Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 7===

The concussion grenade had a range of about 2 meters and the dance hall was larger than a gym and filled with ladies and gentlemen, so the one blast was not going to knock them all out.

However.

The bodyguards in black did not seem in a big hurry to protect the shitty VIPs who had hired them.

“To be honest, we’re thankful,” said the security chief while bowing. “It’s probably wrong to act like we were on your side all along, but maybe we just needed someone to give us the opportunity.”

“Who are you?” asked Quenser.

“I am technically a noble,” The middle-aged man smiled a little. “But if you will allow me some irreverence toward that title, I would ask that you do not assume all of us are quite that heartless.”

There was an absolute wall between commoners and nobles.

But that allowed them to partially ignore the need to establish ordinary relationships with each other. They could think of each other as residents of entirely different worlds.

But what about between nobles?

That closer position had bound them. They had been unable to directly face the problem because they feared incurring the wrath of the great power those richer nobles carried.

But they had chosen to act now.

They had had enough.

Another chance might not come along, so they had decided to take the risk and try to save those children while they could.

And it was not just the bodyguards.

While they said nothing, the maids and the crew in sailor uniforms silently stepped out of the way. They could not don military uniforms and they could not fight against nobles, but they still tried to come up with something they could do.

Heivia must have understood all that.

But instead of mentioning it, he spat out a question.

“What’re you gonna do with your bosses?”

“The nobles seem to have fallen ill, so we will let them get some rest. They can rest all they like inside the ballast tank on the lowest level. It cannot be opened from within, so if the battle is lost and the ship sinks, they will be forced to share its fate.”

“Heh. That should make for a good wakeup call for them. Welcome to a battlefield country.”

“And if it is not too much to ask of you, could you possibly speak with the children once all this is over? This is something we cannot do ourselves.”

“Hm? What did those kids ask Santa for???”

The security chief smiled at Heivia Winchell’s question.

And he gave the answer.

“They asked for a true knight to show up and rescue them.”

It was possible not even the children themselves knew how serious they had been about that.

They may have asked for something they knew was impossible so they would not get their hopes up and they would feel no shock when it did not happen. It may have been their way of giving up on all hope of anyone ever coming to rescue them.

So could they now tell those children that some unbeatable soldiers had shown up to do just that?

Of course, there was no thread of logic leading up to this conclusion.

The mission to shoot down Santa Claus had started with that Christmas card sent to the military, but it should have ended in success and Quenser and Heivia’s presence in the Arctic was pure coincidence. And while they had set their sights on the aurora observation ship, their mission had not been one to save the children.

Nevertheless, through several layers of coincidence and happenstance, here they were.

A few mistakes and misunderstandings had forcibly kept that thread going when it should have come to an end so many times along the way. If they repeated this scenario 100 times, they would probably fail to notice the children in need and pass them by every single time, but for some reason, they had ended up knocking out the rich scum aboard the aurora observation ship this time.

This result defied all logic, so perhaps it was best described as a miracle.

“Heh,” quietly laughed Heivia Winchell.

A true knight.

That concept was like a dream that the children could not abandon even after seeing how ugly real nobles were. Which was why they had tried to go through that ritual so they could finally forget all about it.

After living in the world of nobles, Heivia knew all too well that the title was far too stained by profit-seeking and that the noblesse oblige they loved to talk about was nowhere to be found.

But someone was clinging to that nonexistent dream.

And he was not narrowminded enough to shake free of that desperate grasp.

“Fine then. It’s time for the knight to throw down his gauntlet and ready his rapier.”

They could no longer choose to intentionally fail their mission by running away and abandoning the kids and the maids to their fate.

The Julius Caesar had no gold onboard.

Instead, there were about 20 commoner children onboard. Yet the excessive number of artificial joints and organs implanted in their small bodies rivaled the value of a great mountain of gold since they were made from the rare Immortanoid.

A health boom had been started for investment purposes.

After pushing up the price of the longevity mineral as far as it would go, it was worth 200 times the price of pure gold.

It was said its weak radiation would activate the cells and extend one’s lifespan by 30%. That claim was laughable, but it was easy to imagine how some people would benefit by naming it a longevity mineral and spreading the word around. Humans were the foolish creatures who, if it was said to be good for your health, would pay large sums of money for goop made by boiling down the seaweed found growing just about anywhere.

What do we do? Do you think the Information Alliance will believe us that there’s no gold? I mean, we’re the enemy who boarded ahead of them.”

“Why would they believe us? They’ll just assume we’re trying to buy enough time to carry out all the heavy gold. That means they’re attacking the ship no matter what the reality is.”

And if he Information Alliance did arrive at the correct answer, what would that change?

Those children were the people of an enemy nation.

Once they learned the children had a fortune equal to a mountain of gold hidden in their bodies, they were sure to pull out a scalpel and slice them open like a dissected frog to get at the precious Immortanoid. These were the people who had started a war to get at this fortune, after all. Who could say what the actual soldiers thought. They might even think they were rescuing or protecting the children, but it was highly doubtful that their higher ups would care one whit about those human lives. They would confidently and triumphantly slice up those children in the hospitals they had been sent to for safekeeping.

Which meant…

“Do we hole up in the ship, or do we take the kids out and lead them back to the maintenance base? Either way, we can’t leave things as is. The rules of the battle have changed, dammit.”

“Let’s try to stay positive. Those kids are a lot lighter than gold and they can move around on their own. Those goddamn nobles were right about them being convenient carriers. We should have a few options other than dumping the treasure in the ocean and redoing everything.”

That was when a loud creaking sound reverberated throughout the dance hall.

“What the hell is it now?”

“Emergency, emergency!!”

Elise Montana had been taking a look around elsewhere, but she ran back into the dance hall. She held her military mobile device out toward them.

“Something big is coming this way. It’s an Information Alliance ship! It’s far bigger than a cruiser! It’s over 80,000 tons!!”

“For real? That’s as heavy as a battleship. And since when did they still have a weapon like that leftover!?”

“Wait, what do you mean it’s ‘coming this way’? You mean it isn’t trapped by the ice?”

Instead of waiting for an answer, they all checked Elise’s mobile device.

The name on the side of the ship was Electric 019.

The footage came from photographs and videos. The scale was difficult to judge with nothing but white around it, but it was definitely big. Bridge windows were generally the same size for every ship, so Quenser realized he could use that as a reference point to grasp the scale of what he was seeing.

The battlefield student groaned at what he saw.

He was little more than an amateur, but there was something even he could tell at a glance.

“That isn’t just 200m; it must be 300m.”

Modern design standards focused on small size and maneuverability for any weapon other than an Object, but this took the opposite route. Perhaps there was an eccentric faction within the Information Alliance that was displeased with the current Object-centric system, or maybe this was the result of a bizarre evolutionary branch created by the Object-less Northern Restricted Zone.

“Even a conservative estimate puts those main cannons at 50cm,” groaned the student. “This isn’t just normal firepower. Those have to be railguns or coilguns. I’m amazed such heavy weaponry is being developed for anything other than an Object, but since it’s a naval weapon, maybe they disguised it as electromagnetic catapult research.”

“Hey, isn’t that thing moving? I though the thick ice had trapped everything in place!”

“It has a weird blade covering the bow. It’s bent in a V-shape like a snowplow.” Quenser noticed something. “Is it using its extraordinary power and weight to forcibly break through the ice? No, it’s more than that. Look at that icebreaker blade, Heivia. There’s steam coming from where it’s contacting the ice.”

“Are they heating up the metal blade with the engine’s heat, or are they giving it a high frequency vibration? The damn thing’s melting the ice as it goes. Is it like slicing through foam with a hot wire?”

“Whatever the case, it doesn’t look like this was originally part of the ship. The blade stands out from the rest. I bet they threw it together from the parts on hand, but this just means the enemy was a step ahead of us. Since they’ve moved close enough that we can see them, they must intend to blast the aurora observation ship with a direct shot similar to a tank’s gun.”

“Why bother with that? They could just throw their ball in a long arc over the watery horizon…or the icy horizon, I guess.”

“That would blast the ship to pieces, but with an even more powerful direct shot, the shell will pierce through the ship and out the other side. Just like with a tank or armored vehicle, they can demand we surrender while gradually blasting away pieces as if with armor-piercing rounds.”

“…”

“Remember the problem with my concussion grenade? You can’t negotiate if the other side doesn’t fear the weapon until you use it. This means they want to talk too. They may have their doubts that the ‘treasure’ really is in the form of gold. And torture is a much better way of getting someone to talk than execution.”

That ship would be blindly tearing up a civilian ship from one end to the other without knowing where anyone onboard was. They did not care at all about the human rights of the people onboard. Once they learned the treasure was actually the healthy rare earth(?) stuffed inside those children, they would be delighted to come “retrieve” it. They would be happy they did not have to fish anything out of the water with a crane.

Heivia’s expression was bitter, but he did not overlook what mattered.

“If they have their doubts, then they won’t sink the ship right away, right?”

“Yeah. If the treasure turns out to be paper currency or checks, fire and water are the enemy. So they’re going to apply as much pressure as they can in order to figure out what it is. They want us to give away the answer.”

Of course, all of this was based entirely on assumptions.

No matter what the people on the aurora observation ship claimed to be the truth, the Information Alliance could not eliminate their doubts that the enemy soldiers might be lying or hiding some crucial fact. They would wonder if they had enough information and wonder how much information would ever be “enough”.

That was just how things were when you were winning the battle.

In the end, there was always a chance they would decide to sink the ship right this instant.

“How many of the noncombatants, like those kids, the maids, and the crew, do you think they’ll let go?”

“Are you seriously asking that, Heivia? The Information Alliance will see them as low-priority people. Since they want to make enough of an impact to get us to talk, they might kill those harmless civilians first of all. They don’t know the treasure is actually inside those kids.”

He must have already suspected as much because Heivia did not press the issue further.

Those kids had asked for a true knight to show up and rescue them.

How it had happened was unclear.

There was no rhyme or reason to how that had led to this.

The path from the Santa Claus mission to this Arctic battle had not been planned out in any way and the Legitimacy Kingdom was only interested in the money. It was laughable to think they were interested in the rescuing the children. After all, they did not even know those suffering young lives existed.

Nevertheless, Heivia’s group had learned of that wish and here they stood.

It was a coincidence that defied logic.

In other words, a miracle.

“They won’t let anyone escape and we can’t hole up in here. That means our only option is to head out there and fight that 80,000-ton monster ourselves. We may not have to travel past the horizon to reach that Information Alliance battleship, but the journey is still going to be straight out of hell.”

“Are you suggesting we give up? Do we walk up to those kids, crouch down to look them in the eye, and tell them we can’t help them after all? Do we blame it on circumstances beyond our control and tell them to abandon all hope of things ever getting better for them?”

“I’d rather die, dammit.”

“Then let’s give the Information Alliance hell.”

Just as Heivia and Quenser had reached a consensus, the delinquent noble noticed someone looking at him.

It was that small boy.

That carrier boy had been cut open with a scalpel and stuffed full of Immortanoid joints and organs that he did not even need. The adults had abused the concept of charity to use him for their own profit, so that depressingly “ordinary” soul had to have despaired in all forms of good and justice. No, he was probably too overwhelmed to even feel that kind of hatred.

“Hey.” Heivia crouched down to put himself at the boy’s eye level. “Don’t you worry. We’ll handle it. The Information Alliance can send a warship or whatever else they want, but we won’t let them lay a finger on you, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“How?” That blunt question cut right to the heart of the issue. “How can you protect Claudia? John said nothing can be done for us. He isn’t from the institution and has everything he wants, so he always comes to laugh at us.”

“Hey, I said not to worry.” Instead of answering the question, Heivia said something else. As if piercing straight to the foundation of what was wrong here. “I never said anything about only protecting Claudia, did I? And I don’t care what this John says. Listen, we’ll take care of everything and I mean everything. So you don’t need to write yourself out of those ‘what if’ scenarios. You deserve to be happy too. So let’s start from there, okay?”

“Eh? But…”

The boy tilted his head.

It was like he had woken up to find a present by his pillow and assumed it could not possibly be for him.

He was not used to being given things. He did not know how to step outside of the greenhouse.

Those rich scum had gone on and on about charity and justice, but they had in fact stolen every last possibility of a better life for those children. Any branch that stretched out toward freedom would be snipped away to ensure it only gave bloom to the flowers they wanted.

So it had to start from here.

The words that slowly flowed forth like some kind of curse were the result of how twisted that boy’s idea of normal and ordinary had become. So no matter how horrific it might seem, Heivia could not look away.

Those words definitely left that boy’s small mouth. A normal person would have a hard time understanding it, but the boy had been forced to conform to this view of justice.

:“I was born with a terrible disease.”

::::“That put my mom and dad through a lot of trouble.”

:“I heard they ended up in a lot of debt.”

::“I couldn’t go to a normal school.”

::::::“But someone came to help me.”

:“I can’t turn my back on them after they helped me.”

:::“They say this is the right thing to do.”

::::“But I can’t stand to see Claudia in pain anymore.”

:“So.”

:::“I just wanted Santa Claus to bring a true knight for her.”

::::“You can leave me.”

:“I can carry them all.”

::::::“I can carry all the other kids’ stones.”

::::“So.”

“Hey.”

He kept making rejections.

More and more and more rejections.

He was refusing to be saved.

But Heivia Winchell softly cut in while still crouched down.

And then he continued as if slicing through something invisible with a knight’s sword.

“You can relax.”

The boy broke down into tears.

It was such a normal thing, but they had never been allowed it before.

The security chief sighed from a short distance away. He had been watching that painfully twisted greenhouse without doing anything to help, so he felt like he was seeing someone grant the wish he had failed to grant.

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The boy’s words were a barely intelligible mess, but Heivia Winchell definitely heard something in that mass of noise.

He heard the boy asking to be saved.

“I swear to you I’ll end this. None of you will ever transport Immortanoid again and we’ll sink that greedy battleship. I, Heivia Winchell, swear on the blood running in my veins and on the tradition of my name that I will not abandon any of you. So there’s nothing – not a single thing – to worry about.”

Then the noble son gently placed a hand on that small head.

He may have been in over his head here.

He may not have been the most morally upstanding person in the world.

But at this moment, he had to be the unbeatable knight in shining armor here.

That was his duty.

“Hey. Anything I say is probably going to sound like empty words after the garbage people you’ve been exposed to, but let me ask you one thing. Do you know why nobles like me eat better food, sleep in nicer beds, train in cutting-edge gyms, and pay for it all with the tax money taken from the commoners?”

He recalled some musty old words.

He had heard this line from his father on a daily basis until a certain incident had led to a falling out with his parents and siblings.

Nobles were those who were given land by the king to protect the people who lived there.

Nobles were those who were first to race into battle when the need arose.

Nobles were those who could do the jobs no one else could.

In other words…

“It’s to hone the strength needed to protect you.”