HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1
Status: Incomplete
3/13 parts completed
Chapter 1: A World Where the Flamboyant Die >> Covert Operation in the Transylvania District
Part 1
The November sky felt more like winter than fall.
Gentle sunlight shined on a grassy land of rolling hills. The vast land was surrounded by cobbled-together wooden fences and it might have looked like a golf course at first glance. But it was not. Busty, silver-haired Major Frolaytia Capistrano lay face down on a picnic sheet while wearing her tight skirt military uniform and with a teriyaki burger and matcha latte next to her. She was peering down the scope of a semiauto sniper rifle supported by a bipod.
A few 7.62mm shots rang out in quick succession.
“You’re really going for it, aren’t you?”
“Speaking to me now is rude, colonel.”
“You’re only doing this to blow off some steam. That gun is a Technopics model, isn’t it? Really, I’m not sure you should be wielding a gun as casually as a bat in a batting cage. Oh, and feel free to keep smoking. I’ll be smoking too.”
An old man was crouched down next to her.
Smoking and sniping was the ultimate luxury only possible in training. Even the civilian hunters who helped eradicate harmful animals on the weekends had to pay attention to the wind direction. Another scent mixed in with that sweet aroma which would be taboo during a real battle. This was likely a thick cigar from Central America.
Instead of a sniper rifle, the old man reached for an observation device that was like a monstrous pair of binoculars with other electronic devices attached.
“After all, this is the perfect way to have a private chat.”
“Out in the open like this? There are satellites spying on every part of the world these days.”
“Ha ha ha. Satellites aren’t as all-powerful as they might seem. A parasol lined with a thin layer of lead is enough to block them. Although satellite avoidance can get addictive if you start getting paranoid. Also, you never would have agreed to meet me in some closed room somewhere. Although if you would prefer, I could fill a hotel bar with bodyguards in black.”
“…”
Frolaytia fell silent for a bit.
Her irritation did not come from the deer that walked calmly by the paper target, oblivious to the danger.
“But don’t worry. I’m not about to make a serious pass at someone young enough to be not just by daughter but my granddaughter. So let’s get down to business.”
“Very well.”
“I want to use your 37th. It’s an urgent matter, but I want to keep that fact hidden to enemy and ally alike.”
“My 37th is a 1000-soldier mobile maintenance battalion with a 50m Object, colonel.”
“Yes, and that’s what I want. Trying to sneak around would only stand out in this case. It’s a delicate matter that is bound to leave some noisy footsteps even if you tiptoe. So I would prefer to just make a complete mess of things. Those footsteps will go unnoticed in the roar of the stadium, right?”
…In other words, it was yet another dirty job. It felt like reaching into the campfire and burning your hand just to grab the pile of shit someone else had squeezed out.
Frolaytia sighed.
“If you can promise me one thing.”
“Sure. I quite like how you ignore our hierarchical society to worry about your subordinates’ lives.”
“We will handle everything from beginning to end. Do not send in an assassination team behind our backs.”
“So you want to keep your territory clean, hm? Fine, but this is not going to be an easy one. Let’s hope your subordinates aren’t the ones who have to pay the price for your convictions.”
“So what is it?”
“Simply put, it is a retrieval operation. I want you to take back something that was stolen. The culprits are a local criminal organization named Ivory Garden, but the details are unknown. They might actually be something else in sheep’s clothing. Also, failure here would be an international incident. The stolen item is extremely valuable, you see. If you were to rent it out to another country, it would probably be…yes, I think 2 or 3 million euros a year. Your 37th is performing scheduled military exercises that double as a show of force to maintain our influence in the Eastern Europe area, so make it look like you happened across the item by chance.”
The military brought together the government and private sector, so everything tended to come with a high price tag. Still, this was unusual.
Both the price, and…
“Rent it out? It’s a rental item? Like an anti-air radar or datalink server?”
“No. I joined the military when I was much younger than you. It’s been 50 years since then, but this is a first for me as well.”
For the first time, Frolaytia removed her eye from the scope for something other than tending to her long, narrow kiseru.
“It’s a first for you, colonel?”
“Yes.”
“Then is it something Object related? Or one of the nukes that long since fell out of use?”
“No, it is a panda.”
Time stopped.
She thought this had to be a code word, but apparently not. She froze there with her mouth hanging open, so the serious man explained.
“A baby panda. For the culprits, it is a valuable political tool and a stable source of money from renting it out. This is a painful blow to us since it belongs to one of our zoos, I would like for you to rescue it. No matter what.”
Part 2
And in a desolate battlefield country of Eastern Europe, while the main battle was fought between two Objects, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion found themselves in a harsh battle of their own on the frozen land infamous for its war crimes. Now, how to explain what it was they found there? This may be the best place to start:
The Panda War had begun.
With sweat soaking his face, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage shouted at the top of his lungs despite knowing it would never reach the roaring jet engine passing by overhead.
“Wait, you dumbasses!! We’re on your side! Fire on the enemy!!”
“Who the hell called this a battle of love, justice, and humanitarianism? There’s something wrong when they get paid more than us!”
A double delta attack plane protected by thick armor had sprayed its Gatling gun at them right from the beginning, so the armored truck carrying Quenser and Heivia had come to a stop on the cracked asphalt. They had gone to the trouble of chasing the poachers down a curvy highway while ramming their vehicles against each other, but then that son of a bitch in the sky had fired a machinegun down at them while showing off its threatening paint job that looked a lot like the eye pattern on a moth’s wings. Thanks to that, the difference between enemy and ally meant squat. Both trucks had overturned and Quenser, Heivia, and the others were forced to use the half-scrapped military truck as a shield. Idiots were never rewarded for trying to do a good deed every once in a while.
Perhaps due to the cold, the land was rough and short on vegetation.
Some conifer trees dotted the bare wasteland, a jagged mountain rose in the distance, and old monasteries and castle spires could be seen on its slope. When it came to both plants and animals, it was unclear what people were supposed to eat to survive in this area.
And now was not the time to be getting a tour. The overturned Ivory Garden truck was only about 10 meters away. They would not have been wiped out in that one blast, so a close-range battle was about to begin.
“Let’s end this quickly, Quenser.”
“Using a bomb at this range would just blow us all up, but why are you so motivated today of all days?”
“Because that thing that zoomed by overhead is making a U-turn! If we don’t end this before it comes back for a second pass, we’ll end up as mincemeat!!”
But this also meant something important.
Objects were equipped with anti-air lasers powered by the ultra-high levels of energy from their JPlevelMHD reactors. So there was no place for aircraft in a clean war between Objects.
That hinted at the situation Quenser and Heivia found themselves in.
This was not a clean war.
It was a unilateral purge of a criminal group without an Object.
“I still can’t believe they sent human beings to engage in a firefight just to rescue a baby panda. Are human lives less valuable than animals these days?”
“It’s a panda, so what’re you gonna do?”
“Yeah, they’re cute, but still.”
“They apparently go for 2 to 3 million euros a year when rented out to a zoo. Human lives? Worth way less.”
“That damn thing is making as much as a sports star on nothing but its cute face!?”
That was when they heard a quiet sound.
Whether they had high-level training or not, both sides’ lives were on the line here. An enemy had apparently done his best to not make a noise as he circled around the Legitimacy Kingdom armored truck. The young Eastern European poacher held a large knife instead of a gun.
“Oh, crap!” shouted Quenser in horror. “At close range, a blade is faster than a bulle-…”
Heivia fired his assault rifle like normal, the bullets punched a few holes in the chest and gut of the Ivory Garden soldier like normal, and he collapsed to the ground like normal.
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”
Quenser’s mouth flapped wordlessly with an indescribable look on his face, so his awful friend spoke up in annoyance.
“Stop looking so disillusioned. Of course a gun is faster than a knife. Not even a kung-fu master can beat a gu-…”
A second man showed up while Heivia was speaking and stabbed the boy in the side.
“Heiviaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!?”
“Cut the theatrics and actually help me!!”
The idiot was doubled over, but he seemed fine. The tip of the blade had apparently been stopped by his magazine pouch. But despite Heivia’s insistence, Quenser could not use his Hand Axe plastic explosive while within 2m of the enemy. The idiot and villain were grappling, so in a split-second decision, Quenser grabbed a giant wrench meant to remove the lug nuts on the side of the armored truck’s tires and he swung it down on top of the criminal’s head.
Crash! And now the man was seeing stars.
…Well, that was the idea, but instead, blood and spinal fluid splattered around and the second man collapsed to the road. His face looked kind of funny since his skull had been split open. His skin was stretched and distorted like a robber with a stocking over his head. Quenser felt like he had even ruined the guy’s funeral.
And he was unsure what to say when the wrench proved more destructive than expected.
“Ah, ahh…”
“So what now? Is it gonna turn out shovels are unmatched on the battlefield?”
Surprise attacks lost their effectiveness once the surprise wore off. While Quenser felt his balls shrivel up at what he had done, Heivia, Myonri, and the others managed to calm down and began suppressing the enemy with their assault rifles. The rest was over in a blink of an eye. Light bursts of gunfire snuffed out lives.
“Oh?”
One of the young men on the ground held a grenade.
His courage on the verge of death was commendable, but Heivia used his foot to roughly roll the man over.
“Human shield!!”
“You’re awful!!”
There was a muffled boom, but the wall of flesh was enough to suppress a normal grenade blast. After having the enemy clean up his own mess like that, Heivia shot the bottom of the overturned poachers’ truck, opening a hole in the gas tank. The Ivory Garden members fled from their vehicular shield and were shot for their trouble.
“Man, today is nothing but disappointments. Why didn’t the truck blow up when you shot the gas tank?”
“Reality has a way of robbing people of their dreams, Quenser.”
As soon as Heivia said that, sparks scattered on the road and an explosion erupted out. The two idiots were knocked onto their asses together. Quenser did not bother getting up and instead climbed on top of Heivia and threw a straight-A-student punch.
“You dumbass!! This is what happens when an idiot tries to act smart!!”
“Ow! Shut up and get off of me or I’ll shoot you along with the enemy, Quenser! The leaking gas vaporized and reacted to the static electricity! It wasn’t the liquid gas in the tank that exploded!”
However, there was no more resistance. The explosion must have taken out the rest of the enemy. All that remained was a container that looked like a thick acrylic die. It was an incubator for the baby panda that could earn a yearly salary of 3 million euros.
“There’s something wrong when an animal gets thicker armor than our bulletproof jackets.”
“I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if it had blown up along with the poachers. Thank goodness it’s all righ-…”
Quenser trailed off.
He picked up the large transparent die and viewed the target within from multiple angles.
“This isn’t a panda.”
“What?”
“I-it’s a bear cub made to look like one with white powder camouflage!! Who would this ever fool!? It’s like those legendary dyed chicks at Island Nation festivals!”
Part 3
The soldiers of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion were exhausted, but they were called to gather in the briefing room.
But not because some idiot had forgotten to attach the infrared ID marker to their truck’s roof and the aerial unit had wasted some bullets and reduced valuable equipment to scrap.
Frolaytia stood up on the podium and got down to business.
“Now, I thought we would be done here after recovering the baby panda, but we found a very concerning document in Ivory Garden’s truck. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Quenser whose sticky fingers led him to dig around in the dashboard and find this material.”
With shouts of “why couldn’t you have left well enough alone, you idiot!?” and “no one wants a hard worker!”, the overworked and angry potatoes surrounded the battlefield student and started kicking him.
And when Frolaytia saw the behavior of her shabby and unshaven subordinates, she only toyed with her silver bangs with an annoyed look.
“I bet that old man knew it was a dyed chick from the get-go. This is looking a lot more like one of those shitty odd jobs he always forces onto us, but we are civil servants fed by the people’s tax money and the military is especially picky about the chain of command. I might not have known what I was agreeing to, but I can’t back out now. This is a pressing situation, so we have to keep going.”
“God, what a pain in the ass.” Heivia looked dejected. “Can’t we just have the Baby Magnum blow everything up and call it a day?”
“Hm, hmm.”
The Princess must not have cared whether it was a panda or a bear cub because she was busy looking after the baby animal with a bottle in hand.
“Here, have some milk. Once you’re full, you can take a nap with mommy, okay?”
She had been in full mother mode since they got back with the bear, so it seemed unlikely she would agree to a bloody battle. The old maintenance lady had been observing her while pretending to give advice, but she shook her head. It looked like the Princess would exercise her right to refuse this mission.
The delinquent noble held his head.
“Is there really no other option?”
“Relax, Heivia,” said Frolaytia. “I’m on your side this time. I say we all beat up Quenser together. Now, I really would like to end this with a long-range main cannon blast, but that won’t work this time since we need confirmation of the target’s destruction. I want to avoid spending months digging through piles of rubble to get that confirmation. Plus, Eastern Europe is headed toward its snowy winter. If the white snow keeps piling up no matter how much we shovel it out of the way, we’ll never be able to dig through the rubble. None of you wants to die from overwork, right?”
“The target’s destruction? This isn’t about retrieving some rare animals that the something-or-other groups are up in arms about?”
“Ivory Garden’s secret transportation route is apparently being used for a different item: an Object reactor.”
That sent a stir through the room.
Those reactors had created the current age. With nukes eradicated, Objects were the new trigger for humanity’s destruction.
“Let’s not waste our valuable time asking questions like ‘why’ or ‘how’. This is all based on the list of transported goods on the document Quenser found. The details and the accuracy of the document are for the intelligence division to worry about.”
“Gulp. Then it would be best to act on the assumption it’s real?”
“Someone punch him right in his serious face. And that’s an order. Quenser, do not forget that I too am burdened by this extra work you brought us.”
His inaccurate shout of “But I was only trying to do the right thing!” vanished into a flurry of blows. He had only been searching through the enemy dashboard in the hopes of finding some loose change.
Frolaytia took a puff of her long, narrow kiseru to help deal with the stress.
“Speaking of local trouble, the Transylvania District is nearby, isn’t it? That is an Information Alliance safe country, but the extreme wealth disparities have led to a lot of crime. The peace-loving wealthy want to throw out the burden of the poor, so the southern tourist area known for its vampire legends is planning to declare its independence. In fact, a local referendum passed with a majority voting ‘yes’. I don’t know how many of them were serious about independence and how many were just trying to make a point, but now that the vote has passed, the local celebrities supporting it have no choice but to go through with it.”
“Hm? But isn’t that looking like trouble? I heard the overall Transylvania District refused to accept the south’s independence so they’ve sent a giant Object to the proposed new border. They were saying something about declaring war and taking back the south less than a second after the south declares independence.”
“We’re only talking about a conflict between safe countries. An actual war won’t break out that easily. The Transylvania District is really just threatening the southern tourist area like they have knife to their throat. …But what if the supposedly powerless south managed to secretly acquire an Object of their own?”
“…”
An unpleasant silence hung over the room.
No one wanted to answer that question.
“Then we would have an unprecedented conflict in which two safe countries use Objects against each other. If the flames of war spread from there, it could drag entirely unrelated regions into war. Do not forget that includes the Legitimacy Kingdom safe country that borders the Transylvania District. The electronic simulation division is busy calculating out the estimated number of deaths including noncombatants, but we can be certain the war would be one of the worst in history. It would eliminate the taboo set in place by the Northern Restricted Zone when the reactor buried below a city of 5 million blew up during an intense artillery campaign.”
“But, um, squeal, we’re talking about an Object, right? Squeal.”
When Quenser was finally released with his face beaten and swollen, he asked a question with some pig language mixed in.
“Ugh, cough. I-I mean, those are 50m colossuses. It takes years to construct one. Building one in secret is easier said than done. Is it even possible?”
“The south’s independence is supported by the wealthy who have more money than they know what to do with, so they could afford the 5 billion dollar budget. And on the technology front, there were some rumors floating around for a while that the main stumbling block was the inability to build a JPlevelMHD reactor on their own.”
“In other words, they could have secretly built the rest…”
“The wealthy are all alike. Whether it’s a masterpiece painting, rock candy, an idol, or a slave, they try to fulfill every last one of their desires with money. And it seems someone is trying to purchase an extra-large gem to fill their empty jewelry box that was previously a bluff.”
Frolaytia sighed in exasperation.
Was the human race trying to wipe itself out? At this point, it was hard to tell if they were just dumb or if this was a clever form of atonement.
“The southern tourist area plans to announce their independence at midnight two days from now. In what I can only imagine is part of their vampire culture, they are apparently holding a lavish party with a fireworks show at a hotel deep in the mountains. That will be when the Transylvanian Object waiting at the new border will make its move. No, maybe I should say it will be forced to act then. Governments and militaries are all about appearances, so they won’t be able to stop when someone makes a fool of them. We know the time limit. We have less than 48 hours. We can’t afford to lose even a second, so there’s no time for naps. Do you get what I’m saying, you poor civil servants? I’m exhausted already, so won’t someone hit Quenser again to reward him for his hard work!?”
