Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

The two idiots named Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell were groaning in the landing unit hold at the bottom level of the disguised cruiser named Scarlet Princess.

The exterior was made to look like a luxury cruise ship, but the inside was completely different. Of its 380 meter length, over half of the bottom was a single large space. And that space was crammed full of military hovercrafts. Quenser and the others were packed like sardines into those hovercrafts.

The hovercrafts were pitched as “small but able to hold a tank☆”, but they were far from comfortable for people to use. They reeked of machine oil.

“This is tyranny!! We were only riding along! Can you really throw us out in front of the pirate’s guns? This isn’t even the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s job! Who’s going to pay us!?”

“This is probably how we’re buying our ticket to ride the ship. I don’t feel like doing any real work either, though.”

“And how is this a ‘disguised cruiser’? It’s almost 400 meters long! They didn’t make battleships this big even back when they were relevant. That’s 100 meters more than the Island Nation’s Yamato! Are they insane!?”

“The category of battleship has vanished, so what can you do? And it’s a disguised ship, remember? Bringing escort ships along for protection would blow its cover, so it has to handle everything as a lone wolf. And it had to be heavily armored to safely draw in the pirates. It has to be tough enough to take a few rockets or torpedoes without issue.”

History had proven that aircraft would overtake the battleship in usefulness, but battleships could be useful once more now that aircraft could not be sent out. They were perfect for luring out and slaughtering pirates.

“…Why are you breathing so heavily?”

“Eh? Doesn’t seeing giant machines get you all excited? It’s human nature.”

Heivia shoved the perverted creep away with both hands as an ear-splitting buzzer rang and the lights switched to red.

Someone they could not see gave a high-spirited shout.

“Our brave ‘waitresses’, it’s time you risked your life fishing for sharks! Let’s make this an exciting enough battle to get a movie made! Rock & roll!!”

“Shut up! We’ve been ready!! And if you want to be the lead that badly, go do it on your own! Be a one-man army! Don’t drag us into it!!”

Heivia demonstrated his grace as a noble by elegantly raising his middle finger as he shouted at the man, but that changed nothing.

With a heavy rumble, the wall in front of them opened to either side. The bow of the disguised cruiser opened like a castle gate. One after another, amphibious hovercraft slid out and into the gunfire-filled battlefield of the Strait of Malacca.

And…

Whether by coincidence or design, a rocket suddenly flew into the hold.

As Heivia frantically held down Quenser’s head and got on the ground himself, a tremendous shock wave spread through the enclosed space.

A dull pain exploded more in his chest than his eardrums.

“Gbh!? Cough!! H-how the hell is this a safe and simple mop up mission!!”

“Anytime they call the mission ‘simple’, you should be suspicious.”

“Wait… Wait a second!! Did this hovercraft just start sliding? Wait!! We’ve got a bunch of injured soldiers already! You can’t just throw us out on the front liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!”

But his protests came too late.

The hovercraft slid down the slope and shot out the bow of the “Blood-Soaked Princess”. They were suddenly forced to clash with the small fishing boats (which had been modified into high-speed boats) sitting in front.

They were about sixty centimeters away from the closest boat.

They were close enough to jump from one boat to the other.

Heivia’s gaze met that of a suntanned man.

“You bastards!!”

The man tried to raise the rifle carried over his shoulder with a sling belt, but he was too slow. Heivia pulled his handgun from its holster and fired repeatedly.

Quenser finally came to his senses as he watched three dark red holes appear in the man’s chest.

“Stop, Heivia! You can’t kill them!!”

“Ah? What!? I can’t hear you over all the noise!!”

“Don’t kill them!!”

All the 20 mm Gatling guns on the side of the disguised cruiser’s deck began to fire and shot down a homemade anti-ship missile flying over Quenser’s head. In return, several vertical launch missiles were fired at the pirates’ fishing boats. The noisy sound of rotors came from the heliport and a military attack helicopter began to take off.

The pirates had formed a half circle to envelop the Scarlet Princess’s path, but that proved a suicidal formation due to their misjudgment of the ship’s firepower. There had supposedly been around fifteen pirate boats, but half of them had already been sunk.

Everything was in motion and just watching it all made one’s eyes and head hurt.

And on top of that, the environment was so poor that one would be deafened while just sitting there.

After Quenser’s group’s hovercraft moved away, an attack from the air blew away the previous high-speed pirate boat like an empty can.

With his ears still ringing, Quenser shouted toward Heivia who was right next to him.

“If we just had to kill them, the ship’s weaponry could handle it! We were sent out for a reason!! Weren’t you listening during the pre-mission briefing!?”

“Oh? Oh, oh! Did they say something about that!?”

“They’re using fishing boats rather than used patrol boats so they can ditch their weapons in the sea and act like innocent fishermen if they have to! If we just kill them all, we’ll be suspected of slaughtering civilians. That’s why we need to capture a few of them alive and have them admit to being pirates. That’s what we were told!!”

“In other words, they’ve knocked down a hornet’s nest with a stone and now we have to retrieve it barehanded!? Goddamn this is a terrible job!! We’re at least getting paid extra for this, right!?”

Nothing the pirates did could turn the situation around.

Sounds of gunfire and explosions continued without end.

The ship’s rapid-fire cannons and the attack helicopter’s rockets were unilaterally blowing away the pirates’ boats.

“Two more! Our side just took out another two boats. Shit. If we don’t capture a pirate soon, they’ll all be dead!!”

“Shut up!! If you care that badly, jump over to that fishing boat and grab one yourself!!”

Only a few of the 10 meter high-speed pirate boats remained. The Scarlet Princess was fully equipped with the Legitimacy Kingdom navy’s best, so it was a 400 meter mass of giant guns. There was no chance of it being sunk now.

But there was a chance of the pirates fighting back in some way.

The fishing boats were equipped with homemade anti-ship missiles. They would be able to blow away at least one of the hovercrafts that used the power of air to float.

“This is way too scary!! A missile just shot by right above us!! What happened to the close-in weapon system support!?”

“Are these the type that react to magnetism to detonate? This thing’s hull is made of layered plastic and the balloon is made of synthetic fiber, so they might just slip past us.”

“Dammit. Of course the Gatling guns on the side deck wait until ''now'' to turn this way. …Hm? This way!?”

“G-get down!! And turn the hovercraft to the side! Our own side’s barrage is gonna fill us with holes!!”

The gunfire sounded like a broken buzzer as the line of CIWS weapons targeted an anti-ship missile flying a few meters above the ocean surface and scattered giant bullets at a rate of 5000 a minute. They were 20mm bullets which were masses of metal the size of a thumb. They were much larger than the standard used with anti-materiel rifles and even a single one grazing you could blow off a limb.

“They have to do all that just to shoot down a single missile. An Object’s laser beams are an entirely different story, but this says a lot about the balance between offense and defense.”

“Why are you starting that creepy breathing again!? Don’t get your design-obsessed blood pumping like it’s some instinct to preserve your genes in a life-threatening situation!!”

“Eh? I don’t mix my love of machines with lust. Making anthropomorphized girls out of weapons is kind of disturbing if you think about it.”

“Just think of it as adding on elements!! Don’t think of it as surgically cutting and pasting things!!”

The hovercraft ridden by the two idiots and 28 others had three engines resembling two meter ventilators on the back. One of them was sending out disconcerting black smoke (due to the barrage from their side’s close-in weapon system).

“How about we say the pirates did that and put in for injury pay? I think we deserve a bonus.”

“If we do that, it’ll mean we were injured by a group of amateurs. That would be a dishonor.”

Meanwhile, the battle was almost over.

The attack helicopter that had been sent out partway through was doing too good a job. It was sending down a storm of rockets which were enveloping the small fishing boats and the surrounding ocean in flames.

“Isn’t this pretty bad?” muttered Quenser as he carelessly looked up into the blue sky. “All of the pirate boats will be sunk soon.”

“What happened to capturing some alive!? If we don’t have one to say he’s a pirate, we’ll be accused of slaughtering civilians!!”

The two idiots looked around, but they saw nothing but eerie black smoke and wreckage starting to sink. It no longer felt like they were fighting. It was more like a treasure hunt.

“There!! There’s another fishing boat behind that smoke. If we miss that one, we’ll have to give up on catching anyone alive!! We’ll be mercilessly accused by a grinning international committee!!”

The attack helicopter flew by over their heads. It was clearly moving toward the same target.

Heivia brought a hand to his forehead.

“Is that pilot a coward!? I don’t think he can relax until he eliminates every threat he sees. And it’s not like those pirates can shoot down a helicopter flying around at high speed!!”

“What do we do? If we don’t take one alive, we’ll have to try our hand at necromancy during the court martial.”

“I’ve had enough of this!!” shouted Heivia in desperation as he shouted at the young soldier in charge of steering the hovercraft. “Head full speed toward the fishing boat! …I can’t believe I have to put my life on the line to protect the enemy!!”

“But what exactly are we going to do!?”

“We only have one choice.”

For some reason, Heivia removed the safety pin from the shoulder-fired missile launcher hanging from his shoulder along with his rifle. He rested one end on his shoulder and aimed the other end. Tanks on land, small patrol boats at sea, and ground attack craft in the air. Save for its ridiculous price tag, that missile was known as a masterpiece.

“We fire on our own helicopter.”

He did not hesitate.

He captured the target with both infrared and ultraviolet at the same time and he pulled the trigger.

The long, narrow missile shot out like a spear and shot by right next to the helicopter.

No damage was done.

Except for Quenser who was knocked backwards by the backfire.

He flew two or three meters like an unnamed character in a kung fu movie.

“Hot!! Hot!? Wh-what just happened? Are we under attack!?”

“If you’re that lively, I’m not gonna worry too much.”

The other soldiers on the hovercraft focused on Heivia. Their gazes were asking why he had fired on an ally.

“If I had actually aimed, it wouldn’t be in the air right now! I purposefully missed. But that coward of a pilot won’t notice that!! If you don’t want to die, get ready!!”

The attack helicopter belatedly took evasive actions and then took a tight turn around. It was clearly being wary. If the pilot panicked, there was a chance he would simply attack. It was similar to an extremely sleepy soldier caught in a whirl of gunfire confusing which side was his allies.

Heivia shouted in desperation.

“I bought us some time, but it’s only a dozen or so seconds! Charge straight into the fishing boat!! We just have to take at least one of them alive!!”

The hovercraft moved straight toward the lone remaining fishing boat. Meanwhile, Heivia aimed his assault rifle into the air and fired a long spray of bullets toward their attack helicopter. Orange sparks covered a side of the helicopter.

“With proper equipment, it can deflect rifle bullets.” While firing tons of wasted bullets, Heivia gave a thin smile. “But that coward won’t know that. His desire to survive made him panic and forget the plan. He’ll actually try to avoid this peashooter.”

The hovercraft approached the modified fishing boat from the side.

More accurately, it crashed into it.

Hovercrafts floated above the ocean surface with the power of air. The skirt portion that contained the air was a giant balloon made of bulletproof and knife resistant synthetic fiber.

Rather than a straight collision, the hovercraft climbed on top of the boat.

And the pirate man standing on the boat’s deck was knocked into the ocean.

The fact that the skirt portion was a soft balloon turned out to be a stroke of luck for both sides. As the man flailed his limbs around, he was knocked several meters horizontally like a small stone.

At the same time, a rocket fell from the heavens and struck the point of intersection between the fishing boat and the hovercraft.

The blast knocked the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers into the air.

But it did not knock the will to fight from them. Or rather, they could not leave this sea of flames and smoke until they completed this. Several soldiers used strange wrestling moves to jump on the pirate who had fallen into the ocean.

Several dull sounds could be heard.

The pirate struggled as his head was forced under the salty ocean water.

Quenser and Heivia grabbed the pirate by the collar and dragged his head back above the surface.

And they shouted angrily into his ear.

“If you don’t want us to start an interrogation using the water here, then start talking!! Tell everyone that you’re a piece of shit pirate who was causing everyone all sorts of trouble!!”