Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 3===

Quenser’s strategy was a success.

Not only did they target the enemy at a distance from multiple directions, but they also buried spare plastic explosives and shells from the armored vehicles under the snow before their temporary retreat. The two-waved attack of bullets from the distance and explosions beneath their feet was enough to rout the Information Alliance.

“How many times greater was their force? If this wasn’t a covert mission, wouldn’t this earn us medals?”

“Not necessarily. We’ll be fleeing back to the base with 70% losses. And there are still more of them than us.”

“They might call in reinforcements,” pointed out the Perfect Idol. “We should get aboard the trucks and head to the military airport.”

And so Quenser and the others chose new drivers to make use of the convoy of military trucks.

But before they began driving, they heard the sound of thunder clouds in the distance.

The temperature was minus 20 degrees, but Quenser still felt an unpleasant sweat appear on his skin.

“Not good… Not good!!”

“Hey, Quenser. Don’t tell me that noise is…!”

“It is! It’s a static electricity propulsion device. An Object is headed this way!!”

Something huge suddenly appeared from behind the mountains.

Its giant form was several dozen meters tall. It had over 100 different cannons. It was a giant weapon equipped with thick armor that could withstand a direct hit from an MIRV meant to destroy large cities. That mass of steel was the symbol of war, but it seemed somehow different from the ones Quenser and the others had seen previously.

The spherical main body had been done away with for a more streamlined shape that resembled a rugby ball.

Its primary propulsion device was shaped similarly to a giant sled, but it also had several objects similar to rocket engines attached to the back of the main body.

“What is that? A Second Generation Object focused on speed?”

“The Object’s main body is spherical so that it can withstand large scale attacks from all directions including from nuclear landmines buried in the ground. This one has abandoned that possibility. This model had the front armor strengthened to focus on fighting other Objects because a nuclear attack is unthinkable in this day and age. The idea behind its design is different from the other models we’ve seen.”

This made the armor on the sides thinner than any of the other Objects they had seen and Quenser had a feeling it might be possible for old-style weapons to damage it, but he had no intention of battling that monster head on. Just looking at it told him its mobility was likely excellent. Once it noticed them, they could not escape it in trucks driving over the snow.

But luckily Quenser and the others still had the opportunity to escape left.

“Hey, what is that sound? Another one’s coming… Wait, isn’t that…!?”

“It is the Baby Magnum,” said the Perfect Idol.

“Shit. We’re in the middle of a covert mission. The princess and the others probably don’t know we’re here. If they start a battle here, we’ll be caught in the middle of it!!”

The surviving soldiers frantically climbed aboard the military trucks and started the engines. Heivia got in one driver’s seat, Quenser got in the adjacent passenger seat, and the powered suit got in the back. The truck noticeably slanted backwards.

“Hey, hey, hey! The Information Alliance’s rugby ball is turning a cannon this way! It’s probably spotted us!!”

“If we just head across the broad snowy field to the military airport, we’ll just get shot, won’t we!?”

“It seems to be focusing more on its battle with the princess right now, but I think it’s waiting for a chance to attack us. It might also be hesitating because it doesn’t know which truck has the secret material aboard. An Object's attack is too powerful.”

“But how do we lose it? That thing is a mass of radars and sensors. Even if mountainous areas can cut off signals, we won’t disappear so easily.”

“Since you’re in the passenger seat, you take care of the navigation!” Heivia used one hand to operate the steering wheel and used the other to operate the truck’s navigation device. While looking at a small screen, he said, “Here we go, here we go. There’s a tunnel. Tunnels were dug all throughout the mountains to act as shortcuts back when this was used as a ski resort. Its like a maze inside. We have to head in there!!”

Quenser used the truck’s radio to inform the other trucks. As they drove full speed over the short distance to the tunnel, the two Objects began their battle.

The Information Alliance’s rugby ball had the high mobility Quenser had expected, but it also possessed formidable ability in its quick footwork.

“Wah!? Quenser, did you see that!?”

“Eight lasers suddenly bent and surrounded the Baby Magnum!?”

Quenser’s naked eyes were only able to see the afterimage of the orange striation of snow crystals being torn apart. But that image of the past that burned through his eyelids provided more than enough of an impact to fill him with raw fear.

Those laser weapons that could attack at the speed of light were like the grim reaper to even the old-style of weapons, so the age itself had left flesh-and-blood soldiers far, far behind.

“Is it scattering a powder of photonic crystal? Since it can control the direction so accurately in this raging wind, they might be using some kind of nanotechnology.”

“How was the princess able to evade that? She determines when the enemy will fire from the motion of the enemy and its cannons, right? I don’t see how that method could allow her to deal with lasers that bend at a right angle.”

“Something has to be interfering with the light. She might be able to determine where that something is located using active ultraviolet sensors or something.”

The princess was firing in areas that had nothing to do with the rugby ball itself and that may have been a means of destroying that something ahead of time.

But that means was bad news for those caught on the battlefield.

The shells that missed fell here and there on the battlefield, creating craters. And naturally Quenser and the others’ direction was no exception.

“Dammit! We’re gonna die!! They need to be kinder to the earth!! The planet’s gonna split in two!!”

“Hey, Heivia. Which would you prefer to be killed by: your enemy’s cannon or your ally’s!?”

As Heivia somehow managed to control the military truck even as it began to slide to the side ominously, the convoy charged into the tunnel.

“It’s pitch black in here! Come to think of it, this is practically suicide!!”

“Slow down. We’re slowing down!” shouted Heivia into the truck’s radio. “We have no idea where there’s been a cave-in! The trucks’ headlights won’t be enough to see. Someone needs to get out in front of the trucks and check for fallen rocks or a cave-in!! Quenser, you’re not doing anything, so you get to do it!! In fact, everyone not driving get out!!”

Quenser opened the passenger side door that had been bent in the GPS mortar attack and got out. He also saw the Perfect Idol step down from the back of the truck in her powered suit.

“I can still see my breath, but it feels quite a bit warmer than before. Is that because the wind can’t reach us in here?”

“What is the tunnel like from here on?” asked the Perfect Idol.

“It’s not just a straight path. Several tunnels intersect so there are several paths to an exit. If we can get to the other side of the mountain, we should at least be hidden from that rugby ball’s sensors.”

“The main problem is whether the path to the exit has been blocked by a cave-in or not.”

“If only we knew for sure we had a path to an exit. Then we could use explosives to seal this entrance.”

And so Quenser and the others walked in front of the slowly moving military trucks to check for obstacles. Large pieces of concrete had fallen here and there. When they pointed their lights upwards, they saw several large cracks running through the tunnel ceiling. The pieces had fallen from there.

“…Just a fragment falling from there could probably split your skull open.”

Since two 50 meter Objects were clashing outside, it was not something they wanted to see. The tunnel would shake eerily every time one of the Objects fired. If a coilgun or something similar was fired directly at the mountain, the entire tunnel would likely collapse on them.

“So how far are we going to have to circle around to reach the military airport after crossing the mountain? Maybe we should have gathered rations from our fallen comrades.”

“One of the surviving soldiers has a chef’s license,” said the Perfect Idol.

“But what is he going to make food out of? What lives in these tunnels? Rats? Bats?”

Quenser shined his light on the tunnel wall and saw “7 km to the exit” written in scratched writing. It was a horrible distance given the circumstances. They had to be constantly watching their footing and trembling in fear of a cave-in while pushing the concrete fragments to the sides of the tunnel. He would have preferred taking inventory in a store.

“Keep up the good work, Miss Idol!”

“Yes, men who do not follow a ‘ladies first’ mindset are worth less than dog shit in the Legitimacy Kingdom.”

They made their way three kilometers through the tunnel while Quenser left the heavy lifting to his work partner. At that point, they reached an intersection between several tunnels.

Quenser shined his light around and said, “Are you kidding me? Not only are we in this dark tunnel, but we have to go with no traffic signal or stops. I hope everyone managed to stick together. They should call these things the demonic tunnels or something.”

“I detect a light source,” said the Perfect Idol as she used her powered suit’s default sensors. “It’s a metal drum. A few cinders are left over inside it. It seems someone frantically tried to put out a fire when they noticed us approaching.”

“I see it, I see it. …A truck is parked near the drum.”

Quenser reported the situation to the convoy and Heivia replied, “Is it from the Information Alliance?”

“How should I know? But it’s definitely a civilian model. It just looks like a beat-up truck from a battlefield country.”

Something happened before he could continue.

A gunshot rang out and sparks flew from the Perfect Idol’s powered suit.

Quenser frantically dove behind her.

“We were fired on!”

“Is it the Information Alliance or the local people!?”

“I don’t know, but they fired on us!!”

“Then fire back! Neutralize them!!”

“No! What if they’re just civilians hiding here!? We’re the ones intruding!!”

The Perfect Idol he was using as a shield sighed and spoke through her speaker.

“That isn’t something you should say while hiding behind a girl.”

“Shut up! Just stay where you are. Dammit!”

The powered suit casually waved its 150 cm grenade machinegun in one hand.

“Should I take them out with my Morning Star?”

“Whatever you do, stop her, Quenser!” shouted Heivia. “Don’t let that amateur use that firepower that tops the lists for friendly fire!!”

But Quenser did not reply. While hiding behind the powered suit, he pulled out some Hand Axe plastic explosive.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Heivia! Throw me a pair of sniper earmuffs! I’m sure we have extra equipment with so much fewer soldiers!!”

Quenser could see something tossed toward him from the direction of the bright headlights. They looked like headphones but had no cord. Quenser put it on, pulled the Hand Axe out from his backpack, and stabbed a fuse into a small piece he tore off.

The Perfect Idol said something, but he could not hear her through the soundproofed earmuffs.

Whatever she had said, Quenser threw the plastic explosive in the direction the gunshots were coming from. The bomb fell to the ground before it reached the source of the sounds, but he pressed the button on his radio nevertheless.

He heard an explosion.

All of the gunfire stopped as soon as that great noise that pierced through the earmuffs rang out.

Quenser removed the earmuffs and said, “It’s nothing but an acoustic effect, you idiots. And it works instantly in an enclosed tunnel like this.”

“Dammit, Quenser!” shouted Heivia. “Tell us before you do something like that! You knocked out some of our guys too!!”

“Then we just have to wake up our guys and we win.”

Quenser and the Perfect Idol headed ahead of everyone else to the unknown force of people who had been firing on them. They found a large civilian truck, a metal drum stuffed with old magazines being used for a fire, and men wearing work uniforms collapsed on the ground.

“This isn’t enough to tell whether they’re civilians, local guerrillas, or camouflaged Information Alliance soldiers.”

“The truck is carrying unexploded shells. It's filled with them,” reported the Perfect Idol.

“That doesn’t tell us much either. They could be volunteers and they might have just been using it as camouflage for another mission like we were.”

Heivia spoke up over the radio, “They’re amateurs. They’re the ones that fired on us first. Professionals wouldn’t fire normal bullets against a thick powered suit. The first bullet would have blown Quenser’s head off.”

“Really?”

“Really. Anyway, tie them up and toss them aside. Those unexploded shells might be useful. If we swap out the fuses, we can add them to our firepower. We can also take the beat-up civilian truck.”

“So we’re going to steal from civilians?”

“They definitely fired on us, so I see no reason we should be that gentlemanly.”

One of their surviving comrades that could drive large vehicles climbed aboard the civilian truck. They drove slowly for fear of a further attack, but no obvious firefights occurred afterwards. Eventually, light from outside the tunnel faintly illuminated the exit.

“With the mountain in between, we should be able to slip past the Object’s sensors and radar to a certain extent. And with multiple exits from the tunnels, they can’t know which one we’ll exit through. Even if we have to make a wide circle around the battlefield, we need to head for the military airport while keeping out of sight of that Object,” said Heivia.

“How many degrees below zero is it outside? You make it sound like we’re safe now, but we aren’t going to freeze partway there, are we?”

“I think we have better odds winning against the weather than that Object.”

But as soon as they exited the tunnel, the thick layer of snow before their eyes was suddenly evaporated.

An explosively expanding mass of steam pushed Quenser back and he fell right back into the tunnel.

An area 50 meters back and 2 to 3 kilometers across of the white scenery had been liquefied, exposing the muddy dirt.

“What the hell was that!?”

“All the snow was evaporated for several meters ahead of us…?”

“It was the Object. It used that refracting laser to fire over the mountain and cut off our route!!”

But how?

With that giant mountain in between, the Object’s sensors and radar waves should have been reflected back.

“GPS,” said Quenser as he brought a hand to his forehead. “The Information Alliance was using a satellite to support that mortar. That means they can do the same for the Object. They can peer down at us from above like into a doll house, so having a mountain in between doesn’t matter!!”

The Perfect Idol gasped within her powered suit and said, “But then we can’t escape. If these military trucks are already marked, they will know where we are and attack no matter what route we take!!”

And if a single Object laser so much as grazed them, both humans and trucks would be turned to ash.

“What do we do, Quenser?” asked Heivia. “Head back into the tunnel?”

“They know where we are. In that case, we should assume they have infantrymen heading through the tunnels. Heading back in will just let them clean us out like these tunnels are bath pipes.” As he spoke, Quenser headed for the beat-up civilian truck filled with unexploded shells. “Miss Idol, you use your ridiculous strength to scrape the metal down to a powder and pack it in plastic bags. I’ll swap out all of the fuses in these used goods. If we scatter metal dust into the air, it might cut off their signal.”

A bomb would not explode without a fuse. The method to make an unexploded shell safe was to remove the fuse. But that also meant they could be made to detonate once more by attaching a new fuse.

“Will that really work? There’s a blizzard raging out there. The chaff will be scattered in no time at all,” warned Heivia.

“How about we reload the secret material into the civilian truck? I know it’s a cheap trick, but it’s better than just using the military trucks.”

The idol in the powered suit started by loading the metal containers of the secret material. Quenser started using his tools to force open the tip of the unexploded shells, but then he heard a loud noise from behind him.

It seemed one of the containers being loaded had fallen to the tunnel floor.

“Hey, stop that, Miss Idol! The work I’m doing is more delicate than cleaning out your ears. Do you want me to blow us all up!?”

“Wait, come look at this.”

“What? Are you going to strip for me?”

Quenser turned around while continuing his work, but then he froze in place.

The metal container’s latch had come open when it had fallen and the secret material had spilled out.

It was a silver metal. It was in the form of brick-like blocks and each individual block was vacuum packed in plastic. Two letters of the alphabet and a purity had been engraved on the surface of the metal blocks that came rolling out.

“Li…Lithium? It’s a 99.999% ingot.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Another rare earth?” shouted Heivia.

“The market price is less stable than that of pure gold or platinum, so I thought it was ill suited to use for savings,” said the Perfect Idol. “A single piece of news about research into alternative materials can greatly affect its value.”

“But that also means it’s a great commodity for speculation in stocks or futures.”

The containers had filled three military trucks. That was about 20 tons.

“What’s its market price today?”

“How should I know?” replied Heivia. “I don’t like looking through all those detailed numbers in the newspaper. But I do know mining in the five great salt lakes was stopped, so it’s skyrocketing. I heard its worth ten or twenty times what it was four years ago. Even with a cheaper estimate, a mountain of the stuff like this is probably worth more than a villa on the Aegean Sea. Of course, the value could drop like a rock depending on what happens.”

“This is the secret to this covert mission?”

“Is it the secret savings of some high military official?” asked the Perfect idol. “But where did the money come from?”

“From the unexploded shells probably,” said Heivia through the radio. “We may have used it as a cover, but the units at the military airport usually deal with that mission. And tax money is needed to pay for it. …But those amateurs we ran across a bit ago were doing it too.”

“So they force the work on the local people to cut labor costs and pocket the savings. They converted it into difficult-to-trace speculative lithium for money laundering purposes and then put it on a stealth bomber to carry it to a safe location.”

“But the stealth bomber was shot down by a fellow Legitimacy Kingdom surface-to-air missile where the Information Alliance is able to interfere?”

It all seemed to make sense.

But something still seemed odd.

“But then how did the Information Alliance learn about the secret material?” asked Quenser. “If the Object’s radar or the satellite had simply spotted enemy soldiers, they would not have fired a warning shot to stop us. We would have been wiped out in a single shot. They seemed oddly cautious about the trucks. Don’t tell me this means what I think it does…”

“So all of this was part of the plan, including handing the lithium over to the Information Alliance?” groaned Heivia. “It can probably all be summed up in the word ‘bribery’. They cannot hand money over to an enemy nation in the form of cash. But this lithium is a secret material that ‘does not officially exist’. And our mission is considered a secret. If we die, we won’t even be counted on the official list of war dead. And so…!”

“There is nothing that can officially be done if the lithium we are transporting is taken by the Information Alliance,” added the Perfect Idol. “They are using the fact that this is a covert mission that does not officially exist.”

“Are you saying everything from the bomber being shot down to the Background Unit being attacked was nothing but a safe method for a Legitimacy Kingdom officer to hand this money over to the Information Alliance? Operation Christmas Boot was nothing more than a way to give a present to an enemy nation? Over 100 of us died!! This was all just some stupid traitor trying to help the enemy!?”

Lithium would melt at 179 degrees, but there was a risk of it burning away if that was done in air. That may have been why the Object did not want to end everything with a bombardment. No one wanted to turn their high-priced prize to ash.

“I can’t believe this! How expendable do these people see us as? If we stick with this mission, not a single one of us will be left. Some fatass is lining his pockets using our lives!!” shouted Heivia.

“…”

Quenser fell silent.

He traced his finger across the surface of the unexploded shell he had started to exchange the fuse in.

“One of the supply soldiers has a chef’s license, right? Bring him here.”

“Are you planning to destroy a second generation Object with nothing but a wok and a spatula? Or will you need some sesame oil and doubanjiang, too?”

“No,” he immediately replied. “What I need is engine oil, some metal containers, and the liquid nitrogen used when removing the fuses.”

“?”

“The piece of shit officer who ordered the Background Unit to do this is waiting for us to run into the Information Alliance unit or its Object and be annihilated. In that case, what we need to do to win is obvious: we just have to find a way to avoid fighting either of them.”