HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1
Status: Incomplete
Chapter 1: The War Broker Closest to Heaven >> Intelligence Battle in the Cook District
Part 1
“I can’t cover for you two anymore. Go off for a bit to cool your heads.”
The blazing sun made it easy to forget it was January.
Quenser used the sleeve of his military uniform to wipe away the sweat on his face on a solitary island in the southern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean.
“Why have we just been shooting and shooting for so long? Are we feeding the fish lead food?”
“We’re using brand new bullets for shooting practice. It’s about time for the accounts to be settled. If we don’t use up the excess bullets now, the defense budget will be cut down for the next fiscal year,” said Heivia sounding a bit bored as he fired a rifle next to Quenser in a decent-looking pose.
“Are you making things up with no proof again?”
“The fact that they gave an amateur like you a rifle is proof enough. That means this ‘homework’ is the only thing left for us to do. Shit, how many tens of thousands was our quota today?”
The Cook Addition Islands.
It was a part of Legitimacy Kingdom territory. It fell into the category of a small safe country.
It was actually made up of a number of islands floating in the Pacific Ocean, but only the small island in the center was natural land. Or rather, the area around one of the small islands on the edge of the archipelago had been thoroughly developed. Artificial land similar to offshore oil platforms dotted the area around that island. The individual islands were connected by giant bridges like the Information Alliance’s Miami. Most of the islands were used as testing grounds for Objects and storage areas for supercomputers, so all of the soldiers lived on a single island.
Quenser, Heivia, and the others were on land made of steel. They were leaning over the handrail and firing rifles at targets attached to boats that moved around by radio control.
They had made small but repeated mistakes.
They had accomplished many great achievements that put bitter expressions on faces of the higher ups in the military.
It seemed that had all exceeded what their sexy commander (as they called her) Froleytia could handle and so they had been “transferred” away from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion.
This was conventionally called being demoted, being sent to sit by the window, or being kept out of the way.
“Welcome to the peace humanity has won,” said a blonde woman firing a carbine with zero motivation.
She had completed removed the top of her camouflage uniform, leaving only a tank top on her upper body. The top she did not need in that heat was tied around her waist. The two boys enjoyed watching her thanks to all the jiggling caused when she fired her weapon.
“So what did you two do to get yourselves sent out here?”
“We showed off our good looks and skills too much and made some people jealous.”
“That’s dangerous. That’s the fastest way to earn yourself an early grave.”
He received a serious reply to his joke.
Quenser gulped, but Heivia’s rifle had jammed, so he shouted out like someone tossing a video game controller to the side.
“Dammit!! Shooting each individual bullet like his is such a pain in the ass! At this rate, the year will be over before we finish. Someone bring out the Crocodile!! We need to use a Gatling gun!!”
“But the Crocodile is 30 mm, right?” said the blonde tank-topped woman with a grin.
She must have been used to seeing soldiers have their spirit worn down like this.
With a puzzled look, Quenser asked, “So why are you here?”
“I’m Genelia, a marriage scam artist. Nice to meet you!”
“…Oh, wow.”
“I pretend to have noble blood to make money. I never thought that money box I met in that bar would be the idiotic son of some high ranking member of the military. I got in a lot of trouble for that. As a result, I’ve been moved around among the harshest battlefields in the world.”
“Wait, wait, wait! This is one of the harshest battlefields in the world?” cut in Heivia as he tried to take apart the assault rifle to fix the jam and ended up burning his fingers on the hot barrel. “I thought they would gather a team of people they want to get rid of and send them out into the mountains on what is supposed to be an anti-terror mission. But the team would intentionally be given the wrong information so they would attack some villain’s hideout. That way the higher ups can eliminate any allies they want without worrying about how skilled they are.”
“When you do that, you have to pay a pension to the families. These days, the higher ups pay close attention to how much tax money they spend. Other than what they waste on themselves, of course.”
“This island is surrounded by the blue ocean and summer lasts year round. Genius Object designers live here. It is protected by 4 second generation Objects. This is heaven on earth and quite possibly the safest place in the world. What about it is harsh?”
“Because it is so peaceful, there is nothing to do.” Genelia fired repeatedly out towards the ocean to fill her quota. “When people earn the ire of the military, it is usually because they have a strong individual streak, right? Maybe they refuse to shoot children or they claim it is a subordinate’s job to stop a commander who is doing something wrong. Well, those kinds of ideals will rot away in no time on this island. After all, they don’t let you do anything.”
“…”
“During the first few months, you will be afraid that you are growing rusty and try to rehone your skills with independent training. But it’s no use. It’s too late. Both your mind and body will already be slowing. Here we have delicious food, air-conditioned private rooms, video games, a fully stocked bar, and lots of high quality cigars. …Once you get a taste of this, you’ll never want to go back to the jungle or the desert. They didn’t have online stores in Napoleon’s age, but if he was given a chance to use them for a while, he would never want to go back to the 18th century or the 19th century or whenever it was.”
That was how it was “harsh”.
Quenser and Heivia finally understood what kind of place they had been sent to.
“In other words, this island is a diplomatic way of urging us to retire?”
“That’s what it means to be sent to sit by the window. If the higher ups fire you directly, they have to spend more on severance pay. So instead they give you just enough work to justify minimum wage. There are only three patterns for the people sent here. Some continue the futile struggle against growing rusty, some begin thinking of retirement before the rust reaches the core of their bodies, and some decide to accept the rust and just enjoy themselves with the taxpayer’s money.”
“Is that really okay?” Heivia looked over towards the central island. “The most famous designers in the Legitimacy Kingdom are gathered here. Should they really use this as a place to let delinquent soldiers rot? It sounds more like the place for some ultimate special forces to me.”
“Oh, they do have a mysterious elite unit,” replied Genelia offhand. “The Night Edge Platoon. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s like they’re trying to sound cool. But they do protect everything well enough. And that just makes the rest of us feel all the more useless. Apparently the Night Edge Platoon swaps out its members every few months to prevent them from growing rusty. I guess this is like a vacation for them. But they’re dangerous. Really dangerous. If you tried to talk to one of them like this, you could easily get your throat slit.”
“I saw them. Even in this 40 degree heat, they had their heads completely covered in black masks. I doubt you could ever have a proper conversation with that kind of honor student.”
“But the military wants that kind of ‘honor student’ that never makes any complaints. After all, the exact same amount of the people’s tax money goes to those honor students as goes to the problem students.”
“Keh. They aren’t the legendary White Bears that disappeared in a South American desert. Y’know, that 115th Independent Royal Guard Company. Soldiers that follow their commander’s orders with no complaint like that are rare.”
“You mean those elites from the Volga District? The ones said to be knights working to protect a young princess from wicked politicians? From what I heard, they could have a movie made out of them.”
“Yeah, they like to make entertainment out of the tragedies of war. …Come to think of it, a movie would probably work out great since Princess Staivia is so popular. I hear they sell photographs of her in front of the palace in Moscow.”
“Are they all pedophiles or something?”
“If you said that in Volga plaza, you’d get shot.”
Quenser and Heivia had digressed into pointless chatter, so Genelia spoke up to bring them back on track.
“With delinquent soldiers like us, the tax money spent to pay us is considered wasted and they do not want to pay the pension to our families if we died. And so the higher ups want to find another way to get us out of the military.”
“If they want to save money, wouldn’t it be easier to tear out the fattened hearts of those higher ups?”
“You do realize that kind of comment is what led you to be a target for cutbacks, right?”
(How many months will we be stuck here? No, how many months will we last?)
With that offhand thought, Quenser continued to shoot his rifle out to sea. It was not as bad as the mythological Japanese children’s limbo, but being forced to do completely useless work with seemingly no end in sight was a way of harassing soldiers and wearing down their spirits. It was similar to the method used in prisons during the middle ages.
Of course, Quenser and Heivia both had their individual goals and they had joined the military to accomplish those goals.
And so this was no time for them to be sent out into the middle of nowhere just so the higher ups could harass them.
But…
“This place is filled with genius Object designers, right? Heivia, you may be out of luck, but this shouldn’t be too bad for me. In fact, I can probably learn a lot.”
“You idiot! That stuff is at the highest level of classification. You’ll never get to see any of it! It isn’t something you can just sneak a peek at like the women’s bath!!”
“I can just ask them while in bed. If you like, I can give you a lecture on what I learn.”
Those two problem students would probably never shut their mouths even if they were sent to Mars, and they were as energetic as ever. As they focused more on chatting than firing their rifles, a bit of static ran through their radios, immediately followed by an announcement.
“Quenser Barbotage. Calling battlefield student Quenser Barbotage who recently transferred from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. As per the instructions of one of the researchers, you are to head to the Center as soon as possible.”
“…What? Am I being called to the principal’s office for a lecture?”
“The Center is a gathering of genius girls. It’s a lot like a girl’s school. In all seriousness, I hear it is 100% female! Dammit! Yet again I get left behind for this scrawny intellectual!! There’s something wrong with this world. Is god jealous of my good looks!?”
“It looks like your chance to take one of them to bed is already here,” said Genelia. “Well, I’m sure the Night Edge Platoon can’t believe this either. So be careful, okay?”
“Be careful about what? Those scaaaary trainers from Night Edge?”
“Do you know what this place is called? The nursery,” said Genelia with a grin. “And that isn’t because of us. It’s because of the genius designers in the Center. The top levels of the military can’t handle them either. They’re geniuses, so the military doesn’t want to lose them, but they’re too much trouble to keep nearby. This heaven in the Cook Addition Islands was created to gather all of them in a single place.”
“…So that building is filled with perverts?”
“And they have enough individual talent to force their way past the general wisdom of society. The very fact that a newcomer like you is being invited into that top secret facility should be proof enough. Normally, the Night Edge Platoon would remove your head in the name of preventing the leakage of classified information if you so much as approached that facility without going through the proper procedures.”
“I hope I get to meet the kind of pervert that walks around wearing nothing but a lab coat. That hope is of course limited to girls.”
“Oh, come on now. You’d be too shocked to stand if you actually saw that.”
