Chapter 3(3/4)
His face stiffened with fear as he turned tail and fled.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!!”
He used his radio to inform the others of the oddity and ran into a nearby building. It was the Baby Magnum’s maintenance facility.
The maintenance soldiers working inside those thick walls may not have understood the gravity of the situation.
But once they saw the storm of bugs covering the windows and sounding like heavy raindrops, the fear finally caught up to them.
They quickly sealed all the entrances, but a few had gotten inside. They quickly crushed those and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The old maintenance lady clicked her tongue.
“The radios are cut off. Now we can’t contact the Princess while she tests the Baby Magnum out there.”
“You mean I just missed her!? Why now of all times!?”
The large space meant for the Baby Magnum was oddly empty.
Heivia cursed, but that would not solve anything.
The old lady gathered the maintenance soldiers and started gathering some equipment.
They were probably making some kind of weapon to fight back.
But what would be any use against such a large swarm of bugs? Heivia looked out one of the relatively unaffected windows and saw a pillar of fire. Someone had probably made an impromptu flamethrower out of a fuel vehicle, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. They would be roasting quite a few of them, but dozens as many flew in to swallow up those people. Some of them flew to the humans while still burning, as if to take the soldiers out with them.
“What do we do? What are we supposed to do about this?”
“We just have to figure something out on our own. C’mon, if you’re gonna be useless, at least get out of the way of our work.”
Heivia looked dubiously back at the old lady. The threat of the bugs was one thing, but that old lady was oddly calm after seeing such a hopeless scene.
The old lady appeared to be gathering nonlethal gas grenades used for riot suppression.
“Listen, our opponent is outdoors! We won’t be able to kill them without one hell of a powerful smokescreen! These are made to be safe, but a few small adjustments and we can turn them into a powerful insecticide. Our resources are limited, so I can only show you how once. Anyone who screws it up and wastes one will be tied up outside as bug-food!!”
Insecticide was the best way of killing insects.
The answer was so obvious that Heivia actually laughed.
He had been too overwhelmed to even reach that most obvious answer.
And when they were only up against small bugs.
“Will that really work?”
“That depends on the wind. If we’re lucky, it’ll cover almost the entire maintenance base in a smokescreen.”
The old lady covered her nose and mouth with a scarf and quickly manipulated the strong-smelling chemical.
“You get ready for dealing with things afterwards. We have to do something about the bugs to rescue the soldiers collapsing out there, but we’re using a smokescreen of insecticide. That’s harmful to humans too, so we need to drag the victims out of there and perform first aid as soon as the bugs are dead. You remember your rescue training, right? Let’s get started!!”
They did nothing wrong.
The insecticide using nonlethal gas grenades was a more effective weapon than bullets or knives and they showed commendable courage for opening the doors protecting them to aim the gas grenade launchers outside to rescue the soldiers still out there.
But there was one ominous factor out there: the impromptu flamethrower using a fuel vehicle.
Gas grenades and hairspray were made pretty much the same. They used pressurized gas to spray out the liquid inside as an aerosol. A number of gases could be used, but due to environmental concerns, propane gas had become more common than Freon or carbon dioxide.
And thus, the gas grenades would burn.
As soon as it made contact with the flamethrower’s flames, the smokescreen meant to rescue them all detonated and created a sea of flames.
Part 7
“Gyah!!”
Quenser flinched back from the intense wave of heat and tried to flee back inside.
But the sole of Frolaytia’s boot kicked him in the back and pushed him back outside.
“We can’t turn back now! If the leader slows down, the odds of survival for everyone following you drops!! You started this, so get going, Quenser!!”
“Dammit! What the hell is going on!?”
Half in desperation, Quenser ran out into the outside world that reeked of gasoline.
There was nothing but fire as far as the eye could see. The heat was like a solid wall and he thought it would burn his hair away. Black smoke caught in his throat. On top of that, the swarm of crickets had not been wiped out. They broke through the screen of flames and smoke to rush toward this new “food”.
Sharp pain reached him through his uniform and the duct tape, but not because he was being bitten. It was the pain of them flying into him. He knew that, but a strange sweat still covered him and he felt like they were eating him to the bone. The source of the pain also seemed to be gradually shifting.
A dull vibration reached him from behind. He could not look back because it would throw off his sense of direction, but the detention barracks had probably toppled over. There was no going back. There were no safe walls or doors. He could only continue forward.
(My compass! The compass in my hand! I need to calculate the distance using my steps...)
He looked down at his hand to shake off the nightmare around him.
Someone was lying on the ground nearby and he tripped over them.
“Wah, wah! Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
He lost his compass as he tripped and he had no way to search for it with the low visibility. And who had that been? Had the explosion taken them out or had they been eaten by the bugs? Just what was going on here?
His mind started going blank with panic, but then someone grabbed his arm and tugged him forward.
It was Eric from the Faith Organization.
“It’s okay. We’ll be okay!! If we make it eight hundred meters southeast we can get through this, right!? I have a compass! We can survive together!!”
“W-wahh, wahhhh!”
“It’s too late for that guy back there. He isn’t moving. But we’re alive, so we have to survive this!!”
Only after Eric grabbed his shoulders and yelled into his face did Quenser regain his focus on reality.
He shook his head and spoke while covered in bugs.
“Sorry. Let’s go. Let’s survive this.”
“That’s more like it!!”
Eric slapped him on the back to urge him onward. The Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization shared a compass to slowly advance.
“What happened to Skuld? Why are you alone!?”
“Don’t look back! We got separated almost immediately. I’m worried about her too, but we can’t afford to lose our sense of direction. We can only pray that the others are heading this way too!!”
It was like a journey through hell.
There was nothing but black bugs and red flames as far as the eye could see. Eight hundred meters to the southeast was the shortest distance, but it was all over if they found a wall of flames in their way. They could not let themselves be enveloped in flames, but they also could not hope to bypass the flames with so little visibility. If they tried, they would lose their sense of direction and lose track of where their destination was.
They were nearly praying as they walked.
The pain of the crickets striking their bodies forced them to continue focusing on reality.
They could not keep up even the mental capacity necessary to think about time, distance, direction, or even the distinction between enemy and ally. Their minds went so maddeningly blank that they nearly forgot their own names. They became machines that simply moved their legs in silence.
Even so, they made it.
Without running into any walls of flames, their hands reached the distant storage building’s wall.
“We did it...”
Even in the middle of hell, Quenser smiled.
“We did it, goddammit!! We’ve finally arrived!!”
They had apparently been near the head of the group, so they grabbed the doorknob for the human entrance with bugs still covering their bodies. Fortunately, they did not find that someone else had already taken refuge there and locked the door. It opened like normal and they poured inside.
Frolaytia and Elfily arrived together.
There was still no sign of Skuld, the Pilot Elite who had been with them when they had left.
“Hurry,” said Elfily. “Hurry up and shut the door. This is all meaningless if the crickets get inside!!”’
Quenser turned around in shock, but the eyes behind her glasses were serious.
“We can’t! We can’t do that, Miss Elfily! There are still Faith Organization prisoners out there. They risked their lives to reach this building! If we shut them out, they’ll all die!! We’d be betraying them after convincing them to do this!”
“The same fate awaits them if the building fills with crickets. They can’t escape hell whether they arrive or not, so shutting the door is the only option!!”
“We can’t...”
“They would have shut us out if the roles were reversed. We just happened to get here first. That’s all this is. Or am I wrong!? Do you have some proof that they would have let us in!?”
“I don’t care if they would or not!!”
“Shut the door, Quenser Barbotage.”
The student heard a quiet metallic sound as Elfily pulled a handgun from her waist and aimed it at his face.
Still, he shook his head.
“Shut the door, Quenser!!”
She shouted at him, but he pressed his back against the open door. Even if she shot him, he would collapse against the door and continue to hold it open.
Just as she clearly clicked her tongue, the second group arrived.
Then the third and the fourth.
As the number of Faith Organization soldiers grew, Elfily lost her influence. She would be unable to deal with all of them even if she fired every bullet she had on hand.
And of course, plenty of bugs flew in with the people.
There were more than two hundred people in all.
After grabbing Skuld’s arm and pulling her in last, Eric shouted from within the bugs.
“Is that everyone? Okay! Close it, Quenser!!”
“Is everyone accounted for!?”
“Yes! It really is okay! I’m not lying!! So close it!!”
He shut the door with his entire body.
A deluge of bell-like chirping filled the building. More than just a few hundred had gotten inside. The number covering the floor and walls clearly reached quadruple digits. Normally, this would mean the building was contaminated and far from safe.
But that was not the case.
“Huh? They aren’t attacking us?”
Elfily looked confused as she kept her gun in her hand and breathed heavily.
Frolaytia explained as she observed the situation.
“These are ‘brazen bugs’. They ignore the normal pyramid structure to attack even large beasts when there are hundreds of thousands of them. ...But if there aren’t that many, they lose their advantage and return to being obedient bugs.”
This was just like the cricket Quenser had seen in the duct.
It had been so close by, but it had only sat there chirping. Without a giant swarm, they would not try to bite people.
Meaning...
“Split them up and they’re just bugs.”
Quenser slowly stood up.
“They don’t stand a chance against us now.”
Part 8
The insect extermination began.
It was officially to ensure the safety of the storage building, but was that really why? As they crushed the nearly defenseless bugs with their boots or with mops, they may really have been releasing their built up frustrations.
They did not feel sorry for the bugs or find the action unpleasant.
Their hearts had entirely numbed over.
“Goddammit! Goddammit goddammit goddammit!!”
As he crushed them underfoot, Quenser’s chest filled with a hopeless lethargy and emptiness.
With an opponent that fought back and would try to eat him if he let his guard down, he would have been able to slaughter them without issue. But these crickets were different. They just stood on the floor, stared up at him with emotionless eyes, and vibrated their wings to create the clear bell-like chirping. It felt like they were placing all the blame on the rampaging humans.
He started feeling silly going along with it, so he moved away from the commotion and leaned against a wall without any bugs on it.
He removed the towel from his mouth and nose.
“What the hell is this...?”
He slid down to a seated position.
Even with the sea of flames outside, the swarm showed no sign of being wiped out. And yet having the Baby Magnum work toward exterminating them would only blow the maintenance base to smithereens. Could they open the door and lure small groups of them in at a time to squish them like they were now? How many days would that take to finish? The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers still outside would be eaten to the bone by then and Quenser’s group had no food or water. They could not live in this storage building forever.
So what could they do?
How were they supposed to survive this?
“Quenser.”
That was when Eric of the Faith Organization spoke to him. Quenser slowly looked up and then looked puzzled. Eric was not alone. He was gently guiding Pilot Elite Skuld by the hand like an escort at a dinner party.
“Saint Skuld wishes to discuss something with you,” said Eric. “She said she could trust you.”
“Skuld did? What do you want?”
He honestly did not think they had much of a connection. They had spoken a bit in the detention barracks, but they had been enemies during the battle the night before and she would not know he had been listening to her interrogation through the one-way mirror.
But she seemed to see things differently.
“You hold a special position among the Legitimacy Kingdom,” explained Eric. “Being a student instead of a soldier definitely helps. To be honest, I’d prefer to use you as a point of contact than those young women.”
“I see. So what is this about?”
“This.”
Skuld casually held her hand.
One of the bell crickets was clinging to the gentle curve of her palm.
“Wah!!”
“It’s okay. This one won’t bite anymore.”
Skuld remained calm and gave the chirping insect an emotionless look.
“There’s something that bothers me about these bell crickets.”
“Something that bothers you?”
“I’ve seen them before.”
At first, Quenser did not know what she meant. Insects were not exactly rare. The issue here was the ridiculous number of them.
But Skuld had more to say.
“These are not naturally occurring bugs.”
“What?”
historical
“The Faith Organization has a project known as Draupnir. Do you know what that is?”
“?”
Quenser tilted his head, so Eric answered for him with a bitter smile.
“It’s a story from Norse mythology. It’s a gold bracelet owned by the god Odin and it increases in number after a set number of days. Just like the biscuits in that Island Nation nursery rhyme. So no matter how much money Odin spends, he will always have more. It’s a symbol of wealth.”
“Our Draupnir project was meant to secure a large amount of food,” explained Skuld. “The Objects stand out the most, but food is a necessary part of war, right? If we could develop a food source that would never run out, don’t you think we could wage war much more easily?”
“Hold on...”
At first, the bell crickets did not seem to have anything to do with a project to develop a food source, but if he removed all of his presuppositions...
“Hold on!! Are you saying these crickets are your food source!?”
“Apparently so,” said Eric. “I’ve only heard rumors, but bugs are near the bottom of the food chain and they can multiply endlessly in the right environment. Apparently some old guys in a lab were all excited about it being a more efficient source of protein than raising cattle or pigs.”
He made it sound like some theoretical issue, but then Skuld cut in.
“Oh? Aren’t the fries the most popular dish among the infantry berserkers? What do you think they squish up to shape into those?”
“G-gweeehhh!!!???”
Eric faced the other way and spewed some noises that will be omitted here.
Skuld remained calm.
“Draupnir is a genetically modified food insect and I believe that is what these are. For one thing, there are no bell crickets in the Antsiranana District’s Experimental Battlefield Madagascar. They should only be found in the Island Nation and Asia.”
“Frolaytia did say she’s seen them in a pet shop that specialized in the Island Nation.”
It was possible there were nocturnal chirping bugs on this island and an amateur might not be able to tell them apart, but that changed when they were clearly bell crickets.
Unnatural insects had been brought to an unnatural place.
Had it all been intentional?
“So they’ve been genetically modified to breed like crazy and never run out no matter how many you eat?” groaned Quenser. “I did hear crickets chirping all over the place last night. Had they already started multiplying then?”
“Let me make one thing clear. The Faith Organization only sees Draupnir as a project to provide the soldiers with food. I swear to you that they were not developed for use as a biological weapon.”
“I understand that. These are far too difficult to control to use them like that. We just have to pray your higher ups don’t see what happened here as a success.” Quenser wiped the sweat from his brow. “But this has given me some hope.”
“?”
“Skuld, you said these bell crickets have had their genes messed with, right? That’s fine, but do you know how that was done?”
“Only in general. I think a few of their chromosomes were intentionally damaged with chemicals and then they were crossbred for generation after generation. In a way, they had their genes damaged.”
“In other words, the abnormal level of breeding and growth came from damage to their chromosomes?”
“What about it?”
“It’s simple. The simpler a creature’s structure, the more easily their genes change due to outside stimuli. It’s enough for the flu to be different every year. And between humans and bugs, the bugs are much more easily affected.”
Quenser paused for a beat.
“These Draupnir are easily-altered bugs to begin with and their genes will be even more unstable after the intentional damage done to them. That means we just need one last push. If we damage the chromosomes of these killer crickets, we might be able to wipe them all out as their cells break down.”
“But how?”
“There are a few ways to alter genes. As you said, the easiest and most effective method is getting some help from chemicals, but you can also use UV, IR, coal tar, or asbestos. I think the solvent used for printing would work too. Really, just anything that’s been labelled carcinogenic should work.”
“Printing solvent? So what about Object paint?”
“They wouldn’t let our Elite Princess anywhere near something dangerous like that. Plus there’s something else that’s even more common.”
“Like what?”
“Extremely high-power microwaves. If we send out radar waves at max levels, we can exterminate all of the crickets swarming the maintenance base.”
Part 9
After they suggested their plan, Frolaytia created a map of the maintenance base zone using the tools and cans in the storage building. Normally that would not be something to show the Faith Organization POWs, but the base zone was made of vehicles and could thus be freely rearranged. If they did things right, this would not reveal any critical information.
“It’s nearby. The control tower and radar facility are only fifty meters west of here. Head there and we can send out high power radar waves just as Quenser suggested.”
They knew what they had to do.
Then something strange happened.
No one had been moving in the slightest, but as soon as Quenser raised his hand, Skuld did as well. And she was not the only one. Eric and Elfily did too.
“If Saint Skuld is heading out there, of course I am too.”
“The people suffering out there are Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. We have to do something.”
Finally, more and more hands were raised by Faith Organization soldiers who Quenser did not know or recognize. He realized this was never going to end if he did not put a stop to it himself.
“Okay, okay!! We’ll be going, so the rest of you wait here. We wouldn’t get the work done any faster even if we all went!”
They once more covered their mouth and nose with towels and used duct tape to close up any part of their clothing the bugs could get in through. That did not take much for Skuld whose skintight special suit already covered her entire body.
“Then let’s go. Close the door behind us as soon as we’re out.”
Their march through hell began anew.
Everywhere they looked, they only saw bugs, bugs, bugs!! The sea of flames was still burning just as strong, so the bell crickets were flying around like sparks as they themselves burned. They nearly lost track of distance and direction when faced with the overwhelming sight, but they desperately put up with the pain and supported each other’s bodies as they relied on their compasses to take one step at a time.
A mere fifty meters felt like it took years off their lives.
Quenser was gasping for breath by the time he placed his hands on the control tower’s wall. Technically, it was the giant tire of the vehicle at its base. He felt along to circle around it in search of the stairs up into the control tower.
And then...
“?”
Suddenly, the reliable feeling of the tire vanished.
The visibility was almost down to zero, but when he strained his eyes, he saw the tire floating upwards, despite being taller than he was.
No, it was not floating.
“Waaah!? I-it’s falling! It’s falling over!!”
“Move away, Quenser!!”
An arm that likely belonged to Eric pulled him back just as the air was stirred up. A gust of wind caused by great pressure briefly blew away the black smoke and crickets. The screen blocking their view was split apart as if by a giant’s sword.
What had caused this was obvious.
It was the same as the detention barracks they had come from. A few of the tires had been eaten through and the weight distribution had collapsed, causing a chain reaction of bursting tires. Then the building had been unable to maintain its balance. And since this was a control tower rising toward the sky, its center of gravity was higher up, making it easier to lose balance. It fell over all at once.
A deafening roar and tons of dust scattered out, blowing away the flying insects.
“Ahh.” Elfily cried out in despair. “The control tower! The radar! Now we can’t give it our commands. They machinery inside must have been smashed to pieces!!”
The swarm of crickets filled the empty space and the world became hopelessly closed off once more.
“...!!”
Even so, Quenser clenched his teeth and walked over to the collapsed control tower. He felt the sharp pain of the insects tackling him and they covered his body, but he could not give up now. He had no idea how many soldiers were collapsed across the base. He could not calculate how many lives were depending on his decision here. He could not just give up and head back.
“Dammit...”
A cricket flew into one of his eyes, narrowing his vision. A dull pain stabbed deep into his brain.
“Goddammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”
He managed to climb inside through a broken window. There were already tons of bugs inside. The bloody soldiers groaning in pain had likely been the ones working inside when the tower collapsed. There were countless bugs covering their bodies, but pulling them off one at a time would be meaningless now.
Quenser looked around the smashed-up room and approached what looked like a radar screen.
“Ahh...”
He reached for it, but Skuld, who had to know more about radars than him, shook her head.
“The display isn’t right. In fact, it’s completely dead. I don’t know if it was the impact of the fall or the crickets chewing through the wiring, but this radar is useless.”
That was the last thing he had wanted to hear.
As the world grew dark before his eyes, he grabbed a nearby microphone. He was almost drowning in a sea of bugs, but he managed to force out a voice.
“Control to Baby Magnum, control to Baby Magnum ...Can you hear me, Princess? If you can, then help us!!”
“What will this accomplish?” groaned Eric who was similarly buried in bugs. “No one can help us even if we do get an SOS out. Firing an Object’s cannons will just turn us to mincemeat.”
But Quenser viewed things differently.
This was not just a desperate shot in the dark.
He gave his answer as Skuld looked puzzled next to him.
“It never had to be this radar that we used. As long as I had communications equipment powerful enough to break through this swarm, I could ask the Princess for help. Isn’t that right?”
He looked to Skuld as if he were confirming a perfectly normal fact.
“Objects are covered in weapons, so their radars have to be even more powerful than the base’s!!”
Part 10
There was no light and there was no sound.
The Baby Magnum simply scattered powerful radar waves in every direction. Soon thereafter, the tens or even hundreds of thousands of bell crickets fell to the ground like their power switch had been flipped.
Part 11
Quenser gasped for breath while tearing the duct tape from his body.
Exterminating all those bugs was not the end of this. First they had to rescue the injured. Then they had to report on the damage caused by collapsed buildings and chewed-through wiring. They also had to extinguish the sea of flames. And if they did not dispose of the bug corpses littering the base, they could easily become a hotbed of disease.
A few of the prisoners did not show up when they were counted.
They had probably used the commotion to escape and were currently running through the humid jungle. If the Faith Organization learned about the damage here, they could make another attack with the Trinity Style piloted by Urd or Verdandi.
“Now I’m nervous,” he said without thinking.
“Yes,” replied the person next to him.
It was not the Princess or Heivia.
<-->>