Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 6===

After arriving on the north side, Quenser, Heivia, and Catherine did not kick down the port’s front gate and go in guns blazing.

“Hey, our guns don’t have any expensive suppressors on them. Fire once and it’ll be like poking at the hornet’s nest. How do we get inside?”

“We’ll have to look for something else we can use. …Oh.”

After climbing onto land from the water scooters stopped in the canal, Quenser looked around.

“There we go. There’s a ton of stuff mixed in with the rubble. Hm, a dog whistle? Did some VIP abandon a war to take an overseas trip with his toy-like indoor dog? In that case…”

“Big brother, what are you doing? If you’re cleaning up the trash, let me do it so I can get a stamp.”

The boy continued rummaging and digging through the rubble until he found a cylindrical container about as thick as a human arm. It looked something like an Island Nation diploma case or a somewhat skinny thermos.

But it was neither of those.

“You can really tell Second Venice is full of the world’s wealthy. Their bond cases are made of tungsten steel. Look at this logo. It’s the same series as those bomb-resistant safes. We can use this.”

“Hey, what are you trying to do with that junk? Even if the Capitalist Corporations are all about money, they’re not going to be our friends just because we sell them some scrap metal.”

“That’s not what this is for.”

Quenser pulled a thick wire out from below the concrete and wrapped it around the cylindrical container as he answered.

“Heivia, what is it I’m carrying around despite all the rain?”

“Hm? Hand Axe plastic explosives, right? …Hold on. You aren’t planning to use a bomb when we’re trying to be silent, are you!?”

“That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.”

Idiot #1 gathered a few thin steel panels.

“I’ll use explosives to silently take them out. And I’ll tell you how.”

With his handmade gathering of junk, he stuffed a fingertip-sized piece of Hand Axe in the cylindrical container with an electric fuse stabbed into it. Then he closed the lid. He ran through the pouring rain while ducking down and holding the container in his hands.

“When you get down to it, explosions are nothing more than a rapid expansion of volume. With this explosive, a fist-sized mass will produce lots of flammable gas which instantly expands a hundred or thousand-fold. The power of that pushing out is what destroys things.”

“Get to the point.”

“Explosions have a direction to them. Seal one in a sturdy closed container like this and the rapidly expanding blast has nowhere to go. This thing is made to withstand explosions, so it can’t break through the side. So what happens if I carefully open a single hole with this hand drill?”

The dark container yard was large and had multiple entrances.

They focused on a small employee gate that was relatively inconspicuous. They hid behind a crushed crepe stand located about fifty meters away.

“Big brother, there are guards there.”

“Yeah, but fewer than anywhere else,” said Quenser with the cylindrical container resting on his shoulder like a bazooka. “I’ve sealed the blast inside and given it a single small hole to escape. For the finishing touch, let’s attach this dog whistle. It works on a frequency too high for human ears, but even if we can’t hear it, it still exists. If we fire out the flammable gases using the explosive, we can create a silent blast that human lungs could never hope to match. I’m worried about the sturdiness of the dog whistle, but if I surround it in steel panels like a trumpet to direct the ultrasonic waves in a single direction, what do you think will happen?”

There was no flashy effect.

There was no light or sound.

Or at least none that could be detected by Heivia and Catherine’s human senses.

“Kh.”

But after they heard a quiet metallic click, the soldier standing guard fifty meters away collapsed face-first into a puddle. The soldier next to him had to be baffled. Was the first soldier playing around, was he sleep deprived, or was he sick? With no light, sound, or noticeable injuries, the second soldier could not immediately determine this was an enemy attack. And before he could place a hand on his fallen comrade’s shoulder, Quenser opened the metal container’s lid, tore off another piece of Hand Axe, and tossed it inside.

After another small click, the other guard was silenced too.

“Man, you can really feel it vibrating in your hands. Heivia, tell me what path to take. We need to settle this before those two miss a scheduled check in.”

“Y-yeah. That thing scares me. Are our ears going to be all right?”

“It’s not the ears. It’s shaking their skulls to give them a concussion. And as long as you stay behind me, it won’t affect you. The trumpet of steel panels is directing the ultrasonic waves forward.”

The dark container yard was large and quite a few soldiers were stationed there as guards. No amount of work would allow them to arrive at the control room without running across any of them.

“That doesn’t have a sight, so how do you aim?” asked Catherine.

“You don’t have to be very accurate. It’s like a shotgun or like hitting them with a flashlight’s beam.”

While quietly conversing, they stepped over the collapsed guards and entered the container yard.

“Does this count as ‘go on a test of courage with everyone’?”

“Catherine, nothing counts during a life-or-death battle.”

They had a map on their handheld devices, so they knew the general layout of the container yard. That told them the distance from this gate to the control room.

But…

“Damn. It doesn’t tell us the details of how the containers are piled up. It’s like a labyrinth in here… It reminds me of the killing house back during training.”

Heivia dealt with the unexpected situation by pointing his rifle all around.

The rain poured on the piles of metal containers that caused all sounds to echo complexly around. Even so, he accurately located the footsteps of someone else. He raised one hand and Quenser silently stepped forward with the metal tube on his shoulder. Before they were noticed, he leaned out from behind the containers and aimed the silent ultrasonic skull shaker.

The usual small click followed.

But then something odd happened.

Quenser, Heivia, and Catherine felt something invisible scratching at their heads.

“(…!! Que-…you!?)”

“(The sonic spear hit a nearby container wall and reflected back at us. But the guards are down.)”

Quenser leaned against a nearby container to at least avoid collapsing, but then his shoulder bumped into something.

He looked over and spotted a metal ladder.

“…Uh, oh.”

He looked up and saw the ladder continued up to the top of the square metal container. But there was more than just the one. They climbed vertically to the top of the pyramid-like stacks of containers and they stretched horizontally between stacks of containers. It was all too apparent that this was a path. The soldiers’ patrol route was not just two-dimensional. It crisscrossed in three dimensions!

And then a dark figure’s face poked out from the top of the container overhead.

Quenser quickly opened the cylindrical container and tossed some Hand Axe in, but the enemy noticed something was up and raised his carbine much faster.

Two harsh gunshots burst through the curtain of pouring rain.

Quenser had ducked down on reflex, but he felt no pain or shock.

The enemy soldier up above had not been the one to fire. Heivia had fired his assault rifle and now he dragged down the guard.

“Dammit.”

“Not bad.”

Heivia cursed after his perfectly accurate shots and Catherine cheerfully complimented him.

Then everything changed.

The late night container yard was filled with explosive sounds more intense than thunder. Heivia wielded his assault rifle, Catherine had been given his large handgun, and Quenser still had his silent ultrasonic skull shaker. It was better than nothing and it added in an unknown weapon that operated under different rules, so it helped confuse the enemy. With such a bad numerical disadvantage, they would have been overwhelmed in no time without something like that.

“We’re completely outnumbered!!”

“But after all the blood Myonri lost, we can’t fall back and try again later. We have to push on through!!”

They had to use the metal containers for cover. They at least managed to avoid being exposed to crossfire from multiple angles and changed position each time they heard footsteps or gunfire.

They of course used the assault rifle and handgun, but when the containers were only stacked one or two high, Quenser would ball up some Hand Axe plastic explosive, stab in an electric fuse, toss it over the pile, and blow up the enemy soldiers hiding on the other side.

“Ugh. I’m the one doing it, but I really don’t want to peek on the other side.”

“That just means you’re normal. No one wants to check the bottom of their slipper after swatting a roach.”

They continued through the labyrinth of containers to reach the control room with the data they needed.

Or they tried to.

Something changed suddenly. And not in a good way.

“?”

Quenser looked up when he heard what sounded like a large construction arm moving.

Then his eyes widened.

“Oh, shit.”

A gantry crane as tall as a small clock tower had moved directly above them. Something like a crane game dangled down and its mechanical claws fit perfectly into the holes in a metal container.

Yes.

It was taking away the metal container that was shielding them from the bullets.

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! We’re screwed if it lifts that up!!”

“This way, big brother!!”

Catherine’s small hand grabbed Quenser’s arm and they dove between some other containers. Left behind, Heivia glanced around and slipped into hiding in the opposite direction.

A moment later, the container was entirely lifted up and light machinegun fire swept through the air.

If they had remained there just five seconds longer, they would have been turned to mincemeat.

“Dammit. Why does the crane still have power?”

“They might have their own backup power to protect the transportation infrastructure during an emergency,” explained Catherine. “Like a gas turbine.”

But it was too soon to relax.

They giant crane could easily do more than just lift up the heavy metal container. If it could do that, it could also do the opposite.

In other words, drop it.

“Heivi-…!?”

Quenser realized that, but he did not have time to give a warning.

The impact was so heavy it brought a cold sensation to his stomach.

“We can’t stay here. Let’s keep going, big brother.”

“…”

“Big brother!”

“O-okay…! He’s okay, right? Heivia rolled to the other side of the container right before it fell, right? That’s why we can’t see him, right!?”

“We can’t tell one way or the other now, so we have to wait until later to find an answer! C’mon!!”

The gunfire continued sporadically, so they could not stay put for long. And some of that gunfire was not directly targeting them. That suggested the enemy had yet to finish off their target. Quenser wanted to assume that meant Heivia was still fighting on the other side of that container.

That was when he heard the disconcerting whine of the arm moving.

The four thick wires and the mechanical claws lifted up another metal container. Quenser was watching it in a daze, so Catherine pulled on his hand and slipped through the slight gap between piles of containers.

Even if the metal container was dropped from above, the gap was too narrow and it could not crush them.

…Except the gantry crane ignored that.

It gathered momentum like a pendulum and slammed the metal container against the actual pyramid of similar containers. The large pile collapsed and erased their previous safe zone.

“What is this, a falling block puzzle game!?”

They ran as fast as they could and somehow managed to outrun the collapse.

“Big brother, we need to do something about that haunted crane!”

“The gantry crane’s controls are several dozen meters up. And firing a rifle at it isn’t going to stop it!!”

Quenser held an ultrasonic weapon, but it directly rattled the target’s skull with invisible waves and would be useless here. It could not reach the person sitting at the controls inside the box of reinforced glass.

But with her large handgun in hand, Black Bikini Catherine rejected that idea at a more fundamental level.

“No. There’s no one at the controls. It’s probably being remotely controlled.”

“Then there’s even less we can do…Nonlethal ultrasonic waves and a handgun can’t destroy that thing!”

He could always throw some Hand Axe directly at it, but he could not throw it as far vertically as he could horizontally. Even if he balled up the plastic explosive like a baseball, his arm was not powerful enough to reach the crane’s controls. He could also end up having his own bomb fall right down on top of him.

“Is there any way to destroy the crane other than the controls?” asked Catherine.

“…”

The gantry crane was entirely different from a mobile crane or the kind placed on the roof when constructing a building. Instead of a single arm swinging on a fixed point, a metal tower several dozen meters tall had metal wheels several times the size of a train’s that it used to move along some rails on the ground.

In other words…

“If we destroy the wheels or the rails, would the crane derail and fall over?”

“…”

Catherine Blueangel leaned out from behind the container and fired her handgun several times at the giant metal wheels.

It was said that gun could blow a fist-sized hole in an elephant, but all it did was scatter orange sparks.

“No good. This isn’t enough firepower. Big brother, will your bombs work?”

“With something that heavy, I’m not sure. Plus, they’re moving back and forth. I don’t want to get close to set up the bomb. I’d get my hand caught and crushed!”

“…”

The black bikini gun girl thought for a moment.

“Then the only way to protect you is to take out whoever’s controlling it remotely.”

“Catherine?”

He did not have time to stop her.

He heard a few light footsteps and the 12-year-old braid girl vanished. She had not made a quick horizontal movement. She had moved vertically. She had climbed to the top of the metal container in no time and he had not been able to follow the unexpected action.

But by the time he realized that, it was all over.

He could not call out to the small girl, so he remained crouched in the rainy late night container yard and spoke in a pointlessly quiet voice.

“Dammit, Catherine.”