Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3

Now then.

Who has the advantage, the one being chased or the one doing the chasing?

At this point, it was about 50/50. No one could say who had the advantage and who had the disadvantage.

And that meant this was the point at which that could be controlled.

And what would change it was quite simple.

It hinged on whether one could read one’s enemy’s upcoming actions or not.

Mariydi and her bodyguard spoke while running down a flight of stairs leading to the basement of the building.

“Can you call up a diagram of this area!?”

“We just ran underground where I can’t get a signal,” replied the bodyguard while operating a handheld device with one hand. “But Olympia Dome is a giant artificial island, so its underground…or rather, its inside was made into a large scale facility where they concentrate the pipes, network, and other necessary infrastructure. The layout is pretty complicated, but the walls should at least be strong enough to block a bullet.”

The bodyguard showed the handheld device’s screen to Mariydi.

It seemed he had just barely managed to download a diagram of the layout before losing the signal.

Mariydi wrinkled her brow and said, “The entrance.”

“Yeah, that would be the standard method.”

Mariydi and the bodyguard passed through the straight passageway heading out from the entrance they had come through and stopped once they turned a corner. After moving that bare minimum of distance down the passageway, they turned the barrels of their guns toward the entrance.

They would concentrate their fire when the pursuing attackers headed down the stairs.

By falling back while their enemy was then overcome with confusion, Mariydi and the bodyguard could quickly head even further down the passageway without worrying about the pursuers getting too close.

They would do the same at the next corner.

And the next corner.

But at the corner after that, they would hide an explosive device instead.

By ambushing the enemy at every corner they absolutely had to pass through to continue their pursuit, Mariydi and the bodyguard slowly but surely reduced the number of attackers with their sporadic gunfire. Whenever they estimated the enemy would have figured out the pattern, they would set up a trap. Each time they did that, they would dull the attackers’ instincts.

While they calmly retreated some more, the bodyguard asked, “What do you think?”

“The Faith Organization.”

“But the rifle bullets seem to be a Legitimacy Kingdom model.”

“For the most part, they aren’t using their lights in the dark. Using the lights offensively to blind the enemy is a Faith Organization tactic.”

In an age in which firearms and goggles were equipped with sensors, flashlights were no longer necessary. Those that still liked to use them did so more to blind the enemy with the bright light than to hold back the darkness.

While looking a bit impressed, the bodyguard said, “So when do you think they’ll catch on?”

“When people think they are the pursuers, a counterattack only makes them angry. As long as you keep throwing more branches on a fire, you can keep it burning forever.”

That was exactly why Mariydi and the bodyguard were choosing to continually fall back.

It was like someone who kept putting more and more money into a crane game or like someone who just could not stop playing poker in a casino.

That feeling of being just a bit away from one’s goal would keep the person playing. They would not realize their mistake until their wallet was empty.

It was because the repeated losses were so small and seemingly insignificant that the desire to win them back was greater than the desire to cut your losses.

“No matter how much training they undergo, people are still people in the end.”

“What? Is it over already?” said the bodyguard as he fired his light machinegun around the corner and at the final few people.

Mariydi told him to stop with a gesture and then fired her assault rifle down the passageway.

She did something different this time.

Mariydi blew away all but one of the pursuers and then fired at the wall near the survivor, sending orange sparks everywhere.

She was clearly trying to fill him with fear.

When he saw the Faith Organization attacker fall into a panic and truly start to flee, the bodyguard let out a bewildered voice.

“Should you really have done that? By not finishing them all off, you now have to live in fear of another attack.”

“I did that specifically to avoid having to do that,” said Mariydi while cautiously peering down the passageway. “We have no idea how large an organization we’re dealing with. If they have several other units prepared, slaughtering this one does not eliminate the threat. That is why I let one get away. …He can lead us back to their headquarters.”

“What a pain,” said the bodyguard while shaking his head.

She would expose her own body to the threat of being shot to keep any civilians or members of her bodyguard team from harm, but she also showed no mercy in crushing those who she saw as an enemy. He could not tell if she liked or disliked blood.

Mariydi glanced over at the bodyguard.

“And be careful. Pursuing the fleeing attacker means we have to head back through the passageways we booby trapped. You don’t want to fall victim to your own trap, do you?”

Mariydi and the bodyguard climbed a stairway back up to the surface and exited the building. Reinforcements from the bodyguard PMC had already arrived, so they borrowed one of their vehicles. Instead of a professional military off-road vehicle, it was a standard 4-door car that would not look out of place driving through a normal city.

The Faith Organization attacker whose heart had fallen firmly into the grasp of his survival instincts after all of his allies had been killed was not paying any attention to his surroundings.

After driving 10 kilometers in a vehicle of his own, he arrived at a rental storehouse far removed from the center of the island.

The attacker got out of his vehicle, but Mariydi took action before he could approach the door to the storehouse.

She approached silently from behind and kicked the back of his knees to throw him off balance. Before he could turn around or shout out, she wrapped her arms around his neck and mercilessly snapped it.

“Excellent work,” commented the bodyguard.

“The scary thing about the Technopics is that this didn’t count as a crime.”

“Yeah, self defense is defined pretty broadly here. Of course, without that broad definition, we wouldn’t have been attacked in the first place”

Mariydi searched through the pockets of the limp dead body and found a key. She cautiously approached the storehouse and unlocked the small personnel entrance located next to the giant shutter.

She glanced over the inside with her assault rifle at the ready, but it did not seem anyone was there.

(There are signs of people heading in and out very recently.)

She and the bodyguard checked around inside the storehouse, but found no one hiding inside. They had either all headed out for some mission or another or they had fled for fear of their comrade leading someone back to them.

“It doesn’t look like they left any ‘presents’ for us,” said the bodyguard while lowering his light machinegun.

He was referring to explosives.

If they had detected Mariydi and the bodyguard’s actions and fled, it was very likely they would have left behind some kind of booby trap. That meant they had probably left for other reasons.

“Was that all of them? Or are there more? We can’t be sure with just this.”

“We can just keep an eye on this place. My men can set up a perimeter.”

While listening to the bodyguard, Mariydi looked around the inside of the storehouse. Several of what appeared to be some kind of equipment were covered by thick plastic sheets. She had already checked underneath quickly while searching for any “presents”.

She removed the cords holding the sheets on and removed them.

Inside she found…

“A VTOL fighter? Is it a Legitimacy Kingdom S/G-31?”

“The exterior is just made to look like it,” said Mariydi the ace pilot after giving it a careful look. “The Faith Organization Harpuiai uses the same basic frame. It was designed by an engineer that defected from the Legitimacy Kingdom after all.”

She circled around to the back and spotted the distinctive paddle for the jet engine’s vector thrust nozzle. It was definitely not from the Legitimacy Kingdom.

It had been a patent issue over the shape of that paddle that led the engineer to defect.

“So it’s a Faith Organization design?”

“This fighter has had its exterior modified to hide its identity. It’s possible the inside was modified for the same reason. This isn’t enough to say whether it is Legitimacy Kingdom or Faith Organization.” Mariydi tapped the fighter’s body with a loosely clenched fist. “They just had to make sure we couldn’t tell what world power they’re from. As long as we don’t have 100% certainty, each world power can avoid any possible responsibility with the political exchanges they’re so good at.”

“I thought you had determined the unit we took out was from the Faith Organization.”

“Based on their methods. They definitely acted like a Faith Organization unit…but I can’t deny the possibility that those were soldiers from a different organization that mastered those movements with help from former Faith Organization soldiers, anyone else who had undergone Faith Organization training, or their intelligence department’s analysis of the Faith Organization’s training methods.”

The armored vehicle and submarine covered by the other plastic sheets had been made to look like Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance models respectively. Those false exteriors were not simply meant to deceive. The intent was to leave traces of different world powers to make it impossible to tell which power they were from.

The bodyguard sighed.

“We can’t tell from this.”

“We actually might be able to.” Mariydi looked over at the maintenance tools. “They’ve added elements from multiple world powers to the fighters and armored vehicles that will be seen on the surface, but they would have had no reason to do the same to the equipment that would never see the light of day. We can figure out which power is behind this by checking out their military tools.”

“So what’s the verdict?”

“…In all likelihood, they’re from the Faith Organization. More specifically, from the Greek mythology branch.”

Mariydi used her piezoelectric receiver to ask Alicia, but Alicia replied sounding confused.

“The Greek mythology branch had no decent athletes in the shootathlon. Even if they eliminated all of the medalists, they would not gain anything.”

“Then what is going on?”

“I am not from a criminal group, so I could not tell you. But if I had to take a guess, the goal of their attack is something other than stripping you of your medal.”

“…”

Mariydi looked around once more and then began searching through the storehouse once more.

As she did, she realized something that should have been there was missing.

“There’s no computer. Modern fighters and armored vehicles have advanced precision equipment installed, so a computer is needed for maintenance.”

“So they took all that with them?”

“…I can only think of one possibility,” muttered Mariydi before exiting the storehouse.

She once more searched the corpse of the attacker lying collapsed outside the entrance. She found a handheld device in the inner pocket of his jacket.

It was locked with a password, but it was done with mere free software. She used a special method to lock up the functions needed for the security and rebooted it with the password lock mode turned off altogether.

“Does a pilot need to know how to do that?”

“I use this sort of device to regulate the fly-by-wire system. When the device screws up and won’t do what I tell it, I sometimes have to perform a soft reset.”

The device did not have much data in it, but it did have a few addresses leading to special links and a list of authentication codes. It seemed all the primary data was stored on a server accessed via the internet. Mariydi had no idea how long she would have access, so she just downloaded all of it.

''The Blank will stand out too much. The Blank is nothing more than preparations for the real plan. We cannot allow anyone to grow suspicious at this stage.

''A progressing problem will be used for the Blank.

''We have information that the Legitimacy Kingdom is attacking an athlete from the Capitalist Corporations. We can use this for the Blank.

''Camouflage of the needed firearms and armored vehicles has been completed in time. They will now be used for the Blank.

The bodyguard peered over Mariydi’s head to read the text on the screen from above.

“This is referring to us, isn’t it?”

“It certainly looks like they aren’t trying to strip me of my medal. From the looks of this, they aren’t even really targeting me at all.”

The Blank.

She searched through the files for a bit and found data on that.

''Most of Olympia Dome’s security is made up of unmanned weapons such as UAVs, UGVs, and UUVs.

''If they are not crushed, the real plan will be difficult to execute.

''The unmanned weapons do not run on a completely autonomous program. They are constantly manually controlled from a central control room.

''The antennae are located all over the island.

''Their output is powerful enough that a normal jamming signal will likely fail to completely block the signal.

''But to bring together all of the data from the countless antennae, hubs are needed to control the path of the data like traffic lights.

''If a hub is destroyed, the unmanned weapons will be temporarily unusable over a rather large block.

Mariydi narrowed her eyes.

“How many recoilless rifles were fired when our convoy was first attacked?”

“I don’t remember. I was too busy trying not to die.”

“So that’s what that was. Even if they fired at a different facility amid the confusion, it would still be deemed an attack on our convoy.”

“But this Blank isn’t their main goal, right? This said it was just preparation. What is their real plan?”

“Here we go. I found it.”

Mariydi scrolled down on the handheld device’s screen.

''Every last trace of the original sports festival has been lost from the Technopics.

''We must put an end to these ruins that are swollen with nothing but depravity and proxy wars.

''We of Athletica will return this festival to the original form of the Olympics created by our ancestors from our homeland of Greece.

Athletica.

That seemed to be the name of the organization that was at the center of the current turmoil.

''To do that, we must utterly destroy the Technopics and the massive amount of profit it produces as well as Olympia Dome that runs the festival.

''Olympia Dome is an impregnable facility guarded by Objects from the great world powers of the Faith Organization, the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, and the Capitalist Corporations. We do not think it can be brought down with a frontal attack.

''To sink this giant artificial island, the system that supports it must be used against it.

“…Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“They want to bring back the Olympic spirit? Is this Athletica we’re fighting against trying to make an enemy of the entire Technopic system?”

“But how are they going to sink the island? Four Second Generation Objects are on constant guard.”

''The world powers’ Objects are officially said to be working together to guard Olympia Dome, but their actually reason for being here is to keep each other in check to prevent any single Object from attacking.

''A strong stimulus could create a situation where they begin destroying each other.

''Firing the first shot will be difficult.

''It may be from the same world power as us, but the Faith Organization Object is not a fellow Athletica member.

''That means the first shot must be fired with something other than an Object.

''It does not have to be enough firepower to destroy the Object. However, it must be enough for the Elite piloting the Object to deem it a threat. It must be powerful enough for the Elite to mistake it for a bombardment from another Object or at least for something the Elite believes an Object bombardment is needed to resolve.

Did a weapon with such firepower even exist?

Object’s had armor powerful enough to withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

As Mariydi operated the handheld device, she found information on what Athletica planned.

What it said was:

''In order to appeal to the fact that they have no large scale military might, Olympia Dome supplies power to its unmanned weapons from an outside source.

''It uses the three giant Ocean Substation transformer ships.

''The great power needed to run over 5000 unmanned weapons is transferred in the form of a laser.

''Using that facility, an optical attack powerful enough to damage an Object can be achieved.

''We will eliminate the threat of the unmanned weapons with the Blank and use the gap in security to hijack the Ocean Substation.

''If the Ocean Substation’s high output laser is targeted at an Object, those monsters of the world powers will then begin destroying each other on their own.

''And Olympia Dome will be caught in the middle.

Ramil Scofflaw exited the civilian helicopter storehouse and Iris Aggravation jogged after her carrying a small computer.

Iris spoke to the woman who was not turning around.

“Lieutenant Colonel Scofflaw! The assault members used for the Blank have all been taken out and Motel B they were using has been taken by the Capitalist Corporations!!”

“The destruction of the hub means the Blank was a success. A large area has been created in which Olympia Dome’s unmanned weapons cannot be used. Hijacking the Ocean Substation will not be difficult now. We will continue the operation, Warrant Officer Aggravation. We still have Motel A here and as well as Motel C. If we redistribute our resources, we have enough.”

Three fighters with VTOL ability had been dragged out to the large concrete plaza in front of the storehouse.

When the unmanned weapons were functioning, they would have been shot down in no time by anti-air missiles or other aerial firepower.

But that was not the case.

“First, these three Harpuiai will destroy all the defense systems on the Ocean Substation’s deck. After that, we will board the ship via helicopter and hovercraft. …Don’t overdo the initial attack. This will all be for naught if we sink the Ocean Substation.”

It may have been because they had entered the final stage of their plan that strength had entered Ramil’s voice.

Or perhaps it was because she was a pilot and the topic had shifted to her field of expertise.

Ramil pointed at the screen of the small computer Iris held.

“The 20 minutes after the initial attack are what count. We can’t stretch this out beyond that. The Blank has thrown Olympia Dome into confusion. To pull the trigger of a war, we must strike the decisive blow against the Object while information is still confused.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We will be in charge of taking over the Ocean Substation, but your skills and the program in that computer are needed to weaponize the laser. Do you understand, warrant officer?”

“Of course. We cannot allow the peaceful festival created by our culture to be sullied any further.”

The competition known as the Olympics had been lost.

All that remained was a development race of textile material science for the sportswear and pharmaceuticals for the doping, as well as a trade show of guinea pigs created in human experiments. No wholesome sportsmanship remained and the exhilaration of the entire world growing excited as a single whole was gone.

What was moving about the development of athletes to win gold medals in exchange for shorter lifespans?

What was wholesome about a sports competition where, no matter how hard they worked, an athlete that had dropped below 10th place would be violently attacked by the people as soon as they arrived home because the people blamed them for the bets they had lost?

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“…We will bring it back,” muttered Ramil quietly but with a sense of intimidation that seemed to stab into the human spirit. “We will crush this rotten festival of death and bring back the peaceful festival we once had. That festival that allowed us all to forget about the boundaries of language, religion, nationality, and race between us, even if it was just for a short time. We ''will'' bring it back.”

They knew that their means would involve the lives of everyone on Olympia Dome, the thousands of athletes and millions of spectators, and that it would bring about further tragedy by causing additional wars using Objects around the world, but that did not change Ramil and the others’ minds.

They had no duty to protect the lives of those who profited from that rotten competition or those who enthusiastically held gambling tickets in hand while watching those filthy events.

A large number of people gathered around Ramil.

They were the pilots of the fighters, the assault team that would be brought in on the helicopters and hovercrafts, the analysts who managed data in front of the computers, and the maintenance team for the weapons. They were all focused on Ramil.

She had already decided what words she would use to inspire them.

Ramil lifted a hand in to the air as if she was holding out a cup of alcohol and spoke the words.

Those words symbolized the reason for Athletica’s existence.

“Glory to the festival.”