HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2

Status: Incomplete

Chapter 2: The Team that Carries Out Dirty Jobs More Painful than Hell >> Transportation Battle in the Athabasca District

Part 1

In the northern portion of the North American continent was a freezing land where everything from the ground underfoot to the sky above was covered by a white blizzard. A convoy of 5 large military trucks drove amid all the white. Eight-wheeled armored vehicles with tank-like turrets defended the convoy at the front and back.

Something was obviously different about the convoy.

Quenser and Heivia had been thrown into the canopied back of one of those military trucks. Twenty to thirty other soldiers were crammed in along with them. It seemed all of the trucks were in a similar state.

Heivia was facing the similarly aged soldier who had happened to sit next to him.

“Really, I’m not lying! Her tits are like ‘Baboom’! ‘Baboom’!! I know it’s a weird sound effect to use. Normally, it would be something like ‘boing’, but only ‘baboom’ does our commander’s justice.”

“I-I see. But I’m still not quite sure how to picture that…”

“If you saw them, you’d get it right away. Is there a picture of her on the military network? Even just a bust shot would be enough for you to see what a presence they have.”

It seemed the only redeeming feature of the young male soldier Heivia was speaking to was that he had a chef’s license.

Quenser decided to help him out by saying, “How can you talk so much when it’s so cold we can see our breath?”

“I feel like I’ll freeze to death if I don’t keep talking. I want a fireplace, a bed, and a beautiful woman.”

“That’s what you would want no matter where you are.”

“You’ve got that right,” said Heivia in annoyance. “All we’ve been doing here is digging shells out of the snow and freezing the fuse with liquid nitrogen before pulling them out. And those old style weapons wouldn’t be used by a proper military with Objects. It must be local guerillas. I can’t stand this. They’re the ones that scattered these duds everywhere, so why can’t they clean them up?”

They then heard a metallic clanging noise.

They all looked in the direction of the sound and saw the woman who acted as their leader lightly beating her fist against the floor of the truck bed.

“Attention,” she said. She had a headset on so her voice could reach the other trucks. “We gathered you disposable supplies from different parts of the world and are going to put you to work on plenty of dishonorable missions. Our unit has no official designation. After all, it would be a problem if we actually existed. If we die, we will not be counted in the international lists of war dead, so be careful. But it would be inconvenient to contact us without a name, so we do have an unofficial one. The Background Unit. We melt into the background. We never step forward. You should make your motto ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.”

“Sure thing,” said Heivia with a grin. Apparently nothing else mattered for him as long as she had a pretty face and large breasts. “What’s our job this time? Eliminating the other party in a high official’s affair?”

“An excellent question, Private Heivia Winchell. About half of the unit does not know how things work in Background since half the unit was blown away the other day and had to be replaced. I will now explain what Operation Christmas Boot is before we begin. It all began with an obsolete stealth bomber,” said the woman simply. “That said, it was not being used to turn some city into empty land. Its mission was to transport a secret material. But its identification signal was switched off to allow absolute secrecy and that resulted in it being shot down by a fellow Legitimacy Kingdom surface-to-air missile. It performed an emergency landing deep in these white mountains.”

“What idiots,” muttered Quenser.

The woman ignored him and continued, “Someone must recover this secret material. That is why we were deployed. The retrieval of unexploded ordnance was a decoy mission to hide our real one. Even other members of our military will see us as moving around to recover those unexploded shells. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“That we need to lie even if questioned by the commander of the base?”

“Yes. No matter who asks you, you must not tell them about the secret material. And do not worry about what this material is. If it was passed over to Background to deal with, it must be surrounded by some rather dangerous circumstances. Looking into it will probably lead to your death. At any rate, just take the secret material from the stealth bomber and load it onto one of the trucks. The closest military airport is 80 kilometers away. If we can transport it there, Operation Christmas Boot will be complete.”

“Is it some panty thief’s collection?”

“That kind of joke will only invite death, Private Winchell.”

Still curled up thanks to the cold, Quenser raised a hand and asked, “Why are we loading the secret material onto one of the same trucks we’re riding in?”

“The Athabasca District is a battlefield country. It neighbors an Information Alliance base. If anyone intercepts information about the secret material, there is a great risk of being attacked. By having a few dummy trucks, the risk of the secret material being lost lessens."

“…So we’ll be blown away as one of the fakes.”

Quenser clicked his tongue and peered outside through a nearby gap in the canopy.

He saw a raging blizzard and several white mountains. The area they were in had plenty of conifer trees, but the mountains were not completely covered in trees. In a few areas, the trees had been chopped down to create a smooth slope. He also saw some places with lines of metal towers presumably for a gondola.

“And this area was on the verge of being declared a safe country… I can’t believe all this came from the unstable condition of a single ski resort.”

“I hear the animal protection groups love it, though. Something about the falcons and bears that had almost been poached into extinction recovering their numbers.”

“Those people amaze me. The unemployment rate is going up and both soldiers and the homeless are dying off left and right, but they’re saying we need to use tons of tax money to protect the crows in the cities. Also, why is this truck tilted to the right?”

“That would be thanks to the ridiculously huge powered suit curled up over there.”

Heivia pointed with his thumb and the unrefined powered suit waved lightly at them with supple feminine movements.

A rectangular container case big enough to fit Quenser inside and likely filled with heavy weaponry was attached to the back of the suit’s left shoulder.

“Apparently it’s a fallen idol inside. She could supposedly sing perfectly, dance perfectly, and put on a perfect smile, but she was so perfect she wasn’t cute. She ended up taking part in these clean wars since her options were to be a battlefield reporter or go into porn, but she seriously messed up and got sent out here.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“They say she’s so beautiful she’s boring. I’ll never understand the idol business if that’s possible.”

“That’s the kind of tagline that would make other women hate her.”

“Oh, yeah. There were rumors about that as well. Some idiotic advertising firm said she was ‘more beautiful than the princess of Volga’, so she was forced to resign from her regular TV show due to lese majesty. It’s quite a tragedy since the Perfect Idol herself never said a thing about the princess of Volga and it was just those around her getting carried away.”

“Do you think maybe the princess of Volga was behind it?”

“I saw her at an evening party once. Naturally I didn’t get a chance to speak with her at length or anything, but she hid behind her guards that were twice her height the entire time. She’s just a kid that knows nothing of jealousy.”

Quenser and Heivia were bored, so they decided to make a pass at the Perfect Idol. They moved over closer to the giant powered suit.

“Hey, hey. Do idols need to get a powered suit license for concerts these days?”

“I did have to get a construction license when we had a project to construct a small castle on my TV show.”

“Since you’re so heavily defended in there, do you have an insurance policy on your face?”

“The renewal period was last week, but it was most likely not renewed thanks to my mistake.”

“But your idol office must not want you to get hurt if they issued you that powered suit.”

“That depends on how much of an injury it is. I think they might actually want me to gain a certain level of weakness.”

Quenser lightly tugged on Heivia’s sleeve and whispered to him.

“(They certainly have quite the collection of people gathered here. But I get the feeling this isn’t going to be a case where every member of the team uses their specialty to bring success to a reckless mission like in an action movie.)”

“(Yeah, freckles boy over there is just pissed that his handheld game system froze up. Come to think of it, why is he even playing an FPS on a battlefield?)”

They seriously began to wonder if the Background Unit’s quick soldier replacement cycle (aka its high rate of deaths) was not due to facing powerful enemies but due to members of the unit tripping each other up.

“Men,” said the female leader as she knocked on the truck bed once more. “We will soon arrive at the site of the stealth bomber’s emergency landing. Operation Christmas Boot will begin once we do. Before we arrive, make sure you have your cocoa. That is the stick-shaped bag handed out to you all.”

Quenser frowned and asked, “What are we supposed to do with this? If we drink something strong smelling, we’ll be chased by dogs.”

“We might have to worry more about starving soldiers picking up the scent,” said Heivia.

“No, no.” The woman shook her head. “If unexpected trouble splits us up, we will not put together a team to retrieve you. Walking the 80 kilometers back to the military airport in this blizzard would be harsh. If your rations freeze over, they will be of no use. If that happens, you might be able to shed some tears onto the cocoa powder. Licking it bit by bit may save your life.”

“Seriously?”

“I see this job has a great welfare program,” commented Heivia.

Part 2

The stealth bomber was a flying wing that was shaped similar to a boomerang. The jet black craft showed up quite well in the white snowy mountains.

It had landed next to a frozen river in the gap between two mountains. The ground was covered in small rocks, so the bomber’s wheels had of course been punctured. The craft could easily have lost its balance and burst into flames in that situation, so the pilot must have been quite skilled to neatly land there.

It seemed it was the right side of the craft that had been damaged by the missile. Black smoke was rising from the edge, but there was no other visible sign of damage.

“That’s just a scratch. Why did it go down?”

“Flying wings have a large capacity but they have poor stability. It had to deal with this blizzard and there may have been turbulence up above.”

The giant powered suit got out of the military truck and used an arc burner to cut away the bomber’s hatch.

Once the powered suit had removed the thick hatch and waved over that the way was clear, the female leader peered inside the bomber.

That was when a gunshot rang out.

“Huh?”

“What? What? Why would she need to pull the trigger here!?”

The two boys got down and tried their best to hide behind the snow, but nothing more happened. They exchanged a glance and approached the bomber just in time to see the female leader exiting the hatch with blood splattered on her uniform. The red liquid quickly began to freeze.

“The secret material is inside. Carry it out.”

“What happened!?”

“We do not have time to carry the injured with us. We’re cutting it close with just ourselves. Why should we waste our effort on charity? Not to mention that a few of you would have to stay behind to make room for the injured.”

“…”

“Don’t give me that look. The crew of that bomber is also made up of soldiers not registered in any clean war. They won’t show up on the international lists of war dead. They’re the same as us. The report will only say some people died wearing Legitimacy Kingdom uniforms. We never had a chance to determine their identity, so they will be deemed cosplay-obsessed saboteurs.”

“I can’t believe you…” groaned Heivia, but there was nothing he could do.

Complaining about it would not bring back the dead.

The female leader paid him no heed and said, “Hurry, hurry. We need to do our best to make sure not even others from the Legitimacy Kingdom know what we are doing. I’ve heard that Unicorn is working undercover in this area. We do not want to run into them.”

“Please, no! I don’t want to hear that name!! It brings back all that trauma!!” shouted Quenser half in desperation, but he began working regardless.

First, he headed into the bloody cockpit and pressed the button to open the cargo door used to load bombs. The Perfect Idol used her giant powered suit to enter the back cargo bay, pick up a refrigerator-sized metal container, and carry it to the trucks. The sizes of the different containers varied.

Quenser left the bomber to escape the stench that made him sick to his stomach and asked the powered suit a question.

“How heavy are they?”

“About as heavy as a bronze statue.”

“I have no idea how heavy one of those is.”

However, it seemed they had no choice but to rely on the powered suit for the reloading work. The other soldiers scattered around the stealth bomber and kept watch. …Or perhaps they just wanted to leave an annoying job to someone else.

The number of boxes filled with the secret material was greater than expected. They filled three entire trucks.

That meant the soldiers initially divided into five trucks had to cram themselves into the remaining two.

Heivia groaned amid the foul heat, “This is horrible! Everything about this is horrible!! This is like a crowded train in southeast Asia!!”

“Yes, yes, but it is better than dying, isn’t it? Okay, we’re all loaded up now,” said the female leader offhandedly. “It’s time to leave. Is everyone aboard? If you aren’t on in time, we’ll leave you behind, so hurry up.”

The truck set off while shaking the truck bed horribly. The truck’s balance may have been thrown off by all the people aboard.

“This much weight isn’t going to blow a tire, is it?”

“The truck’s tires don’t have air inside. They’re filled with synthetic fiber all the way through. A lot of advances have been made in the field of shock absorption, so we might soon see a new weapon somewhere between a tank and an armored vehicle that has thick armor and moves at high speed.”

“Okay, I get it, you design nerd! Don’t add any more heat to this human sauna!!”

Incidentally, Quenser had ended up practically embracing the Perfect Idol, but he was hardly grateful since she was wearing that giant powered suit. It was neither warm nor soft. The heat left him safe for the time being, but if a cold wind blew in through a gap in the canopy, he could easily have the skin of his cheek freeze to the armor plates.

Quenser then noticed a sound like a champagne cork being removed. The sound was coming from a great distance beyond the thick canopy.

“What is-…?”

Quenser did not even have time to finish his question.

He heard a great explosive noise and the truck came to a sudden stop.

There was nothing to grab onto in the jam-packed truck bed. With nothing to brace against as the truck slammed on its brakes, everyone in the back was thrown forward. Quenser distinctly heard a screaming noise come from his ribs.

“Gyahh!? Cough…what was that!?”

“Shit. Shit!! I think that was a mortar! I smell something burning. The front armored vehicle was blown away!!”

A mortar was shot up in the air like a long throw in baseball, so it fell down on top of the target. It was a simple weapon used all across the world.

“Eh? Wait! Then we need to force that armored vehicle out of the way! If we stay stopped here…!!”

In the next instant, they heard an explosion from directly behind them. The armored vehicle at the end of the convoy had likely been destroyed. With the front and back of the convoy destroyed, the trucks between them were stuck in place.

“This situation is so stereotypical, you could probably find it in a textbook!!”

“Get out, get out! The trucks are going to be taken out one by one!” shouted the female leader as the soldiers began getting out of the truck bed all at once.

The Perfect Idol used her tremendous physical strength to rip apart the thick canopy and forced Quenser out the side of the truck.

But the enemy was not going to wait for them to scatter.

They heard the champagne cork sound once more.

“Scatter! Get down!!” came the female leader’s conflicting orders.

An explosive noise rang out.

Quenser’s vision became filled with white.

He thought his entire face had been crushed along with his two eyeballs, but it turned out the mortar that had landed a short distance away had only blasted snow up at him. But having snow slammed into his face at tremendous speed was enough to temporarily rob him of his sense of balance.

Heivia shouted from where he was lying on the ground nearby, “Quenser, you idiot! Crawl under the truck!! The armored vehicles were only taken out because the tires and suspension were destroyed. It wasn’t enough to get through the armor!”

“How are they aiming so accurately in the wind of this blizzard!? I thought the first two or three shots with a mortar were used as a baseline to aim from!?”

“It’s a GPS mortar! It just has to be fired up in the right general direction and then its tail moves based on GPS information from a satellite to strike the target. Scattering out across the snow will only get us targeted on a touch panel!!”

Quenser crawled across the snow and below the military truck as he shouted, “Then we need to jam it!!”

“The communications soldiers with the huge machinery on their backs were taken out first. As was that domineering woman commanding us!”

“She died that easily!? I thought she was going to be the final boss!!”

After a few more explosions, their number of allies had fallen considerably. Having the snow fly up at him hard may have saved Quenser by hiding him amid the grotesque scenery of red and black.

“This truck isn’t going to last repeated strikes. If we don’t do something soon, we’ll be crushed by the scrap.”

“There they are. There they fucking are. About 1700 meters to the northwest. A few Information Alliance troop transport vehicles are stopped near the foot of the mountain. The mortar is probably set up behind them!”

Quenser checked with his binoculars and he did indeed spot several vehicles that looked like tanks with the turret removed. Their armor looked thick enough that a rifle bullet would be useless against them. Not to mention that they were too far away.

Since mortars were initially fired up into the air, they could be fired continually while remaining behind cover.

“Where’s your shoulder-fired anti-tank missile!? Set it up already!!”

“I could blow up the troop transport vehicles they’re using as a shield, but the scrap would remain there. I can’t destroy the mortar team behind the trucks with it!” said Heivia in annoyance. “Our attacks can’t reach them. We can only sit here while they throw those baseballs at us. What are we supposed to do?”

“Hey, Heivia. Do you think they attacked us because they know about the secret material?”

“Are you saying we can survive by using the trucks with the secret material aboard as a shield?” Heivia frowned. “No one attacks with nothing but a GPS mortar. That’s just a portion of their force. Infantry will be creeping closer while they keep us in place with the mortar. I think those troop transport vehicles the Information Alliance is using as a shield are enough to hold 60 to 70 people.”

“Then what do we do? Either way, we need to destroy that GPS mortar as soon as possible.”

Quenser pulled a clay-like explosive out of his backpack and looked out from below the truck while stabbing a rod-shaped fuse into it.

He was looking for the Perfect Idol wearing the powered suit.

“Hey, hey! Can you still move? I’m going to blow snow into the air with a bomb in the place of smoke. Run to the front armored vehicle in the time that gives us!”

“That armored vehicle has already been destroyed!” she replied.

“That’s why you need to pull off just the turret! It fires based on an electric signal. You can fire it just by pressing together the torn off cords!”

Quenser crawled out from under the truck and threw the Hand Axe plastic explosive onto the snow. The powered suit was caught in the explosion, but the thick armor protected the Perfect Idol so she could run to the armored vehicle.

Heivia shouted from behind Quenser, “That won’t work, you idiot!! That’s an 80mm anti-personnel turret on the armored vehicle. It may look like a tank, but it’s only meant to tear human flesh apart with shrapnel. It doesn’t have the penetrative power needed to pierce the armor of those armored vehicles!!”

“I know that!” shouted Quenser as he crawled completely out from under the truck.

He stood up and ran toward the destroyed armored vehicle while keeping his hips low.

Several shells fell a short distance away from him.

They had not missed. The GPS mortar was very accurate. They were taking the lives of soldiers other than Quenser. It simply meant he was a low priority target who would be targeted later.

After the powered suit pulled the turret off of the top of the armored vehicle, Quenser climbed below the suit. The shells were normally loaded automatically, but they could be manually ejected in case it jammed. Quenser pulled the thick lever and the loaded shell fell onto the snow.

The shell was about the size of three two liter thermoses stacked end on end. It was as heavy as if it was filled with metal.

“What are you doing?” asked the Perfect Idol.

“Switching out the fuse.”

Quenser opened the tip of the shell with a tool, replaced the fuse inside with one of the radio-controlled ones he usually used, and closed the cover.

He used his shoulders to forcibly lift up the shell and somehow managed to reload the shell despite his lower back letting out a cry of pain.

“Direction: 3409! Angle: 13 degrees!”

“That will not reach the troop transport vehicles being used as shields. It will fall before reaching them,” warned the Perfect Idol.

“That’s the point!” Quenser operated a tool below the turret, severed a few cords, and grabbed them in his hands. “Hold it in place. I’m about to fire!”

As soon as contact was made between the exposed wires, an explosive noise rang out.

Quenser was sent flipping over in the snow and the powered suit collapsed backwards, unable to withstand the shock.

He held onto his radio despite not being able to see where the shell was going. What mattered was the timing, not the exact location of the shell.

As the Perfect Idol had said, the shell did not reach the troop transport vehicles hiding the GPS mortar. It fell onto the snow in front of them.

But since he had swapped out the fuse, it did not detonate when it landed.

And what would it do then?

The force of landing was not enough to counteract the momentum from the tremendous speed at which it had been fired. The shell bounced. It bounced like a soccer ball that had been forcefully kicked.

It bounced right over the troop transport vehicles.

Right after it did, Quenser pressed the button on his radio.

The shell scattered hundreds of pieces of shrapnel while it was directly above the GPS mortar and the soldiers operating it.

“The GPS mortar has been silenced. Damn, that hurt my ears. This must be what it feels like for a deep sea fish to come up on land,” muttered Quenser as he lay flat on the white snow. He then shook his head and shouted, “Heivia! Check how many soldiers are still alive and if any trucks are still usable! Oh, and move out of the way, Miss Idol! Your giant ass almost crushed me!!”

“That is sexual harassment.”

“Don’t be stupid! Seeing that giant hunk of metal isn’t going to turn me on in the slightest!!”

Quenser struggled up to his feet, but very few soldiers were gathering around him. There had been about 150 of them to begin with and now only 10% of that remained.

“Were the crew for the trucks and armored vehicles taken out?”

“It seems the shrapnel from the mortars was enough to penetrate the trucks’ reinforced glass. The crew for the armored vehicle up front was taken out. Opening up the hatch to fire a machine gun turned out to be a bad idea. The shockwaves made their way inside.”

The survivors were not battle-hardened professionals. They were nothing but medics and supply soldiers with chef licenses. And Quenser himself was not much better.

Heivia trudged through the deep snow as he approached.

His expression was not one of relief.

“This is bad! We need to get out of here! Their main force is coming!”

“Their main force?”

“The GPS mortar was just supposed to hold us in place, remember!? From the number of troop transport vehicles, I would say there are 60 or 70 of them. With a group like this, we’ll just be mowed down!! I don’t know what this secret material is, but there’s no way we can push them back while protecting it!!”

Quenser used his thumb to point at the Perfect Idol inside her thick armor.

“If these are normal infantrymen, can’t we do something with our powered suit?”

“It just takes one shot from a shoulder-fired missile to deal with her! And what kind of armaments does our idol have? What’s inside the container case on the back of her left shoulder!?”

“Hm? A Morning Star and a few magazines,” she replied.

“Why that of all things!? That grenade machinegun tops the list for friendly fire!!”

Basically, it was a weapon that fired coffee can-sized grenades like a machinegun. Since it was heavy and had a lot of recoil, it was usually fixed on a stand or attached to a helicopter or armored vehicle.

“I was told it had the high score for attacks on terrorist compounds,” said the Perfect Idol.

“That’s just because the blasts fill up the narrow areas inside buildings. In a powered suit, you can just ignore the anti-personnel shrapnel, but any allies around you will be swallowed up by the storm of shrapnel.”

“I have a secondary 5mm sniper round I can use if the enemy soldier is near a hostage or computer.”

“But can you switch back and forth between rounds when bastards are popping out left and right as if from jack-in-the-boxes? You’ll just blow the rest of us to pieces. I don’t want to end up in a textbook as a cautionary example!”

Heivia could be surprisingly modest when his own life was on the line, but this was not a situation where they could be picky.

He began trembling when he saw the Perfect Idol pull that dangerous weapon out of the container case.

With a tone that made it sound like she was simply chatting, she asked, “How about we fight while using the secret material as a shield?”

“We’re outnumbered. There’s nothing we can do if they surround us and attack from multiple directions.”

“Hey, hey,” said Quenser to get the other boy’s attention. “Heivia, we need to go around to our fallen comrades and gather all the weapons that can fire over 1000 meters such as sniper rifles and rocket launchers. Then we scatter and leave this spot.”

“So we abandon Operation Christmas Boot?” asked the Perfect Idol.

“Fighting while protecting all of that stuff will be hard. And the same goes for the enemy.” He pointed at the military trucks. “So we’ll just swap the situation around. We give them the trucks and then fire our long range weapons from multiple directions to wear down their numbers. …Even if we’re outnumbered, the Information Alliance won’t be able to use their numbers properly while guarding those trucks.”