Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 5===

“It’s time for war, everyone!! I know you idiots are tired of using your heads and forcing a smile, so work off some steam by moving your body.”

After a large number of soldiers gathered in the conference room, Frolaytia began from the dais up front.

A map was projected on the wall behind her. It contained countless dots with arrows connecting them.

“Our objective this time is not the destruction of an Object. We need to destroy an anti-establishment copied weapons factory discovered deep in the White Sea District. All of the military weapons technology leaked from cyber attacks or seduction is given physical form here and then sold to terrorists around the world. They do business with some notable groups like the Tundra Tigers, Woodstock, and the Traitorous Apostle. You could say it was the mess those groups caused that brought attention to this factory.”

Photographs and plans for a few weapons were displayed.

But Battlefield Student Quenser’s expression did not change much when he saw them. They were handguns, assault rifles, hand grenades, and shoulder-fired rockets. While they would cause a major incident in a safe country city, they had no connection to Object development.

“Currently, April’s melted snow has turned most of the White Sea District into a deep swamp. It covers an area of ten thousand square kilometers. The Arctic Ocean lies behind it, but we can’t touch it because the world powers are busy arguing over some new sea route there. Going there could easily trigger a war. That’s why the Baby Magnum has been stuck here and that’s our biggest problem. Based on the depth of the swamp, tanks and armored trucks would be useless too.”

Quenser was bored, so he raised his hand.

“Then why not send in attack fighters or bombers?”

“I would love to, but look at these dots scattered across the map. The purple ones.”

Frolaytia used her pen-shaped laser pointer to point at the projected screen. There were thirty to fifty of the purple dots.

“The factory noticed our approach, so they’re using helicopters to carry some of their spare weapons inventory around the swamp. These are antiaircraft guns.”

A small window was added.

The video file showed mid-sized military trucks with no canopy over the back. Instead, pedestals covered in four meter long and twelve centimeter wide metal tubes were half-forcibly welded or bolted to the beds of the trucks. The gun turrets were angled up toward the sky and the trucks looked something like a dangerous tow truck.

Quenser frowned.

“Won’t these things sink as soon as they’re place in the deep swamp?”

“They have a wooden frame built around them with countless plastic containers attached for buoyancy. There’s a risk of them flipping over as soon as they fire, but this group isn’t actually an army. They probably don’t know how to use the weapons properly.”

Frolaytia placed her kiseru back in her mouth and continued on.

“These antiaircraft guns have poor aim. In fact, you could say they give no targeting assistance whatsoever, but they fire thermobaric rounds. Simply put, they’ll create an eight hundred meter explosion of flames. They’re like the ABM rounds of an older age. They could wipe out all of our aircraft just by shooting those things like crazy. A bombardment that covers an entire surface is difficult to overcome even with a saturation attack.”

“What about cruise missiles or ballistic missiles?”

“I said they’re using ABM rounds, didn’t I? Not even Mach 5 or 8 is enough. They’re not aiming; they’re creating a giant wall in the air for the enemy aircraft to run into. We were hoping to pack a coagulant inside surface-to-surface missiles to disseminate the coagulant in midair, solidify the swamp, and let the Object through, but even that requires silencing these Rafflesia thermobaric antiaircraft guns first.”

This time it was Heivia who spoke up and he had a stiff smile as he did so.

“Wait, wait, wait. Those things are firing tons of thermobaric rounds that create eight hundred meter explosions, right? If we go after them, we’ll be turned to cinders before we even get close.”

“Fortunately, the Rafflesia antiaircraft guns have a limited angle of fire, so they can’t fire horizontally. They’re attached to trucks floating on a wooden frame covered in plastic containers, so if they aimed horizontally and rotated the gun, it would bump into the truck’s cabin. But if you carelessly get close, it’s possible they’ll self-destruct as one final attack, so we won’t target each antiaircraft gun individually.”

A new arrow appeared on the map.

“All of them are controlled by central electronic commands. The only people around the antiaircraft guns themselves are crew to load the ammunition and guards. You’ll be ignoring the antiaircraft guns and instead heading straight toward the weapons factory in the center. If you can blow away the command vehicle with shoulder-fired missiles, all of the cannons will fall silent. Then we can fire surface-to-surface missiles loaded with a ton of coagulant to harden up the swamp and the Object can clean up the rest.”

Tanks and armored trucks could not travel through the vast, seemingly-bottomless swamp and they could not exactly swim the entire way, but if they used an amphibious hovercraft that used the power of air to remain afloat, the journey would go smoothly.

“By the way,” added Frolaytia. “A notable individual recently arrived at this copied weapons factory. She goes by Yog-Sothoth and her real name is unknown. She is a white hacker who slipped into the electronic simulation division by fighting back against the intensifying cyber attacks, but she was under investigation by the Black Uniforms as a possible Capitalist Corporations spy. The last thing Yog-Sothoth accessed were the plans for an invisible bomb. This could get ugly if she brought that to the copied weapons factory.”

“An invisible bomb?”

Quenser frowned at the unfamiliar term, so Frolaytia displayed a new document.

It was a weapon shaped like a three meter black soccer ball.

“The concept is simple. The bomb is sent into the sky dangling from a giant balloon filled with helium. It has attitude control and allows for some level of laser guidance, but it has no primary propulsion. It simply rides the wind. And since the outer shell has undergone advanced stealth treatment, it doesn’t show up on radar. Slipping past visual detection is easy and it can’t be detected by its heat signature since it has no primary engine.”

She lightly shook her head.

“In other words, it’s a bomb that can only move slowly but can slip through any air-defense network. And if they load it with one of those thermobaric warheads, the risk of a direct attack on a safe country only rises. I want to settle this before that happens and before they even show a hint of playing that card.”

Their top priority was destroying the command vehicle in charge of the Rafflesia thermobaric antiaircraft guns.

Their second priority was defeating Yog-Sothoth, the hacker who had arrived at the copied weapons factory.

“I doubt they’ll stay holed up in this hideout now that it’s been located. I wish we could hold the Arctic Ocean, but the international interests there are so complex we wouldn’t even be able to sweep for mines like we wanted. They’re sure to escape on one of the submersibles they use to carry materials and products. You can assume we’re only rushing this plan because the time limit is approaching fast.”

Yog-Sothoth was a woman in her early twenties, but Quenser was not sure if that was young or old for the hacker world.

The other important individual was the factory manager. He was a middle-aged man known as Newsmaker. Since he had no real name, he had likely received cosmetic surgery and faked his death a few times to hide his identity. Naturally, only someone doing something wrong would need to take such steps and Quenser did not want to imagine how much blood had been spilled along the way.

“You will be given Factory Manager Newsmaker and Yog-Sothoth’s personal information, but don’t go out of your way to capture them alive. Only a fool would lose his life for a bonus. I’ll handle the complaints from the higher ups, so if things get dangerous, you can choose to kill them.”

“You’re being surprisingly weak-willed here. Did something happen?”

“Don’t ask that, Quenser. It’s probably just that time of the month.”

A kiseru with an orange flame burning at the end struck Heivia and he started writhing around on the floor.

Frolaytia ignored him and answered the question.

“Thanks to that hacker, things are a complete mess up above. The satellite surveillance network covering the Arctic has been rendered completely useless thanks to some interference. We’re guessing it’s due to a clone satellite, but it will take time for the electronic simulation division to isolate and eliminate the cause. And that means we can’t use the eyes meant to stare down at the chess board from above.”

“A clone satellite?”

“It’s a standard example of a hardware crack. A satellite using a similar frequency is sent near the military satellite to interfere with our signal, intercept our signal, or even slip in some suspicious signals of their own. It’s probably disguised as a small civilian satellite only forty centimeters across and it was probably sent down from orbit using the Capitalist Corporations’ elevator. Simply put, we can’t rely on the dots on this screen.”

Support from the sky above could make a world of difference in a game of tag or hide-and-seek. Searching out and crushing hidden targets in that vast combat zone filled with a deep swamp would indeed take a lot of work. The odds were good time would run out before the search was complete and the targets would escape. And of course, rushing things increased the risk of being caught off guard.

“Just out of curiosity, what is the bonus for capturing them alive?”

Frolaytia readily answered Quenser’s cautious question.

“Well, it will have to be in the realm of what I can grant, so how about a triple burger, a veritable mountain of fries, a soft drink, and chicken nuggets?”

“You might as well just order us to our deaths!!”

Those soldiers only had soap-like flavorless rations to eat, so she had essentially just told them to capture the targets alive even at the cost of their lives.