Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 6===

The mopping up of the terrorists was mostly complete, so Quenser tossed aside the tablet device he had used to control the Apoptosis UAV.

Heivia was returning from a distance.

For some reason, he was covered in mud.

“Did you have a sports festival or something?”

“I had no luck. I was chasing after the fleeing terrorists’ vehicle, but it suddenly blew up. The others in the group might have been cutting their losses like a lizard’s tail.”

“Well, that was blatant.”

“Yeah, it was like the whole thing was plastered with stickers announcing their group was backed by someone else.”

However, it was not Quenser and Heivia’s job to sit in the strategy room and push pieces across a large map. They were curious about the identity and scale of their opponent, but it was nothing more than curiosity. Whoever their enemy might be, what they had to do was the same.

In other words…

“Well, we finished blowing up the terrorists. Now we have nothing to do.”

“You’re saying we should head back to all the honor students in that naval base? And end up running around in pace with all of them? I don’t think so. This confusion will keep them from confirming things are safe at least for a while. Since we’re out here in the market, how about we get something to eat at a stand?”

“Things aren’t exactly calm here either. There was that firefight and explosion, remember? All of the townspeople are gone.”

“We can just leave the money on the counter.”

“What’s the traditional food in the Amazon district?’

“It’ll at least be something we can eat. It won’t violate the Washington Convention.”

After saying that, the two cowards decide not to be adventurous and bought (without permission) some fried chicken they could have gotten anywhere. As he tore into the chicken while leaning against the stand made from a small modified truck, Quenser finally felt his stiffened cheek returning to normal.

“Ahh, ahh. Cheap food like this is so damn good. We really are gourmets.”

“Hey, Quenser, can we drink 0% beer while on duty? It doesn’t have any alcohol.”

“We’re already breaking regulations with this fried chicken.”

As they chatted, an annoying voice came in over their radios.

“All available soldiers are to head to runway 3. We will reorganize the units. All who are not injured or aiding the injured are to hurry to runway 3!”

“It’s that Latin guy again.”

“So that grades-obsessed bastard survived. Maybe we should have used the confusion to fire a bullet towards the naval base too.”

What they were saying was horrible, but it was nothing but talk. The ones who had actually silently fired at their own side during the attack had been the men from the naval base. That would normally warrant a court martial, but there would be no proper witnesses due to the confusion and the others from the base would likely cover for their comrades.

“Lieutenant Colonel Camellia is injured, but I have instructions from her. A yellow label is underway here. I repeat, a yellow label. Normally, only officers have clearance to know this, but the only way to continue the mission is to reveal it,” continued the transmission.

“What’s a yellow label?” asked Quenser.

“A real bitch of a job,” replied Heivia. “It’s a mission for an embassy, consulate, or military facility to shelter a VIP who is being pursued for some reason or another.”

“The transmission went on to say, “Due to the damage we have taken, we are unable to defend the VIP here. But the yellow label is still in place. We must rendezvous with the VIP and protect her as she heads to a secondary candidate for a base. Anyone who can move must work. Once the units have been reorganized, we will head out to recover the yellow label! If we allow the defenseless Staivia Nikolaschka to be abducted by local terrorists or the local mafia, our names will go down in history as the ones who let it happen!!”

“…Nikolaschka?”

A bit of seriousness mixed in with Heivia’s joking tone.

Looking confused, Quenser asked, “What is it? Is it a name you recognize from your noble evening parties?”

“You idiot! This goes higher than that. She’s way higher than me! Nikolaschka is the royal family of the Volga district! Staivia is the youngest princess, but she’s said to be one of the most influential candidates in the conflict over who inherits the throne. Normally, she would be surrounded by bodyguards every moment of her life! In the Volga district, the next heir is decided 30 years after the queen’s enthronement, so this is when her value is at its highest!!”

“Is she a beautiful woman?”

“Given her age, you’d have to call her a beautiful girl.”

And that was enough to give them motivation.

Quenser casually tossed aside the bone to his fried chicken and restarted the conversation.

“So the naval base was attacked to alter the route of this sheltered Staivia girl?”

“Looks that way. Whoever it was using those terrorists as disposable pawns is probably planning to try something along this new route of hers, don’t you think?”

They had no idea why one of the royals who stood at the top of the Legitimacy Kingdom would be wandering around this area, but it would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for those who wanted to use her. There would be plenty of people wanting to abduct her for the sake of money even if they had no direct grudge against her.

…Or so it seemed.

“Hey, what do you even do if you abduct a royal?” asked Quenser, a commoner, with a frown. “It’s just too rare a situation. It would be like when people steal a Van Gogh or Picasso and have trouble selling it afterwards, right? And if they tried to make threats while using the princess as a shield, it would be dealt as a threat to the dignity of the royal family and the Legitimacy Kingdom as a whole, right? A power on an entirely different dimension from family bonds would make her family try to slaughter all of the abductors even if it meant sacrificing the princess. …Her family would be looked down on otherwise. It could act as a spark that incites conflict among the influential royals.”

In the Legitimacy Kingdom, the purpose of abductions was usually to get at the wealth of commoners. If someone noble was abducted, the abductor would meet overwhelming resistance thanks to the noble’s money, influence, and connections. And if someone went after a royal that was even higher than a noble, they would lose any chance to turn back.

Even if they fled to another world power like the Information Alliance or Capitalist Corporations, various diplomatic methods would be used to have them sent back to the Legitimacy Kingdom. And if those failed, an assassination team would be sent in.

As a noble, Heivia was more familiar with all that than Quenser who was only a commoner, but Heivia shook his head.

“The situation is different for Staivia Nikolaschka.”

“?”

“The Volga district is in the top 10 of Eastern Europe when it comes to issues regarding the heir to the throne. It wouldn’t be surprising if the faction supporting her opposing candidate or a force wanting to sell her to that faction is trying to crush Staivia.”

“…Is it really bad enough to warrant military involvement?”

“The other candidate has a reason to rush things. According to rumor at least.” Heivia leaned up against the wall of the fried chicken stand. “Dimiksy Nikolaschka. He’s over 30. If you just go to any salon, you can hear more rumors than you want about how he’s killed at least two other candidates. Then again, Dimiksy is at the top of the list due to his age. And not just compared to Staivia. He’s the oldest of any of the candidates.”

“Then wouldn’t Dimiksy be first in line for the throne? I guess I have heard of the order getting changed if the primary candidate has a congenital disease or is likely to die before too long.”

It was not rare for the rights of the one who stood at the top of a nation to be taken away by a third party if their ability to rule was threatened by physical or mental issues.

And since the Legitimacy Kingdom gave bloodline more weight than anything, they had a custom of avoiding adding any genetic risks into the royal bloodline.

But…

“Dimiksy Nikolaschka’s issue is nothing on that level.”

“Then why change the order of succession? If he has to get rid of several other candidates, he must have ended up fairly low on the list.”

“The Volga district’s queen is said to be wise, talented, and skilled at both military and political matters, but she does have her faults. That queen is known as the Goddess of Moscow, but her ability to choose men is bad enough to go down in history.”

“…So her husband cheated on her?”

“Officially, Dimiksy was said to be birthed by a surrogate mother, but the theory that he is a bastard child from a mistress is pretty likely. One writer who tried to investigate it ended up drowned in a river. In the Legitimacy Kingdom, bloodline is everything. The royal bloodline of the Volga district comes from the queen. If Dimiksy really is a bastard, it means he does not contain a single drop of royal blood.”

If that was true, Dimiksy Nikolaschka would not just be low on the order of succession, but he would have no right to the throne at all.

If he still planned to inherit the throne of the Volga district, the options left to him were limited.

He had to murder all of the other candidates.

The suspicion was a problem, but it was better than having the royal bloodline come to an end. No matter how suspect Dimiksy might be, those around him would be forced to give him the throne.

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“But the Legitimacy Kingdom has the Lineage Department, right? When he inherits the throne, they’ll definitely do a DNA test. No matter what Dimiksy does, he’s done for as soon as his DNA doesn’t match up, right?”

“If the Lineage Department does its job properly,” replied Heivia so quickly and readily that he had to have been expecting that question. “The Lineage Department is officially cut off from politics. Otherwise, nobles and royals would be unable to use them to mediate family turmoil. …But the top executives in the Lineage Department are filled with people from the tutoring organization that works for the royal families. In other words, they were given their jobs there.”

“You don’t mean…”

“A royal will give a group of several dozen tutors to a single child. And for a few years now, the top executive positions have been filled one after another with people with a connection to Dimiksy. He has a majority. It wouldn’t be hard for him to have a record or two swapped out.”

Dimiksy Nikolaschka was suspected to be attempting to take the throne of the Volga district on false pretenses.

It was possible he was trying to drive the proper heir, Staivia, off of the stage so that he could fulfill that ambition.

Which meant the purpose behind Dimiksy’s faction using terrorists to attack the naval base to alter Princess Staivia’s escape route was not to abduct her. It was to assassinate her.

“That’s horrible. The family has so much power and yet they start killing each other.”

“What are you saying? It’s just your standard fight over inheritance.”

“…Oh, I see. So nobles are insane, too. We commoners will never understand any of this,” spat out Quenser offhandedly. “But this is a conflict between royals, right? Wouldn’t a clash between their direct royal guard units be enough to cause a war? And if they use their political power, they can probably get Objects brought in…”

“Staivia is a solitary princess. Unlike the other royals, she does not have a direct royal guard unit. Although it seems she used to.”

“…?”

“The Legitimacy Kingdom’s 115th Private Royal Guard Company. Also known as the White Bears. They were the unit that acted as the princess’s shield. Three years ago, they were wiped out in a surprise attack by the Information Alliance during a military exercise. …And it seems they were forced to take part in that military exercise. I’ve heard talk that Dimiksy’s faction was behind it.”

“In other words, there’s no proof the soldiers wearing Information Alliance uniforms were actually from the Information Alliance, hm?”

If someone was killed in a safe country, it was a major incident. But things were different in a battlefield country. Even if 100 or 200 people were killed, it would be compressed to nothing more than a small article crammed into the corner of the newspaper. …After all, this was an age when small-scale wars were constantly occurring all over the world.

That had been a careful slaughter carried out simply to wear down the power of a political enemy.

“And rumor has it a newly formed unit began hanging around Dimiksy at the same time. Supposedly they passed some entrance exam and succeeded in gaining Dimiksy’s favor. But…” Heivia used his thumb to make a slicing gesture across his throat. “That unit was the 202nd Mobile Support Company…aka Unicorn. And that’s the deed that towers above all the other horrible things they’re rumored to have done.”