HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2
Status: Incomplete
3/15 parts completed
Chapter 2: We’ve Started Lending Out Weapons >> Technical Analysis Operation in the Hawaii District
Part 1
Hi, everyone! It’s Monica, the battlefield idol reporter who can both sing and kill.
Am I ready to go?
No, not really.
So Quensette, huh? Did you see the search engine’s trending terms? That legendary maid is right there at #1. Why must that demon in a maid uniform always go viral and stand in my way? Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
Oh, yes, yes.
I’ll do it! I’ll do it, okay!?
Ahem. Today I’m in the Hawaii District which is effectively controlled by the Capitalist Corporations. Aloha! It’s technically a neutral blank zone, so it’s full of tourists from all four world powers.
The Hawaii District has long been an important point in the ocean and they say whoever controls Hawaii controls the Pacific as a whole.
But not all islands are the same, so people will focus on them for different reasons. Some have the fresh water and crop land needed to be self-sufficient and some are a waypoint along several different ocean currents. And while Guam and Hawaii get all the attention, why were Easter Island and its Moai dropped from the front line of history despite being in the Pacific too? Pursue that question and you might just realize what it means to be an important point in the ocean. If you’re interested, tune into Channel 2929.
Hmm, how was that for a rehearsal run?
4 minutes 30 seconds? Ugh, this is a 5 minute section, right? Wahhh, it’s way too short.
I can’t do this. The human body isn’t made to function without carbs. I can’t do anything without some foooood!! Assistant director, do a search and find somewhere nearby with good loco moco!
Eh? That was good?
Wait, wait, wait, wait!! Wait just a second!! I don’t like the looks of that smile!! You had better use a different take! I can’t let everyone see me looking so unprofessional!!!!!!
Part 2
No swimming!! Lots of sharks this year!
“…”
“…”
The two Legitimacy Kingdom idiots did not bother asking why they had traveled all the way to Hawaii.
A warning was pasted over a sign that normally introduced a legend in which a god fished the islands out of the sea, but the problem was not that warning in the middle of the beach. No, it was the shocking scene before them.
“Why are those cuties in swimsuits running barefoot across the white sand to reach the ocean?”
“Didn’t you know, Quenser? Humans are the creatures that attacked giant mammoths because we wanted to eat meat. Survival is just an excuse since we could have subsisted off of smaller prey like deer or rabbits.”
They were on the beach.
To be more specific, they were at a restaurant that sold nasty frankfurters and toxic-looking sodas at tourist prices. It was like a fusion of an Island Nation seaside restaurant, a gas station, and a motel. It was actually a camouflaged observation bunker prepared by the Legitimacy Kingdom in the Hawaii District since that was technically a blank zone which belonged to no one. They used terms like crime prevention, intelligence, security, data collection, and sampling to make it sound better, but it all boiled down to some peeping by utter perverts. Sitting in an air-conditioned 2nd-story room using binoculars to spy on the skin nearly spilling out of so many bikinis counted as an official duty that earned a stable income from the people’s tax money, so whoever approved it really deserved to be punched.
“Oh, the next bus is here.”
“How many times have we switched busses now, dammit!? We’ve zigzagged around so much I feel like we must have made 3 full circuits of Oahu by now!”
This “bus” was really a canopied truck with the name of a pineapple plantation written on the side in the local language. By now, they were used to their hips taking a beating from the shaking of the poor suspension in the back of the deadly un-air-conditioned trucks. The two idiots and the rest of the potatoes climbed into the back of this new one with dead eyes.
They had been shaken around by those trucks for 3 hours now, but they had yet to be informed where they were going.
“This is the worst. It’s too damn hot for war. We came all the way to Hawaii, so why are we stuck smelling like an Island Nation judo uniform?”
“Neh heh heh.”
Quenser heard an odd noise coming from Heivia, who was curled up in the seat next to him. This was not all that unusual for the harsh Legitimacy Kingdom military. The living conditions were so bad that following your orders and doing your duty was a good way to end up with a runner’s high.
As the boy set off for a dream world with no help from certain substances, words began to escape his lips.
“Quenser, did you hear about the legendary maid that appeared in an Eastern European monastery hotel?”
“Gulp!?”
“The hotel staff said they have no idea who she was. Press from around the world saw her, but all their equipment was broken and no one managed to even snap a photo. ‘Legendary Maid’ is the top trending term right now. Rumor has it she’s the ghost of some super cute maid who made an appearance to tell them how dangerous it would be to forcibly declare independence using an Object.”
An unpleasant sweat soaked Quenser’s back.
The story was taking an unexpected turn.
Legendary Maid Quensette had apparently reached the level of inhuman beauty. At this rate, the Capitalist Corporations’ TechCiv would create a speculative design and the Information Alliance would create a 3D model to give her a life of her own as a Virtual Whatever-tuber.
The pineapple plantation truck arrived at a processing plant on the coast. It pulled up below a roof and Quenser spoke to a man in a work jumpsuit after leaving the truck.
“What do we do now?”
“Take a rubber motorboat out to sea. You’ll join a destroyer battleship waiting there!”
“Damn the navy. Just because Objects have stolen their thunder is no reason to start inventing weird new kinds of ships.”
Quenser and Heivia went in the direction indicated with a giant machete probably used for chopping the leaves off pineapples. Any leisure shop in Hawaii would probably have something nicer than the rubber motorboat they found waiting for them. To keep sharks away, the bottom was covered with bright red and orange warning colors reminiscent of an anemone and it was loaded with sugarcane.
They left the concrete bank.
Traveling straight from the pineapple processing plant to the destroyer battleship would blow their cover, so they made sure to pass below a random bridge and toss all the sugarcane into the sea to change their appearance for the satellites.
And eventually…
“?”
While they soared across the ocean, the water split open right next to them and a large silhouette jumped out.
But this was nothing as adorable as a dolphin swimming alongside them. This was an 8m mass of muscle the size of a truck.
It was a real great white shark.
“Watch out!!”
Once Heivia realized what it was, he drew a military handgun known as the Bear Killer, but the giant shark moved away as if it had lost interest.
Quenser had felt entirely helpless, so he wiped sweat from his brow.
“The entire ocean is learning. The shark understood the threat your gun posed. This is like a river full of black bass that can’t be caught with normal lures.”
“Yeah, this isn’t looking easy.”
Heivia did not return the gun to its holster for a while. It might have an engine, but they were in a rubber boat.
“With this lend-lease program, I can only imagine our mission is going to end in failure and pain.”
Boarding the destroyer battleship as soon as possible was the only option they had.
Why did that ship have a name that made it sound both big and small at the same time? Quenser was imagining something like a monstrous magnum that was a handgun but required a shoulder rest to avoid breaking your wrist, but as they continued on in the rubber boat which was (fairly ineffectually) protected from sharks by its anemone warning lights, they arrived at an old-fashioned heavy cruiser with its anchor lowered. The gray ship was nearly 200m long and covered in giant rapid-fire gun turrets and vertical launched cruise missiles. It also had jet stream propulsion devices extending from either side.
“So they’re just trying to make it as powerful as possible? Do they think they can reach an Object’s level by moving faster or something?”
“That’s ridiculous. Think of a car’s speedometer. The max speed on a straightaway is entirely different from the normal speed while making small turns. If this ship tried to sidestep at speed, it would break right in half.”
The ship lowered what might as well have been a rope ladder, so Quenser and the others boarded the baffling destroyer battleship (which had likely soaked up a ton of the people’s tax money).
Before entering the conference room inside, they found Frolaytia in the smoking area partway down the narrow corridor.
There was no definite “right answer”, but their attempt to make a quick exit was a mistake today.
“Oh, oh, oh? What’s this? Shouldn’t you be showing a bit more respect for your commanding officer?”
“Oh, no. She’s sulking even more than I expected! Y’know, it takes some doing to be this much of a pain in the ass when you have the silver-hair, giant tits, 18-years-old, and beautiful commander things going for you!!”
“Curse that clingy commander. If she wants our attention, she’d better change into a bunny suit.”
But in the extreme hierarchy of the military, there was nothing they could do. There was something wrong when they were government workers, but the labor supervisors had no authority here. There was little chance of them getting any vacation time or a mid-day siesta any time soon.
“I had thought this sounded complicated from the beginning,” said Frolaytia.
This was dangerous.
It was like starting a conversation with, “You know how I can be really dumb sometimes?” They were about to have to keep nodding like a machine to get through a long story rivalling a school principal’s speech.
“They said it was a lend-lease program for old model weapons.”
“That thing where we let other people use the weapons we’re no longer using, right?”
Quenser frowned even as he tried to be conversational.
Lending out their old weapons had a number of merits.
By strengthening the enemy of your enemy, you could attack your common enemy from multiple fronts at once. And even when that was not the case, weapons were sometimes lent to outsiders as a bit of a gamble. That was especially useful when you wanted a certain war result but did not want any of the deaths officially counted against you. It could also be lucrative to force an exorbitant asking price onto the buyers.
Needless to say, war cost money and it killed people. If that was a problem, you could always find someone to work some magic on the paperwork and rewrite those numbers in the official records.
“Money and lives. If they’re worried about the numbers on the strategic documents…”
“The year goes by quick, doesn’t it? We’ve already reached the customary end-of-the-year performance. Although if it weren’t for this, we would start seeing anti-war protests demanding we protect the precious lives of the youth and stop wasting tax money.”
Simply put, it was an underground business run by the government.
It was the same as a country spreading white powder around and calling it a drug war. In this case, they were lending out tons of weapons like an arms dealer in order to rebalance the war situation.
In this case, it was about the influence the four world powers had in the Hawaii District.
That said, weapons were full of secrets, so if you let someone else use them, they were sure to be analyzed down to the last screw. It was an odd world where you were telling stealth fighters not to crash and tanks not to get stuck in the mud even if they were destroyed. No matter how thoroughly you checked the buyer’s identity, it was insanity to hand over a weapon with the maintenance manual included. You might as well be throwing all your military secrets in a shared folder.
Frolaytia slowly shook the long, narrow kiseru in her mouth as she spoke.
“That’s why they chose the outdated weapons that are past their expiration date and about to be retired from service.”
“Have they never heard of intellectual property!? You never know when that will lead someone to a breakthrough in whatever tech they’re trying to develop!”
“These things have been in service long enough that they’ll have already been pried from a corpse’s hands and analyzed.”
It was nothing but excuses. It sounded like asking someone if they had done their homework and having them say, “I was about to, but you just killed all the motivation I’d worked up!” The words of an engineer – especially one in training like Quenser – did not hold much weight.
“This was originally meant to send weapons to those that want to break free of the Capitalist Corporations’ control over the region, right?”
“That’s oversimplifying things, Heivia. First of all, the Hawaii District is a blank region, so no one controls it. Even if the Capitalist Corporations act like they own the place.”
“And we’re trying to get in their way?”
“Not yet, Heivia. Don’t be hasty.”
Frolaytia breathed an exasperated sigh mixed with tobacco smoke.
The Hawaii District did not belong to anyone, so each of the four world powers was doing them the “favor” of protecting it. The Legitimacy Kingdom armed the coastguard, the Faith Organization worked to preserve the Hawaii and Polynesian mythology and culture, and the Information Alliance ran the mass media stations, but the Capitalist Corporations had the most control by maintaining the power and water infrastructure. And when you had a monopoly on the schools and hospitals, you would have the most influence.
“The problem is the charity work they’re doing: the Oxyocean Operation. They claim to be bringing life back to the hypoxic area of ocean known as the Sea of Death, but…”
“Are they pumping air in like for a tropical fish aquarium?”
“Yes, that. Although the scale is far greater. They’ve set up a ton of ridiculous pumps that dissolve oxygen into the ocean at a rate of tens of thousands of liters per minute.”
“Isn’t there only so much that can dissolve into the water no matter how much they send in?”
“Don’t ask me.” Frolaytia dismissed the student’s question. “Although I was told they draw the seawater into the device, apply a massive amount of pressure while dissolving the oxygen using microbubbles, and send the processed seawater back out. It kind of sounds like the oxygen would separate out and escape as soon as it returned to normal pressure, but I guess the hypoxic Sea of Death does the most damage in the deep sea pits. The pressure is already high there, so maybe it isn’t a problem.”
But why were they so interested in altering the water quality?
Why would their military be interested in it?
Frolaytia had the answer.
“The Capitalist Corporations apparently want to revive the treasure trove of valuable fish around here. Most importantly, the sharks. Shark fin is a valuable ingredient and used for makeup foundation, so it can be sold as a luxury product.”
“…”
“…”
They had already seen this information in the email they were sent, but they did not look exactly pleased about the reminder.
“You mean they’re intentionally increasing the shark population for profit? Are you kidding me? Not even the protective nets are perfect. Do you know how many surfers were eaten this summer alone?”
Heivia sounded disgusted, but Frolaytia remained somehow apathetic.
“Tourist locations with travelers from every world power are always a spy paradise. That isn’t great news for the Capitalist Corporations who want absolute control over the Hawaii District, so they want to change things. Although they need to show how doing so will also make money if they want approval.”
“So they’re making money off of their own vague conspiracy? Aren’t they afraid of hackers?”
“It doesn’t matter to them if they’re found out. They just want all the tourists to leave. And if they spread a fear of shark attacks, it should enliven the insurance industry. We might even see a boom for cheap disaster B-movies.”
They would always find a way to keep the cash flowing.
And of course, the Legitimacy Kingdom wanted to put a stop to this. They wanted Hawaii to be full of tourists to maintain the spy paradise there. They did not want their binoculars to show all that bikini-clad flesh being chewed to pieces. Quenser did not know how to use a gun properly, but that may have been why he groaned in a know-it-all way for no real reason.
He shrugged in a way that was unusual for him.
“But isn’t that what the leased weapons are for? To hunt down the sharks! Is our coastguard doing that badly?”
“Hard to say. For one thing, it isn’t sharks they’re fighting.”
Frolaytia started down a mysterious digression.
They had not heard this part of the story.
“Now that they have more firepower, they seem to have started targeting the air pumps causing all the trouble. Those things use tons of pressure to process tens of thousands of liters every minute. So unless that oxygen supply is stopped, the shark population will only continue to grow.”
“Ugh.”
“This is what happens when you give an idiot nothing but a tool. And it’s the problem with the lend-lease program. They attacked the Capitalist Corporations base with nothing but some old machineguns that were close to breaking down. And that-…”
Frolaytia Capistrano was cut off by a loud boom.
It sounded a lot like a nearby tree being split in two by lightning and the strange 200m destroyer battleship shook vertically.
It was not that anything had hit them. The ship had only been shaken by the waves created as a side effect.
Frolaytia placed a hand on the wall.
“And that woke a sleeping tiger: the Capitalist Corporations’ Second Generation Over Cavitation. Our Baby Magnum is currently going on a diet to shave off the excess pounds.”
Frolaytia audibly dumped the contents of her kiseru into an ashtray.
That meant she would explain the rest in the conference room.
With the two idiots in tow, the busty silver-haired commander threw open the large double doors and made an immediate announcement.
“Everyone! We are running out of time, so I will keep this short. Make sure you’re ready to fight some sharks!”
She used the projector to display a map of the Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding ocean.
“Currently, the Princess and the Over Cavitation are engaged in a naval battle, but you don’t need the details on that. Sending a bunch of idiots in won’t help her any. Your lives will be used for something a little more useful, so be thankful in your own idiotic way.”
She set that topic aside as readily as a cooking show stepping over and pulling out a version of the dish that had been allowed to sit for 30 minutes.
The Princess really must have been short on time.
“Based on our analysis of past battles, the Over Cavitation is quite skilled. But at the same time, it has an odd tendency to only fight when it has plenty of weather and ocean data support. That’s the kind of demand it can only make because it’s won so often, but it also gives us a target.”
With a sound like an analog camera shutter, another image appeared on top of the map. There were now Xs across Hawaii’s 8 main islands.
“The Hawaii District is a disaster-prone area thanks to its several active volcanos and the more than 30 hurricanes that hit every year. That means it has plenty of weather stations and ocean observation stations. It’s the perfect place to provide the glasses that the ace Over Cavitation desires.”
To finish it off, Frolaytia tapped an extra-large X with her long, narrow kiseru.
“This is the Rocky Coast Ocean Meteorological Research Lab. All the data is gathered here and then sent to the Over Cavitation. Taking out this lab will shake that Object. And if we shake it, the Princess will have a chance for a cross counter.”
Part 3
The Princess was already in the ring.
They had to give their cute kitten a chance to strike back before she collapsed, could not get back up on all fours, and started convulsing with her little butt sticking up in the air.
The Rocky Coast Ocean Meteorological Research Lab was located on the coast of Oahu near some sheer cliffs. It was located there to help look after the “tropical fish tank pumps”, so approaching from the ocean by motorboat would be fastest. However…
“Watch out!”
The rubber boat was tossed around by the loud boom, the shockwave, and the waves. The red and orange anemone pattern on the bottom of the boat came into view. The boat could entirely capsize at any time, but they could not afford to forget that the Capitalist Corporations VIPs were raising tons of sharks here to profit off the luxury ingredients.
“It’s no use! That catfight is causing too much chaos! We should take a land route, even if it’s a bit of a detour!!”
“Dammit, but we can see the landing point right over there…”
They were not paid nearly enough to make an emotional charge, get thrown out into the ocean, get chomped by 8m great whites, and have a movie made out of their lives that would get popcorn tubs thrown at the screen. The potatoes were lacking in a spirit of loyalty and service, so they changed course and made their way to an area of coast shaped like a knife blade.
“Where are we anyway? …Oh, hell! This is easily 8km away!! The current dragged us on way too much of a detour!!”
“Once we walk those 8km, it’s time for combat. But this isn’t a battlefield country, so are you really brave enough to shoot them?”
“Oh, shut up. They’re equipped with rifles and grenades more expensive than ours and they’re selling secrets to the Capitalist Corporations, so they don’t get to claim they’re civilians.”
“Maybe not, but could you say that if it turns out we’re up against some cute girl who’s down on her luck?”
They could already see the Object battle from the coast.
One of them was the Baby Magnum.
An extra naval float was attached to the static electricity propulsion device shaped like an upside-down Y and the 7 weapon arms attached to the back of the giant spherical body held the main cannons which aimed for its target from multiple angles.
The other was the Over Cavitation.
This one was built exclusively for naval battles. The float stretching back from below the spherical body was a specialized air cushion. It omitted the usual shark anchor weights used to maintain balance, but that may have been for its nimble footwork. It could not move over land despite floating up from the surface, but that was apparently because it used salinity to make minute adjustments to the air’s viscosity. It also had several metal pipes spread out on either side like wings. The world looked somewhat hazy, so it may have been sucking up the seawater and converting it to vapor with the immense heat produced by its reactor. That steam power was used to slide the 200,000-ton mass side to side.
It had a single main cannon on the front.
Two bipod-like parts extended to the ocean surface from the base of the cannon, so they likely supported its long barrel. It also seemed to have laser beams and low-stability plasma cannons as secondary cannons, but instead of covering the sphere like a sea urchin or chestnut burr, three specialized towers were built on the top and the secondary cannons were installed on them. Had they needed to shift those parts elsewhere to surround the entire Object in water and steam, or had they been worried the steam would slightly divert the lasers and plasma if they were not that high up?
“That’s insane,” groaned Heivia as he viewed the distant fight. “Those are steam spears. It’s using that stuff to attack. An Object’s onion armor can survive a nuke, but that’s a steam engine! How is our Princess being shredded by that steampunk stuff!?”
“It’s not just slicing through with the steam pressure. It uses cavitation, Heivia.”
Cavitation used the same process by which the air bubbles in the water applied pressure to and ultimately destroyed a ship’s propeller. And when using that as an attack, you needed a fuse of water to get all those small air bubbles to the target.
“Cavitation can be created by quickly passing a large mass through the water, but it can also be created by sending out a supersonic wave to raise the sound pressure. I’m betting this Object fires a water spear and sends a supersonic wave through that to transform it into a bunch of air bubbles. From there, Bernoulli’s principle hits the target with the water attack.”
“Calm down your science boner and actually explain it this time.”
“It’s a 10km-long pile driver. Or you can think of it like a giant battering ram meant to break through a castle’s gate.”
The Over Cavitation transformed the water itself into a weapon that stripped away the Baby Magnum’s armor.
It was frustrating, but cheering on the Princess from the stands would not transfer her some miracle power for a mysterious awakening.
“Let’s get going, Heivia. We have a job to do.”
“What do you think we can even do? Jerk off and go to bed!?”
“Heivia.”
“At least tell me who I’m allowed to kill!! Can I just slaughter everyone in that lab!?”
That was not an option, so they had Mr. Drone do some recon. They received the report from Thomas, who operated the same model of drone that had helped them at the Eastern European monastery hotel.
“Found it. There are flashing IR signals. You can’t see them with the naked eye, but they have markers on their right arms to make sure the Object doesn’t blow them away by accident. Those are official military equipment, so whether they’re wearing camouflage, a Hawaiian shirt, or nothing at all, these are definitely Capitalist Corporations soldiers.”
“Are you sure they aren’t lent out like our scraps?”
“They’re using a Class 3 military standard, so the company president or whoever must be afraid of the signal’s encryption being broken. They updated to this latest version only two weeks ago and they’re careful to retrieve the devices from dead soldiers along with the dog tags, so there’s no chance they released them on a lend-lease program. We’re not talking about a disk of porn; you won’t find these on the shelves in their private viewing booths.”
That settled it, but infrared signals were invisible. If anyone got some footage of the aftermath, it would be tagged “horrific slaughter’ and uploaded to video sites to harass the Legitimacy Kingdom, so even though they knew who their target was, they wanted more obvious justification before entering “kill everyone” mode.
And this aerial vantage point let them view the distribution of enemy troops before the fighting began. The Ocean Meteorological Research Lab was surrounded by guards wearing ghillie suits despite the heat and carrying a type of bolt-action sniper rifle that had started out as a hunting rifle before making its military debut, but the wider wilderness around them looked peaceful. The smaller heat signals they detected were likely wild animals. The long-range sniper rifles were probably a way of covering as wide an area as possible with limited personnel.
In that case…
“Be on the lookout for mines just to be safe. Sniper rifles like that are weak to a charge from a unified group of people. They generally try to stop people and then shoot them. If they don’t have any barricades set up, they might have something buried in the dirt.”
“You’re kidding, right? This is a tourist area.”
Quenser heard a plastic clasp clicking into place.
Heivia had attached something to the end of his assault rifle. Its shape was very different from a bayonet. The round part was similar to the kind of simple metal detector used by the bouncer at a club.
“This is a blank area, so it technically isn’t a safe country. Neutrality isn’t always a good thing. It isn’t clear which of the four world powers makes the rules here, so there are no definite rules in place and they’re free to do whatever they want.”
But then Thomas interrupted again.
“Wait, wait. We can attach the mine detector to the Vehicle.”
“The Vehicle?”
“The land drone. You can think of it like an RC car you can control from really far away.” Thomas seemed a little overexcited. “The mine detector isn’t perfect. It won’t detect glass or plastic mines, so let’s have this thing go on ahead. If it detects the mine, we know it’s there. If it misses one, only the toy gets blown up.”
“You’re sounding awfully Information Alliance-y to me.”
“If your knight’s honor matters that much to you, then you can ride on ahead on a white horse. We need to absorb the good points of the other powers. There’s nothing sadder than a giant who can’t keep up with the changing times. Weapons these days are all IoT, so-…”
They heard a bang from up ahead.
It came from a mere 5m away. Thomas took a shot to the temple and collapsed to the side. It happened so suddenly that the two idiots only stood and watched.
Also, what was that?
What had just happened!?
“That was a gunshot.”
“But from where!?”
Heivia held out his unwieldy assault rifle with mine detector still attached, but his aim wavered uncertainly.
They were on a section of the coast that jutted out like a knife and it gradually sloped upwards on the way to the lab. There were a lot of rough boulders lying around, but there was nothing close enough for the 5m distance of the sound they heard. Only a few smaller rocks. Also, Thomas had sent out a drone and observed everything from the sky before he was killed. Even if someone was hiding behind cover, they should have been visible when viewed from above.
(Is there something buried here? Not an explosive, but a remote handgun that swivels like a fan?)
Something moved behind one of the smallish rocks.
No.
There was definitely something there!
“Is it a drone!? Dammit, what is going on!?”
“We can figure everything out after destroying it!!”
Quenser felt just as disgusted as he would have been if he found a colorful bug larger than a slipper. He cut off a decent-sized piece of plastic explosive, stabbed an electric fuse into it, and wrapped a hard zip tie around it. Detonating that would scatter pieces of the zip tie like shrapnel.
However…
“Ahh!?”
Heivia yelled when he used the assault rifle’s scope to see and circled around to get a view of the assassin hidden behind the rock.
This was yet another thing technology had sent to the battlefield.
It was a monkey.
The 60cm monkey was…holding a handgun with an oddly large chamber that had probably been made with a 3D printer?
It gave a short screech of warning.
No matter who or what was holding it, a gun was a gun.
Before the monkey could move its finger, Heivia fired a short burst of gunfire into the center of its body.
“Is this a joke!?”
The atmosphere had changed.
Had they even fully accepted that their comrade had been killed?
More and more monkeys appeared from behind rocks and on branches to aim identical printed guns their way.
“Are you kidding me!? Thomas lost his life to this!?”
They did not have time to sit around complaining.
There were more than 100 of the monkeys and they were all armed with real guns. Quenser threw his handmade grenade made from a plastic explosive and quickly sent the detonation signal via radio. He was not even thinking about wiping out the monkeys. He just wanted some cover to hide behind and use as a shield.
A temporary smokescreen was good enough for now.
After breaking free of that situation, Quenser and the others hurried to the thick tree trunks in the area. The soldiers that were not going to make it in time jumped toward the coastal cliff instead.
“Heivia, above!!”
“Goddammit!!”
Heivia aimed his assault rifle up like he was firing a salute or a warning shot and he brought down the monkeys in the branches to secure their safety.
“This isn’t an easy job at all. I thought our job was to safely bring the Over Cavitation to a stop!”
Some other cheap gunshots rang out.
Luckily, the monkeys’ guns used light 9mm rounds. They probably could not endure the recoil of anything more powerful than that. The tree trunks could block those bullets.
“So what is this? What in the hell is this!? What is happening here!?”
“The enemy must have given them these weapons.”
“They gave animals guns to shoot at us!? Isn’t that a bit nightmarish for a fairy tale!?”
“I remember seeing an online news article about a monkey picking up a camera someone left in the woods, messing around with it, and eventually taking selfies.”
“What’s that got to do with-…wait.”
“They can aim a camera at something and take a picture. Aiming a gun and pulling the trigger isn’t much different. With a bit of training, you can get them shooting. Those printed guns are generally disposable, so they don’t need to think about anything complicated like taking them apart for maintenance.”
“But they’re monkeys!”
“Using animals as weapons doesn’t violate the war treaties. Everyone’s familiar with military dogs, right? It depends on the exact conditions, but if they don’t have a semiconductor plant, they might be able to mass produce these faster than plastic and rare earth drones. They probably made sure to choose a non-protected species. I remember hearing about hundreds of thousands of monkeys being experimented on for neuroscience research, so there’s definitely a loophole there!”
The biggest advantage of guns was that they gave everyone the same ability to kill or wound. Even if it was a nonhuman creature that was only taught to pull the trigger without understanding the actual meaning behind it.
“How many times do I have to remind you these are animals!? How am I supposed to believe this, Quenser!?”
“If you’re just repeating the same thing, it means you’ve stopped thinking, Heivia. We don’t have time to deny reality. We can think about what to do next after we deal with these monkeys to secure our safety!”
Heivia and Quenser started moving while coordinating with the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes pressing against the other trees.
They were lucky in one way.
There were a lot of monkeys, but their cheap, 3D-printed guns only fired weak 9mm bullets. This was clearly designed to get some lucky shots in but not achieve a definitive victory. It was quantity or quality. Thomas had been taken out from 5m away, so they probably could not hit unless they got really close.
Meanwhile, Heivia and the others were equipped with sensor-enhanced assault rifles with an effective range of 400-500 meters against a moving target.
They opened fire.
Once they were aware of the threat, this was how it went down.
Also, dead Thomas’s drone detected the monkeys’ movements just fine. He had only overlooked them because he assumed only humans were a threat. They had been right in front of him, but he had failed to see them. It was another form of camouflage.
But now the soldiers understood.
They had updated their definition of “enemy”.
Heivia, Myonri, and the rest used the trees as shields and fired their standard equipment to swiftly eliminate the threat.
“What’s next!? Bring on the Woodpecker Unit or the Otter Squad!! Attention all tool-using animals, the exterminator has arrived!!”
“Is this really official Capitalist Corporations equipment? Setting aside how easy it is to get the animals to reproduce, the guns they’re using are too cheap. I’ve never heard of soldiers going to battle with printed guns.”
They had a bad feeling about this.
One problem remained unresolved after the incident in the Transylvania District: the arms dealer.
“Is that mystery dealer sending weapons to the Capitalist Corporations like we’re lending weapons to the coastguard? We’re not trying to wage a drug war here!”
“This is turning into a proxy war like kids getting rhino beetle to fight each other. Who are we benefitting as we grab at each other’s hair like this?”
The advantage of numbers was not enough, so there was no fear of being defeated once the surprise wore off. It was the same idea as quantity over quality. A female soldier everyone called “mom” (age 17) woke everyone up by scattering the monkeys with a full-auto blast of a light machinegun. Then everything changed. The gun-wielding monkeys started to flee, but Heivia and the others mercilessly shot them in the back. They were enemies as long as they held those guns. If the monkeys got away, they could attack from a ditch, a roof, or a tree hollow at any moment.
These were not humans.
If the enemy was using that to their advantage, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes would use it against them as well.
Then some bark burst from the tree Quenser was hiding behind. He ducked his head down on reflex. That had not been a cheap 9mm round from one of the printed guns. It was heavier.
“Snipers!!” shouted Heivia. “That one was a human. The lab guards are targeting us, but we can’t reach them from here!! Dammit, why do I always get the short end of the stick? Well, I’m not dying until I get a chance to see that legendary maid!!”
“Please don’t talk about that right now!!”
“?”
“Anyway, Heivia, hand over what Thomas left behind. Machines are my specialty, so I’ll make that drone more deadly.”
That was a simple task.
He did not even need to attach a bomb that would only unbalance it. To keep it airborne for long periods of time, the military drone used a large lithium ion battery and it only took a bit of reworking to make one of those explode. Once it was ready, he sent the drone high in the sky. Then he used it to spy down on the enemy, flew it over their heads, and stopped the motor to drop it right on top of them.
In this case, it did not matter if the snipers shot it down.
The conservation of mass was absolute. Even as wreckage, the explosive would reach the ground.
After detonating it with his radio, they only had to eliminate the scattered snipers.
The snipers’ ghillie suits made from dried grass and palm bark proved to be a mistake. The explosion ignited them and the snipers went up in flames.
“Wow, look at them dance. Why not get to shooting them, Heivia?”
“No, that just sounds like a pain. And it scares me how you can spy on them and then attack them from above even though they’re hiding behind cover. I feel like we’ve reached the end of 2D battles.”
“It’s not as convenient as it sounds. They’re developing countermeasures that let airport security use jamming signals or powerful IR signals to take control of the drone and force it to land. It’s also possible a cyber attack could turn it around and have it attack us instead.”
They heard gunshots coming from the human fireballs. Either the spare ammo in their pouches was going off, or they had gathered their last ounce of strength to draw a handgun and shoot themselves in the head. With the snipers gone, there was nothing to stop the potatoes. They did not even need to hide behind cover. They walked toward the Rocky Coast Ocean Meteorological Research Lab while occasionally using their assault rifles to take out the few remaining monkeys.
“They’ll know something’s up. Watch out for a jack-in-the-box cause you never know when something will pop out of that hive of intellectuals. We’re talking about the Over Cavitation’s favorites after all.”
But whether there would be traps, an ambush, or a mysterious superweapon from an ancient civilization, Quenser and the others did not have any tanks or armored trucks to shield them and all the cover on the ground was only large enough for the monkeys. They settled on spreading out as much as they could to make sure they were not all wiped out at once by a spray of bullets or an explosion.
“I hope our lives are still more valuable than some plastic toys and pet shop rejects.”
“Whatever the case, our lives are more valuable than theirs. It’s time for a year-end sale.”
The lab in question was on a cape-like point of the coast. Reaching it from the cliff would have been easy, but that had not been an option. They had been forced the long way around with the Princess’s battle stirring up the ocean so much.
As they approached through the human, animal, and drone remains littering the ground, they came across what looked more like a prison than anything. There were barbed wire barricades taller than they were, a double wall of reinforced concrete, and guard towers at each corner. None of it looked like later additions. Whatever it was officially registered as, this place had been constructed to military standards from the beginning.
“What do we do?”
“Send out a radio signal. If they don’t respond, that counts as hostile intent and we wipe them out. Our goal here is to trip up their Object, so let’s get back at those intellectuals and their Over Cavitation.”
“Will anyone but Martians even be able to receive a signal on this core band?”
This was how war worked when you were winning. There were no snipers in the guard towers, so they may have retreated inside. There were heavy machineguns that swiveled without anyone manning them, so they had jack-of-all-trades Myonri switch to an anti-materiel rifle to silence them. After that, they sliced through the barbed wire with a large knife, continued on in, and approached the reinforced concrete walls.
“Myonri, take out the cameras around here and then knock on the front door.”
“This can’t punch through that steel gate.”
“You only need to warn them to keep clear.”
They knew the layout thanks to the aerial drone footage, so they decided to go for the building closest to the wall. While Myonri knocked on the giant main gate with her anti-materiel rifle, Quenser set up a plastic explosive.
“Myonri, match your timing to mine!”
With a ridiculously loud explosion, they blew down the wall. They used the large hole to walk a few meters inside and then attached a bomb to the building wall there.
“While you’re at it, destroy the switchboard on the courtyard-facing wall to take out the security. We’re counting on you!”
“Sure, sure,” replied Myonri.
A loud gunshot joined the next blast.
None of the building’s cameras or sensors were working anymore, so the potatoes snuck into a hallway which lacked air conditioning now that the power was out.
Once inside, Quenser hung back to let Heivia and the others take the lead. Myonri also switched back to her submachinegun.
At first glance, there was no one there.
But this was not like a school at night. They sensed the strange pressure of people holding their breath and waiting.
“Watch out for an ambush.”
“We don’t necessarily need to kill everyone, Heivia. Focus on taking out the weather and ocean data support to shake the Over Cavitation.”
“Do you want to get shot in the back because you decided to go easy on them? Getting killed by some skinny researcher is even worse than by your own pet. Do you want that written on your gravestone?”
According to the map on the wall, there was a large boiler room in the basement. If they set up a bomb there, they could probably blow up the entire facility.
They heard a heavy metallic scraping sound coming from around the corner to the stairs leading down there.
Heivia aimed his assault rifle that way and Quenser cut off a grenade-sized piece of plastic explosive just to be safe.
They first focused on the floor at the corner.
That floor reflected the light and they glimpsed a blurry figure in that reflection.
That settled it.
There was someone there.
But they still were not sure how that person was equipped or if they were alone.
“…”
Heivia took the lead with his assault rifle. Myonri followed a short distance behind with her submachinegun. It might seem harsh, but this formation allowed her to swiftly eliminate the enemy if Heivia was shot.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Heivia came to a stop just before reaching the corner. He pressed against the wall so he could freely swing his gun around.
He was prepared to eliminate the threat in the blink of an eye.
But that was when Quenser noticed something on the wall at the corner. He saw something reflected in the window which had a thick wire mesh across to keep anyone from getting in or out.
He threw his ball of clay at Heivia’s temple while that boy readied his assault rifle in 120% serious mode.
“Wait, Heivia, you idiot!!”
“Bgwah!?”
He had expected it to be light, but it was apparently quite heavy. Heivia collapsed to the floor like someone had swung a bag of apples at his head.
Myonri’s eyes widened.
“Quenser, are you finally sick of how he treats you!?”
“He framed me when he was caught searching for porn on a military computer! When I kill him, you can expect a much more devious plan! Anyway, everyone needs to wait!!”
After shouting and having them lower their guns, Quenser peered around the corner.
A brown-skinned girl of about 12 was sitting on the floor with tears in her eyes.
And a grapefruit-sized metal ball was chained to her skinny ankle.
