HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3

Status: Incomplete

2/20 parts completed

   

Chapter 3: A History of One or the Other >> South Atlantic Civil War of Emergency Succession

Part 1

The next battlefield was in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The battle was to defend the Vanderbilt lady and her civilian cruise ship from the Destruction Fes.

Frolaytia’s response was simple.

First, she sent the Baby Magnum ahead at its naval speed of more than five hundred kilometers per hour.

Quenser and the others in the maintenance battalion gathered their surviving ships, stopped by a Legitimacy Kingdom base on the southern tip of Africa, and used transport planes to fly to Saint Helena, an isolated island in the South Atlantic Ocean. After borrowing some naval forces there, they regrouped with the Baby Magnum at the island, finally began the Object maintenance, and prepared to arrive on the scene and fight.

It had of course not been an easy journey.

If the Destruction Fes had been waiting for them, its anti-air weapons could have destroyed every last aircraft in midair. When the weight of death was bearing down on you the entire time, the flight was far from enjoyable.

“Listen up!!”

But Frolaytia Capistrano ignored that physical and mental weariness to raise her voice in the small aircraft carrier’s briefing room.

“The greatest desire of the Legitimacy Kingdom military is to protect our people’s lives, property, and honor and to destroy anything that threatens those things! That aspect of our fight remains unchanged whether our enemy is another world power or a rogue faction of our own. If Azureyfear Winchell’s faction intends to slaughter civilians en masse in their desire to strike at the Vanderbilt family over an old feud, then we will do whatever it takes to stop them!!”

Every one of them was worn down.

They had lost many colleagues and their morale had plummeted.

They were filled with the unpleasant mood of people being forced to work without pay.

But.

Oddly enough, none of them threw down their gun, tossed out their dog tags, and left the battalion.

“Currently, Celestial Flowers, the world’s largest ocean fireworks festival, is being held in the South Atlantic Ocean. Around five hundred civilian ships have gathered around the two-hull luxury cruise ship Rose & Lily for that festival. The Destruction Fes, which we speculate to be Second Generation, is approaching their location. If it arrives, we will have a true bloodbath on our hands, so I want to finish this before that happens.”

The enemy was a private unit led by Azureyfear Winchell.

Operating a Second Generation without relying on a Pilot Elite was estimated to require a crew of more than ten thousand. They had enough soldiers to fill an army division and it was to pilot just the one Object. And all of that personnel, equipment, and materiel would have been bought with the money she earned in her drug war.

Heivia and the others did not hesitate to oppose Azureyfear.

The fact that it was entirely remote controlled may have helped there. Blowing it away would not kill anyone, so the extra familial connection did not have to make it awkward. And if they destroyed this strange Object, the ridiculous war…no, personal feud would be over.

As usual, diagrams were projected on the white wall behind Frolaytia.

“Luckily, the Legitimacy Kingdom Second Generation Oceanic Driver was patrolling this area of sea and it put up a decent fight. It is the true ‘owner’ of the naval force at Saint Helena. Even as they worked to slow down the Destruction Fes, they gathered valuable data on the unknown Object. We can never thank them enough. Don’t you waste their efforts!”

The Oceanic Driver was a naval Second Generation that fought bravely with a laser beam main cannon. In addition to its reactor, it was equipped with several large-scale capacitors to leave no gaps in its rapid-fire when necessary. It also had several ballast tanks attached to its outer perimeter that could be filled with or emptied of seawater to intentionally shift its balance for incredibly nimble and rapid turns.

But it was no match for the Destruction Fes.

The Destruction Fes was fully remote-controlled and had no Pilot Elite. Freed from the restrictions of the inertial Gs, its movements were like lightning. More than just its top speed, it had ultra-sharp footwork and could cut back and forth unnaturally quickly. The difference was too great to be seen, like a cutting-edge stealth fighter taking on the Wright Brothers’ plane in a serious dogfight. It fully surpassed the biological limits of a manned machine. Before the Oceanic Driver could even place it in its sights, the Destruction Fes would slip into its blind spot and unleash cruel attacks that gouged into its armor.

The Destruction Fes was supported by the air cushion float directly below its main body, but it also had three insect-like legs attached in a reverse Y-shape. Those legs had booster-like devices covering the sides and they provided explosive mobility. The pure white torrent they produced looked more like a liquid than a jet or plasma.

The difference in speed was overwhelming.

The battle was so one-sided that the field itself seemed to shift out of place.

Even so, the Pilot Elite had not ejected even in the very, very end.

Over one hundred thousand innocent civilians sat behind the Oceanic Driver, so it had to hold its position until the Baby Magnum’s battalion caught up. Every minute and every second mattered. And that determination to continue fighting had sealed the Pilot Elite’s fate.

No one instructed them to, but when the Object exploded, every soldier in the briefing room saluted.

Even Quenser and Heivia.

Frolaytia gave a short sigh and then abandoned her pride. She would use everything available to her. There was a lot she had to prioritize above her own self-respect.

She did not hesitate to do something unthinkable of a soldier.

She gave the floor to a mere student.

“Quenser, what do you think?”

“Its main cannon is a large caliber low-stability plasma cannon, but that isn’t what I’m interested in.”

After moving to the head of the room in place of his commander, Quenser paused the tragic footage, rewound it, and then pointed at something with a laser pointer. He had no intention of mocking the Elite’s death. That Elite had lost their life passing on this baton, so they had to look it straight in the eye and chew it down to the marrow.

“It has some parts on the back that look like peacock feathers, but they don’t seem to be related to the boosters. If it’s supposed to be a high-mobility Object that uses the incredible speed of its footwork as its greatest weapon, they would have eliminated anything that would create air resistance, so these are odd. And as you can see when zooming in, they are a collection of some sort of giant speakers.”

“Speakers?”

Heivia looked puzzled, so Quenser nodded and continued.

“They’re an acoustic weapon. That’s what messed with our heads back with the boats.”

“Oh, goddammit. Jut remembering it is making me feel nauseous. That thing was bad. It wasn’t just the ears or the head. It felt like I’d been punched in the head so hard I was going to vomit.”

“The Destruction Fes also destroyed our aircraft carrier fleet, but a low-stability plasma cannon can only fire in one direction and can’t apply damage equally to one hundred ships. These things produce a great noise at a regulated frequency. That causes micro-vibrations in the target and destroys them a lot like a harmonic scalpel. The weaker welded points of the metal are burned through on the molecular level and then the entire ship breaks apart and sinks.”

“So you’re saying the Destruction Fes has two main cannons?” asked the Princess.

She was going to directly confront this enemy, so it was life-or-death issue for her.

Quenser gave a troubled look.

“At that power, I don’t think it could directly damage an Object.”

“Yeah, we’re still alive,” added Heivia.

“Although we might have been turned to mincemeat if we were closer and didn’t have any cover. We didn’t survive due to luck. It was because those ships sank in our stead.” Quenser rejected the other boy’s optimistic view. “If anything, I’m betting that one’s used to hold its opponent in place. Just like how the Spectre Q&A detonated the air to stop the Princess from moving. That said, it’s powerful enough to sink an entire fleet at close range. For flesh-and-blood humans, being exposed to that would be the same as being thrown into a human meat mixer.”

“That’s a dangerous combination.”

“That it is, granny. Not only does it have footwork too fast to keep up with, but it has an additional weapon to slow us down. As the gap in speed grows infinitely wide, the Destruction Fes will move to our blind spot and safely fire its main cannon. It really comes down to relative speed, but it’ll feel like fighting an enemy that can manipulate time. I doubt there would be any way to win in a straight fight.”

He paused for a beat before adding a “but”.

The projector displayed the situation in the South Atlantic. The map displayed where the Oceanic Driver had sunk and where the five hundred civilian ships were gathered for the world’s largest fireworks festival. It also showed the Destruction Fes on its way to kill the Vanderbilt lady along with countless other civilians and it showed the Baby Magnum and Legitimacy Kingdom forces moving to intervene.

The student took all that information in.

He looked across everyone’s faces and cast the die of fate.

“If we give up, a hundred thousand civilians will sink into a sea of blood and the Oceanic Driver’s resolve will be wasted. Also, Frolaytia has ordered us to keep that from happening. I will obey that order. I’m not telling you to die here. I’m telling you to draw out every ounce of strength needed to survive. So what will you do? It’s a thin, thin thread, but we have the chance left to us by the Oceanic Driver. The rest is up to you. You need to decide here whether you’re going to hear me out.”

No one objected.

Ten minutes later, the worn-down soldiers all took their battle positions.

Part 2

A two-hull ship was exactly what it sounded like: a ship with two hulls.

The Rose & Lily was constructed from two cruise ships measuring four hundred meter long. They were lined up side-by-side with a few passageways connecting them. The ship had been made so large to secure more storage space and deck space, but this increased the resistance against the waves and water which reduced the fuel efficiency.

One of the hulls bore the Winchell family crest and the other bore the Vanderbilt family crest. In reference to some legend or another, a single sword was stabbed into the middle of the central connecting passageway.

A lot could be said of its origins, but none of that mattered at the moment.

The main player of the Celestial Flowers fireworks festival was not that lodging ship. Instead, it was the many ships belonging to fireworks craftsmen that were spread out around the cruise ship.

The event itself was mostly entertainment for the rich nobles.

It was the same as the nations that spent massive sums of money exploring the moon or deep sea in an older age. “We have the technology to do this.” “We are this wealthy.” “We have plenty to spare, unlike the rest of you.” By implicitly stating those things, they could build up a mistaken long-term strategy against their foreign enemies. By consuming an unnecessary countermeasure budget like water, they could indirectly torment their enemy without firing a single bullet or shell. In that way, this too was a type of war.

Of course, that was nothing more than an excuse and a pretext.

The nobles loved wine more than water and sought casino chips more than cheap meat, so they were not about to begin any stingy self-sacrifice even if the world was going to be destroyed tomorrow. They might flick some bread crust over to a charity, but they would never allow their great fortunes to be stripped from them in the name of “justice” or “self-restraint”. They would put any amount of work and argument into allowing themselves to live their hedonistic lives.

Five hundred ships had gathered around the Rose & Lily for the Celestial Flowers fireworks festival, but popular opinion had been guided on multiple levels so this festival of gluttony would not provoke the ire of the commoners.

On the Rose & Lily’s portside deck – the one engraved with a rose – the Vanderbilt lady sighed and leaned back against the railing overlooking the dark sea.

Normally, over ten thousand fireworks and the canopy of the artificial aurora would have decorated the sky while far too much food to eat was lined up and a world-class violinist provided the music for an elegant dance.

But that plan had been called off, so the sky and sea were both dark.

The nobles in dresses and suits were muttering amongst themselves and extra focused on their own safety. Not only could they no longer see the Oceanic Driver which had been sent out to protect them, but fragments of information were showing up concerning the unknown Object headed their way.

“It apparently has to do with the conflict between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families.”

“Then what does it have to do with us? I-I know. I don’t mean anything too much by it, but is it too late to request a helicopter? Yes, wouldn’t it be lovely to go for a flight between the fireworks and the aurora?”

“Don’t be stupid. If it really is an Object, its anti-air lasers will tear us to pieces. And it would be hard to reach land this far out at sea.”

The young lady could tell many eyes were glancing her way in the darkness.

(How careless. This is an age of war, so you never know who is after your life the second you take a step outside a safe country. In fact, being in a safe country doesn’t guarantee anything. And yet they fully believe they alone are safe.)

When they left their safe country despite the danger, were they contacting people from another world power to tear down both sides’ prejudices and reach a true mutual understanding that could stop war without military might?

Or was it merely a sham without any of that framework?

It seemed the VIPs gathered on the Rose & Lily did not know how to tell the difference.

“We can never let this happen, but…hypothetically. Hypothetically speaking, just to put our minds at ease…how powerful is this Winchell Second Generation? If it is on a rampage, who can stop it?”

“Why is this happening? This wasn’t part of the plan. I was promised absolute safety…”

“My family will never die! Ancient documents show it going back for five hundred years!!”

“But just because something was fine yesterday doesn’t mean it can’t fall apart tomorrow, right? Ah…ah ha…ah ha ha ha ha…”

The pressure grew.

They had lost their fangs and claws and they had grown round and fat, but when it came to their own safety, these nobles could be more tenacious than greedy wolves. They would never say it directly, but through various hints and metaphors and with the help of the secretaries by their sides, they were telling each other the following:

“This comes down to the historical conflict between those two families, so why do we have to be caught in the crossfire?”

“I only care about the survival of my family and I am indispensable as far as that is concerned.”

“The Winchell girl will be satisfied if we offer Vanderbilt to her as a blood sacrifice.”

“That means there’s something we can do here.”

“If we tie up that young lady and hand her over to the crazed lioness, we can show her we have no intention of opposing her.”

If those unpleasant nobles had been the only people at the fireworks festival, she would have abandoned them already, but unfortunately, there were also plenty of unrelated commoners. She would have trouble sleeping if she also abandoned parents who had saved up their limited pay and leave to bring their families or the couples who had secretly bought a ring for this occasion.

“Now, then.”

The Vanderbilt lady removed her back from the deck’s railing. She grabbed a glass of nonalcoholic champagne from a tray held by a passing maid in a long skirt and she calmly walked through the darkness while drinking it. The nobles were too busy practicing their wise-looking poses to think and parted in front of her without saying a word.

For the time being anyway.

Once the scales of the situation tipped too far, those ladies and gentlemen would restrain the girl’s body with more vulgar looks than thugs in an abandoned part of town.

Perhaps to show a sign of neutrality within the strained atmosphere, a courageous member of the commoner crew spoke to her while wiping down the glass door leading inside the ship.

“Lady, where are you going?”

“Unfortunately, it seems there is still something I must do.”

Faithful young men like that were the treasures Legitimacy Kingdom’s treasure. As a noble, she could not allow those people to be killed needlessly.

She left the empty glass with him and entered the ship.

Azureyfear Winchell was behind this attack. Her goal was undoubtedly the annihilation of the Vanderbilt family and the death of this young lady as a symbol to hold up to the world. But could Azureyfear really have accomplished such a grand plan on her own? And could she really have kept it hidden for so long?

There was a possibility that something was still hidden.

Someone may have given Azureyfear a helping hand to benefit in some way.

And the White Lily of Vanderbilt had already heard someone say something curious.

The truth may have been surprisingly close by.