heivia back to his senses.

The battlefield cameraman named Sewax had removed the neck strap attachment to the camera he valued more than his life and he threw it at the guard holding the grenade.

“I’m not going back to the way I was. I swore I would stop doing that!! I swore during that war in Oceania!!”

As Sewax shouted out in desperation, Heivia began to move. The camera was heavy, but it was not enough to knock out that large man by striking his upper body. However, the man decided to prioritize his own safety by protecting his body with his arms. And he still held the grenade in his hand. He had not released the pin or safety lever.

They had a chance.

Heivia immediately let go of the ration and water bottle and drew his large military knife with a flowing motion of his right hand. He even had enough composure to cover Dorothy’s eyes with his left hand.

He threw the knife without hesitation.

After rotating exactly ninety degrees, the tip of the blade stabbed accurately into the guard’s throat.

(Damn.)

But Heivia’s expression twisted silently.

The man did not collapse. It was a fatal blow but not enough to kill him instantly.

There was going to be a lag of a few seconds to a dozen seconds.

(I missed the center. The blade didn’t hit his spine!!)

As Heivia watched, the man’s fingers writhed like caterpillars and reached for the grenade’s metal pin. One finger passed through the ring of the pin.

All he had to do was release it now.

Pulled by gravity, the explosive fell straight down. The pin attached to his index finger was pulled out. The shock of the round grenade striking the deck was enough to release the safety lever.

It was ready to detonate.

“!!”

Heivia saw Myonri immediately pull out her handgun, so he took action. While still crouched down, he ran forward like a beast. The man with the blade in his throat could not speak, but he glared at Heivia. The ring-shaped pin on his index finger glittered in the light like a cruel piece of jewelry.

The kill radius was five meters.

The injury radius was twelve meters.

It would explode in only five seconds.

(Just killing him isn’t enough. We’ll all be caught in the blast!!)

As the guard started to fall backwards, Heivia grabbed his collar. This was not a gentlemanly attempt to support the man. He grabbed the man’s right arm, spun him around, and used the man’s waist as a fulcrum to throw him to the ground.

He threw the man on top of the grenade he had dropped.

A muffled explosion arrived an instant later.

The cheap bulletproof plate and the living flesh and bone were enough to suppress the explosion of a grenade meant to kill with shrapnel rather than the blast. In textbooks, this method was given as a means of bravely protecting one’s fellow soldiers.

Heivia was splattered with blood and guts and he desperately shouted out with a ghastly look on his face.

“Ugh, shit!! Is anyone hurt!? If not, jump into the ocean. That explosion will draw the rest of them here!!”

“Wh-what about Quenser!?”

“He’ll have heard the explosion too!!”

Myonri grabbed Dorothy who could not move properly on her own and the girl frantically jumped over the railing. Sewax picked up his camera and followed suit. Heivia grabbed a few polyurethane foam floats from the railing and threw them in the sea before jumping into the dark water himself.

The shock of falling or having her entire body covered in lukewarm seawater seemed to have helped Dorothy recover a little from her hypothermic symptoms.

She repeatedly blinked while Myonri supported her so she would not sink.

“Where is everyone…?”

As her mind cleared, her memories seemed to recover.

Her question was filled with panic.

“Where are all the others!? They were brought onboard that ship!! There are a lot more than just me!!”

It was a legitimate question, but Heivia and the others did not answer her.

The cargo ship would be on its guard now, so it would be difficult to make their way back onboard. It would be tough to fight a few dozen armed men with only four people. On top of that, there was no guarantee they would make it back safely as things were.

And then a new figure fell from the cargo ship and into the dark water.

It was Quenser who had gone elsewhere on the boat.

“Uuh… I’m gonna sink. Give me a float, too.”

“Since you escaped with that stupid look on your face, I take it you at least completed your preparations.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to here? More importantly, what was with that explosion!? You sure screwed up badly!”

With a look of extreme confusion, Dorothy looked back and forth between Quenser and Heivia.

Quenser spoke to the old woman.

“Defeating Blue Bottle’s entire organization with just the four of us would be difficult. The same goes for rescuing all of the people trapped in separate containers. And that cargo ship is under the protection of the Information Alliance, so we’re unlikely to get any help even if we ask for it.”

“Then you are going to give up? I don’t want to be the only one rescued!!” shouted Dorothy.

Quenser smiled and waved his index finger.

“But there is a wonderful magic item that can completely turn around that hopeless situation.”

“?”

That comment caught Dorothy off guard, so she stared blankly at Quenser as he spread out the “prize” he had won on the boat.

“This is it. Do you know what this is?”