Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 3===

Things were not going well.

A mere 30 seconds into the battle and they had already lost their work vehicle.

“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what do we do!? We need to save the tunnel-drilling vehicle’s driver!!”

“Wait, Elise!! Rush out there without thinking and you’ll just inform the Police Queen that there were survivors!! That thing has thick armor and a first-aid kit, so as long as it doesn’t blow up, they’ll be safer inside that scrap metal!!”

“Dammit,” complained Heivia. “Why do you two sound so much more serious about rescuing them than when it was me?”

A giant form cut by overhead, but it was not one of the salt cylinders rolling around. It was much bigger. It was hard to tell from the split-second glimpse of the underside, but it was probably the Police Queen. Air rushed into the salt tunnel like a solid wall shortly after it passed by.

“Bwehh!?”

“Cough, don’t breathe!! It’ll damage your lungs.”

The ridiculously powerful gust of wind was a problem on its own, but it was also carrying fine salt. The amount was far different from what was found in the shaker on the dinner table. When it was dumped over your head, it was more like a slow-acting poison.

“What the hell is going on up there?” asked Quenser.

“Hey, wait!” shouted Heivia. “That’s our vehicle. You don’t get a free ride after showing no interest in saving us earlier!!”

Quenser ignored that useless comment while climbing onto the roof of the military engineering vehicle that had finally righted itself. The trench’s depth was about the same as a large tour bus, so standing on that tank-based vehicle and stretching up was not enough to see what was happening on the surface.

“Hey, a little help, Myonri?”

“Sure, sure.”

Quenser tied his mobile device’s strap to the end of one of the crab-claw arms, set it to video recording mode and had it lifted up like a periscope.

It had only been a minute, but being left behind for just that long was enough for impatience to burn in their chests. It felt like being in a foreign country during a disaster and hearing all the speakers play an urgent warning in the local language you did not understand. Was it saying you were in a safe spot and should not to move, or was it saying to get out of there because that area was dangerous?

They were starving for some accurate information.

They wanted to know what to do to survive.

The footage was mostly useless since they could not see what they were recording, but when freeze-framing it, they finally got a good look at the Police Queen.

The giant spherical main body had three arms attached at the top and evenly spread out along the front 180 degrees like a fan’s frame. The weapons were hanging down from those.

“I-it actually has flashing lights on top? Is this some kind of joke to them!?”

“That’s probably meant to emphasize that they’re only the police.”

The main cannons…were unknown.

Were they low-stability plasma cannons, laser beam cannons, railguns, coilguns, or rapid-fire beam cannons? There should have been some slight identifying features to figure that out, but the battlefield student could not find the answer from viewing those colossal cannons. They may have been able to switch between types like the Princess’s could.

They had already known it used an air cushion system, but it specifically had two ski-like floats that extended back behind the spherical main body. Those were held together when moving straight, but during turns and rapid stops, it could apparently spread the backs out into a V-shape to adjust its balance.

“Damn, it’s fast. And not just its top speed. It can move side to side faster than the Princess too! She’ll be overwhelmed like this!!”

“I can see why our busty commander was so insistent we stop it for her. But why the hell are we challenging an opponent we know we can’t beat spec-wise!? That’s just asking for a painful battle full of sorrow!!”

At any rate, they knew that moving up onto the surface would end badly.

There was no saving them if that Capitalist Corporations Second Generation locked onto them. The unidentified main cannons were bad enough, but it could also directly crush them by approaching while it whizzed all over the battlefield.

And with that in mind…

“This thing’s arm can drag the stuck tunnel-drilling vehicle down here, can’t it?”

“Hey, didn’t we just conclude going up there is a bad idea!?”

“I can’t just leave them! We’ve waited this long and there’s still no sign of the driver. Keeping the Police Queen from realizing there were survivors is our top priority, but there’s no saving that driver if they’re crushed again either by accident or on purpose. We’re free to move down here, but we have to get them somewhere safe to wait for rescue!!”

Heivia scratched at his salt-covered head.

Of course he was hesitant.

It was all over if they were noticed. This was like climbing into the lion or gorilla cage to save a child who fell in. Even if you knew it was the right thing to do, the fear gripping your heart was very real. Doing it by the book would be difficult for anyone.

After a loud click of his tongue, Heivia finally gave a shout.

“Fine, let’s do it!! Oh, hell, there’s no escape is there? Nothing good ever comes of being around that walking disaster zone!!”

“Um, excuse me!? I had nothing at all to do with this one!”

They ignored the busty blonde glasses woman who grew tearful at this unfair criticism.

Quenser looked at his radio.

“Princess, where’s the Police Queen!? The dot on our devices is based on the maintenance base’s ground radar, so we can’t see it when it’s hidden behind those salt pyramids. Is Zone C5 safe!?”

“I am currently engaging it in Zone D5. That is fairly close to there. What are you planning?”

“I want to drag a stranded ally into the trench labyrinth.”

“Understood. I will lure it to D3. Rescue them ASAP.”

They only had one chance at this.

They started by crumbling the salt wall with a plastic explosive and using the military engineering vehicle’s crab-like arms to smooth it out into a diagonal slope. The continuous tracks brought the vehicle up with a grinding noise, but a layer of softer crumbled salt got in the way. The student ducked down when he heard the loud squealing. If that 30-ton mass slipped down on them without warning, it could easily kill them while they watched on from below.

Once at the top of the salt slope, the crushed and stranded drill vehicle was right in front of it.

But a voice spoke over the radio while the vehicle’s arms wandered hesitantly back and forth.

“It was damaged a lot worse than I thought. If I grab it with the claws and try to pull it down, it would probably tear apart. It might even explode.”

“God, really!?”

Quenser rushed up to the surface where explosive booms continued shaking the air and pulled a thick wire form the winch reel on the back of the mass of metal Myonri was driving. He climbed on top of the scrap, made a circle of the pinecone-shaped drill turret to tie the wire in place, and then spoke into his radio.

“Pull now! Hurry!!”

“If the wire snaps, you’ll be slapped by a piece of steel thicker than your thumb. Jump down!!”

The white ground was torn away as a fairly forceful game of tug-of-war began. Myonri was probably using a camera to see, but watching that heavy machinery back up like that was a powerful sight.

And a panicked voice cried out just as it was disappearing down the slope.

“Gyahh!!”

“Ah!? Myonri!!”

The military engineering vehicle descended the slope first and the tunnel-drilling vehicle followed afterwards.

That was simple enough, but the latter vehicle had been reduced to scraps and could not use its gas or brakes. The junk had apparently slid down the slope and collided with Myonri out front.

A normal tank or armored vehicle might have been pushed all the way down and crashed into the opposite salt wall, but that military engineering vehicle had two mantis-like arms.

“Ghhhhhhh, take this!!”

The crab claw ends held the scraps back while Myonri had her vehicle slowly descend the slope as if slipping back bit by bit. If she used too much or too little force, they could easily lose their surviving vehicle too.

The student shouted down from the surface.

“Is there anything I can do to help!?”

“Stay back! These are two 30-ton vehicles, so getting caught between them could take off a limb!!”

Instead of using the slope, Quenser jumped directly down from the edge of the large trench opened in the ground.

He had made the suggestion, but he could not find anything to do.

While he anxiously searched around, the two vehicles completed their one-minute descent down into the trench.

They were both safe.

“Well done, Myonri! I’ll buy you a drink or something later, so figure out what it is you want!!”

“Please don’t talk about what will happen ‘after the battle’. It’s bad luck. More importantly, can someone pull out the tunnel-drilling vehicle’s driver? It would be safer to bring them in here with me, wouldn’t it?”

Luckily, the hatch was not particularly bent. As instructed by Myonri, Quenser pulled out the driver and found it was a 13-year-old girl with bright brown skin.

“I’m so glad we didn’t abandon them.”

“Why are you treating her so differently from me?” asked Elise. “Do this world’s rules favor the small or something?”

She may have cut the inside of her cheek because there was a bit of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, but there was no sign of broken bones or serious internal bleeding. The blood in her mouth was probably not coughed up from an organ injury. They worked with Myonri to load the injured girl into the functioning vehicle.

“U-ughh.” A weak groan escaped the silver-haired, brown-skinned girl’s young lips. “Save me here and there’s a good chance I’ll fall in love with you…”

“That’s an awfully self-interested reason for love. And I notice she’s hedging just like those disinfectant sprays that say they kill 99.9% of germs.”

With the sound of scraping metal, several of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s gold Christmas coins fell from her breast pocket. The filthy schemer had apparently been ensuring peace of mind by converting her money into pure gold in between battles.

“Yup, she’s a member of the 37th all right. You call her type a fortune hunter, right? Y’know, the people who marry a much older rich person and then get divorced three days later. I won’t be surprised if I see her on a millionaires list through nothing but alimony.”

She did not look on the verge of death or anything, so Quenser let the fancy noble treat her wounds while he instead looked through the materials left over in the crushed vehicle.

“Here, Myonri. I brought over the first-aid kit and PDW from the other vehicle. Plus a shovel, a fire extinguisher, a smoke grenade, and a few rations. And if you can believe it, she had a whole coffeemaker set in there. And I mean one with a mill to grind the beans before putting them in the dripper. There’s no point leaving it all in there, so store it all in here, will you?”

“Can’t we ride in here too?” asked Heivia. “Being outside scares the hell out of me.”

“Sigh. You can if you like, but the trench’s walls are made of fragile salt,” said Myonri. “If they collapse and cover up the hatch, we’ll be trapped in here until we all suffocate, but if that’s what you want, be my guest.”

The two idiots’ balls shriveled up and they declined, as did the busty woman who had no balls.

They needed someone to dig the vehicle up if disaster struck.

After removing the winch wire from the scrap and retrieving it, they finally got back to work.

The Baby Magnum and the Police Queen were still locked in combat. Any chance they had was gone as soon as the Princess lost. Frolaytia had apparently been focused on the spec differences from the beginning, but that only meant they had no chance unless they could stop the Police Queen according to plan.

“Ksh, ksshh. Quenser, can I make a request?” asked the Princess. “If you can do it, anyway.”

“What are these?”

Some bright glowing dots were flashing on the map of the Uyuni Salt Flat displayed on his mobile device.

“I will drive the Police Queen into position, so please split open the salt ground at the point I give you.”

“This is something human legs can handle, right? I’m getting dizzy just thinking about trying to keep up with your 500km/h speed!”

“Like I said, if you can do it.”

The original plan had been to spread their troops out across the area and have whoever was at the requested point do the detonation or drilling, but it sounded like the unexpected circumstances had prevented the potatoes from reaching their designated positions.

“Where should we start?” asked Myonri over the radio.

“All of us survivors lose any support if the Princess loses, so we need to destroy the ground below the Police Queen, don’t we?” said Quenser. “We may not be able to cover all of them, but it seems safest to work out which spot is closest to the greatest number of points and wait there.”

“Hey, wait,” said Heivia. “We don’t know where this trench goes, do we? Can we really reach where we want to go by following this? Doesn’t figuring out the layout of the labyrinth come first?”

Both of them had a point, but they could do the computer work while checking out the labyrinth. They could work out the spot closest to the greatest number of the Princess’s possible request points in advance.

So…

“Point F9. That’s our goal!!”

“Now it comes down to whether or not this trench reaches that point. We might have to dig into the wall and climb to the surface.”

Heivia was about to say more, but they once more fell victim to their inability to judge perspective or the flatness of the terrain.

It looked like a single straight path, but some men and women with carbines suddenly appeared up ahead. They were Capitalist Corporations soldiers. No, according to Frolaytia, these would be police officers and not soldiers. It was hard to tell since the dark blue bulletproof jackets and synthetic clothing would have been the same either way.

The only real difference was the distinctive flat police hats, the star-shaped badges on their chests, and the tight miniskirts on the women.

They were about 100m ahead, so there must have been a T-junction there.

The encounter came as a surprise for both sides.

However, the Legitimacy Kingdom group was in the middle of a straightaway and the Capitalist Corporations one could use the turn as cover. Once the latter group regained their cool and started shooting, the former group had no chance, so Quenser immediately shouted an instruction.

“Run them over!!”

“What, but the miniskirts!”

Panties could not save the world.

The tank-like continuous tracks tore into the salt ground as Myonri drove the mass of steel straight ahead. It bumped into the salt walls a few times along the way and tore off white chunks. The space was as wide as a tour bus, but that was barely enough. When they charged forward, the infantry would have a hard time dodging to the side.

The potatoes clinging to the roof were in a fairly risky position as well.

If this bluff failed, they would be riddled with bullets in no time, so Quenser felt the need to give a shout to seal the deal.

“Hah hah hah!! Don’t blame us! Blame your bad luck and your lack of equipment! This is how things are when you’re winning the battle!!!!!!”

Just as he was getting carried away, his vision dropped straight down.

To repeat, the pure white surroundings messed with their sense of perspective. That was why Heivia had not noticed the trench in the ground and why they had not noticed the T-junction that allowed these enemies so close.

Also, the ground was made of salt. There was no real limit there, so you could dig as deep as you wanted.

In other words, it was like a river interrupting the straight-line path.

The military engineering vehicle driven by Myonri fell to a second level of the trench labyrinth.