Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 7===

Quenser and the others had originally planned to approach by sea in rubber motorboats. That meant they had no land vehicles. They ended up hopping into the back of the military truck Frolaytia must have arranged after being informed of the situation. The rude cowards driving the trucks had refused to approach until the threat was gone.

“Hey, do we even know the arms dealer is here? You can buy anything online these days, so they might be relaxing on the other side of the globe.”

“They’re keeping themselves safe by keeping the secrets of the new propulsion device to themselves. They wouldn’t hand the plans or manual to anyone else. They’ll be on the scene to boss around the maintenance soldiers while never letting them see the whole picture.”

“And why is that Hina girl still clinging to you?”

“Wow! When did you sneak in here, lady? The other truck will take you home!”

That belated instruction was meaningless because the truck headed to Oahu’s urban area had already left. It was too late to change trucks now.

“Que’ser.”

Also, Hina Liqueurball puffed out her cheeks, clung to him like he was a giant stuffed animal, and made no attempt to move. He could sense her high body temperature and faint sweet scent. She must have picked up on his name from the conversations she overheard and she said it with bit of an accented pronunciation. This was looking more like Stockholm syndrome than popularity with the ladies. The soldiers spoke up in annoyance because they did not like being used as the bad guys in that scenario.

“Make sure you look after her yourself.”

“If a stray bullet flies her way, you had better take it for her. Let Hina die after all this and all four world powers will hunt you down.”

“What are you people expecting of a battlefield student who can’t even fire a handgun? I’m not a shirtless macho man with a Gatling gun who can soak up bullets without ever dying.”

At any rate, Heivia had given up on overturning Hina’s view of him, so he simply tried not to scare her.

“Now, you say they’re in the Hawaii District, but that’s more than 130 islands if we count the small ones. Where is this truck headed? I assume you have some kind of idea.”

“Hina is our hint.”

“Hm? I am?”

The brown girl looked confused.

“Or rather, the ocean meteorological research lab we found her in. It was located on the point of a cape so it could look after their precious equipment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just let him ramble. Tune back in 10 minutes from now and you’ll get the actual answer you want.”

Myonri must have been tired because she did not hold back in the slightest, but Quenser did not let it get to him.

“The arms dealer will be living comfortably in Capitalist Corporations territory and they will have an escape route ready in case the Capitalist Corporations turn on them. They’re on an island and there’s a laser-covered Object here, so the only real option would be a sub. They’ll have planned this out carefully, but that narrows down the possibilities. The ocean surface looks flat, but it has varying terrain as well. There are only so many places where an emergency sub can avoid detection by sonar thanks to thermoclines and brackish water.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“We can check the ocean terrain with Hina, but anywhere the Object overreacts to would be the most suspicious. Heivia, do you remember why the Baby Magnum and the Over Cavitation started fighting in the first place?”

“The coastguard armed with the weapons borrowed from our lend-lease program were attacking the air pump facilities the Capitalist Corporations is using to increase the shark population, so they decided to take a gamble and…”

Heivia trailed off when he caught on.

Quenser snapped his fingers and continued.

“That was their biggest overreaction. There’s something there they want to protect badly enough to send out a Second Generation. The arms dealer is located at one of the Oxyocean Operation air pump facilities. This one.”

The military truck took them to a point on the coast. This time, there was a long bridge heading out to a square artificial island with sides longer than a kilometer. According to Hina, the entire island absorbed the seawater, applied tons of pressure, used microbubbles to infuse it with oxygen, and sent that back down to the deep pits where the hypoxic Sea of Death was located.

Quenser and the others were not reckless enough to ride the truck down the straight bridge with nowhere to hide.

It was known as Tunaroa Bridge and there was no stopping once they started down it. The potatoes climbed out of the military truck after it stopped in front of a sign bearing an illustration of a man with a fishing pole, a giant eel, and a girl.

“Watch out for a monkey army wielding cheap printed guns. Those probably came from the arms dealer.”

“Do you think they’ll try the same thing twice?”

“Watch out for the Object too. Don’t forget that it was the coastguard poking at this hornet’s nest that called the Over Cavitation here in the first place.”

“Oh, god. What can we even do by ‘watching out’? That’s about as useful as learning the weather forecast predicts an extra-large meteor shower raining down on the earth this afternoon.”

Hina Liqueurball was a 12-year-old civilian, so they left her in the military truck.

Would they simply walk across the bridge, or would they use one of the rubber boats with the anemone-like red and orange warning colors on the bottom?

When you could not figure out the right answer, you just had to split your personnel and choose both. Even if one group died, the other would reach the destination.

“Lives are on a really good sale today. It’s like we have clearance stickers on our souls.”

“Why the hell did you bring Hina on this crowded boat, you idiot!?”

“Que’ser.”

“Hina, what!?”

Quenser looked over in shock and yelled, but it was too late now. She had joined them without anyone noticing. And the rubber boat was already headed out to sea with its motor running. If they hung around in one place for too long, a great white shark would probably show up.

Myonri’s group would be walking across the bridge directly overhead. And to be extra careful, they would be sending a drone to scout out ahead.

“There’s less here than we thought. I was expecting an ambush and a big shootout.”

“Let’s just hope we don’t find the place abandoned.”

The boat was faster than on foot, so Quenser’s group landed on the artificial island first and used their guns and binoculars to make sure they were safe.

Myonri’s group joined them shortly thereafter and the girl spoke up with a cheerful smile.

“Wow, no one died this time. That’s pretty unusual.”

“Myonri, is this what you’re like on your period?”

That comment just about got him shot, so Quenser used Heivia as a shield for the rest of the conversation.

“Anything here?” she asked.

“Not that we can see from the ground. Did the drone see anything?”

“No.”

This was only getting more baffling. They could not find the enemy. It would normally delight them to avoid a deadly battle, but it was still worrisome. It was unnatural and unnerving.

Regardless, they knew this artificial island held something that had led the Over Cavitation to exacerbate the war. And the damaged Baby Magnum had no time. They could not come to a stop just because the place was so unsettling. They wanted accurate information on that Second Generation’s undercarriage. And they wanted it now. No matter how suspicious this felt, they had to investigate.

“If this was a horror movie, continuing the mission would be what gets us all killed.”

“Would you prefer waiting out here all alone? That’s the guy who always gets killed almost immediately.”

They also could not leave Hina by herself. It was the Capitalist Corporations who saw value in her intellect, so the arms dealer might see no reason to keep her alive.

With no advance knowledge, the artificial island would have looked like a square piece of land covered in factories and pipes. The buildings were of varying heights, which created a warship-like silhouette. The space was crammed full.

“The arms dealer is all about being cheap and reliable. You can see that in the experimental monkeys with printed guns and you can see it in the modernized undercarriage for the Over Cavitation. The ideas are really out there, but they’re still sensible. This is not going to be a fun opponent.”

That was when they heard some quiet noises in the distance. These were not gunshots or explosions. It was more like steam valves opening. The island was an air pump facility, so it was sure to have tons of that sort of equipment.

So they assumed that was all it was.

But then a squall of metal balls rained down right next to Quenser.

“Eh?”

It was such an extreme change that his mind failed to keep up at first. They had been relaxed a moment before. They had been smiling together about how no one had died. They had breathed a definite sigh of relief and they had all been alive.

Yet now orange sparks tore away the asphalt.

Metal ball bearings larger than a pachinko ball crashed into the hard ground and bounced back up.

They had been dropped from a great height.

But worst of all, the colors red and black were splattered across the ground.

That was all that remained of their allies. There were no recognizable uniforms, weapons, human flesh, or even dog tags.

They had been reduced to something like jelly.

Their merciless death had been like an invisible giant crushing a row of ants underfoot. If that squall had been directed just three meters to the side, it would have been Quenser and his immediate group that were killed.

“…!!”

Quenser belatedly got on top of Hina to cover her young eyes, but then he heard the same sound again.

It sounded a lot like air escaping something. The breath of the grim reaper was quiet enough to entirely miss it if you were not focused.

“We need a roof! It doesn’t matter what, just get below something that will shield you from the sky!! Quenser, you take care of Hina!!”

Heivia gave a shout while Myonri and the others took off running. It was no time to worry about moving as teams or staying in formation. Quenser had both his hands free, so he scooped up Hina’s small body in a princess carry, pushed open a nearby metal door with his back, and practically fell inside.

The deadly squall filled the outside once more.

“Wh-what is that, Que’ser? What is that!? Don’t go away! I’m scared!!”

“Never fear, lady. It can’t hit us now that we’re inside the building!”

Quenser decided explaining the details would only worry her, so he got straight to the point. And if he kept holding her, he was afraid she would notice he was trembling.

Sometimes people would fire a handgun straight up as a warning shot. It was a common sight in movies and dramas, but where would that bullet land? Just as a screw or bolt could become a weapon when dropped from a skyscraper roof, the bullet had to land somewhere and it would be quite deadly from the fall. In major metropolises, that probably took more accidental lives each year than lightning strikes.

The arms dealer had properly weaponized that phenomenon. A thick tube was probably stuffed with metal ball bearings and then compressed air or carbon dioxide gas launched them more than 100 meters into the air. That created a squall-like quantity of weapons to suppress a general area when accurate targeting was not needed.

You could not hope to dodge it.

It was a lot like being crushed by a falling ceiling covered in spikes.

It took a bit of work to set up, but it was far cheaper than a standardized machinegun. After all, durability, fire rate, precision, and accuracy could all be ignored. You just had to launch them into the air. If you could ignore its quality as an industrial product, you could cut a lot of corners.

Cheap and reliable.

This new product took lives with cost efficiency.

Quenser clenched his teeth and grabbed his radio.

“Heivia. We can’t take the shortest route to regroup outside! Can we find a route that stays below a roof at all times?”

“That squall shot down our drone. We have the general aerial photos on our mobile devices, but that doesn’t tell us the exact internal layout. This place is as cluttered as a warship, right? There’s no guarantee we can regroup right away. Everyone, use what range of movement you have to eliminate the enemy. Let’s clear one safe zone at a time until we can finally regroup. Like water droplets joining together on the window.”

“I don’t have a gun…”

“But you have Hina who should know a lot about these facilities. You haven’t abandoned her, have you? Get her advice as you move along. You came here to fight a war, didn’t you?”

“Are you serious?”

“We all got the short end of the stick here. Dammit, I swear I’ll survive and meet that legendary maid. I’d love to go on a personal scouting mission in search of her.”

“(Is no one on my side anymore!?)”

Quenser clicked his tongue and pulled some Hand Axe plastic explosive from his backpack. He could use that like a grenade if need be…but that raised a crucial question: could he win this labyrinthine indoor battle with nothing but grenades?

(In the worst case, I’ll blow myself backwards with my own blast.)

The arms dealer would have more than just the one weapon. The first weapon had eliminated the outdoors area as an option, so the next step would be to pick off the separated potatoes one at a time.

He would have to protect himself here.

And he was not allowed any mistakes with Hina clinging to the side of his hip and giving off a sweet scent from the hibiscus decoration in her black hair. His death would mean her death.

“Lady.”

Fortunately, her small size was an advantage here.

Quenser found some duct tape, copy paper, and plywood nearby and created a rectangular shield she could fully hide behind.

“It’s a bit heavy, but if you hear any noises, hold this out toward it with both hands. Press the bottom of the shield against the floor so there isn’t a gap.”

“…”

“Despite what movies and dramas would have you believe, you can still die of blood loss when shot in the hand or foot, so make sure you stay fully hidden behind the shield. Got that?”

“What about you, Que’ser?”

“Me?”

He would be entirely exposed.

He did not have a single bullet to fire.

They had no idea how many enemies there were or what kind of equipment that enemy had.

Heivia and the others could not rush in to save him no matter how much he asked for help.

The girl’s question forced him to focus on those various aspects of reality, but he forced down those thoughts.

He could not let Hina notice his fear while she looked worriedly up at him with the handmade shield, so he shook his head and spoke.

“I’ll be fine. C’mon, let’s get going.”

He had given Hina the shield to protect her from the arms dealer’s bullets and from any nearby explosions. He knew he had to do it, but he could not predict what exactly would happen once he started throwing bombs around in this labyrinthine space.

Also, the shield might double as a blindfold and prevent her from seeing the splattered corpses.

“Hina, let’s ignore the arms dealer side of things for now. How many workers would they need to keep this place running purely as an air pump facility?”

“Hm. Probably none.”

He had not expected that answer.

“They stepped outside their field of expertise and developed an unmanned factory OS for it. Although I think they keep three people here in case of any trouble.”

“How can I tell them apart from the bad guys?”

“They’ll understand the local language. The foreign soldiers only ever look puzzled when they hear us speak.”

“You mean like aloha?”

“Que’ser, that means both hello and goodbye. Did you know you say that at funerals?”

Heivia had been right. Hina was a valuable ally. Maybe even more than an industrially produced handgun.

In this case, they did not have a single set goal such as destroying a turret or reaching the power station. They had to check every room they came across to make sure everything was as safe as possible and eliminate any enemy soldiers they came across. It was a lot like walking around a minefield to find the explosives. You wanted to detect them in advance so you could dig them up. Eliminating them by stepping on them would not be fun.

The corridors were unlit, perhaps because the place was designed to be unmanned. It was all plain concrete. As Quenser walked along with Hina, the imitation ball-and-chain unavoidably made a scraping noise as she dragged it behind her skinny ankle. The chain was too short for her to carry it around in her hands and wrapping a towel around it would not actually help all that much. On straightaways, he tried to make sure there was always a door they could jump inside at a moment’s notice. The light through the windows highlighted the dust in the air like a projector bream. There was no air conditioning, so both the heat and the tension made it hard to focus. He felt like he was rotting from the fingertips.

They continued further in while Hina explained that they were in a transformer room or in a storage room for the hunks of salt that came from the seawater due to electrolysis. The salt sounded like it would be easy enough to sell, but the impurities were apparently concentrated along with it and people could not eat it. Pufferfish and shellfish toxins were gathered from the plankton the animal had eaten, so you could not underestimate concentrations of anything from the sea.

But there was no one around.

The arms dealer had weaponized monkeys to keep anyone out of the lab and an enemy waiting behind a door would have been enough to defeat Quenser when he only had bombs to work with. The tension only continued to grow, but there really was no one there.

“This is weird.”

He had not wanted a tour of the factory or to explore an abandoned building. The metal ball squall was enough to know the enemy was definitely there. They were not simply in the wrong place. The arms dealer had intentionally let the potatoes cross the bridge and only used the squall once they were on the artificial island so they would flee indoors. They had essentially been split up and trapped. He was certain there would be further attacks. And yet…

“Que’ser.”

Hina moved right up next to him while holding the handmade shield in both hands. As if covering him with the shield too. Was she worried and trying to protect him?

Her high body temperature and faint sweet scent reached him.

Quenser longed for his radio. Or rather, he missed the presence and reactions of other people. He knew it was meaningless, but he pressed the switch.

“Heivia, has anything happened there?”

Only static answered him.

“Heivia?”

The enemy was here.

The arms dealer had intentionally invited them in. There was no escape inside this building or on the artificial island as a whole. While trapped in that double prison, they could be easily finished off.

In that case…

“Hina, have your shield at the ready.”

“Why? Are the others being attacked?”

The brown girl looked worriedly up at him, but he said nothing more.

…That was not it.

The jamming was affecting Quenser and Hina. That meant they were the ones being separated from the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. They were the ones surrounded by the hounds.

The battle was approaching.

(The jamming means I can’t detonate the fuses via radio.)

This eliminated one of the few cards in his deck. The pen-like fuses could be set to a timer, but timing it right probably took practice.

And as he carefully checked inside each of the doors around them, he noticed something odd.

“What is this?”

There was a large space there.

Whatever the space had been originally designed for, there was now something sitting in the center of it.

It was a flat cylinder that glinted with a silver light. It looked thick and solid and it was larger than a school classroom. The airtight door on the side had a round handle that was turned to open it, just like on a submarine. If not for that door, he probably would not have recognized it as a room.

This was clearly different from everything they had seen so far.

It did not fit in with the rest of the facility.

Hina tilted her head too.

“I don’t recognize this. What is it? A pressure cooker?”

She had a good reason for saying that. The scale was different, but the safety valve on the top used the same principle as a pressure cooker. She looked like a small girl, but she was already in college. She may have had even more knowledge than Quenser and it was that knowledge that led her to view this as a pressurized container larger than any she had ever seen.

“Is it a hyperbaric oxygen chamber?” muttered the boy.

Come to think of it, wasn’t this an air pump facility meant to increase the valuable shark population by artificially infusing oxygen into the hypoxic Sea of Death?

It was part of the Oxyocean Operation.

It was true that facility’s horsepower could be used to run some extraordinary equipment, but…

“That isn’t possible.”

It was not that Hina had lacked the knowledge.

In fact, it was her knowledge that had prevented her from considering the idea and that now led her to oppose Quenser’s suggestion.

“Hyperbaric oxygen chambers are used for medical therapy, not industrial work, right?”

“…”

“This island’s air pumps are especially large so they can dissolve oxygen into seawater at a rate of 90,000 liters per minute. If you put a human in such a giant pressure cooker, they wouldn’t just hyperventilate. Their red blood cells would rupture or they might just be crushed by the pressure.”

“Maybe for a normal human.”

It was gradually coming into view.

He was gradually realizing why the Over Cavitation’s undercarriage had been secretly modernized and why it had wanted to protect this air pump facility that contained a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. How had the arms dealer made themselves indispensable to the Capitalist Corporations? Also, what crucial core component for the Object had they supplied?

And.

Why were civilians like Quenser and Hina being targeted ahead of Heivia, Myonri, or the others?

That was when he heard a sound like an electric razor coming from outside that large space. It was not particularly loud, but he would have heard someone dropping a ball-point pen in this deserted place.

(Is it some kind of drone?)

“Que’ser.”

“(Sh! Over here, Hina.)”

They circled behind the giant pressure cooker of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

The sound came from the hallway.

This was a large space, but it had no other exit. He did not know if his explosives could break through the wall and an explosion could ignite the highly concentrated oxygen in the pipes. Detonating one in an open space like a grenade was one thing, but attempting to blow down a thick wall made of who-knows-what would be too risky.

They just had to wait it out.

They just had to hope whatever this was continued right on down the hall.

However…

“(The sound…)”

Hina fearfully squeezed the handmade shield in her hands.

The electric razor sound had stopped near the door. It was not continuing on. It was staying. It was sealing the exit while waiting to see what happened. The machine(?) knew they were here.

“(I’m scared, Que’ser. Is there anywhere with a lock? Oh, I know. Let’s close ourselves in the oxygen chamber.)”

“(They could operate the machinery to knock us out with the pressurized oxygen.)”

This was no time to panic.

The train known as reality was still roaring down the tracks. Gathering the resolve to jump off was useless if it had already passed the station you wanted to reach.

They had to change how they viewed this.

This was still an opportunity.

There was just the one entrance.

Whatever this enemy was, it would have to pass through there. The plastic explosives were not the easiest thing in the world to use, but he could hit the enemy with the blast if he tossed one toward the door. It was too late if he waited until it was already in the large room and could move wherever it wanted. This was the neck of the gourd or hourglass. Taking out the enemy here was his best bet.

“(Hina, wait here with your shield at the ready.)”

“(You’re going on your own? Wait, Que’ser.)”

The hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the center of the large room was a flat cylinder much like a petroleum tank. Unlike a boxy building, it had no corners. That made it difficult to tell how far he could go while staying just out of sight.

“(Que’ser.)”

The tearful girl ended up following him. If he was killed now, the enemy would not just leave, assuming they had killed everyone. If he died, they both died. The look in his eyes grew a bit sharper. He had to take this seriously. Ensuring their safety by crushing the enemy was the only option left.

While leaning against the curved metal wall and slowly moving forward, he rolled a ball of plastic explosive and stabbed in a pen-like electric fuse. The jamming kept him from using a remote detonation, but the timer would work fine. If he set it to three seconds, he could use it just like a grenade.

Although that was still a problem since Quenser was not all that familiar with using normal grenades.

“…”

He was pretty sure he had gone as far as he could without being seen from the door.

He would be spotted if he went any further.

He silently came to a stop and raised the ball of plastic explosive to shoulder height. He of course held it in the hand opposite the wall to his side. This would be a side throw. It was basically the same as a grenade, but it was soft like clay and he could not expect it to bounce and roll. He had to picture it flying in a parabolic arc and landing right where he wanted it.

The electric razor sound continued.

But he also heard some light footsteps.

(Feet?)

This was not just a drone. Was there someone with it? He was still confused, but the situation did not wait for him to figure it out. The sound of the footsteps changed.

The person had moved from the hallway to the large room.

He had no idea who this was, but they had just walked through the door. That was the neck of the gourd or hourglass. The difference in skill was irrelevant. This was his first and last chance for an amateur’s explosion to actually work!!

“Hh!!”

His life was on the line, but…no, ''so'' his thoughts were of secondary importance. The fuse was set to three seconds. The pressing situation led him to lean out and throw the hunk of clay. It was a side throw that sort of tossed it around the wall of the oxygen chamber.

And he realized something once he leaned out.

The enemy was a human woman.

But he was not sure if he should call her a soldier. After all, she was not wearing a military uniform. She may have been ''that'' kind of person because other than her military boots, she only wore a small bottle hanging from her neck by a thread and a thin ribbon wrapped loosely around her. The tall woman with radiant skin walked casually through the door with her long red hair fluttering behind her.

And she had giant red wings behind her back.

“Wha-?”

Was she not actually human?

This was a greater shock than her radiant nudity.

What was she? What in the world was she!?

With a loud compressing sound, the wings roared to life. It looked all the world like they had melted into a streamlined shape, but that was not it. The electric razor sound remained and the wings were technically not connected to the naked woman’s back.

(That sound…is it the same rotors that drones use? Did she attach armor to a flying car!?)

He did not have time to speak out loud.

The wings roared through the air and accurately struck the clay to knock it back toward Quenser with a sound like a metal bat.

With the jamming in effect, he could not use a remote detonation and had instead used a timed one.

He had set it to three seconds.

It was just like a grenade.

“Oh, shi-…!?”

He did not have time to hit it back into his opponent’s court like a game of badminton.

The Hand Axe mercilessly detonated above his head.