Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 8===

“Goddamn them…!!”

Sigma 3, real name Robinson King-Cole, groaned within the rubble of the harbor block. They had tried to be very cautious, but this was the result as soon as that crumbling ship entered C Dock. The zombies had flooded out from the Trojan horse and bared their fangs against the symbol of peace known as the Olympia Dome. It had been quickly transformed into a battlefield reeking of gun smoke and blood.

The large Hispanic man looked up at the crumbling ship that was more than 9 meters tall. The ship itself seemed to be from the Information Alliance, but the flag raised above it was the Legitimacy Kingdom’s.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Who are they!? Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers that captured an Information Alliance ship, Information Alliance soldiers disguising themselves as the Legitimacy Kingdom, or someone else altogether!?”

Many varieties of rifle and shotgun cartridges were lying around. Yet normally there would be a single standard used within a unit.

(There’s so much evidence here, but it feels like that’s actually obscuring the truth. It’s always like this when the Information Alliance’s name pops up!!)

Robinson felt a physiological disgust at a level above reason, but that may have been because he belonged to the Faith Organization that saw value in a single absolute truth. He simply could not understand the people who used post-truth politics and fake news to muddy the truth and make all sorts of noise.

After regrouping with some fellow soldiers who had also arrived on personal watercraft, they ran along the dock, checked the pulses of their collapsed allies, stopped the worst of the bleeding and attached GPS tags to those who were still breathing, and moved on to the next one.

Leaving the harbor block did not wake them from the nightmare.

They smelled smoke, gunpowder, and death.

The ominous odor of the city before them could not be washed away by the blowing rain.

(This is awful…)

It would be easy enough to hate the enemy for this, but it was Robinson’s group that had allowed this to happen. The fact that they had just been following orders did not soothe his conscience. Bringing that ship to C Dock and stationing themselves at Olympia Dome in the first place were both the Faith Organization’s decisions.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Send the plan to me too. I want to join the battle, but what kind of operation are we running!? OD Control!!”

“…Oh, Zeus, god of life and punishment. Your pure shrine maiden beseeches thee. Lend us the power that once guarded Olympus to send lightning upon the villains who would lay waste to your modern temple…”

“Dammit!!”

That female operator usually kept a head as cool as ice, but she had driven her mind to an elevated state with that flat and expressionless prayer. Robinson and the others in charge of the actual combat were professional soldiers, but the people monitoring communications and making decisions based on a variety of regulations were civilians who were only meant to inspect and maintain the sports facilities. They could not necessarily endure the pressure of knowing their decisions could lead to so many deaths.

(The damage is spreading throughout the entire city. I doubt ''just'' the intruders could cause all this. Did the ground troops cut their limiters and begin a war of attrition?)

Robinson’s group had not rushed to the Olympia Dome in response to the Manhattan issue. There had not been enough time for that.

It was more accurate to say they had happened to be in the right place at the right time while making their near-standard naval resupply stop.

(If we had predicted things that well, we could have handled this better! Curse the Manhattan. It just shows up and then starts scattering disaster everywhere. Who are we even fighting against here!? Are they trying to protect that thing or destroy it!?)

This had all been a stroke of good luck in the first place. It was entirely coincidental that they had acquired the closest base to Manhattan without having to risk their lives for it. And yet they had been told that revealing the purpose and value of Manhattan was a mission that had to succeed even if it cost them their lives. Their lives were being thrown away for the whims of their higher ups who had been blinded by greed. That was Robinson’s blunt assessment.

They were up against a faceless enemy.

That was a threat on the same level as some strange form of the occult.

(And when we were already transporting ''something so dangerous''… What even happened to our original mission, dammit!?)

“What should we do, Sigma 3?” asked the large female soldier next to him while she stared off into the distance. “Should we cut the circuits in our minds too?”

“…No,” spat out Robinson. “If this were the ending god had given us, then so be it, but both sides here are no more than human. I’m not about to die for human greed. We’ll regroup with the main unit. I don’t care about that digital war nonsense. We have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so as long as we keep our cool, we should be able to win this.”