Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume20 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 5===

Charles de Gaulle Airport was located only a few dozen kilometers away from the center of Paris.

The airport had been taken by Faith Organization commandos and it had to be retaken before it was back up and running or Paris would be engulfed in flames after armored trucks or rocket launchers were flown in.

“Gyah!?”

“Damn, there are mines. Medic! I don’t care if you’re scared! Get over here!!”

The sound of thick gears turning came from directly ahead. The club flail, an additional piece of equipment attached to the front of a tank, was an extremely imprecise device. The dozens of chains and weights attached to the thick axle forcibly plowed the dirt and detonated all of the mines. This was a race against time and they weren’t about to go through the painstaking process of digging up and deactivating each end every one of the Faith Organization mines.

Something flashed near the corner of the fence surrounding the rectangular airport grounds.

Rapidly installed heavy artillery blew away both the tank and the soldiers and medics spread out around it. The ground was torn up in an unnatural fan shape and shrapnel was thrown through the air. The lethal range was three or four times the size of a small convenience store.

“Bwoh, gwah!?”

“Dammit, I am not dying an emotional death here. My daughter’s college fund is riding on this. And I haven’t been paid any of the retirement money I’ve earned!!”

“Did you see that crater? That must have been a 25-inch gun. Even the tough powered suits were smashed up and thrown into the air. Th-that’s got to be fortress artillery.”

25-inch fortress artillery had a range of about 15km, so it could directly reach Paris. But did the Legitimacy Kingdom force have the firepower needed to push them back when they were having so much trouble with the minefield?

The commandos were a small, elite squad, so they had arrived knowing they would be outnumbered. That was why they had planned to make up for their inferior numbers with mines and artillery. But that also meant they couldn’t have laid out tens of thousands of mines by hand. They must have loaded them in their extra-large artillery and launched them in every direction to rapidly distribute them.

And during all this…

“Wow am I glad I challenged them to that rock-paper-scissors game. Sometimes we actually win.”

“I still think we got the worse job. I mean, those powered suits are only a diversion. Once the suits are destroyed, the soldiers inside get to sneak away.”

“So it’s all about stripping the armor off musclebound macho men?”

“Yeah, the enemy gets to strip them, but there’s nothing worth seeing inside. Probably meant as psychological warfare to bring down enemy morale. Remind me to never get on Frolaytia’s bad side.”

The idiots hung their heads with shadows over their faces.

Heivia and Quenser had changed into their Legitimacy Kingdom uniforms and were now walking through a thick metal pipe with flashlights in hand. The pipe was more than 2m tall, so it felt more like a small tunnel.

While the rest of their forces fought a diversionary battle up top, around 20 Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were traveling underground. They were meant to sneak below the airport and wipe out the Faith Organization commandos in a surprise attack.

They were accompanied by the 7th Special Training Unit’s Elise Montana and Black Uniform Charlotte Zoom. Those two had both mastered close combat even in the Age of Objects. This surprise attack operation needed warriors like that to provide any chance at survival, so the battlefield student doubted he was coming back alive.

“So does this drain pipe really reach the airport?”

“The more than 3000m of runway would be entirely useless if they sank by even 10cm, so controlling rainwater and groundwater is crucial. An entire network of pipes runs underneath the airport. But that doesn’t mean they are all running 24/7. They are only insurance just in case.”

They were on their guard the entire time, but they did not find any mines or other traps. The Faith Organization probably hadn’t noticed the pipes. This was the Legitimacy Kingdom’s home turf, so they had superior intel.

Even Heivia was avoiding chatter for once.

Eventually he pointed upwards.

A ladder led to a maintenance hatch, but they did not push it open just enough to stick out a mirror or fiberscope. A concerning number of their satellites had been shot down, but the information from the diversion team’s binoculars and range fingers was being shared with this team’s mobile devices. There were 16 “moving human-sized heat signatures” in the airport terminal and three each at the fortress artillery guns set up at the four corners of the airport grounds. But the firing angle did not let those guns fire inside the airport, so they could be ignored for now.

“We’re making the surprise attack, but they have us outnumbered.”

“We’re relying on the element of surprise because we’re outnumbered. C’mon, let’s go.”

They knew it was safe since there wasn’t anyone here, but they still tensed as they pushed up the hatch. Quenser watched from below as Elise climbed up the ladder first.

“The real threat is the gas.”

“Wait a moment, I’m checking the reading now, so- hyah!? Who just pushed up on my butt while I’m trying to see if we’ll die!?”

“So are we safe or not?”

“The reading suggests no gas, but wait, ahh, stop lifting my butt like that!! M-my glasses are fogging up!”

Even knowing her true identity, that busty glasses instructor was still extremely bullyable and she only had herself to blame for choosing to climb the ladder first. Had she really thought the filthy potatoes weren’t going to start attacking that peach-shaped pinata hanging above their heads?

“Hey, no fair, Quenser! I want some teacher love too!! Damn, how can such a skinny guy get so thoroughly in the way!?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Teacher’s best student is up here protecting her from all of you horny idiots. I am the barrier!!”

If Quenser hadn’t made sure he was second up the ladder, everyone would have started hitting the restlessly wiggling sexy pinata with their rifle stocks. It had been a real close call. Really, he was the hero here. A guardian even.

The Black Uniform glasses woman gave him an icy look from below.

“Quenser, I will not get after you for your actions here, but I am recording them.”

“What for!? How many extra lives do I have left on that phone of yours!?”

“If the hidden parameters concern you, I would recommend shaping up before you game over. Memo, memo.”

The metal cover creaked open and they rushed out into the first floor of Charles de Gaulle Airport’s terminal building.

Bodies littered the floor. The poison gas would have been removed by the automatic ventilation, but the people killed by it were still there. The security guard holding a tiny handgun had probably been a retired police officer or something. Thousands of people were doubled over on the floor and not one of them was moving. An airport firefighter was collapsed on the way to the emergency exit with her only oxygen mask covering the mouth and nose of a short old man. The old man wasn’t moving either. And he never would again.

The firefighters must have continued crawling toward the exits while grasping the victim’s clothing. Of course, the poison gas had covered the entire airport grounds, so leaving the building wouldn’t have accomplished much of anything. But still.

The heroes had failed.

There had been no goal for them to reach.

Quenser bit his lip and hung his head.

The people in the airport would have been civilians. With all the travelers gathered here, there might have been businesspeople and tourists from the Faith Organization among them. The Legitimacy Kingdom travelers may have been stuck here after their trip to Rome for the carnival was cut short.

Had none of that given the commandos pause?

“Damn the Faith Organization.”

“No enemies detected among the bodies. The 16 must be elsewhere. If you have time to talk, then get your ammo ready. The battle is about to begin.

They split into two teams: one to secure the terminal and the other to destroy the fortress artillery.

Quenser and Heivia were on the fortress artillery team.

However, they didn’t need to walk across the flat open space to the corners of the airport. The outward-facing fortress artillery were filled with explosives, so a single shoulder-fired missile from an angle outside their turning range could blow them up along with the commandos operating them. To cover everything from the four corners, each one covered 90 degrees. Blow up just one of them and that cardinal direction became a safe zone. Then the Legitimacy Kingdom forces waiting outside could blast their way through the minefield and enter the airport. The Faith Organization would know the enemy was coming, but their guns couldn’t turn far enough to aim that way. And the stationary heavy artillery could not be moved by hand like an Island Nation mikoshi.

Leaving the building would actually give away their presence.

There had to be blind spots everywhere with the enemy occupying a building the size of a school with just 16 people. But if Heivia thoughtlessly launched his shoulder-fired missile, the enemy would notice and raise their guard. Their allies sneaking up on the enemy with suppressor-equipped carbines would not appreciate having their deadly game of red light, green light ruined like that.

Quenser didn’t have a weapon, so his job was to keep an eye on their surroundings. While their safety was secure, Heivia used a special tool to cut a sufficiently large hole in the thick soundproof glass covering one wall of the lobby, giving him line of sight with his missile.

First they would take the terminal and then they would blow up one of the four fortress artillery guns.

Heivia peered through the sight of his shoulder-fired missile and muttered something under his breath. Quenser couldn’t tell if that came from fighting spirit or fear and nerves.

“Come on. Hurry up. I already have them right in the center of my sight. I’ll have a lock as soon as I send out the IR and microwaves. Just give me the go sign already, you dumbasses.”

“Why are you assuming our people will succeed? What if we start to hear gunfire inside the building?”

“Then I fire this and we get back underground. Succeed or fail, I just wish they’d hurry the hell up.”

Ten nerve-racking seconds passed and then another.

But all of a sudden, the tension was gone.

“Huh?”

It began with Heivia. The delinquent noble had been staring through his missile’s sight, but then he noticed something. His tone of voice was one of confusion.

Puzzled, Quenser looked over and then realized it was too far away. He quickly pulled out his binoculars and looked to the base of the fortress artillery gun 20km away.

Something was moving there – a human-sized shape.

But it was sliding unusually smoothly for a human. This was not taking steps. Unless this person was using the shuffling technique seen in Eastern martial arts, then this was a communication robot moving on wheels. They were common enough as guides for large facilities with lots of people who spoke different languages.

It was moving and it had a heat signature.

Either wrap it with electrically-heated wires or heat its surface with a hair dryer and it would indeed have the temperature of human skin.

“Charlotte here. There are no Faith Organization commandos here. The moving heat signatures were all guide robots!”

“Elise here. Same here. Come to think of it, weren’t the mines distributed through the air by the fortress guns, not placed by hand? If the guns are remotely controlled, then they wouldn’t need anyone actually here.”

“Shit!” swore Heivia. “Then where did the Faith Organization commandos go!?”