Volume 3, 3: Honor is Priceless >> Emergency Interception at Victoria Island(3/6)
Or so Quenser thought.
He then heard some unbelievable words over his radio coming from a controller back at the base.
“The Active Sledge has been destroyed!!”
“...What?”
“I repeat, the Active Sledge has been greatly damaged and has sunk!! The pilot Elite is confirmed to have escaped. The Object cannot continue fighting!!”
“How!?” shouted Quenser as he grabbed at his radio. “The Indigo Plasma was supposed to be the 24th’s only Object!! So how was the Active Sledge sunk!?”
“I do not know. It was suddenly blown away. We are checking the satellite imagery as we speak!!”
“Shit,” swore Quenser as he pulled out his handheld device.
He could view the GPS map, too. He called up the data on the area of sea the Active Sledge had been passing through. Sure enough, the friendly Object had disappeared. It had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
What Quenser could see was something he simply could not understand.
He saw 6 giant forms.
As if to replace the Active Sledge, six shapes just as large as the Active Sledge could be seen.
That was what had blown away the friendly Object.
Quenser could not believe it, but they could only be...
“Are all these 6 things...Objects...?” gasped Quenser.
He then heard the controller speaking from his radio.
“We went back through the footage and checked. They came from the sea. They rose up from within the sea!! Radar signals on the sea are attenuated by the thick ice, so they have difficulty reaching the waters below. The satellite and radar have difficulty staying in focus when trying to target an Object in the sea. We should have been on our guard for submarines coming from the sea!!”
“From the sea?” Heivia looked like he had just heard a really bad joke. “What do you mean from the sea!? Did these Objects take a replicant inspiration from orcas or dolphins!?”
“Dammit...”
As he stood atop the hill, Quenser looked blankly off into the distance.
He could see something gigantic approaching beyond the white horizon.
“I can see them!? They really are Objects. The 24th really does have 6 more Objects in addition to the Indigo Plasma!!”
The overall silhouette was similar to the Indigo Plasma’s. The two main cannons had been reduced to one and the 5 ski-like parts on the back had been reduced to two, but the design was still basically the same.
And an Object was an Object.
No one could stop their advance.
The six Objects forcefully broke through the ice covering the ocean surface in a straight path for Victoria Island. They had isosceles triangle-shaped floats for moving along the sea, but they automatically detached when they approached the beach. With a thick metallic noise, the six Objects separated from the floats and smoothly moved up onto land and to the front line of the battlefield.
Quenser and the others could not do anything.
There was nothing they could even hope to do.
As the Objects approached, Quenser leaped to the side. He lay flat on the ground and placed his hands over the back of his head. The 50+ meter machine passed by relatively nearby. It paid him no heed whatsoever.
“Heivia? Hey, what is it? Pull yourself together!!” shouted Quenser.
Heivia remained on the ground, refusing to stand up. His arms and legs were trembling eerily. Six new Objects had joined the battle. Heivia was in a state of shock at the new development.
Even as he shook Heivia’s shoulder, Quenser’s mental state was pushed to its limits.
He had no idea what had happened.
He could not understand what they had done wrong to end up in that situation.
He started having trouble breathing and it felt like the connections between thoughts in his mind started to snap.
But...
The seven Objects of the 24th Mobile Maintenance Battalion took action to end the battle before anyone had time to think.
First, they fired through the Snow Quake that’s movements had dulled due to its damaged propulsion device.
Now that it was isolated after losing its two friendly Objects, the Baby Magnum was attacked.
Even with the power of an Object, it was left helpless while on its own.
Low-stability plasma cannons fired from multiple directions at staggered intervals ripped away piece after piece of the princess’s armor. It lost all ability to function in less than 60 seconds.
(This is insane...)
Quenser could not even force out his voice.
The Objects had been destroyed before he could even think about assisting.
The destruction had not had the same impression of overwhelming and savage violence that Objects had had up until then. It was pure division of labor. It had even had a bit of the same empty feeling as when a giant cake is evenly sliced up so that a single slice can be brought to your table.
(So this is how the 24th fights. It’s just too fast. It’s so over-optimized that you can’t read any human emotion in it at all.)
After having turned the two Objects to scrap metal scattered across the snowy plain, the seven Objects of the 24th Mobile Maintenance Battalion calmly left the battlefield.
“What...?” muttered Quenser blankly. “Why didn’t they finish off the princess?”
The seven Objects of the 24th had thoroughly stripped away the Baby Magnum’s outer shell, but they had not destroyed the reactor or cockpit in the center. They could have easily destroyed it if they had wanted to, but they had spared her.
Quenser could see no logical reason for doing so.
However, the answer came to him from a surprising source.
It came from Quenser’s radio.
Part 6
A staticky voice came over the radio.
However, the joy in the deep, male voice could be heard even through the static.
“To all my respected allies in the Legitimacy Kingdom military. This is Prizewell City Slicker, the Elite of the Legitimacy Kingdom military’s 24th Mobile Maintenance Battalion.”
In her officer’s room back in the maintenance base zone, Froleytia grimaced.
“It seems there has been a bit of a misunderstanding, so allow me to make an announcement that should clear everything up. We are not enemies of the Legitimacy Kingdom. We have taken action to ensure the victory of the Legitimacy Kingdom in this worldwide war.”
As the CS broadcast reporter girl ate canned lasagna in the passageway, she looked over at the radios of the soldiers heading around on patrol.
“Needless to say, the driving force behind war is the economy. And the Legitimacy Kingdom’s economy has stagnated. Why is that? It is caused by a lack of speed at which information spreads throughout the Legitimacy Kingdom.”
The old maintenance lady stopped working on her preparations for a pit stop in the Object maintenance area.
“The Legitimacy Kingdom has an official language, and yet we continue to use a great diversity of languages at once. That is lowering the speed at which information spreads. The world economy changes minute by minute and second by second, so that slight delay causes vital losses. If the Legitimacy Kingdom is to continue fighting and to achieve victory in the end, we must do something about this problem.”
The 24th had 7 Objects and had destroyed the Baby Magnum, Snow Quake, and Active Sledge.
Prizewell spoke with great strength as if to emphasize that advantage.
“In other words, we must exterminate those other languages.”
His tone seemed to declare that there was no one who could argue with him.
It was a proud declaration that his 7 Objects could breach the 5 Objects protecting the Atlantic Ocean as the Legitimacy Kingdom’s second line of defense.
“The proper language will bring about the proper economy. The speed at which information spreads will improve and we will be able to keep up with the ever-changing world economy. ...This also means that those who do not speak the proper language have no right to take part in the economy.”
His were the words of a ruling class.
No matter what would happen, his position could not waver. It did not matter what troubles that caused for those around him. His was the tone of a man who felt that way.
“And that is why I must act. I must redistribute the proper citizens of the Legitimacy Kingdom to their proper place while putting the others in their proper place as well.”
However, he could not be stopped.
The overwhelming military might that 7 Objects gave him meant he could get away with any atrocity he wished.
“This redistribution will be carried out based upon the bare minimum of what is needed for the Legitimacy Kingdom: a proper language.”
Froleytia heard a controller say something about the Objects approaching.
“All units evacuate!! The enemy is after the ability to maintain the Object. They did not care about our flesh-and-blood soldiers from the very beginning!! Everyone is to leave the buildings and the base zone ASAP!!”
“Those who speak the proper language will be accepted as citizens. Those who cannot speak it but are putting all their efforts into learning it will be granted the right to live as slave laborers. ...However, those who cannot speak it and make no effort to learn it are not worth wasting the Legitimacy Kingdom’s resources on. I have no intention of allowing such parasites to exist.”
Numerous low-stability plasma cannons fired on the maintenance base zone.
The bombardment had been given after a plentiful delay.
He did not intend to kill those inside.
After all, they were all from the Legitimacy Kingdom military.
(Did he give us time to escape in order to prove he is just!?)
Froleytia gritted her teeth as she watched the base zone erupt into a sea of flames.
“I have already transmitted the necessary report to the highest institution in the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Sovereign Parliament. The sovereigns who rule the people need only do as the report says and carry out a language test in schools all across the Legitimacy Kingdom. If they do so, we will have no need to cross the Atlantic Ocean to have direct talks in the European home country.”
The giant forms of the 7 Objects passed by the remains of the ruined base zone. Afterwards, the trucks transporting the 24th’s foot soldiers and the bare minimum of maintenance vehicles met up with them. It looked like a victory parade.
They were all smiling.
Some of them aimed their guns at Froleytia and the other helpless people from the 37th and then jokingly pretended to pull the trigger.
They were no longer the 24th Mobile Maintenance Battalion from the Legitimacy Kingdom’s military database.
The size of the force and the morals of the troops were simply not the same.
It was simply not normal for a single battalion to have 7 Objects.
“However, we have a plan in case you refuse,” continued the enemy as they passed by. “We will carry out a small military exercise to ensure you understand just how serious we are and just how powerful we are.”
A military exercise.
That term had a truly horrible ring to it.
The traitors made it very clear who they would be targeting with their 7 Objects.
“There is an immigrant residential city located on the eastern end of Victoria Island in the Alaska district. As those living there have come from lands under the control of other world powers, they are merely a burden that has no intention of becoming a part of our culture. We will begin by carrying out an exercise using them so that you may understand the vision we strive for. Depending on your answer, the same thing may happen in Europe. We beg the Sovereign Parliament to take the results of these actions into account when deciding on their answer to us.”
Prizewell City Slicker stated his goal.
It was not a war.
The other side did not possess the military strength needed to resist.
And he was well aware of that fact.
“We will now carry out this exercise using our seven Objects to demonstrate the power of an attack performed using multiple Objects. Also, these seven are not our only force. A second group is nearing completion in manufacturing plants.”
They held an overwhelming military force.
They exhibited more power than any individual should possess.
“We have also developed a system to efficiently mass produce Elites. The proper language will provide proper knowledge. These results are a clear demonstration of our ideals.”
It was quite the demonstration.
And Prizewell City Slicker summed it all up in his next statement.
“Those who use the proper language shall be citizens, those who cannot use it but work towards learning it shall be slaves, and those who cannot use it and have no intention of learning it shall receive death. That is the only way for the Legitimacy Kingdom economy to grow and lead us to victory.”
The transmission ended there.
All that was left now was a large-scale slaughter.
Most of those who came from other cultures would be unable to speak the official Legitimacy Kingdom language. That was to be expected and it was no real problem. However, a language preservation activist like Prizewell would not allow it. His love for the “proper language” would lead him to mercilessly fire the Object’s cannons at just a slight error in intonation.
And he was also a lineage advocate. He would never accept immigrants who had come from elsewhere. In his vision, those people would be forced to choose between being subordinates, slaves, or dead.
(Can we get reinforcements from the home country...?)
For a split second, Froleytia considered that, but she then shook her head. In all likelihood no additional Objects would come. Now that all of the Objects in the Alaska district had been taken out, the higher ups in the home country would definitely put their own safety above all else. The current situation left the efficacy of the defensive line on the Atlantic in doubt. No matter how many Objects the home country had, they would all be sent to defend the Atlantic. They would never be sent to the Alaska district.
(But we cannot allow the 24th to carry out this atrocity.)
The situation looked grim, but Froleytia grabbed her radio. She set the frequency and contacted her subordinates who were scattered around the area.
“Quenser, Heivia!! Can you tell how much damage was done to the Objects!?”
“It seems the Elite ejected from the Snow Quake. The princess was able to stick with it. Her armor is in pieces, but it seems she can still move.”
“Understood. If our control equipment is still functioning, we can monitor the data. Maintenance soldiers!! Dig up as much usable equipment as you can find in the rubble!!”
A flustered maintenance soldier replied to Froleytia’s command.
“Eh? Wait a second. Eh?”
“Load up as many vehicles as you can and carry out the pit stop directly on the front line!! No matter how much of an advantage they have, only the Baby Magnum has a chance of stopping the 24th’s Objects!! We need to repair the Baby Magnum to as close as working as possible before those nutjobs attack the city!!”
“No, no!! Please wait. ...Hey, what is going on!? Where did the chief go!?”
That last bit seemed to be directed at someone other than Froleytia.
Froleytia frowned and asked, “What happened?”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t seem to find the chief!!”
Froleytia looked over at the surrounding sea of flames with a bitter expression.
“...Did she not get away in time?”
“N-no, she did!! She was here just a second ago!! We were all listening to City Slicker’s transmission...or rather, declaration of war together!! But we looked away for an instant and-...!!”
(...Wait.)
Froleytia narrowed her eyes slightly when she heard that.
“That old lady wasn’t originally from the Legitimacy Kingdom, was she? I recall hearing that she is an immigrant from the Capitalist Corporations’ Japanese Islands.”
“Y-yes. What about it?”
“What about her daughter and son-in-law?”
The maintenance soldier did not respond to Froleytia’s question.
She asked again.
“She didn’t come alone, right? She had her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter with her. Where do they live? Where in the vast Legitimacy Kingdom do they live!?”
The maintenance soldier still did not respond.
However, it seemed Froleytia’s fears got across to him.
“It can’t be...” he said.
“The immigrant residential city. This is an unpleasant coincidence.” Froleytia took a deep breath and scratched at her head with one hand. “What does that old lady hope to do against 7 Objects!?”
Part 7
Quenser’s face paled when he heard the transmission from Froleytia.
“So that old lady headed off to save her family in the immigrant residential city!?”
“Yes. Honestly, she’s lucky the Black Uniforms are elsewhere. If they had caught her, she would have been shot on sight.”
From the sound of her voice, Froleytia must have been utterly shocked. She seemed to have thought she only had two people in her unit stupid enough to do something like that.
“I will be sending the maintenance unit’s vehicles to where you are. Help treat the wounded and make the necessary preparations. Check for any remaining enemy soldiers and use explosives to blow away any obstacles that will get in the vehicles’ way. Understand?”
“Will we make it in time?”
“It won’t be easy, but luckily the 24th’s Objects are travelling along with the foot soldiers. They have to match the speed of the military trucks and armored vehicles. If we can repair the princess’s propulsion device, she might be able to catch up. That is why we need to keep the time loss to an absolute minimum. Do not cut corners in these preliminary preparations.”
The transmission ended there.
However, Quenser and the others had nothing more to do. The wounded had already been treated, and they could see no obstacles across the vast snowy plain. All they could do was stay put.
“Hey, Quenser!! I heard that transmission. What do you think about what our giant-breasted commander said!?”
“Does it matter!? We’re the only ones that can move right now. If we’re going to save that old lady or protect the immigrant residential city, we have to act now!!”
“Wait. Sorry, but I was kind of hoping you would take this more in the direction of ‘Froleytia ordered us to wait here, so we have no choice but to give up this time’! Ah, what!? Hey, stop that! What are you doing!?”
“Just listen, Heivia,” said Quenser as he grabbed at the collar of the idiot who always seemed to chicken out when it mattered. “The 24th is approaching the immigrant residential city as we speak. Nothing says the Objects have to stay with the foot soldiers. If they head out at full speed on a whim, they will be there in no time at all. ...Do you really think we have time to think about this? We need to act now. And you are the only one who can drive.”
“Don’t be stupid! Don’t get caught up in the situation!! You don’t seem to get this, so let me explain it to you. Seven Objects. The enemy has seven Objects!! How are we supposed to stand up to that with just the two of us!? We wouldn’t be able to do anything even if it was just one of them!!”
Heivia shook Quenser’s hand off of his collar and shook his head. He seemed to be letting out the trembling that he had been forcing down until then and his expression looked like that of a frightened child.
“What is our purpose in this war!? I’m working to gain the honor I need to inherit my noble family and you are working to become an Object designer as quickly as possible, right!? We’re not running around out here with rifles just to get killed!! We don’t need to do this! We’ve done plenty already!! Why are we the ones that have to head down into hell every single goddamn time!?”
That was the overwhelming fear people had of Objects.
That unreasonable situation held the underlying assumption that it could never be overturned.
What Heivia was saying was perfectly natural for anyone of that day and age. It was the people who felt nothing when suggesting they stand before those monstrous weapons that had something wrong with them.
Quenser understood that.
However...
“Calm down and think, Heivia.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that!? Do you have any idea what you’re saying!?”
“Heivia, do you really think they have 7 Objects!?” shouted Quenser.
Hearing that, Heivia suddenly stopped speaking. It was not that his emotions had cooled down. He was simply so confused he could not figure out what to say.
“How many people does it take to keep the Baby Magnum running? It takes an entire battalion. That’s 800 people. You need 800 people for a single Object. If they are using 7 of them, how many people, how much equipment, and how much money would they need? And how much time do you think it takes to raise a single Elite? There is no way they have been spending that much money this whole time!!”
“Then what are you suggesting!?”
“The Oceanian military nation!!”
Quenser suddenly spoke an unrelated term.
But it was not actually unrelated.
He continued, “They used gas tanks to look like nonexistent Objects!! Operations that attempt to throw the enemy into disarray with misleading appearances are hardly rare!!”
“That can’t be... They shot off the princess’s armor.”
“I didn’t say it was gas tanks this time.” Quenser shook his head. “But I doubt these are cutting edge Objects as that would require too great a constant expenditure. They are likely a budget model. Something lower than a Generation 0.5. The armor does not have proper craftsmanship, so it is much thinner and more brittle than a normal Object’s. Who knows if any of the non-main cannons are functional. They prepared a number of low-cost dummies to confuse the princess!!”
“We can’t know that!! What you’re saying makes sense. It isn’t normal for seven Objects to suddenly appear. But we have no proof! This is just speculation!! If they turn out to really be cutting edge Objects, our odds of survival are 0%! This is too much of a risk to base off of conjecture and speculation!!”
“Then I’ll prove it.”
“Hey, wait. Where are you going!! Hey!!”
Quenser headed for the coast while avoiding the areas heated by the low-stability plasma cannons. On the beach were the abandoned floats used by the six Objects that had come from the sea. As a designer, he was a bit interested in the device that allowed it to be easily attached or removed, but that was not the time to be caught up in that kind of thing.
“...Their basic form is that of an isosceles triangle. The sides are 50 meters and 20 meters. They’re 3 meters tall. The thickness is probably...and the material used is...”
“What is it? What are you checking on, Quenser?”
“I think the area inside the armor is filled with a gas lighter than air. By using something like AB-22 kept in liquid form, it could gain the buoyancy it needs by vaporizing the amount needed. But that doesn’t make sense.”
“?”
“It’s an issue of volume. Floats this size cannot allow a 200,000 ton mass to float even if filled with AB-22. 50,000 tons would be its limit. Do you understand what I’m getting at here?”
“So...”
“These floats can only carry 50,000 tons, so do you think they were attached to 200,000 ton Objects!? If a real Object sank down into the ocean with floats this small, it would never come back up! Their formation is a bluff!! They don’t actually have 7 Objects’ worth of military power!!” said Quenser as he lightly tapped on the side of the float with the back of his hand. “The armor must be less than a quarter as thick! And if they’re going to cut corners there, it won’t have the artisan-made high-level heat resistance!! The flexibility of the onion armor must be much lower than normal! Who knows if the reactor provides a proper output! They may be travelling with the foot soldiers to mask the fact that they can’t move any faster than that! If so, the non-main cannons may not be able to fire properly!! It’s possible we can penetrate its armor without using an Object!!”
Heivia remained silent for a bit.
He must have been thinking over what Quenser had said. Some of his thoughts were likely focused on the uglier side of the debate such as ‘what do I do to survive this?’ and ‘what choice do I get the most out of?’
Heivia finally slowly opened his mouth to speak.
“If we ended up blowing up 7 Objects at once, we would get quite a reward, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“And I need to do something that leaves quite an impact if I want to hurry up and take over my noble family rather than smoldering out here, don’t I?”
“If the alternative is moving from battlefield to battlefield facing Objects, wouldn’t your highest odds of surviving in the end lie in finishing things here once and for all?” Quenser shrugged. “And if we don’t do anything about City Slicker, he might cross the Atlantic Ocean and arrive at Europe. I doubt the home country would fall, but a conflict that escapes the boundaries of a ‘clean war’ could create an economic crisis. Commoners would not be the only ones to suffer from that. How would your family fare? Can you be certain it wouldn’t decline greatly before you could even inherit it?”
“Damn you,” swore Heivia. “Fine. I’ll go along with this!! But this is the last time!! This time, I will do enough to become the head of the Winchell family! This is the end! I’ve had it with war!! I’m never going to make a gamble with my life again!!”
“We need a vehicle. We should be able to figure out their route using the GPS map.”
“Hey, Quenser. The dummies left their floats here, right? So how are they planning to cross the Atlantic?”
“City Slicker supposedly has a weapons factory somewhere around here. There might be another unit waiting to attach the floats on the eastern end of Victoria Island.” Quenser lightly tapped on the side of the abandoned float with the back of his hand. “I have no intention of giving them a chance to use anything like that or to attack the immigrant residential city. That’s why I need a vehicle, Heivia. We need to head after the Indigo Plasma as quickly as possible.”
“Dammit. Where are the drivers? I need the key. Don’t tell me the key was melted by those low-stability plasma cannon blasts.”
“Can’t you just hotwire one like in movies?”
“I could if I wanted to, but it’s all over if I mess up. It would be easier to just use the key.”
As they spoke, Quenser and Heivia started back in the direction of the hill where the injured soldiers were resting.
Suddenly, gunshots rang out.
Sparks flew from the side of the float just ahead of where they were.
(...Are there still some of the 24th’s foot soldiers left!?)
“Get down, Qu-->>