Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 6===

I’m dead.

That was the sole thought in Charlotte Zoom’s mind until she realized someone was shaking her shoulder. She last recalled collapsing face down, but she was now facing up.

(…I see…I was carrying that large piece of radio equipment on my back…)

The attacker had fired from behind. The equipment on her back had prevented the rifle bullet from piercing her soft flesh. Fortunately, the bullet was an anti-personnel bullet that had been designed to remain within the person it hit. A normal rifle bullet would have had little trouble going straight through a car, much less the communications equipment.

Even so, quite a shock had struck the core of her body.

“Quenser…Are you okay?”

“Yes, thanks to the plastic explosives case I was carrying. But Charles…”

He held a torn off pair of dog tags in his hand. That was enough to tell Charlotte that one of their fellow soldiers had been killed.

“There was one other. He was called Nutley I think… What happened to him?”

“He disappeared,” was Quenser’s short response. “Only one set of footprints leads away from here. The rifle bullet in my explosives case was a Legitimacy Kingdom bullet. And the Faith Organization primarily uses UAVs. I have never heard anything about them sending out foot soldiers.”

“…Tch. I had thought the gunshots sounded oddly nearby. If an enemy soldier had gotten that close, we would have noticed them, and they need not get that close in order to shoot us.”

Charlotte got up and checked on the large radio she had been carrying, but it had been completely destroyed. It had saved her life in the place of a bulletproof vest, so it may have been unfair to expect anything else of it.

Quenser stared out across the snow where the footprints headed away.

“I don’t know whether he simply deserted in fear or was a Faith Organization spy, but I think we should treat Nutley as guilty here,” said Quenser.

“Whatever his circumstances, he appears to have voluntarily fired on Legitimacy Kingdom troops and is trying to flee to the Faith Organization. That is enough to consider him an enemy spy. …Since he went as far as to kill Charles just before he could transmit the virus, it seems unlikely he was just a child soldier who panicked.”

“We have a problem.”

“What is it?”

“When Nutley killed Charles, he also destroyed the transmission antenna and the laptop with the interference program on it. We cannot send the interference program to the UAV, so we cannot continue the mission. We need to contact HQ and the unit headed to Point 1 as soon as possible.”

“…My radio is currently shooting sparks everywhere.”

“My radio can only send long-distance transmissions via yours. That means we have no means of contacting anyone.”

“One other thing.” Charlotte used both hands to grab the assault rifle hanging from her shoulder. “UAVs are headed this way because of that gunfire!! A ton of those annoying models with two free-fall bombs are flying over. We will simply get worn down if we try to take them on!! And no matter how many of them we take out, it won’t eliminate any of their actual manpower!!”

“Where’s that bastard Nutley!? We might be able to find him if we follow his footprints!!”

“No, we need to retreat! We cannot continue this mission. It is too late to chase after him. And even if we think up a way to contact HQ or Point 1, we need to ensure our own safety first! If we are taken out here, we will never be able to report the horrible situation. Also, Nutley might return to the Legitimacy Kingdom military claiming to be the lone survivor! At the very least, we need to report that he is a spy. Do you understand!?”

“Y-yes. But how are we supposed to escape an enemy that is coming from the sky!? Even if these UAVs are low speed, they can still fly at over 100 kph!!”

“Don’t worry about that. Luckily, we have a route the UAVs cannot enter. These UAVs need a trajectory correction program to fly between the cliffs, so I doubt they can pull off this kind of dangerous acrobatics.”

As she spoke, Charlotte pointed with her gun barrel.

300 meters ahead was…

“An entrance…to the coal mine…?”