Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 2===

Things had changed for the worse.

“The guerillas have better equipment than expected. The space elevator must have supplied it for them. Everyone, focus on making smart attacks using your electronic equipment!!”

Silver-haired and busty Major Frolaytia Capistrano’s words would have been useful had they not come so late. The two idiots really wished they could put a collar and chain on her and take her for a walk along the front line.

The actual attack was more or less just a toy made by combining a flying drone with an anti-tank rocket that some dead soldier had been holding onto. It was a lot like reusing a rocket as a landmine after losing the launcher for it – not the kind of recycling you wanted to see. But Quenser’s group had heard nothing about the sandy guerillas using multicopter drones. Drones were a niche hobby at the home electronics level, but these wireless units looked very powerful. They were fast and made almost no noise.

The student grabbed his radio.

“Wait, you dumbass!! What happened to Myonri!?”

“That jack-of-all-trades managed to escape in time. We have confirmed her survival, so worry about yourself. You can’t expect any support from her tank anymore.”

“Oh, I see. So we’re stuck out here, huh? I swear you bring us nothing but trouble!!”

“Quenser, stop taking out your frustrations on a lovely lady like me. And don’t think I’ve forgotten the sexual harassment of that highly-inappropriate conversation from before.”

“Oh, god! You heard that!?”

“You were warned: the military records everything you say.”

They would be able to last a while firing the heavy machineguns from the craters, but if the enemy could blow up a tank, they could do the same to a cluster of infantry. Once one of those drone bombs arrived overhead, the rocket would be launched straight down and the blast would fill the crater the potatoes were using to hide.

“The drones are top priority,” said Heivia. “Quenser, you’ve got nothing else to do, so use your binocs to keep an eye on the filthy sky! Don’t overlook even one! We need to shoot them down before they get here or we’re dead!!”

“Focus too much on the drones and the guerillas will reach us on the ground!!”

“Radar alert,” said a voice on the radio. “Several unnatural readings are approaching the battlefield. They are almost certainly support materials being dropped from the Mother Lady space elevator. We estimate their size to be about that of a large tour bus!! Their contents are unknown, so they could contain anything from powered suits to tanks!!”

“What the hell are we supposed to focus on first!!!???” shouted Heivia while bristling.

Despite his question, their top priority was the cargo tanks dropping from the sky. If the guerillas obtained a 120mm cannon with a gas turbine engine while the 37th’s tanks were crushed, the guerillas could make a comeback. Wars were not determined by morality or emotions. It was all about quantity and cutting-edge equipment. And no one wanted to end up on the losing end where they were devoured by a monster that had the upper hand on both counts.

“Online stores are doing same-day delivery of weapons now.”

“Doesn’t this mean they’re in geostationary orbit? They responded awfully quickly after the request down here was made. Are they launching cargo tanks with a simple coilgun or something instead of just letting them drop? In the vacuum of space, that might give them more speed than if they did the same on the surface.”

Or it was possible they had other space stations positioned in lower orbits than the main one. Like the various foods positioned down the length of a skewer sitting on a grill. That would provide plenty of defense around the elevator.

Regardless, complaining was not going to change anything.

Those unwanted gift boxes were dropping onto the battlefield and it would be a huge pain if the enemy managed to collect them.

“Myonri, I don’t care if it can’t move. How many tanks aren’t on fire yet?”

“You’re still forcing me to work after all that?”

“If you didn’t want to work, you should’ve played dead, smartypants. Now quit lying around and get to work. Since you’re amplifying your signal with a tank’s equipment, you must have already reached a surviving one, right? Anyway, you’re upwind of us, so gather smoke from that intact tank and then release it all! Hurry!!”

Far behind them, a pink smokescreen spread out like cotton candy while a tailwind pushed it toward Quenser’s group. With nothing to obstruct it, the smoke continued on and enveloped the guerillas as well. It had a toxic-looking chemical coloration, but since it was not tear gas, it would not actually stop the enemy. However, the enemy would panic until they realized that.

Also, the supplies for the guerillas were descending from high in the sky, but no matter how accurately Mother Lady dropped them, the guerillas on the ground would have trouble moving into position with the giant pink cotton candy cloud obscuring their vision.

Tech was the cheat code of the modern age, but it provided the same benefit to everyone.

Outside of the Pilot Elites who operated Objects, no special bloodline or talent was needed to operate it.

If the 37th picked up the Capitalist Corporations cargo tanks first, they could destroy them or even use the contents for themselves.

“Cough, ugh.”

“It’s a harmless health product – it even has skin-friendly collagen inside. So don’t let the placebo effect do you in, Heivia. C’mon, let’s get going. Remove the spring from the machinegun and ditch the rest.”

From here, it was all about speed.

After removing a key component from the 20kg machinegun so it would no longer function, the potatoes abandoned the heavy machinery and rushed from the edge of the crater. The smokescreen not only blocked ordinary vision, it also absorbed or reflected EM, IR, and other forms of mechanical scans. They ran through the swollen pink cumulonimbus cloud and, whenever they found a guerilla within 2m of them, Heivia would cover their mouth and slit their throat with his knife.

“Man, we’re actually doing real war stuff for once.”

“I am, maybe! You’re doing jack shit, Quenser!!”

“And what am I supposed to do with my bombs? Make a bunch of noise that draws the guerillas to us, defeating the entire purpose of the smokescreen?”

Even the largest group could be divided into nothing but individuals if their vision and means of communication were cut off. With EM blocked, everyone would be sending out panicked radio signals, so no one would question it if someone was not answering. This was not enough to wipe out a large army of course, but you could take out individuals and sneak into the enemy lines as long as the panic lasted.

Their goal was the predicted landing point for one cargo tank.

If they did not reach and destroy it before the local guerillas arrived there, the battle’s momentum could be reversed. Being killed by the very people they had been so easily defeating before would make this the worst New Years ever. They were not interested in an unpredictable rollercoaster or a surprise twist on the last two pages. Not when they were the ones who would suffer for it.

“Am I imagining it, or are there a lot fewer people around here?”

“We’re near Point D4. After dropping that thing, they have to slow it down with a parachute at the end. If the wind blows just wrong, anyone in the area could be crushed by that thing’s huge ass, so everyone’s watching from a distance until it lands.”

That meant the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes were sweatily chasing after that big mama’s butt when not even the guerillas were interested. Happy New Year – have a new fetish. Their only choice was to assume this was one of those immortal mamas who looked just like a schoolgirl no matter how old she got.

“Heivia, prepare your shoulder-fired missile. If the guerillas reach it first, blow away the people surrounding it.”

“I’ll do it, but they’re dropping multiple cargo tanks and I can’t cover all of them.”

That was when they heard a loud boom.

It came from a good distance away.

Quenser and Heivia stared blankly for a while.

They heard a comrade speaking over an ultrasound transmission designed to travel through the smoke that blocked radar waves and IR.

“C2 here. Our cargo tank blew up from the inside! It killed Raver since he got there first!! There’s a password written on the back of his organ donor card. Someone use that to fulfill his final wish by secretly erasing his hard drive and cloud storage!!”

“Did those sons of bitches send down decoys along with the real ones!?”

Anyone trying to obstruct them would have to take out all the cargo tanks, but the recipients would be told which ones were real and could focus on those. It was a primitive but effective method.

And hadn’t Heivia said earlier that there were not many people around here?

That would suggest…

“This one’s a decoy too. Fall back, Heivia! Hurry!!”

Just as Quenser shouted and gestured his warning, the thick pink smoke was torn through by something dropping nearby. It was a hunk of metal that had been carelessly separated from its parachute in midair.

Before Heivia could even widen his eyes, a container that looked like a cross between an oblong box and a water bottle exploded from within due to the impact of the fall.