HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3

Status: Incomplete

3/10 parts completed

   

Day 3

Part 1

“Soldiers! I know you must be tired, but this is an emergency.”

Frolaytia spoke from the dais at the front of the briefing room.

“The Information Alliance’s Second Generation Rush has set up a blockade. Now none of the transport ships with humanitarian aid from the Legitimacy Kingdom or anywhere else can reach us. This was just after the four world powers – including the Information Alliance – announced their intent to provide disaster relief. This violates international law. Their position should only grow worse, but that does not solve the more immediate problem. We must gather food as an emergency measure. Search through the half-destroyed Second Venice and check the warehouses, containers, supermarkets, convenience stores, shopping malls, bars, restaurants, and hotels. Go wherever you think you might find food and water and then retrieve it.”

“If the evacuated people learn about this, they’ll fight us for it. They’ll claim it belongs to them.”

Heivia sounded annoyed, but Frolaytia did not seem to mind.

“With the power out, the food in the city will spoil before long. The food would be too much for the citizens to eat before it rotted, but we can preserve it in our large cold rooms. Listen, this is not our food. Do not forget that we are merely storing it for redistribution. If you eat any while gathering it, that will be considered looting and you will be punished when discovered. Now get moving!”

Frolaytia clapped her hands twice to encourage them all.

None of them were particularly excited about this, but they had already released their own rations and their storerooms were empty. When they could not expect breakfast in the morning, they could not slack off, so they silently obeyed their orders.

With the Rush ruling over the surrounding sea, they could not use transport helicopters. If it targeted them with anti-air lasers, they could not avoid them.

And unfortunately, their military vehicles could not drive through Second Venice thanks to the canals.

“We have to go on foot!? We’re just like some volunteers cleaning up litter!!”

“I think someone forgot what soldiers are for at some point.”

Heivia complained as they marched out into the late night ghost town now that the rain had stopped, but Quenser remained somewhat calm.

“I had kind of thought Oh Ho Ho was on our side. I mean, yeah, she’s an Information Alliance soldier and she’s the person piloting the Second Generation at the cornerstone of this war, so maybe I should have seen this as a possibility.”

Catherine was clinging to Quenser’s waist.

She had cut her bikini strings with the knife in the boy’s survival kit, so she had changed back into the blue special suit of a Pilot Elite. Catherine had done the work on her own inside a changing room, but Quenser’s small cooking knife now had the rare quality of being “the one used to cut a girl’s bikini strings”. The student himself was back in the sweaty military uniform that had been hanging up in his room.

Incidentally, Catherine’s special suit had some additional elements that resembled a thin-collared blouse, a ribbon tie, and a short pleated skirt. It made her look like a student. Lineage and honor were everything in the Legitimacy Kingdom, so they liked to reveal one’s status and occupation through their clothing. What school had she been in before that bastard Flide snatched her up?

“Are you shocked about the Information Alliance, big brother?”

“I’m not sure. Well, maybe I am.”

Second Venice had temporarily fallen under Legitimacy Kingdom control, but there were a lot of facilities and equipment they could not control without removing the locks placed on them by the Information Alliance. The broadcast towers were one example and they had been transmitting a swimsuit G-cup idol’s cheerful online concert all day and all night long. It was being broadcast on all frequencies, so it amounted to jamming. Normal cellphones and smartphones without a military-grade control tower could not get word of the disaster out of Second Venice. And even if they did use some trick to punch through, it was obvious whose side the mass psychology would take when some random person’s face appeared in place of the world-class idol’s swimsuit.

There was a clear difference between those inside and outside the blockade.

Definite malice and hostility could be seen in the Oh Ho Ho’s actions here.

“I thought we might run into her as an enemy, but it’s true I never imagined it would happen like this.”

“Let’s stop talking about that Oh Ho Ho. If the Princess is listening in over the radio, this will only put her in a bad mood.”

The Baby Magnum still could not take part in a high-speed battle after the hit from a piece of the asteroid. The Princess could do nothing about the Rush. Even so, she was still plenty powerful as a stationary gun platform. She might be able to support them now that the civilians had been fully evacuated from half-destroyed Second Venice.

“Will the Princess have a chance to help out here? Do you think the Information Alliance has troops hidden in the rubble city?”

“I stopped trying to make sense of this after a transport ship protected by international law was blown away before my eyes. Anything goes in this war. If we’re attacked by little greys in backpacks instead of soldiers, I’m just going to roll with it.”

As they spoke, a large supermarket in the south side came into view. It was dark inside since the power was out, the windows were broken, and the shelves had fallen over. When they shined their military flashlights inside, it looked like a strange cave.

“Heh heh heh. Now I’ve finished ‘draw a portrait of a friend’ and ‘play basketball’. I’ve got a bunch of stamps now.”

“Oh, you’ve passed your daily quota while I wasn’t paying attention, Catherine. Did you make some friends at the base?”

“Look, big brother. The stamps cover more than half the card!”

“So you’re on the final stretch of the Civilian Acclimation Assistance System, hm? You’re real close to the safe country now.”

Catherine smiled like she was showing off a perfect score on a test.

Heivia peeked at the fresh foods section along the wall.

“The meat and vegetables look like a lost cause. I guess that’s just how it is in August.”

“We should be able to grab all the pre-packaged stuff and the cereal. And we should check the storeroom in the back.”

“Big brother, it’s nice and cool over here.”

There was still a chill in the meat processing room and storeroom in the back. No one had needed to open and close the thick insulated door, so it had kept the cold air in like a thermos. It had already been 48 hours since the asteroid exploded in midair, but time was still on their side.

“How are we supposed to carry all these cardboard boxes?”

“We’ll have to take a lesson from the ants.”

They stepped outside, pulled out a smoke bomb that let out colorful light and smoke, scraped the tip against the cap, and threw it out onto the end of the road. After contacting their fellow soldiers by radio, they noticed similar requests from the shopping malls and department stores in the area.

The Princess must have been monitoring them through a camera because she contacted them over the radio.

“You all seem to be having fun. It’s like a school camping trip.”

“I was always the type that hated volunteer work in the mountains so much I would vomit. So are you irritated that you’re stuck there? Try doing some stretches. But make sure to change into a white school swimsuit and give the stretches some real energy. Eh heh heh. That’ll bring some light to the world.”

“Quenser, could you not make me a part of your fantasies that make me want to vomit? Didn’t I tell you anything but a bikini isn’t even an option this year?”

Once they shared the location of the food, another unit could send someone to collect it, so Quenser’s group moved on to another store.

Heivia let out a cheer on the way.

“Oh, hell yes! There’s a soldier flying through the air using a water jet.”

“Where did they drag that leisure product from? Are they entering a store through a skylight because the other entrances were crushed?”

“Huh? They have an engine on their back, but they still need that water hose dangling down into the ocean like a tail, right?” asked Catherine. “It’s something like a vacuum cleaner, so I feel like it’s still missing something if it’s going to be a fashionable leisure item…”

Meanwhile, they ran into some other soldiers.

“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be gathering food? What are you doing at a hardware store?”

“The place is full of weapons: crowbars, shovels, hammers, chainsaws…everything. A nail gun could be used as a projectile weapon. We still haven’t set up any gun control, but I don’t want to imagine what happens if they begin rioting and bring out things like this. We’ll have to kill them.”

The fact that their fear was not of being attacked by the rioters may have been a unique side of the military.

Quenser sighed.

“But we can’t just destroy it all. With the blockade in place, we’ll have to do any construction with whatever we can find. We still haven’t built any real temporary residences.”

“Yeah, neither option is great, so we’ll have to retrieve them and store them at the maintenance base for now. See ya.”

After leaving those soldiers, Heivia made an annoyed comment.

“Civilization keeps breaking down more and more.”

“The Information Alliance might actually want that. If they do have soldiers hidden in the city, they might be working in secret to turn the military and civilians against each other. I can see why Frolaytia wanted to retrieve the food right away.”

“Hm?”

“What if the Information Alliance hid small glass shards on or in the food out here? The food we retrieved would kill the civilians. Then they would just have to shout complaints while pretending to be civilians themselves. They’d say the Legitimacy Kingdom sabotaged the limited food to reduce the number of mouths to feed. They’d say we were tricking everyone for some population control.”

“Are you serious…?”

“Frolaytia told us not to swipe any of the food, remember? That may have been because she feared that possibility. She wants to retrieve it all and then do a thorough inspection because who knows what could happen.”

Quenser’s view had no actual evidence to back it up.

And misinformation had a way of spreading during disasters.

Which side was putting everyone in danger? The inability to answer that was what made a crumbling ghost town so frightening.

They went around to a few more stores and placed smoke bombs near the entrances, but after that, they were stuck helping carry it all back.

The rain had let up, so the midsummer sun beat down on Second Venice once dawn broke.

“Goddammit. It’s already past six. With how diligently we’re all working, I feel like something’s bound to blow up soon.”

“It’s nice having a thousand people working together. We’ve finished carrying most of the food.”

“But a lot of the food had gone bad already,” said small Catherine as she strolled along beside them. “What a waste.”

“I’ll ask our busty commander if we can retrieve it later to make compost. We might be able to manage some fast-growing vegetables, like a resourceful office lady growing her own salad ingredients in her planter.”

“And couldn’t we make batteries by sticking electrodes in the rotting oranges? Each one might not amount to much, but all of the fresh foods were wiped out. We could gather a whole bunch. Plus, the shelters will need power and I bet that would be more reliable than if one of them thinks he’s an amateur inventor and tries to build a generator.”

Naturally, they did not think they could grow enough to make up for the lost food, but it was better than nothing. Even if a bucket had a hole in the bottom, it could still hold a little water if it was tilted at an angle.

“Hmm. Wouldn’t that battery idea be pretty unsanitary? Would you be boxing up a bunch of rotten fruit and sticking it in the shelters? Wouldn’t that bring in a bunch of flies and roaches which would spread disease?”

“I guess it isn’t that simple.”

“If we need batteries, it would be safer to gather them from the motor boats floating upside down all around here. Their batteries have got to have at least some power left. And if we tear up a parasol just right, it can work as a propeller. Combine that with a bicycle light generator and we’ve got a wind power generator. I have no idea if that busty commander would give the go-ahead on any of that, though.”

At that point, Quenser felt a shiver down his spine.

(Wait… How long do I think we’ll be stuck here?)

A week? A month? ….Or a year?

They normally moved from battlefield to battlefield as a part of the Object’s mobile maintenance base, so they never stayed anywhere for long. But the Princess had been taken out and the Information Alliance’s Second Generation Rush was blockading the ocean. The usual rules no longer applied. He could not deny the possibility of being stuck here for an extended period of time.

And once they returned to the maintenance base, Frolaytia spoke to them.

“The MPs are measuring all of the food, but with this many people, it likely won’t last two weeks. Ten days if we’re lucky and seven if we assume there’s trouble and we lose some. And that includes the rations we already released.”

“…”

That provided a clear limit.

Before that caught up with them, they had to figure out what was going on in Second Venice, drive out the Rush, and remove the blockade. Otherwise, they would starve to death along with 130,000 civilians.

The delinquent noble grew pale.

“Wait, wait, wait! Isn’t there anything we can do!? Can’t they hold an international summit to gang up on the Information Alliance for breaking their treaties!?”

“This is the Information Alliance we’re talking about. They’re the world’s best at weaseling out of things. I guarantee we’ll starve before the ambassador their home country sends to the online summit has run out of excuses. But don’t ask me whether it would be them speaking or just an AI negotiator stringing words together.”

Quenser brought a hand to his forehead.

“Give us our orders. What do we need to do?”

“I wish you were always that eager, but to be honest, there isn’t much we can do. And we might not even need to bring this to a direct conclusion ourselves.”

The busty silver-haired commander winked.

“This isn’t a desert on the moon. It’s a Mediterranean resort. The Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization home countries are right in front of us. The four world powers have already announced they intend to provide disaster relief. That means the Rush has made an enemy of the entire world with this blockade.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes,” said Frolaytia. “An Object will be here soon. One on our side.”

Part 2

It was eight in the morning. The ocean glittered in the early morning sun as a Second Generation floated above it with an air cushion engine.

The Legitimacy Kingdom called it the Rush.

The Information Alliance’s official name was the Gatling 033.

It was an amphibious model, but it was more suited for land battles. However, that did not matter here. That queen of the sea would use every attack method it had to exterminate any ship or aircraft that attempted to approach Second Venice.

(Honestly, even if it’s borrowing Juliet’s processing power, this fully virtual show just isn’t very exciting. It lacks the edge only seen in the dances using my motion data.)

In her spare time, the Pilot Elite displayed a few small windows to check on the previous night’s data for the online concert that had been running for several days. She was digitally reviewing the excitement over the high-speed connection as well as the combination of the song and dance.

(Oh, that’s surprising. The private talk between songs has higher numbers than the intense dancing. Oh ho ho. I suppose cute and sexy are just two different things.)

She of course could predict what was coming.

The Gatling 033 was not fully controlled by the Pilot Elite. It was unique Object that was mostly left to a strategic AI named Juliet. By diverting those resources elsewhere, it could be used for some generic largescale simulations.

All that remained was to see who sent out an Object first and what Object it would be.

“Oh ho ho.”

A thin mocking smile came to her lips.

“The Faith Organization? Yes, the Faith Organization! Since you’ve shown up now – oh ho ho – can I assume you have been tasked with opening the gate to hell?”

“What are you talking about? I am here for humanitarian purposes and to drive you away so you cannot interfere with the safe travel of the transport ships. All four world powers have agreed to this. So prepare yourself, you bitch.”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure that’s the official reason.” She did not seem at all bothered. “I do not know whether or not you are aware of Second Venice’s ‘true form’. Are you here to assist your superiors who informed you of everything, or are you just an ignorant pawn? …Either way, I cannot allow you to approach. Oh ho ho. At least make sure you give this everything you’ve got. A top idol is personally inviting you to dance after all!!”

Her enemy was an air cushion style of amphibious model. It had a standard and quite boring design: four rectangular floats arranged two-by-two to form a large panel. It had just the one main cannon: an old-style cannon on the right side that fired metal shells. There was also a large missile container on the left and various other cannons sticking out from its spherical main body like a sea urchin or chestnut burr.

To sum up, it was a First Generation.

The Information Alliance called it the Powder Cannon 011.

But things were different for the Legitimacy Kingdom. They had once referred to it as the Iron Lance, but they had begun to use a different name in recent years.

That name was the Old Fashion.

It was indeed old-fashioned, but it was undeniably an ace.

The Gatling 033 had the firepower of two rapid-fire beam Gatling cannons, so it boasted devastating strength on an ocean with no obstacles. Its rapid-fire attacks became a single long blade. Just by swinging that around 180 degrees, it could slice through most any Object. That was why she was stationed on the ocean even though that reduced her mobility somewhat. If she took out her enemy before they could do anything, she did not have to fear any damage.

But that assumption was overturned in a single shot.

Just as she began swinging her main cannon around to sweep the bluish-white light across the ocean, the Old Fashion fired a railgun secondary cannon.

Instead of at the Gatling 033 itself, it fired at the joint on the base of the Gatling-style main cannon just as it started to move.

“Wha-!?”

This was not a fatal blow.

But the impact still lifted up the Gatling 033’s main cannon. The line of fire shifted and the horizontal sweep passed fruitlessly above the Old Fashion.

Object battles were primarily fought by exchanging main cannon fire, yet this Object had suppressed a main cannon blast with one of its secondary cannons?

“You deflected it!?”

“Is that really so surprising? This is merely one of my tricks.”

The Old Fashion put on a burst of speed to move fast and deep into the opening in the Gatling 033’s barrage. The Gatling 033 was meant for close or midrange battles, but she fell back because she did not like letting her opponent choose his distance. While keeping her distance, she made alternating sweeps of rapid-fire beam Gatling cannon blasts from the left and right.

But none of it hit.

Sometimes the Old Fashion would fire its main cannon into the ocean to create a wall of water in front of itself and sometimes it would use the floats beneath itself. Instead of a single float, it had four of them arranged two-by-two. Originally, that would have been so it could press one of them against the water or ground to make a rapid turn, but by intentionally submerging one of those floats and rapidly lifting it, it could launch up the nearby driftwood or flotsam like someone kicking up a soccer ball with the top of their foot.

Of course, the Gatling 033’s main cannon was not so weak that a wall of water or large junk could stop it, but it was enough to slightly divert it. The Old Fashion used that tiny margin of error to just barely evade what was supposed to be impossible to dodge.

Every one of those actions tore at her pride.

“You…!! But that’s a First Generation!!”

“Unfortunately, I have no intention of switching to a newer model. My lost friend designed this and I intend to take it with me to the grave. The only question is whether that will be today or in ten years’ time.”

That was another of the legends surrounding this Object.

Objects were a crystallized form of military technology, so the ones that absorbed the most advanced technology were the strongest. …But this old-fashioned pilot had singlehandedly overturned that theory. This veteran Elite had stubbornly rejected all orders to the contrary, continually refused any upgrades to a newer model, and ignored the modern trends and the military’s desire for optimization. And it was all to keep a promise with a war buddy of his.

Yes.

He had the skill needed to drive an enemy world power to change their codename for him from Iron Lance to Old Fashion.

But what had the Faith Organization called it?

Cronus, the ruler who preceded Zeus.

The original reason for the name would have been different, but it was an ironically perfect name for the ace that continued to resist any advance in technology while slaying all the latest Objects.

“You need not try to entertain me, Information Alliance.”

“Kh.”

The owner of the ultimate piloting instincts bared his fangs against her.

“I will entertain myself with Cronus. It really doesn’t matter who it is in front of me.”

Part 3

The actual battle did not even last an hour.

Heivia pouted his lips as she started at the flashing dots on the screen.

“Aww. The Old Fashion and Rush are moving away. Is that all you’re gonna do!? Are you running away!?”

“The Old Fashion was probably only meant to fight a quick battle to gather information. It didn’t have to settle this in the first battle. After all, the Rush can’t send in another Object or Elite, so the Rush is the one that loses its advantage as time passes.”

As Quenser listened to that conversation between Heivia and Frolaytia, he narrowed his eyes in thought.

“Is the Old Fashion’s main cannon what I think it is?”

“Yes. It’s an old Object, so we have all the data on it. It fires metal shells, but it isn’t a railgun or a coilgun. It’s a compressed metal cannon. That sounds fancy, but it really only fires them with gunpowder the old-fashioned way. You saw the gigantic cross-shaped muzzle flash, right?”

“Gunpowder? How can that break through an Object’s nuke-resistant onion armor?”

“It uses special shells. The energy from the Object’s reactor is given to a press that applies extreme pressure to a large mass to sharpen it down to a pin-like point. The destructive power of two one-ton shells varies a lot depending on whether it’s as thick as a bowling ball or as narrow as a pin. Think of it like the difference between being stepped on by athletic shoes versus high heels. Some of the outdated tank guns would increase their destructive power by focusing the heavy shell’s kinetic energy on a dart-like pointed core, but you can think of this as an extreme mutation of that. And that allows it to pierce the armor that a nuke can’t get through.”

“Ugh,” groaned Heivia, but Quenser looked puzzled.

“But just like with diesel, wouldn’t forcibly compressing the shell create a ton of heat?”

“It’s just like the earth’s core. The melting point of steel is over 1500 degrees, but the core reaches 6000 degrees. The pressure from all directions is so great that the liquid can’t act like a liquid and then it’s bound by its solid state. And when a magnetic substance is exposed to high temperatures, it’s spin is disturbed, which can apparently cause irregular changes in its magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistance. The method was left behind by the flow of time. The shells’ paths were too unstable for railguns and coilguns, so the method tends to fall back on old-fashioned gunpowder. It might look strange now, but at the time, there was a lot resistance to the switch from giant cannons full of gunpowder to laser beams and railguns. It’s all about who benefits.”

Perhaps this Object was a freak specifically because it was old-fashioned. If just a little more time had passed, the firing method would have taken priority over the processing of the shell.

“That would explain why it has both a normal magazine and a drum magazine. One is for the explosive and the other is for the metal shells. I also don’t see any cartridges being ejected, so maybe the powder is being wrapped up and held in place like a giant roll of old paper.”

“It doesn’t really matter as long as that antique from the pirate age can slap up the Rush for us.”

“Also,” cut in Frolaytia. “The Information Alliance has taken another action. Some soldiers hidden in Second Venice seem to have broken away from them. And they are showing no interest in surrendering to us. They are currently holding the observation deck of the Pillar of Truth, a giant broadcast tower on the east side.”

“A broadcast tower?”

Quenser sounded skeptical and the busty silver-haired commander sighed.

“Assuming they aren’t just seeing the sights, they might have wanted to hijack the airwaves and broadcast something to the world. Now, the tower itself seems to have had backup power to preserve the broadcast infrastructure in an emergency, but the crucial broadcast equipment was apparently remotely locked by the Information Alliance and they haven’t sent out even a single 140 character comment. And that idol Elite’s online concert is still playing on all frequencies. That swimsuit girl jamming is truly frightening. Anyway, the rogue Information Alliance troops haven’t left the tower yet, so they’re probably still fighting to unlock the equipment.”

“So if we capture them…”

“We might be able to figure out what’s going on, even if we can’t get rid of the Rush. This group has broken free of the Rush to transmit something and the Rush is trying to stop them. It smells fishy to me.”

With that settled, they had a mission.

But attacking a broadcast tower was different from attacking a normal building. It was going to be a real pain in the ass.

“The Pillar of Truth is 400 meters tall and the rogue Information Alliance soldiers are holed up on the observation deck at 300 meters. The elevators are of course stopped and they’ve completely cut away the emergency stairs. That means we’ve lost the normal methods of climbing to the top.”

“What are they planning to do? Hole up there until they starve?”

“The observation deck has a restaurant and a souvenir shop, so they’ll have plenty of food and water for the time being. I don’t know how they plan to escape, but towers like that tend to have maintenance gondolas like window washers use. If they need to, they might be able to descend with those.”

Of course, those would be stored up top, so Quenser and the other attackers could not use them.

Heivia rubbed his chin in thought.

“It would be easy enough to send out some snipers or an attack helicopter to fill the observation deck with holes, but then we might not be able to get our hands on whatever information these rogue soldiers have.”

“How are they equipped, Frolaytia?”

“As infantry, probably assault rifles and military handguns. Maybe grenades too.”

They could not get in from below.

Nor could they directly attack the observation deck to exterminate the enemy.

“Then what do we do? If we can’t attack from below, are we supposed to attack from above? But I doubt that pointy tower has a heliport.”

“Close but no cigar.”

Frolaytia responded to Heivia’s complaint with a serious nod.

The two idiots were confused, but then she said something even more inscrutable.

“We’ll be taking the average of those two by attacking from the middle.”