novelBloody Pool >> Atlantic Artificial Island Proxy War (2)
| ← Ch.130 | Ch.132 → |
So before they were overwhelmed, they had to thoroughly strike the enemy and secure a foothold on land.
This was an away game and they knew in advance the enemy had more personnel and equipment. They had to throw them off their pace and break through regardless.
Heivia's group's enemies were not just those in front of them. They had been warned in advance that they would be shot in the back if they fell behind schedule.
Black-uniformed Wraith was hiding behind a different steel panel from the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and she shouted at them while pointing toward the area with the most intense counterattack. She was the overall supervisor who was the only one allowed to shoot Heivia's group in the back. And if Heivia's group tried to retaliate, they would of course be executed by gunfire. Their actions were restricted by both force and military regulations.
"Avoiding work seems to be the only thing you fools are good at, but set up more of a barrage! I want to throw some more of these things while I can!!"
"Shut up and die, dead-end girl! Will those toys really accomplish anything... !?"
If he did not have to hit, he did not have to expose himself to danger. Heivia kept his body hidden behind the steel panel and stuck only his assault rifle up to randomly spray bullets down. And that made him one of the harder workers. Some of the soldiers were busy "pretending" by creating fake muzzle flashes with a strobe light and speaker linked together. It sounded silly, but unlike in movies, real battles did not have unlimited ammunition. That was a surprisingly handy item for conserving bullets.
"... The creep toward technology has already begun."
"Oh." Myonri sounded oddly cheerful."It looks like those things have started to move."
Behind her steel panel, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had a focused look on her face as she operated something with both hands. The device looked like a smartphone with a sold-separately H-shaped game pad attached.
No, that may have been exactly what it was.
Something the size of a baseball silently rolled around the Faith Organization's cover and into their hiding spot.
Immediately, an explosion erupted behind cover as if a fragmentary grenade had gone off there.
The lethal range was 5 meters and the incapacitation range was 10 meters, but those basic specs barely mattered. After a sudden explosion within the wall or vehicle they were hiding within, the people relying on that shield would be blown to bits.
"Wah!? Wha-!?"
Other Faith Organization soldiers behind nearby cover cried out in panic before they were blown away by other explosions that resembled dirty smokescreens. Some soldiers decided they could not stay where they were and rolled out from behind their shields, but Heivia and Myonri picked them off with bullets.
"Remote grenades that can roll along the ground and behind cover? How cruel can you get... ?"
"Those simply incorporate the tech from sticky tape cleaning robots, don't they?"
That was the identity of the devices Wraith had thrown earlier. After scattering the spherical explosives around the targets, you could control their exact locations with a smartphone or tablet. You rolled them behind the enemy's cover and stealthily detonated them at the defenseless enemy's feet. They could also be thrown over a prison's thick walls and sent through a vent to explore the ducts.
"Should we really be relying on tech like this?" asked Heivia.
"They aren't IoT devices, so they won't be connected to Capulet, " replied Wraith."Besides, unmanned weapons run on systems even more simplified than a pet robot. They won't rely on an AI network."
"Eh? Really?" asked Myonri.
"It's true it would take a server with massive capacity to fully reproduce the flowchart for the predetermined movement patterns of the wings and legs of a single fly.... But what if we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing artificial as far as the eye could see? An unmanned weapon would be useless if it needed to constantly send out signals to inform a server of its location. The ideal form of modern unmanned weapons is generally a submarine. It only sends out a signal when absolutely necessary. Capulet might want to connect to everything and suck up all the data it can get, but even it has to make concessions here."
Black-uniformed Wraith gave them the pitying look of a teacher to a poor student.
"They use the Insect Colony Theory that takes artificial creatures that learn and construct the simplest ways to move a spider or butterfly's body and combines it with the swarm intelligence that uses machines to reproduces the social structures of ants and bees. That allows them to communicate and take the optimal action without the need for a server. This is an ideal. Just like a grazing herd, the group of unmanned weapons automatically works toward a single goal while we are the sheepdog who watches on and intervenes only when necessary."
"That all sounds wonderful, but I'm more afraid of you going nuts then the machines!" shouted Heivia."Are you sure this is okay!?"
This was somehow different from Quenser who had shaped bombs with his own hands and used them to realize his clever ideas.
Wraith Martini Vermouthspray's explosions were merciless and unemotional.
It felt like she was trapping the enemy and efficiently killing them.
A motor that sounded a lot like an electric shaver passed by over their heads. They did not bother looking up. It was an aerial drone shaped like a four-winged water strider. Instead of just flying in a straight line, those things would include figure-eight movements, perhaps to divert the enemy's aim.
Or was it a form of non-EM communication between the unmanned weapons?
It was thanks to these drones that the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had been able to so accurately fire on the Faith Organization soldiers immediately after opening the metal doors. Intelligence was the greatest weapon. The battle was decided before the bullets and knives began to fly. It really was the Information Alliance's style.
Wraith pointed at the drones being tossed about by the storm.
"If we have them self-destruct at an altitude of 50 meters and rain shrapnel down on the enemy's head, we should be able to secure a route to C Dock. We need to reach land before enemy reinforcements arrive. Don't be slow."
"It doesn't really matter, but... hey, watch out! Get down, Myonri!!"
Perhaps because of the powerful storm, some of shrapnel downpour reached the ship's deck as well. After they were nearly decorated with some delicious plastic and rare earth seasoning, Heivia tried to grab at Wraith, but Myonri held him back. A single retort could get them reduced to a bloody pulp right now.
At the moment, time was of the essence.
No gangway had been nicely attached for them, but the actual docking work had been completed. If they descended the ropes attached to the railing, they could reach the concrete wharf area they had stained with blood a moment before.
They were not searching out each other's position in the jungle or anything, but just to be sure, Heivia made sure not to step in any of the blood.
"I've got a pretty good idea of what kind of shitty tactics the Information Alliance uses, but what about the Faith Organization?"
"Guts maybe?" suggested Myonri."Like making a gutsy charge?"
Just as Heivia dismissed that as ridiculous, the wall of a nearby warehouse broke open from within. A gigantic firetruck for fuel oil fires had crashed through.
"I don't know if it's for bulletproofing, but they've attached a thick wire mesh over the glass. And it's not just handmade. It's just like the 'observation helicopters' owned by a certain environment protection group. That thing was designed to accommodate this attachment!!"
But that was not the biggest problem. Soldiers were clinging to the sides and roof of the boxy vehicle. They looked like countless ants swinging around a sugar cube. Before Heivia's group even did anything, some of the soldiers were caught on the jagged edges of the warehouse wall or had their uniforms caught in the giant tires, turning them to mincemeat.
It was tank desant.
"Huh, so it is guts, " said Heivia.
"Definitely guts, " replied Myonri.
Regardless, Heivia raised a hand and one of their allies fired a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. More than 10 Faith Organization soldiers were blown away like the contents of a jack-in-the-box.
"Shit, they're still alive!?"
They must have mastered the use of willpower and guts because the soldiers lying on the road or on top of the warehouse roof still fired toward the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers.
But that was not why Heivia's group quickly dove behind rusty metal drums and wooden boxes.
"What is with them... ? They're firing something else along with their bullets."
"Probably collapsible bows. They take a more arching path than rifle bullets, so be on your guard even when behind cover. It's the same as you diligent and clever lot using both rifle bullets and rubber bullets. Individually, they wouldn't be that effective, but mix them in and the enemy has to perform more mental gymnastics."
"That's not what I was talking about, crazy girl. Look at the arrowhead over there. Why have they rubbed seagull shit all over it!?"
"Maybe as a form of poison arrow? They probably hope to increase the damage done by shoving germs into the wound. The military use of rotten corpses and excrement is an effective strategy that has been used since BCE times."
"Heivia, look at that on the road over there, " said Myonri."Wow, I don't want to see that at all. Isn't that just the worst!?"
"Don't just say 'that'! Explain what it is!!... !? W-wait, you're kidding, right? Not dogshit!"
It did not at all look like they were kidding and little Wraithy did not want a face full of dogshit, so she threw a baseball-sized explosive. The blonde girl operated her smartphone's H-shaped game pad while hiding behind cover to blow up the Faith Organization soldier groaning on the ground 20 meters away.
"You idiot!! You just scattered dogshit and human entrails everywhere!! Be more careful!!"
"I feel like this is turning into biological warfare, " commented Myonri.
Just then, they sensed what seemed like a sound but was not. A slight vibration reached their feet from the ground.
They frowned.
"What's this? Cheering from a stadium?"
"Why would it be that?" asked Myonri."I thought this city was essentially dead except during the Technopics."
"Can you professionals not even find a scientific explanation of the occult?" complained Wraith."The winds and waves of the storm may be causing a resonance within the artificial floating island. It is not rooted in the actual earth, so looking at the overall ratio, it must be thinner than a pizza."
"Don't butt in, Loli Grim Reaper. I'm not a pedo or a necro."
"There's no need to lie."
"And don't just smile and say things like that, Myonri! People will think it's true!!"
But in reality, a powerful vibration erupted in the distance and reached them like someone had scored a decisive point near the end of a soccer game. There was no way this was a natural phenomenon. The sound of mayhem had human intent behind it.
"... So is it really guts after all?" asked Myonri, sounding annoyed.
"Curse those perverted mythology fetishists. Did they start some self-loving to blow through the limiters in their minds!?"
The digital vs. analog war had finally begun.
Heivia's group was not trying to remain in C Dock and protect the ship with their lives, so they had no reason to stay in place and put up a thorough resistance. Instead, they moved elsewhere.
Wraith looked up from her customized smartphone.
"Our objective is the broadcast station where most of the communication equipment is. We can ignore the broadcast tower and parabolic antennae. As long as we destroy the core, they can't manage the exchange of information and that other equipment will be useless."
"Wait, that's not what we discussed. I thought that Martini sister you love so much was talking about sinking the whole damn island. Unlike you, we could get executed by Taratua if we make a single wrong move!"
"I can't believe how little you can adapt to the situation... What does it matter what she hopes for? Can your poor little mind do nothing more than what it's told? Besides, we don't even know if it's possible to sink Olympia Dome as a whole with the equipment we're carrying. Most of its power is supplied by the generator satellite in orbit and the transformer ships in the ocean, so we can't expect to trigger any explosives within Olympia Dome. The Faith Organization military infiltrating the artificial floating island doesn't matter. Our top priority is robbing the Manhattan 000 of the ability to gather information."
"Sure, sure. How kind of you. Such a pillar of charity. Is that the spirit of Nightingale I see hovering behind you? I'm sure Quenser is weeping for joy in the afterlife right now, you piece of shit."
The aide young man punched Heivia and Heivia returned the favor.
Before it devolved into a serious grapple, timid Myonri aimed her assault rifle at those allies to restore order.
"This isn't supposed to be my job!" she protested."Wraith, please manage our people better!"
"R-right..."
"Just shoot him, you idiot!" shouted Heivia."Whose side are you on, anyway!?"
"If you don't quiet down, I will fire rubber bullets into your balls. Then the rest of us can keep moving while the two of you bond over your shared experience. Nonlethal weapons sure are convenient, aren't they?"
She was smiling.
Was she aware that rubber or not made little difference when it came to balls? Myonri seemed to have awoken to her calling as a fearsome Black Uniform. This was another example of how frightening serious girls were when they got mad.
"... Is there some kind of special campaign in effect this month? When did plain old Myonri transform into this shiny ultra-rare?"
"I imagine it was the result of everyone's daily treatment of me."
"You have some nerve, Myonri. What good is an ultra-rare if you aren't even going to show any more skin?"
"That's what I'm talking about! Everything about your treatment of me is the worst!!"
They left the harbor block and entered the outer city region.
It was probably due to the thick storm clouds overhead, but the city looked very gray in the pouring rain.
"Are you sure we aren't dragging civilians into this... ?"
"There are apparently no athletes or spectators here except during the Technopics. The only civilians are the Olympia Dome inspection and maintenance staff. The city's population density is less than 8%, so there's very little chance of a stray bullet causing any harm."
"I read you loud and clear: we don't actually know anything for sure and we need to be careful if we want to avoid a nightmare later on."
They heard the dull sound of several thick tires tearing at the ground. Garbage trucks and mobile cranes drove out from intersections and parking garages like crocodiles poking their heads out of the bushes. Soldiers covered them like a packed train in Southeast Asia, and...
"Oh, no! They've attached heavy weaponry with bolts and slide rails!!"
"Look how perfectly those fit. This is clearly how they were designed to look. They just normally have the equipment removed so those look like civilian equipment!! With the infrastructure support of a frontline base, they're just military weapons!!"
In this case, it was heavy machineguns instead of construction equipment. If Heivia's group remained standing in that wide-open six-lane road the size of a runway, they would have their torsos torn in half by a horizontal flash of light.
Driven on by the deep booms of gunfire, Heivia's group broke the window to one of the shops lining the road and fled indoors.
Only after rushing inside did they realize it was a trendy bar.
"Damn, this is no time to let a horizontal stream of bullets hold us in place. They've broken through the limiters in their minds to free themselves from the fear of death. They're sure to charge in at us!!"
"Do not worry, cowardly expert. This beautiful and kind young woman will wear down their numbers for you."
Wraith sounded oddly confident. Thinking back, Heivia recalled that her aide had fired a 25mm grenade launcher straight up several times as they ran.
Or... ?
"Parachute deployment confirmed. We have access to all rounds. None were lost. We can begin at any time."
"Understood, Frank. Mark the heat readings around the engines and start by blowing away all of the modified vehicles."
It happened after a 10 second delay.
A deafening explosion erupted outside with enough force to drown out the deep gunshots of the heavy machineguns that reverberated in their stomachs. And it was not just the one. Wraith's smartphone was linked with the cameras of the grenades slowly swept up by the blasts, so when she set their targets, the explosives released their own parachutes, used their small wings for course corrections, and fell directly on the garbage trucks and mobile cranes with pinpoint accuracy. Their guidance was perfect despite the storm and the speed of the vehicles.
"Exactly the scary stuff I would expect from a crazy girl..." grumbled Heivia as he realized what it meant that the heavy machineguns had been entirely silenced.
Those grenades could be fired at random and individually locked onto targets later on. That was not something he could freely celebrate. He hated to think what would happen if they showed up in the enemy's hands. This was an urban battlefield with roofs for protection, but an attack from above would be devastating out on an open field.
But Wraith herself did not seem delighted with her incredible results.
"Instead of worrying about their obvious active forces, you should focus on their passive enemy-location infrastructure. In other words, how did they know where we were? The Faith Organization is supposed to be dangerous in a simple way, but have they moved past their outdated analog warfare? Unless we take out their 'eyes', they'll quickly reclaim the initiative."
The stadium cheering erupted from unexpectedly close by.
Heivia clicked his tongue.
"They're coming. And they'll have learned to hold back their special pieces to avoid having them crushed by explosives."
"Wh-what does that mean?" asked Myonri.
"They'll push in with overwhelming numbers! They'll use their allies as shields and climb over the corpses!!"
When she heard Heivia's words, Wraith took out one of the serverless remote grenades she had used at the harbor block and placed it among the jumble of drink bottles behind the counter.
Then they all left through the back exit.
They could not deny the fear of facing more heavy weaponry, so they did their best to choose the alleyways and small roads that garbage trucks, mobile cranes, and other large vehicles could not drive down.
"Keep an eye on the windows above and the manholes below. Urban areas that can't be leveled are crucibles of death..."
Wraith ignored Heivia's words and used her smartphone to check the camera footage from the remote grenade she had set up. A crowd resembling a rioting mob more than soldiers flooded inside the shop through the door and the broken window and trampled everything within.
Wraith spotted a distinctive tattoo on the backs of their hands.
"Aztec?... No, it's Mayan, but is that an even older god?" The blonde girl gently rubbed her slender chin with her empty hand."We can't take them lightly just because they're from an ancient civilization. Their largescale stone architectures and accurate astronomy was supported by a high-level of scientific learning. Their idea of crafting giant structures with an accurate hand could apply to modern Object development."
"Can you look up how to use the ultimate magic with that thing? If not, it's a waste of time. What a joke."
The young man responded by quietly clenching his first and showing off his large bicep bulge, so Wraith kicked her aide in the shin without even looking up from her smartphone. She had learned how to put a stop to it by now. Blonde 12-year-old girls had endless possibility for growth.
"W-Wraith, can you at least look up from that screen?" suggested Myonri."Handle it so halfheartedly and you'll probably make him feel bad. This isn't much of a reward."
"It's a good lesson for him. This is what happens when he tries to speak for someone as lovely as me with his dimwitted and sweaty masculinity."
One of the many soldiers in the shop seemed to have noticed the camera, so Wraith tapped the screen to swiftly detonate the remote grenade. The screen simply displayed the text "Access Lost", but there had actually been an explosion in the middle of that crowd. Small metal balls only a few millimeters across had been scattered in every direction to take lives as efficiently as possible.
"The drones flying above have detected the movement of a different unit. Simply fleeing will not shake them."
"How many?"
"First of all, about 200 managed to pass through the bar and are pursuing us from behind."
"... Hey, do you have so many brain chemicals pumping that you've forgotten how to do math?" complained Heivia."We're lucky if we still have 50 people. An enemy four times our size is too much."
"And there are more than 300 approaching up ahead. The enemy is about 10 times our size and who can say how much larger it will grow."
Regardless of the soldiers' skill and equipment, the difference in numbers was simply too great. They had already used up the advantage provided by a surprise attack, so at this rate, they would be ganged up on and slaughtered.
While Wraith relayed this information with her smartphone in one hand, she pulled a few disks from her pocket and threw them. They were a little larger than movie disks and, when they fell to the ground, they came apart on their own and transformed into meter-long serpentine robots. It was unclear how closely their structure matched that of a snake, but when the head portion tapped against the ground, was it reading the heat to communicate with the other units?
"The worst case is to be trapped between two forces on this small road. Staying on this annoyingly straight path would be the absolute worst plan. It would be better to move out onto the major road to include a lateral vector to our path. We should bend the battle line so we're only being attacked from a single direction."
"U-umm, are those robots explosives too?" asked Myonri.
The robots wriggled like endoscopes as they either wrapped around vertical pipes to climb to the rooftops or slipped underground through the small holes in manholes.
Wraith answered with her eyes still on her smartphone screen.
"No, these are high-speed cameras. The cameras themselves have been made quite small by making them mirrorless, but blurring is a major issue. They can somewhat correct using their gyros, but then there's no point in making them high speed. The engineers are apparently still having a hard time making flying versions."
"Cameras... ?"
"Yes. In an away game like this, we can't help but be outnumbered. So to make up for what we lack, I was thinking we could play some soccer. Baseball and basketball would work just as well. As long as we have viewpoints from around 32 directions on the X, Y, and Z axes, we should manage well enough."
"???"
Part 8
"Goddamn them... !!"
Sigma 3, real name Robinson King-Cole, groaned within the rubble of the harbor block. They had tried to be very cautious, but this was the result as soon as that crumbling ship entered C Dock. The zombies had flooded out from the Trojan horse and bared their fangs against the symbol of peace known as the Olympia Dome. It had been quickly transformed into a battlefield reeking of gun smoke and blood.
The large Hispanic man looked up at the crumbling ship that was more than 9 meters tall. The ship itself seemed to be from the Information Alliance, but the flag raised above it was the Legitimacy Kingdom's.
"Sigma 3 to OD Control. Who are they!? Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers that captured an Information Alliance ship, Information Alliance soldiers disguising themselves as the Legitimacy Kingdom, or someone else altogether!?"
Many varieties of rifle and shotgun cartridges were lying around. Yet normally there would be a single standard used within a unit.
(There's so much evidence here, but it feels like that's actually obscuring the truth. It's always like this when the Information Alliance's name pops up!!)
Robinson felt a physiological disgust at a level above reason, but that may have been because he belonged to the Faith Organization that saw value in a single absolute truth. He simply could not understand the people who used post-truth politics and fake news to muddy the truth and make all sorts of noise.
After regrouping with some fellow soldiers who had also arrived on personal watercraft, they ran along the dock, checked the pulses of their collapsed allies, stopped the worst of the bleeding and attached GPS tags to those who were still breathing, and moved on to the next one.
Leaving the harbor block did not wake them from the nightmare.
They smelled smoke, gunpowder, and death.
The ominous odor of the city before them could not be washed away by the blowing rain.
(This is awful... )
It would be easy enough to hate the enemy for this, but it was Robinson's group that had allowed this to happen. The fact that they had just been following orders did not soothe his conscience. Bringing that ship to C Dock and stationing themselves at Olympia Dome in the first place were both the Faith Organization's decisions.
"Sigma 3 to OD Control. Send the plan to me too. I want to join the battle, but what kind of operation are we running!? OD Control!!"
"... Oh, Zeus, god of life and punishment. Your pure shrine maiden beseeches thee. Lend us the power that once guarded Olympus to send lightning upon the villains who would lay waste to your modern temple..."
"Dammit!!"
That female operator usually kept a head as cool as ice, but she had driven her mind to an elevated state with that flat and expressionless prayer. Robinson and the others in charge of the actual combat were professional soldiers, but the people monitoring communications and making decisions based on a variety of regulations were civilians who were only meant to inspect and maintain the sports facilities. They could not necessarily endure the pressure of knowing their decisions could lead to so many deaths.
(The damage is spreading throughout the entire city. I doubt just the intruders could cause all this. Did the ground troops cut their limiters and begin a war of attrition?)
Robinson's group had not rushed to the Olympia Dome in response to the Manhattan issue. There had not been enough time for that.
It was more accurate to say they had happened to be in the right place at the right time while making their near-standard naval resupply stop.
(If we had predicted things that well, we could have handled this better! Curse the Manhattan. It just shows up and then starts scattering disaster everywhere. Who are we even fighting against here!? Are they trying to protect that thing or destroy it!?)
This had all been a stroke of good luck in the first place. It was entirely coincidental that they had acquired the closest base to Manhattan without having to risk their lives for it. And yet they had been told that revealing the purpose and value of Manhattan was a mission that had to succeed even if it cost them their lives. Their lives were being thrown away for the whims of their higher ups who had been blinded by greed. That was Robinson's blunt assessment.
They were up against a faceless enemy.
That was a threat on the same level as some strange form of the occult.
(And when we were already transporting something so dangerous... What even happened to our original mission, dammit!?)
"What should we do, Sigma 3?" asked the large female soldier next to him while she stared off into the distance."Should we cut the circuits in our minds too?"
"... No, " spat out Robinson."If this were the ending god had given us, then so be it, but both sides here are no more than human. I'm not about to die for human greed. We'll regroup with the main unit. I don't care about that digital war nonsense. We have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so as long as we keep our cool, we should be able to win this."
Part 9
Even when they knew it was the best course of action, abandoning cover and running out into an open area was not good for their hearts. Do not break any branches, do not step in the mud, do not cast a long shadow, do not press up against doors or walls, do not shine your light on mirrors or windows – there was a lot of "etiquette" to something as simple as walking, but actual war did not always allow you to follow the textbook for all of those little things.
The situation was awful.
"Run, Myonri! No one can complain if they're shot in the back now!!"
"But Jonathan was-..."
"Just run!!"
Trying to rescue someone in this open space would only get them shot too. And this soldier had been shot on his center line such that it probably shattered his spine, so there was nothing they could do. They could only clench their teeth and shake free of their regret.
They ran across the runway-like six-lane road and entered the subway station building on the opposite side. Only after diving behind the closest wall did Heivia take in a large gulp of air.
"Pant, pant! Goddamn them. Did they at least shoot Wraith!?"
"You will be sad to hear I am alive and kicking."
"Oh, hell. Well that proves that it's the good people who die first..."
Near the entrance, there was a vending machine from a major online store that was forcing its way into the market, so Heivia blew away its earthquake-resistant bolts with his rifle and knocked it over as a barricade as he seriously spat out those words.
But now it was time for the rioting Faith Organization soldiers to suffer. If they simply pursued, they would have to cross the same road that had exposed Heivia's group to such danger.
"If they really have cut their mental limiters, they'll push their way through even if we fire 5. 56mm rounds at a rate of 700 a minute. Modern warfare is all about smart tactics, but there's nothing we can do if a large army is willing to step on their comrades' corpses and cross a river of blood. I'm sure you know why the directional landmines that scatter small metal balls in a fan shape were developed."
"Yes, I am aware, " said Wraith."Keep an eye on the subway tunnels and emergency exits. The drones are not enough to fully grasp the distribution of these aggressively generic enemy soldiers."
"Th-this is an artificial island floating in the ocean, isn't it... ?" asked Myonri.
"And? Just like with a ship, the lower the center of gravity the better. In marine construction, child-bearing hips and a large ass are more highly valued than giant tits, so they would have wanted the island to be a little thicker for the added weight."
Wraith snapped her fingers and the young man next to her provided the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers with a few items the size of baseballs. They were more of the serverless remote grenades.
"Use them more as 'eyes' than explosives since a frag grenade can't pierce that shield of flesh. They can also be used to flood the underground area in case that large army tries to push in from below."
"That kind of trick isn't my area of expertise. Hey, someone put together a unit of combat engineers. You help too, Quen-..."
Heivia stopped mid-sentence and clicked his tongue.
He scratched his head in an awkward silence.
"... Never mind. Myonri, you're skilled with your hands, right? Would you rather stand out front in the path of that hail of bullets, or move to the back and set things up there? Select 10 people you can use and seal off all the entrances. Hurry! This enemy isn't kind enough to wait until the transformation scene is over!!"
A muffled explosion rang out outside and the shockwave shattered a few of the windows bordering the main road.
Jonathan had been unable to get up as the Faith Organization soldiers had approached to secure their prisoner, so he had mustered his last ounce of strength to pull the pin on a grenade.
Heivia clicked his tongue.
"Damn, it's already started!!"
"Prepared or not, we have to respond."
Heivia hid behind the collapsed vending machine and Wraith hid behind a bookstore cart that carried a stack of unsold magazines taller than she was. Both of them aimed their weapons outside.
The explosion seemed to have pushed their excitement over a line. With the roar of a battle scene in a knight movie, Faith Organization soldiers flooded the large street that panoramically filled their vision.
There were people, people, people, and more people.
The thick wall pushed in with such force that it was easy to forget that each gunshot fired toward it was taking a human life. Dark red blood and flesh flew, the soldiers on the front line collapsed, and countless boots trampled their allies' bodies before they had even stopped breathing.
This was different again from the nightmarish mission led by Piranirie Martini Smoky. Instead of being threatened into it, these people were charging in of their own free will.
"This is just the worst!!!!!!" said Heivia.
"It really is a vision of hell, " agreed Wraith."I feel silly reminding you of something so basic, but coordinate your magazine changes so the barrage never stops. If the density of bullets thins out, they'll push in all at once."
She hatefully spat out the words, but her movements were accurate as could be.
And while calmly firing on the soldiers running out into the road like a sensor-controlled machine, Wraith said something without looking over at Heivia.
"... I'm sorry."
"Is that supposed to be foreshadowing an emotional sacrificial charge or something? If not, then shut your mouth, crazy girl, because your words are meaningless to me. Your sentimentality is as ridiculous as blood-type fortunetelling, so don't think it takes away my right to hold a grudge!!"
Static reached Heivia's ears.
Then a voice came over the radio.
"They've put together a unit aside from the one crossing the road. They're circling around to reach the station from the west entrance while you're focused on the main group!"
"Are you kidding me... !?"
"It's hardly surprising when they have so many people to work with, " said Wraith."And lowering the metal shutters isn't going to stop them at this point. Yes, don't randomly spread out your forces. No matter what kind of clichéd new truths come to light, the station will still be filled with blood if they break through the front."
"Then what are we supposed to do!? They're coming from behind. Are we supposed to just sit here and keep fighting until they shoot us in the ass!?"
"Were you not listening? I said not to randomly spread out your forces."
Wraith emphasized the one word while waving a 5-inch monitor in the hand not holding her gun. It was her beloved smartphone.
"Those snake robots can find filming spots without the map data of a server, so I've been observing the battlefield from 32 directions to accurately analyze the enemy's small idiosyncrasies using the high-speed cameras. That's 10, 000 frames a second. And thanks to their battle of attrition using such great numbers, I've gathered an incredible amount of data in a very short time. Charge, retreat, diversion, coordination – the big data is boiling in the magic pot. And it's about time to take a look at the whole."
"... Is that really going to make a dramatic difference?"
"This is the Information Alliance style and it works for any kind of group sports. That said, the data is useless without enough people to work with. A single director can't do everything on her own even with the optimal answer in hand. So will you obey me and live, or defy me and die? The choice is yours, my dear sworn enemy."
Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue and forced out some words while creating a pile of corpses from the Faith Organization troops outside.
"... You can do as many good deeds as you want now. It won't change a thing."
"That's fine. I never said I didn't want to die. I just said I don't want to die here."
They had a plan.
The black-uniformed girl took the overall command role.
"Frank, fire more of those grenades into the air. Five should do it for now. Send them between the troops in the road and those preparing to enter the road to crush and separate them with the blasts."
"Understood."
"Once those in the road can neither advance nor withdraw, mow them down with your assault rifles. It's the same as keeping water pipes clean: the charge can continue because of the constant 'flow', but once it stops, the fear of death will come rushing back. The slightest stop is all we need."
"Are you serious?" complained Heivia."I thought psychology was as much a superstition as tarot readings."
"Since you have yet to evolve beyond an ape, I will respectfully answer you. It is human nature to be distracted by detours when the way ahead is blocked. Their secondary candidate is the western entrance. Once the pressure here has been reduced, send out three groups with shoulder-fired missiles. Their secondary unit is a minority, so if we blow up their front line right away, we can stop their momentum."
The difference in overall numbers was 50 against 500 or even more.
When outnumbered by more than four to one, they should have been overwhelmed regardless of each individual's strength.
However.
To put it another way...
"We don't have to look at the overall numbers. We only need to recalculate the localized human density, " proclaimed Wraith while looking down at the smartphone screen inserted into the H-shaped gamepad."Sports data analysis thoroughly analyzes the idiosyncrasies of the players. Once you have detailed information on how individuals and teams handle offense, you know where to focus your defense. That allows you to reveal everything about the situation. It's the same in soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey. This is a simple matter of applying that to war instead."
Even if the overall difference in Olympia Dome was 50 against 500, that did not necessarily apply to the numbers that clashed at any one time. By judging the timing, using the terrain, and firing bullets and bombs to divide the enemy into groups of ten or fewer, the Legitimacy Kingdom would have the advantage of superior numbers against those individual groups.
Of course, they would never pull that off if they simply fought at random. Shouting that they would overcome the difference in numbers was the same as relying on guts.
This tactic was only possible because they had high-speed cameras thoroughly filming everything from 32 directions, international competition level algorithms analyzing that footage, and soldiers who could follow the enemy arrangement and distribution, move as the information on the screen told them to, and turn that ideal into a reality.
The statistics in the data began to encroach on the real scene before them.
It was stagnation.
This did not just apply to the Faith Organization soldiers' charge across the road. The excited energy between them rapidly cooled, their momentum faltered, and the fear of death and the confusion was clearly spreading among them once more. Even though that general "atmosphere" should have been invisible.
"Stop firing for 5 seconds."
"?"
"We'll give them a moment of relief before throwing them back into deadly danger. It's just like getting in a hot bath before being thrown right back out into the midwinter night. That's the most effective means of shaking them. Resume firing."
Heivia's short burst of fire caused a previously-unseen change.
One young soldier out in the road came to a stop, turned around, and tried to run back to the alley from which he had come.
"That woke him up, " coldly said Wraith.
She saw the change, but she did not instruct the soldiers to cease firing.
"All that about their mental limiters was a temporary thing. No matter your beliefs or convictions, forgetting the instinctual fear of death is not a natural state for a living creature. So we just have to control that on/off switch. Once this unwanted look at reality has taken away their purity, they cannot rebuild the resolve to trample their allies' corpses and cross that river of blood."
"Thanks for the lecture, but what do we do now!?"
"The minority pushes back against the majority. Instead of that young soldier himself, shoot a few nearby soldiers in the head. Seeing familiar faces destroyed and feeling their blood splattering on him will be more effective. Once the fear of death makes him panic and he starts to scream, the rest will come quickly."
It was like throwing oil on a fire.
Their coordination clearly crumbled. There were cracks running through that army which had been like a solid wall before. Heivia's group only had to use sporadic fire to widen those rifts. The enemy was shoving each other to avoid being on the front line and some fistfights were even breaking out.
"They're just a chaotic crowd now, " cruelly said Wraith."Finish them off."
"You're really scaring me."
They did not even need to shoot all the remaining soldiers. Simply aiming their assault rifles in that direction produced short shrieks as the soldiers ignored their orders and fled.
"Should we go after them? It'd be a pain if they regrouped and regained their cool."
"It's quite the opposite. The calmer people are, the more they remember the fear of death. Give them time, and the fear of death will ensnare their mind like a nightmare. In fact, if we try to deal with them individually, we will lose. Have you forgotten how outnumbered we are? Plus, we only have so much ammo. Data analysis is not all powerful and its effects only show themselves in a limited arena."
Their goal had always been to blow up the broadcast station that supported the Olympia Dome's largescale broadcast infrastructure (which could be seen as an EM spying facility that indiscriminately gathered signals from the surrounding area). Using up all their ammunition before arriving there would be meaningless.
Wraith made a casual decision like she was staring at a schedule book.
"We were lucky to rout them like this at all. They didn't see through our trick. It will take some time for them to prepare for combat once more after abandoning victory of their own volition. Let's achieve our objective and leave the Olympia Dome before that happens."
After gathering their dead comrades' dog tags, Heivia's group left the subway station and resumed the journey to the broadcast station. Since it was a large facility, the giant boxy building was visible from a distance. They were of course cautious in their approach, but the sense of having cleared the largest hurdle enveloped the Legitimacy Kingdom survivors like a cradle.
However...
"What... is this?"
"?"
Heivia gave Wraith a puzzled look when she uttered a low comment toward her smartphone screen. What was that small LCD screen connected to and what was it displaying?
"There's... there's no way they overlooked this!! Did Taratua just decide not to tell us!?"
She seemed to be cursing someone.
And at the same moment, a 50m mass passed by in the sky over their heads.
Their eyes could see it, but their brains refused to accept it.
For one thing, its position made no sense.
It was above all the high-rise buildings in the city. A mass of steel mixed with a heat-resistant reactive substance was positioned at an altitude of more than 200 meters. It was floating. It was flying. If the spherical main body was viewed as the earth, then the 3 Y-shaped wings were attached at the equator. Were those coaxial rotors? The two sets of wings rotated in opposite directions, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise, to free the 200, 000-ton mass from the bonds of gravity like a helicopter. There was something like an undercarriage, but could that even be used to move it? The equilateral triangle below it was like a helicopter's skids or an upside-down version of the tripod used to support the bottom of a pot or frying pan on a gas burner. It may have only been meant to let it take off and land.
"An..."
This was no time to just stare in shock.
It had moved into position above Heivia's group. Which meant... ?
"An Object!?"
A moment later, the colossal weapon that had ended the nuclear age began its attack.
Part 10
Why had that information been kept from them?
Far away on a relatively-intact cruiser, Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks answered her aide's question with a smile.
"Because I have no real reason to be their friends☆"
Part 11
All sound had vanished.
Heivia had no idea what had happened.
"Bwahh, ahhhhhh!!!??? Abfweah!!"
Something had fallen from directly above and crushed the subway station building like a cardboard box. Then, like drawing a thick line along the ground, the reinforced concrete building and asphalt road were destroyed and a cascade of destruction pressed in on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes.
It was like a child crushing a line of ants below their shoe.
Heivia just barely escaped the threat.
Something cut by horizontally in front of him and familiar faces were transformed into red and black stains.
"Get indoors!!"
The extreme situation had left Heivia in a daze, but Wraith's shout acted like a slap to the face.
"They're placing the metal balls used for grenades and mines inside the ridiculously powerful artificial air current used to keep that 200, 000-ton mass afloat and firing them down from that height. If you don't want to be torn apart by that deadly waterfall, then run!!"
Heivia still could not react, so Myonri grabbed his limp hand.
"Let's go! We can't just die here!!"
"..."
Something else happened before he could say anything.
A different shockwave hit Heivia and the others from above. Their legs could not support them and they were sent rolling across the asphalt. They looked up from the ground just in time to see all of the high-rise buildings' windows shatter and a downpour of glittering glass enter the sky.
"Dammit!!"
This time, Heivia picked up Myonri and crawled below a nearby truck. An ear-splitting cacophony followed. The glass downpour was crashing into the ground.
"What happened to Wraith? Did she actually die this time?"
"She's waving from behind cover over there. More importantly, what was that just now?"
If the Object was simply launching a cruel attack on the ground, it only had to use that same combination of wind and metal balls. The glass was merely a side effect of something. This only made sense if it had done something else.
A low rumbling and shaking finally reached them.
They were confused at first, but it slowly dawned on them.
"It was firing something... no, it was a shockwave. That was all it took to shatter all the glass here..."
"But there wasn't anything like a main cannon, " said Myonri.
"Damn, we have no idea how it works without Quenser here. And we can't come up with a weird name for it without our busty commander. Yeah, that settles it. I'm definitely groping those tits later on since she ran off and left us!!"
"I get that your lust won out over your friendship there, but could you at least put me down before saying things like that?"
Since the enemy could crush a tall, reinforced-concrete building like it was a cardboard box, staying in one spot would be a bad idea, so Heivia and Myonri crawled out from below the truck.
"Hey, " said Wraith when they regrouped."How were you planning to escape?"
"What?"
"That came from the harbor block. In a reliable but boring move, I imagine that thing fired its main cannon on the Frigate 042 in C Dock. Those of us here in Olympia Dome will be next. If you had personal watercraft or submersibles loaded on that ship, we need to find a new method."
"I-its main cannon!? But there was no sign of that..."
"It used the coaxial rotors that support it. It probably has giant, heavy-metal shells loaded inside it like a handgun magazine. Those things have a rotation speed high enough to support 200, 000 tons. It only has to open the end of the magazine and release the shell within. Just imagine the destructive power of using centrifugal force to throw a shell like a meteor."
A storm of small metal balls launched downward by the wind and giant heavy-metal shells launched into the distance using centrifugal force. That left the Faith Organization's flying Object with no bind spots. There was nowhere they could hide that it could not fire on them.
"Are you kidding? This really is a nightmare..."
"Is it? This seems better than if they had attached a laser cannon to the end of the main rotor and sliced us to pieces with that rotating blade. Would you prefer to be chased by an infinitely-expanding circular saw?"
Wraith nonchalantly upgraded the nightmare while protected by the aide young man. The history giving form to her imagination had to be insane.
"Centrifugal force, shell throwing... no, it might be better to think of it like the hammer throw. Yes, for now, let's use the enemy codename of Hammer Throw 001."
"We have to call it that too? We just keep getting more and more influenced by the shitty Information Alliance method."
"Yes, it is hard to say we are a perfect world power. The one who holds the most information is the winner, but so many idiots misunderstand that concept to the point that they think the sign of the privileged class is cutting off all information to the point that you can buy a private beach in Miami and swim in the nude. All the bored young wives with ringlet-curls are turning into nudists who claim to aspire to a natural lifestyle."
"Are you just clueless, or are you trying to win me over!?"
"Please, can someone take this seriously!? Our lives are on the line here!!"
Myonri pleaded with them, but she had not taken into account the possibility that the idiots were trying to avoid facing the intense fear before them.
And the Hammer Throw 001 no longer had a distant target to prioritize.
It would be their turn soon.
Myonri's shout had dragged Heivia back to reality, so he felt sweat on his brow.
"... What do we do?"
What would that boy who was not here have done at a time like this?
What would Quenser Barbotage have done?
"What the hell are we supposed to do!?"
A moment later...
It fell.
The flying Object that had been looking down on them dropped far too easily.
"................................................................................................................................................................................................... Ah?"
Heivia's thoughts could not keep up with the crazy sight before him.
But it was no illusion.
After a brief delay, an incredible storm of destruction was thrown out in all directions. More than just the glass, entire groups of buildings were knocked over this time. And it was more than just a shockwave. The connections between the dice-like floating objects made of aluminum and stainless steel were smashed and shaken.
"Ohhhhhwah!?"
Shouting was not going to accomplish anything.
The fact that the ground could softly "sink" into the ocean, allowing some of the force to escape, was the only reason they did not end up with anything like an ice age brought on by an asteroid strike.
"The Hammer Throw 001... fell???"
The rising curtain of dust was swept away by the storm. Myonri reported on what she saw in a daze.
"It was... a crane.... Did the crane on a building rooftop swing around and... catch on the main rotor?"
"It didn't swing the arm around, " corrected Wraith while seawater swelled up from below.
An old guerilla tactic against helicopters and tiltrotors was to throw a wire or net over them from the top of a building. But...
"The crane rotated vertically. Some kind of explosive blasted it at the base to tangle the thick wire in the rotor. It didn't matter that the spherical main body can withstand a nuke."
An explosive.
A flesh-and-blood soldier had attacked one of the Objects which were synonymous with war.
The 50-meter and 20, 000-ton spherical main body had lost its balance and fallen at one corner of the city. It seemed to be near the broadcast station. The exact level of damage was unclear while on the ground like this.
"Could it be... ?"
However.
That had to be Heivia's greatest hope.
So the delinquent soldier could not help but say it aloud.
"Quen-..."
"No."
A voice bluntly cut him off.
It came from Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.
She could not look him in the eye as she forced out the words.
"I'm sorry, but that simply isn't possible."
Part 12
Sigma 3, Robinson King-Cole, was just as stunned as the incredible shaking reached him.
"What happened... ?"
He doubted the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, or a third group disguised as them could have done this.
Nevertheless, the Second Generation Ix Chel being resupplied at the Olympia Dome had indeed been brought down. It had happened so suddenly that he felt like he was analyzing movement in a video game one frame at a time.
"OD Control! What the hell happened!?"
He already half-suspected that he would receive no response.
At the same time, a hopeless chill ran down his spine. What possibilities could he think of? When he laid out the cards, he could not rid himself of this unease. After all, their mission had been to transport something dangerous.
And that "something" had not been the flying Object called Ix Chel. As extraordinary as it was, that colossal weapon had already belonged to Robinson's maintenance battalion, so it would not be counted as an external "package".
But in a way, Ix Chel was nothing compared to the true "package".
Had it really taken advantage of this confusion... ?
"Nee hee hee hee."
He heard a voice.
A lovely but wicked girl's voice sounded from directly behind Sigma 3. And the next thing he knew, all other voices had vanished. And he heard no noises at all from the comrades he had been fighting alongside for so long.
"Did you not even notice? You didn't, did you? Well, that doesn't really matter. Thanks for your work, though. Oh, this is my destination. And it's also the end of the line for you. You've been waging war day in and day out for so long you have to be familiar with the concept of 'acceptable losses', right? If you were tasked with looking after me without being informed... well, just remember that concept."
He did not even have time to turn around.
But the scene he did not want to see was reflected in the show window in front of him.
It was a red and black hell.
And one violent and brutal visual overpowered even the deaths of his allies.
A young girl with long, long blonde twintails wore an Object Elite's blade, bullet, explosion, and environment resistant special suit which revealed even the slightest contour of her slender body.
She was not the grim reaper that brought death and demise according to predetermined rules, like one's natural lifespan.
She was an incarnation of destruction on a much higher dimension who destroyed the world on a whim.
... He should have noticed.
Whether they were the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance, the intruders alone could not have caused so much damage. He had assumed the Faith Organization soldiers' rampage was to blame, but that was not it. It was neither the enemy nor his allies. A third party had used the confusion to remove heads and pierce hearts.
"I followed his example and learned how to use bombs to destroy Objects, but... hmm, what does this mean? I don't see any sign of him... Well, I just need to search a little longer."
This was not war.
It was crime, yet it had done greater harm than an official war.
This was the dangerous thing that Robinson King-Cole's maintenance battalion had been transporting.
"Don't worry about the Manhattan and all that annoying stuff. I, Skuld Silent-Third, will take care of it, so you all can rest in peace. By byyye☆"
Between the Lines 1
The continuous IV drip has been ended.
Saint Skuld Silent-Third is active once more.
The Saint has a glowing record as the primary Pilot Elite of the Faith Organization's Second Generation Norn, but she is also known by the Faith Organization to be the greatest war criminal. She generally chooses her victims carefully within the bases which are seen as small cities, but that is not always the case.
- Former Oceanian Dictatorship: Annihilation of a pro-government village.
- Cape of Good Hope District: Burning of a mercenary camp.
- Alaska District: The mysterious deaths of a foreign press group.
- Malacca District: The sinking of a cargo ship.
- And the infamous Madagascar Report. Please reference that report so it need not be repeated here.
Her primary killing method is strangulation using her own hands, but she is extremely fickle and changes a lot from moment to moment. In the Madagascar District, there was evidence she used old-fashioned torture equipment. These are the crimes of an individual, but if they are slow to be discovered or dealt with, she has the skill to destroy a mid-level guerilla base and construct a mountain of corpses on her own. She intentionally includes shifts and swings of analog emotion in her digital mission operations, so her actions are incredibly hard to simulate and existing troop management rules do not apply. Once she has been released into the wild, do not focus too much on any fixed idea and be extremely careful in how she is handled.
It is dangerous to assume you are safe just because you are the one with a gun.
What she says and her carefree changes of expression cannot be relied on. The Saint is an extremely intelligent war criminal, so she can use various psychological tests and counseling methods to her advantage to win one's trust.
Be extremely cautious of the unique "charisma of death" found in many serial killers. She generally prefers acting alone, but she has something that destroys the morals of those around her. If you begin to think that you alone can communicate with her, you are in an especially dangerous situation. Make sure you have regular meetings with your supervising officer to receive an objective, third-party view of your mental state.
The Saint is a genuine serial killer, so she shows some fixations that normal people find hard to understand.
Currently, she appears obsessed with a specific individual named Quenser Barbotage. For information on him, view the records from the Madagascar District, specifically concerning the destruction of the Norn.
Most likely, it is simply not possible to fully control Saint Skuld Silent-Third. If you are giving her freedom as part of your operation, you must build in a high level of acceptable losses for enemy, ally, and civilian alike. Also, it is more effective to lure her with bait than to give her orders. Gathering information on the aforementioned Quenser Barbotage and using that name to distract her may be one possible method.
Offered to Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker.
May a peaceful holy age arrive to this sinful and impure world.
| ← Ch. 130 | Ch. 132 → |