novelBetween the Year's End and the Year's Beginning >> Uyuni District Salt Flat Suppression Operation (2)
| ← Ch.155 | Ch.157 → |
He thought his heart had stopped on reflex, but once he calmed down, he realized this made no sense.
Heivia looked like he could barely breathe after also taking a load to the face.
"Ew, cough!? Wh-what the hell is this slime? Was that a lotion cannon!!!???"
"Ah, ahhhh!! I'm slipping! Everything's all sticky, so I'm falling off the roof!"
With everything from her boobs to her glasses all goopy, the busty blonde frantically moved her arms in search of something nice and hard to hold onto for support, but despite her efforts, everything she reached for slipped from her grasp. Her white uniform was also slipping off of her.
However, they could not just laugh at the silliness of it all.
Quenser heard the loud screeching of a vehicle slipping on the white land a level above him. It was the Legitimacy Kingdom supply vehicle. It had the same continuous tracks as a tank, but it could not grip the ground and kept sliding a bit to the sides. The people and vehicles could no longer move.
"A nonlethal suppression weapon? Oh, I get it. They probably specialized in this direction since they're police. So things like stun guns, tranquilizer darts, mace, batons, and shields."
"Wait, so is that all they have? Cough, they don't have a giant man catcher that can grab the Princess by the hips and swing her around, do they?"
They were discussing that when another shot was fired. It looked like a signal flare stabbing into the ground away from any noticeable target.
All of the sticky goop erupted into flames.
"Wha-?"
Get out of there.
They finally understood why the Princess had sounded so urgent while warning them from her Object.
"Napalm!!!???"
It was flammable.
The flames spread in all directions. It was like a ripple of fire expanding from a single point, so the white land was engulfed in crimson hellfire before long. There was nothing they could do. The supply vehicle was stuck on the salt land and only kept slipping when it tried to move. The shocked soldiers fled the vehicle, but their fate was the same. They could not stay standing and kept falling down into the stickiness.
Nonlethal? No, this weapon let them choose whether the target lived or died.
The first wave had arrived.
The human screams were drowned out by the deafening roar of the flames taking in oxygen.
This really was a world where the people who did their jobs right were the first to die.
Quenser and the others were powerless to help them. Or rather, they had their own problems to deal with. The mystery goop had poured down on their heads too and that connected back up to the flammable substance scattered across the surface.
"Eek, eeek, eeeeeeek!?"
"No, Elise! Don't climb down!!"
"But, but, the fire, the fire, it's right there, the fire!"
"A 30-ton vehicle with tank-like continuous tracks will still slip, so our boots can never grip the ground!! We need to get onboard!! Get inside!!"
Their hands slipped again and again, but they managed to get the hatch open and hop down into the military engineering vehicle. That was a 2m drop, so it really did knock the breath out of them. Still, the weak student managed to move his trembling spine to force himself up and close the hatch.
A moment later, they were enveloped by an explosive roar on all sides as orange light engulfed everything outside.
They had no desire to peer through the periscope.
Quenser grimaced because he knew what that burning smell had to be. Even those tactless potatoes felt awkward knowing their lungs were filling with the smoke created by cooking their own allies alive.
The battlefield student pressed his back against the wall, sat down, and wiped the deadly flammable substance from his brow.
"Thank god this was a construction vehicle. If it wasn't made airtight to keep dust out, it wouldn't have severed the 'fuse'."
"Hey, what kind of detergent can wash out napalm? This is scary as well! A single spark of static could ignite us!!"
Naphtha was a type of gasoline, so anything that broke down oils would work. They might end up with nice smooth heads since that was the same stuff used to get stubborn scorch marks off of ventilation fans, but they would not have to worry about spontaneously combusting.
That was when they felt the tug of inertia.
The vehicle was moving.
"Myonri?"
"Um, I'd rather not to use that as a solution again, but burning away the goo gave me a grip again. Now we can move back."
There were still some odd irregularities in the roar of the engine and the vehicle kept coming to a rapid stop as if pitching forward.
The busty blonde (who had been upgraded from sticky to bubbly) trembled tearfully with small white bubbles on the tip of her nose.
"Uwehh. I guess that would do some damage, wouldn't it? If the engine stalls here, we can't avoid being roasted inside this giant oven."
"I bet the heat of the flames is preventing the radiator from cooling the engine fast enough. How about this!?"
Myonri seemed to have some kind of idea and they heard a deep scraping sound. However, the vehicle was not taking any damage.
Quenser frowned.
"You tore down the salt wall and dumped it on us?"
"Whoa!? Th-that could've buried us alive!!" shouted Heivia.
"But you can't dump water on an oil fire, right? Okay, that seems to have put out the fire on top of us, so now's our chance!"
Myonri moved the continuous tracks to back down the hill and reach the second level that had a salt roof. That sounded simple enough, but rapidly backing up with tank-like continuous tracks was difficult even with camera assistance. It was easier to just turn the gun around.
"How can they call that thing a police Object?" asked Heivia while nestled lovingly against the steel wall and crouching down."They ignored another Object and fired napalm at the people running around at its feet. They couldn't be more inhumane."
"You didn't know, Heivia? The police aren't bound by war treaties, so they're always shooting dumdum bullets into fleeing suspects' backs. Fleeing civilian suspects. Meanwhile, a soldier would be thrown into solitary confinement for that."
"They're fighting a goddamn war here!!"
"They probably think of it as fun little business trip. I doubt they're even aware this counts as war."
"What kind of double standard is that!? That's it. I'm not setting foot outside this vehicle!!"
"Umm, " interrupted Elise."A single shot from that thing will cause the entire tunnel to collapse and bury us alive and I'm pretty sure a lot of salt already got into the radiator while putting out that fire just now. If we do that too many times, the engine will definitely burn out. The melting point of salt is about 800 degrees, so it'll probably melt onto the metal like cheese on toast."
This really was the worst.
For whatever reason, the Police Queen was targeting the humans first.
It was probably using ALS, ninhydrin, and audio and video analysis. It used every system the police used to track its targets. Mercenaries in the jungle would use their experience and senses to track the enemy soldiers based on footprints in the mud or broken branches, but the Police Queen added a ton of scientific approaches on top of that. Of course, that would be used for more than finding evidence. It was surely hooked up to a large computer in order to profile the Princess.
At this rate, Quenser's group had no way of supporting the Princess. They would be killed the instant they appeared aboveground. And those potatoes were not patriotic enough to act as a decoy for a nuke-resistant Object.
"That said, the Princess will lose if we don't do something. Do you think an Object with such broken morals will actually listen to the White Flag signal? I don't want them hunting down all the survivors with flamethrowers and napalm rounds!!"
Was the Police Queen aware of the Baby Magnum's specs? Did it know it could win a one-on-one battle, so it intended to take out the puny infantry to eliminate even the smallest possibility of an upset?
"This feels different somehow."
"Quenser?"
"I mean, there is a difference in specs between the First Generation Baby Magnum and the Second Generation Police Queen, but the Princess can still get a clean hit in. I get wanting to avoid an upset, but is that really a good enough reason to distract yourself in front of an enemy Object? If it tries fighting the Princess while essentially messing around on its phone, the Princess could get a clean hit in and it'll lose a battle it should have won. Could the Elite really look away from the deadly gun barrel when their life is on the line?" Quenser was so lost in thought that he forgot he was covered in napalm."They could ensure their safety if they could just get a single hit in on the Princess, so there's no need to delay that by eliminating other uncertain factors. The best way to avoid being hit is to destroy the other Object as quickly as possible, so why this?"
"I get what you're trying to say, " said Elise."But aren't you being awfully vague about any of the specifics?"
"Something else scares them more." He sounded confident."What would you do if someone was holding a gun in your face, but a huge dump truck was rushing in from the side? You'd look away from the gun to face the greater threat, right? The Police Queen is afraid of something even more than the Princess's main cannons. But what?"
"Hey, Quenser!?"
He ignored Heivia telling him to stop.
The battlefield student climbed the ladder, opened the hatch overhead, and climbed back out into that world of death and scorching heat.
Myonri was the one who calmly stated the problem with this.
"Leave if you want, but there's no escape if you get caught in that sticky hell."
"That's why I'll do this." He pulled the thick wire from the winch, wrapped it around his hips, and waved toward the vehicle's camera."If things look bad, reel me in with the winch. That way I can escape the napalm area."
"Okay, but I can't do it gently. Don't blame me if it slices you in two."
It was unclear how serious Myonri was about that, but Quenser crouched low and walked through the salt tunnel with his lifeline in place. The makeshift ramp was difficult to climb on foot. Reaching the first level required using his hands as if doing some light mountain climbing. Salt must not have been as flammable as wood or paper because the napalm fire was already gone.
Then he realized something.
(Crap, I can't see up to the surface without the military engineering vehicle here. I could always use a bomb, but would the Police Queen notice?)
"Quenserrr."
A sweet voice followed after him.
He looked back to see Elise Montana still wet and sticky, but from the detergent now instead of the napalm. She was running over to him with a shovel in her hands.
"What are you doing here? You could have stayed in the vehicle and drank some coffee."
"Eh? They had something so wonderful in there!?"
"Hm? We transferred the coffee equipment over from the destroyed drill vehicle, remember? It included a mill for the beans and a dripper.
The communication disruption from the second level's salt tunnel had caused some less important harm as well.
They had to meet face to face to discuss this kind of thing.
"B-but I couldn't bear to just sit there waiting. I'm starved for information, so please let me do something. I'll do anything."
"Hold on, where's your lifeline?"
"Awahh!?"
That said, Quenser would have been stuck without her help.
The first level salt trench was about the width and depth of a large tour bus. They could tear down the wall with a bomb, but they could not allow the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation to notice them. They wanted to observe things as silently as possible.
Which meant...
"Okay, I'll lift you up, Elise."
"That's fine, but please don't let your feet slip so you fall backwards! That would be far worse than a suplex!!"
Operation Piggy Back was a go.
Quenser was on the bottom and Elise on top.
Since she was soaked from the detergent used to get the napalm off, the presence of her crotch was impossible to miss. Plus, she must have been afraid of being suplexed because her thighs were squeezing him excessively tight. Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage's experience points were skyrocketing from this government job that meant having his face squeezed between a beautiful woman's wet thighs.
"(Damn, if not for this, I'd have abandoned her long ago. )"
"I'm actually helping, so can you please not mutter threatening things like that?"
However, Elise still could not reach the upper level even when stretching her hands up. They had no choice but to strap a mobile device to the shovel she had brought and reach that makeshift selfie stick up like a periscope.
After filming the hellscape above, they pulled it back down.
Quenser lowered Elise Montana and extracted his head from the giant tunnel formed by her legs.
Then they both viewed the small screen.
"There it is. And it's still fighting the Princess."
"Eek."
If they had been fighting for this long, it meant the difference in skill was much smaller than the difference in specs suggested. There was not a devastating difference there, so it made no sense for the Police Queen to annihilate the surrounding infantry "just in case". It would not have the focus to spare.
"Huh? It's firing that sticky stuff at the Princess too, isn't it?" said Elise."Is it trying to roast the Object so its reactor overheats?"
"Overheating an Object that can survive a nuke? Not likely. That's probably high-pressure water."
"High-pressure?"
"In other words, a water jet like the ones used to slice through steel panels in factories. They apparently increase the cutting edge by upping the friction with artificial diamond dust or something, so I bet this is a similar process. Firing a heavy goo will pack more of a punch than smooth mineral water."
After watching the video for a while longer, they saw one of the Princess's seven main cannons get torn off pretty spectacularly. Destructive power like that might be enough to tear down a broadcast tower at the base.
"Isn't it dropping some hedgehog-like things while it fights? What are those prickly things? I hope they don't blow up."
From a distance, they could see those mechanical chestnut burrs rolling around like tumbleweed in a western, but even those would function as deadly rollers that skewered any flesh-and-blood human they happened to hit.
Nevertheless, Quenser doubted they were weapons meant to cause destruction. He stared at the footage of those devices that looked like concrete tetrapods or sea mines covered in protrusions.
"The spikes sticking out on all sides are exactly a meter long and they're painted with 10cm-wide stripes. They must be baseline rulers for triangulation. The same idea is used for the video analysis of security cameras. It increases the accuracy of radar locks and of image gathering."
"Eek."
"Modern security cameras can apparently predict when someone is going to shoplift based on the tension of their cheeks muscles. They must be following the movements of the Princess's lenses and joints, so it's all over once they work out the patterns there. Any chance of a direct hit goes away."
"Eeeek!? So she's in a lot of trouble!?"
"We are too. If it stabs echo rods into the ground and has them send out terahertz waves, it might be able to detect the humanoid silhouettes through the thick layer of salt. That's how airport security sees inside luggage and coats without opening them."
"Eh? Talk about scary new tech. That doesn't let people see right through your clothes, does it?"
That aside, Quenser thought quietly. Why did it switch its power output between anti-personnel and anti-Object attacks? Was it afraid of destroying the salt flat below itself if it used too much power?
The Police Queen was outdoing the Princess with its high-speed mobility based on the ski-like air cushion system, so was it most afraid of losing its freedom of movement?
"..."
"Hm? Quenserrr???"
This was odd.
It felt like the Legitimacy Kingdom and Capitalist Corporations were looking at this situation differently. Things were not fitting together, like a shirt buttoned up in the wrong holes.
With those two propulsion devices held together, it could rapidly accelerate. When it spread the back ends in a V-shape, it could rapidly brake. When it adjusted the angle to break the symmetry, it could make sharp turns. It was indeed swishing back and forth over the trenches dug in a labyrinthine path around the salt flat, so would it really be that troubled by someone blowing up the ground?
"Wait."
The blond boy paused the video and zoomed in at one point.
But that point was not the Object.
It was one of the white pyramids of salt cylinders standing in the background.
"Wait, wait. I'm missing something. The issue isn't with the switching over of power output."
"Um, I have no idea what you're talking about anymore, so should I just stay quiet?"
"Why did it light that fire?" Quenser felt like he had grasped the crux of the issue."If it simply didn't want us messing around out here, it only needed to fire that slippery lotion cannon. Those slippery conditions make it too dangerous to move for people and for vehicles, so we couldn't have dug through the salt or blown it up. Trying anything would only have led to accidents."
"Can you stop calling it lotion before we try to have a serious discussion here, you son of bitch? Anyway, you can never be entirely sure what someone is going to do. Wouldn't it be better to seal the deal by burning them away than simply hoping they won't do anything?"
"That's not the point."
Quenser zoomed in on another spot of the same freeze-frame.
This time, it was a faint white haze covering the Object.
"We overlooked that giant thing's presence at first because of this stuff."
"Um, you mean the fine salt thrown into the air like snow?"
"That's not salt."
Dry ice, liquid nitrogen, etc.
A number of possibilities came to mind, but Quenser went with the most extreme of the bunch.
"It's probably liquid helium. The coolant is let out as a gas once it's been used, so it takes the form of a white haze."
"Ah!" cried Elise.
"Its main cannon is a water jet that fires a liquid, so it wouldn't need that stuff." Quenser slowly sighed."Same for the air cushion system it uses to stay afloat. So where is it using that liquid helium that has to be below -200 degrees? And what for? If we narrow down the candidates one by one, we should find the answer."
"In that case..."
"Yes, that fire had a purpose other than killing, but it can't exactly show off the weakness it's afraid of having exploited, so it disguised it as a way of attacking enemy soldiers. There must be some reason it had to burn this salt land. It's that simple. That's why it altered its power output and used fire for the finishing blow."
He stopped speaking there because a sticky cannon blast passed by overhead. It was not directly aimed at them, but a giant sticky beam sliced through the sky all the same. Just like with water from a hose or a water gun, some of it splashed down on them.
Even if it was more of a mist than anything, napalm was napalm.
In the worst case, the fine mist of explosive could behave like a fuel-air explosive.
"That's our cue to leave. Myonri, reel it in!!"
"Umm, I don't think your radio is going to reach her inside the tunnel."
"Then what's the point of this lifeline? Okay, let's run, Elise!!"
"Awawa, awa, awa. Please don't leave me behind!!"
Just as they were descending the makeshift slope from the first level to second level tunnel, the student glimpsed something yellow out of the corner of his eye. Since everything around them was white, he assumed it was some weird afterimage like when you looked at the sun and blinked, but it was not.
There really was something in the roofless first level trench.
It was a yellow construction helmet.
"There's someone here."
Quenser thought his heart was going to stop.
He could hardly believe his eyes.
"There's a normal civilian here!!"
"It's too dangerous, Quenser!"
Elise tried to stop him, but they could not send signals out from the salt tunnel. The boy was afraid too, but he still had to step outside and shout into his radio while prepared to get covered in that napalm goo.
"F-Frolaytia, I've located what looks like a local worker! He's probably a civilian!! Give me approval to save him!!"
"Probably? I need proof! Couldn't he be a Capitalist Corporations spy or a local cooperator!?"
"We can figure that out later, but if I don't save him, that guy will be cooked by napalm!!"
"That isn't good enough!!"
His commanding officer bluntly rejected the idea.
But even now, that middle-aged man without a gun or a jacket was rolling around while covered in the sticky goop. It looked silly, but he could not get up once he was like that. If he could not escape on his own, he would be killed as soon as the Police Queen ignited it all.
They did not have a second to spare, but Major Frolaytia Capistrano was still going on about rules and regulations.
"We are in the middle of a military operation at the moment. Not to mention that the interior of a military vehicle is classified information. We cannot let an unidentified individual ride one for no reason!!"
Elise started to say something, but Quenser held out a hand to stop her.
If it came down to it, could he insist he was a student instead of a soldier and save the man anyway? It was disappointing that the man was not a cute girl or a beautiful woman, but being a middle-aged man was no reason to abandon him with a smile.
But after he thought up his excuse, his commanding officer's voice reached him over the radio.
"This is a crucial mission, so you need to remove that uncertain and unpredictable factor from the battlefield and also draw out any crucial information he might have. Over!!"
He could only laugh.
To translate that into modern language, she was saying a reason to save him could be invented so he should quit talking about it and just save the man.
"I'm so glad I ended up in the 37th. There's nothing better than serving under a great woman."
"U-umm!!" cut in Elise."You can act cool if you like, but how exactly do you plan on saving that sticky old man!?"
"First of all, we don't call him that! It makes it harder to want to save him!!"
A change occurred while they shouted at each other.
While he struggled vainly to stand up, the man ended up sliding down the slope Quenser's group had created and fell to the second level. Now Quenser would not have to attempt to climb that slippery slope from hell.
The napalm fluid had not made it inside the tunnel, so they could stand and run like normal there.
Which meant...
"Elise, you recover me."
"Um, huh?"
"I'm going to get a running start and slide headfirst!!"
He did exactly that.
He took a running start like he was doing a running long jump and he slid on his belly as soon as he left the tunnel. If he continued along like a penguin, grabbed the struggling man's body, and had Elise pull back on the wire, he could return to the safe tunnel.
"I..."
Well, that was plan anyway.
Unfortunately...
"I can't reach him!!"
He was only a meter away, but he could not do anything about that meter. He knew without even trying that any attempts at moving would only spin him around before he slid off in the wrong direction.
He could not save the man like this.
Even the slightest spark would engulf this entire area in flames.
"Ahhh!!"
He heard an odd yell, glimpsed something passing by right next to him, and saw sticky Elise Montana wrap her arms around the man's legs.
"Quenser, grab onto me! Hurry!!"
"Fine, but without you back there, who's going to pull in the wire wrapped around my hips? Our radios can't reach Myonri inside the tunnel!!"
"Ah, awahhh!?"
The clumsy woman was clumsy even in an emergency.
The disconcerting roar of flames consuming oxygen reached them from somewhere. Wherever it was coming from, the entire napalm area would be engulfed in flames in the blink of an eye.
"!!"
Quenser twisted around and aimed his mobile device toward the tunnel.
"The signal won't reach!!" warned Elise.
"I'm using the camera's flash! The tunnel is straight, so the flashing signal should reach them!!"
A powerful tug reached his hips.
He was frantic at this point.
"Ah!! Elise, don't let go of that man!! Keep a tight grip on his legs or hips or whatever!!"
"Wait, with both hands? Then what about me!? I don't have a lifeline, so I'm not connected to you!"
"I'm holding onto you!! Speaking of which, your boobs get all the attention, but you've got a pretty nice butt too."
"Hey, stop that!"
They were all desperate to survive. Quenser was pulled back into the salt tunnel by the winch while he held onto that sticky woman's lower body with his face sticking into a soft spot.
The tsunami of fire washed over the outside world a moment later, but...
"Cover it up!" shouted Quenser while Elise's thighs tightened down on his face in fear."Break apart the salt to cover up that slug-like trail!! We can survive if we sever that fuse!!"
Part 6
Back in the maintenance base zone, busty silver-haired Frolaytia scratched at her head. She bit down on her kiseru hard enough to nearly break it and she violently squeezed the laptop in front of her.
You thought she could relax while sitting back in the base?
Not a chance.
She had to check through all the precedents set in innumerable past incidents to prove the actions she had approved were justified.
A first lieutenant woman stood nearby like a secretary and smiled bitterly while Frolaytia shouted in frustration.
"To hell with all of this! I'm stuck fighting my own battle in an online military meeting!!"
Part 7
With a deep roar, the outside world was once more engulfed in crimson flames. How many of their allies' lives had been lost in that attack? Quenser, Elise, and that man would have been roasted as well had they been just a little slower.
Yet the attack was not even strictly necessary.
It was only being used as camouflage.
"Bwah!? Ah, ah. Th-that was terrifying, so please don't use a scissors throw on me again! I just about drowned in your crotch! And the detergent filled in all the gaps, so it was like having a wet towel over the face!!"
"I made up for it by covering the goop up with the salt, didn't I!? And if I let go of your hand, I would have been stranded in that sticky hell with that old man and fried by the napalm!"
"You were holding onto my face!!"
"It was the only way to survive!!"
"You clearly haven't learned your lesson, vise girl. This calls for some punishment!! Don't suffocate people with your thighs!! How did you end up with a body so wild your boobs and crotch are constantly causing trouble!? Okay, give me a tearful look and strike a pose!! You know what parts to accentuate, don't you!? I'm not looking for any surprises here!!"
"No!! At least don't get my face in the shot!!"
They entirely ignored the man they had saved and begin a battle between his mobile device's camera and her desperate resistance. A new type of war had begun. This alone seemed like enough for its own spinoff. Perhaps the problem was how a middle-aged man made it a lot harder to move people to emotion than a child waiting for Santa. Not that anyone wanted him to suddenly shed his skin and become a cute girl.
However...
(I've found it. )
Quenser must have been experiencing a high after successfully saving someone because his thoughts took an extremely serious turn even as he rolled around with the blonde woman (whose glasses were as sticky as the rest of her) and fought over the camera.
(I've finally found your weak point, Police Queen. )
Part 8
Alarms were blaring incessantly.
The Princess grimaced and gave a stern look through her goggles that tracked her eyes with lasers.
"That stupid thing!!"
"Stay calm, Princess, " warned Frolaytia."If the Baby Magnum is lost, everyone else will be slaughtered. Does that really look like someone who will let the survivors escape?"
"I know that, but still!!"
"I have to fight a war of words with those peace-addled higher ups, so please don't use up any more of my mental resources."
The Princess was taking the brunt of the attacks, but she was also the only one inside a shelter thick enough to endure a nuke. In that sense, she was better protected than Frolaytia back in the maintenance base zone.
She normally did not feel this, but this time she felt a twinge of guilt at being the only one protected like that.
But no matter how much she regulated her breathing or how efficiently she pursued the enemy, she could not seem to capture the Police Queen. It could change the angle of its ski-like floats to switch between straight movement and turns and it would even fire its main cannon to slide to the side.
There was a leisure sport that sprayed out seawater to let people fly in the sky.
If recoil was used effectively, it could provide rocket-like thrust.
The Police Queen's greatest weapon was its sharp side-to-side movement. That would squeeze the Pilot Elite's organs with the intense inertial forces, but they could use those bursts of speed to hunt down their prey while sacrificing the lifespan of their organs and blood vessels.
Calling it a police Object was downright laughable.
That was no more than selling one's soul to the devil for power.
(They keep focusing on other things. Do they really think they can fight me like that? They keep targeting the others just for fun!!)
It was a new Object, so did it want an obvious high score to show its capabilities? If so, it was racking up a score in the exact opposite direction of the clean war concept.
If only.
If only she could get one shot in.
The Princess clenched her teeth so hard she thought they would break, but...
"Hey, Princess!! F9 was a little too hot for our liking, so we withdrew to E7. We will now strike at the Police Queen's Achilles heel. I repeat, we have withdrawn to E7. Lure that bastard over here!!"
They lived in an age where Objects were the deciding factor, so it was unusual for an Elite to be worried about what the puny infantry was doing, but that had entirely slipped her mind because she was always so worried about her allies on the battlefield with her. And it was that side of her that made her allies want to help her out.
Even if it meant risking their own lives.
"Quenser? Wait, what are you doing!?"
"Didn't I tell you?"
She sounded scared.
Even more than when those main cannons were aimed at her.
The boy on the other side of the radio sounded like he was smiling after hearing that.
He seemed to be saying that was exactly why he could keep fighting in this age.
"We're going to strike at its Achilles heel. I'm sure you'll notice how cheap a game the Police Queen is playing before long. The finishing blow is up to you, but we'll take care of its unbeatable footing."
Part 9
The idea had come from the cruelly crushed tunnel-drilling vehicle.
Or more accurately, from a piece of equipment they had transferred over from it: the electric mill used to crush coffee beans.
Myonri's military engineering vehicle traveled through a few of the labyrinthine trenches and tunnels to reach E7.
"I'll tear down the wall like you said, but is this really enough to defeat a Second Generation Object!?"
The hard-working jack of all trades was still skeptical, but...
"Damn this coffee's good."
"You gotta let the pros do their job. No one would know how to use that coffee maker like the owner, so it's a good thing that silver-haired girl we rescued has recovered."
"If you don't make me any, I'm going to fall asleep at the wheel, so I hope you've lived a life without regrets!"
Myonri was getting really angry now, but spoiled Quenser only answered her previous question with his hands wrapped around a mug.
"Just get us to the location. Please! Once we're there, the Police Queen should tell you what a threat we are. But through its fearful actions instead of its words!!"
Once they arrived, Myonri used the folded-up mantis-like arms to tear down a nearby salt wall. The others put on the dust masks that were standard equipment within the vehicle.
"The salt won't just get in through your mouth and nose. It can get into your body through any mucus membranes, so that means your eyes and ears too. Salt is the perfect example of something we need to live, but will kill us if we get too much of it. Dumping salt over your head means taking in more than if you swallowed an entire shaker of it, so be very careful!!"
They left through the hatch and walked to the salt torn down by Myonri's mechanical arms. There were plenty of white chunks the size of large stones. They looked hard, but they easily crumbled below the heels of their boots.
Yes.
"It never really made sense." Quenser was not talking about the Capitalist Corporations Second Generation."Those white pyramids all around are just unnatural! Digging up the salt from the salt flat is all well and good, but salt is still salt. It would never stick together like that. The bottom side would be crushed and it would all collapse!"
"Are you saying they used some kind of trick? We're not talking about the deadly food made by a newlywed wife who never learned how to cook! Will this really defeat an Object!?"
"It was baked together." He got to the point, which meant suddenly shifting focus to the Police Queen."That thing keeps scattering napalm and engulfing the salt flat in flames so it can harden the salt land. Why? Because it doesn't want the salt collapsing below it. Simple, right?"
"Will it really freak out if we destroy the ground below it now, though? I mean, that big, old corrupt cop is already hopping over the trench labyrinth!"
"It isn't the ground collapsing it's afraid of."
"Huh?"
"Elise, you've figured it out already, haven't you? I saw that look of realization on your face when I mentioned liquid helium."
The actual work they had to do was simple.
They were fighting a nuke-resistant Object, but they did not have to construct some massive bomb.
Quenser pulled in one of the salt blocks in front of him.
Today was the once-a-year special event known as the Royal Cleaner.
"That's a polisher, isn't it?"
He held a piece of metal larger than a family-size water bottle. The electric cleaning device was normally used to polish the exterior of a car. A motor rotated the disk and a polishing surface similar to a short carpet removed any stains.
Quenser kept a straight face as he pressed the rotating disk against the salt block
The block immediately crumbled, but...
"Looks like this isn't enough. The pieces are too coarse and it doesn't make enough quickly enough."
"A-atomization."
An unexpected voice joined the conversation.
They looked over to see the man they had saved leaving the vehicle with a dust mask on.
"Couldn't you use atomization? That's what we use to obtain large quantities in the factory. You can't sell the salt extracted from the flat when it's still in large chunks."
He was right.
That method would work.
"Hey, Myonri. You mentioned that salt can melt, didn't you!?"
The driver girl responded to the student over the radio.
"Oh, you mean the radiator? Yes, if you stick salt somewhere that hot, it will melt just like cheese."
"In other words, it doesn't burn. You could even wrap something in it to cook it." He sighed."Let's use heat to completely melt the salt. If we spray it out after that, it should transform into miniscule particles finer than pollen when it cools and rehardens. That's how they make metal powder, anyway."
That was why they were so excessively worried about their masks and their exposed skin. An extremely fine powder would behave differently from normal matter. For example, the kidneys were a fine filter, but some medicines were made into small enough particles to pass right through it. They needed salt to live, but it was still frightening to think of it passing through the filters for their brain and kidneys to reach every last part of their body.
So why did they need such fine salt despite the risk it entailed?
"It uses low-temperature superconducting magnets, " said Elise.
"Huh? What's that?" asked Heivia."Some kind of main cannon?"
"No, that is how the Police Queen moves around. Or more accurately, it is a special joint that can instantly change the angle of its ski-like parts."
"They're floating, Heivia." Quenser took over with the tone of a child who had thought up a good prank."Have you seen those maglev experiments? If you place a neodymium magnet above metal that has been chilled enough, it will just float there. The giant joints connecting the Police Queen's spherical main body to its skis are hollow on the inside. Since they're floating, there's no friction. I imagine the parts fit perfectly together like an Island Nation tea caddy and its lid. The cylindrical support pillars that connect the main body to the propulsion devices probably have rollers and brakes inside that form the mechanism for adjusting the angle of the skis. Anyway, that's the secret behind its absurdly quick directional changes."
"Wait, you mean...?"
"We just have to fill in those gaps." That frail boy's eyes contained the gleam of a bird of prey."The Police Queen is afraid of any unforeseen errors or clogs. It targeted us over the Princess because it feared the fine salt and wanted to solidify it all with the napalm. It may have been upset with us for tearing up the salty ground with our vehicles' continuous tracks, but targeting us was probably just camouflage. It didn't want anyone realizing the true purpose for the napalm, so it was simply attacking the soldiers at the same coordinates. That was all."
So.
So.
So.
"It's like a tea caddy and lid. Those joints have a slight gap on the sides. Or the Pilot Elite is afraid there are anyway. So we only have to target that Achilles heel. We'll use the finest salt we can: less than a micron. Once we scatter around plenty of salt dust finer than cedar pollen, it's sure to bring that bastard to a stop."
"But the Police Queen is engulfing everything in flames already, " pointed out Heivia."You said the process requires heating up the salt to melt it and then cooling it back down, right? If that was enough to clog it up, wouldn't it have taken itself out already!? It's already melting the ground and letting it cool!"
"It has to cool down as a spray. Simply heating it up and letting it cool will just create a single clump like when you melt cheese. Turning it into a fine spray first is crucial."
"That part sounds like it will be hard, " said Elise.
"Really? Even 1 euro stores sell detergents in spray bottles."
The melting point of salt was around 800 degrees, but they could easily reach that with their vehicle's engine. By making some quick adjustments to the end of a metal pipe, attaching that to the exhaust pipe on the back, and making it so the melted salt would pour in there, the rest would happen automatically.
A large silhouette cut by a short distance away. The Police Queen had crossed over the trench labyrinth.
"It's started!" announced Quenser.
"Hey, it uses an air cushion system, right?" said Heivia."When it's blasting air around at all times, our salt powder will just be blown away!!"
"Are you sure about that?"
Quenser stabbed a pen-like electric fuse into a plastic explosive and tossed it toward the pile of salt they had made to be finer than a micron. He did not have time to worry too much about the exact arrangement. Once the four of them (three potatoes and one civilian man) had circled behind Myonri's military engineering vehicle, he hit his radio's switch before the air cushion blast reached them.
With an ear-splitting explosion, all the salt was pushed high into the sky by the blast. The grains were too small to see with the naked eye, but the area glittered like a rainbow. The salt was reflecting the sunlight.
Then the powerful gust of wind pushed in like a bath pipe being cleaned out.
Even a large man clinging tightly to the metal vehicle could have been blown away by that, so Heivia clenched his teeth behind his dust mask and raised his voice.
"See, it didn't work!! Our miniscule resistance was entirely wasted!!"
"You can't create energy out of nothing, Heivia." Quenser smiled while also desperately holding on."An air cushion uses a lift fan for air intake. It gathers that air below itself and uses that to float. So the more powerful that gust, the more air it has to be taking in. And it gets that air from the space around it! Once the salt is in that current, the Object will do the heavy lifting for us. It'll be gathering the very toxin that will destroy it!!"
A deep roar shook the air.
It was a deafening metallic scraping similar to an anti-earthquake structure in a skyscraper.
The salt dust finer than cedar pollen had gotten into the joints of its "skis".
That salt filled the slight gaps on the sides similar to an Island Nation tea caddy and lid, so it started producing a creaking sound. The smooth movements ground to a halt, the skis could not change angle, and its light footwork was interrupted.
It seemed to pitch forward.
It could not change direction while sliding to the side, so it simply floated there. And then it rolled over. The spherical main body rolled and rolled, bending and breaking the main cannons and floats that got caught between it and the salt ground.
"Princess, the bugs crawling along the ground here have just one request."
Quenser exhaled and then spoke a single coldhearted word.
"Fire."
Part 10
The battle was over.
Frolaytia's long, narrow kiseru wiggled a bit inside her personal room covered in her Island Nation personal possessions.
"Sergeant Elise Montana."
"Y-yesss?"
"I would like the opinion of someone who fought on the scene. What was your impression of the Police Queen battle?"
"Unnatural, I guess I would say."
The busty blonde klutz in glasses was more nervous than sharp, so she shrank down (and subconsciously squeezed her large boobs between her arms) while giving the opinion she was asked for.
"Fine powders were a weakness for that Second Generation. And the Capitalist Corporations was clearly aware of that since they had it solidify the salt flat with napalm as a makeshift solution. But why? If it was that poorly suited for use in a salt flat, I have a hard time understanding why they would have deployed it to the Uyuni District."
"Continue."
"That means they were not monopolizing that area because they wanted to. Could there have been something forcing them to do so? I couldn't tell what they gained from doing so, though."
It sounded like Elise had not figured out what exactly this was about.
Frolaytia enjoyed the sweet smoke of her kiseru as she asked another question.
"By the way, Elise, did you know you can find more than just salt in a salt flat?"
"Um?"
"For example, anhydrite, potassium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and borate minerals. As the powerful sunlight dries out the land, the materials that would normally be spread out thinly as moisture end up being concentrated."
That led to a certain suspicion.
And if that suspicion proved accurate, it would explain why the Capitalist Corporations had wanted to send in that new police Object even though it was a poor fit for the environment. There was some "power" there they wanted to obtain as quickly as possible.
Yes, and for the Capitalist Corporations, money was power.
In other words...
"The rare earth known as Immortanoid. There was already a theory that a massive deposit was hidden somewhere in South America."
This topic was a familiar one for the 37th.
Those children on the Julius Caesar aurora observation ship trapped in the Arctic had been used as carriers by filling them with that same rare earth that had grown to be 200 times the value of pure gold.
It was said to emit a special form of radiation, so if it was used in the right quantities (such as in a mineral spring), it could extend an individual's lifespan by 30%.
However...
"U-umm."
"Yes?"
"Well, didn't you say before that Immortanoid can't actually be found in the ground?"
"I did. That's why this entire story is a bluff. After all, they can't sell it unless they announce where it was mined from. Just like with gold and diamonds, you need an official certificate to sell it on the market."
Mineral resources were still commonly sold to fund guerillas and terrorists, but that was why buyers wanted to know where it had come from.
So...
"Immortanoid is an element located after #93. Simply put, it is an artificial element found nowhere in the natural world and must be created in a particle accelerator."
"..."
"All of that talk about it being good for your health or extending your lifespan is bogus information meant to increase its price. Y'know, just like how they fill mineral water with oxygen or nitrogen and sell it at a higher price. If you call it a health product, no one will question how far you jacked up the price."
And there was one thing that was an absolute necessity if you wanted to sell health goods: the magic words "all natural".
"I mean, no one would touch the stuff if they knew it was a new radioactive element created with chemicals in an accelerator and that isn't found naturally anywhere on the planet or even in the universe. You get a lot more customers by saying it's a rare stone that absorbed the earth's mystical energy in some strange unexplored region."
"But, wait, that doesn't make any sense! They sent the Police Queen to the Uyuni Salt Flats when that's just about the worst place for it. If they were only burying their artificial rare earth and then pretending to 'discover' it, they could have used any number of more convenient locations!!"
"It's a bank." The busty silver-haired woman smiled in response to the busty blonde-haired woman's confusion."Remember that secret bank for rare metals in the Bering Sea? Where do you think they store the gold and platinum their customers deposit? Surely you didn't think they kept it in a safe in the back of the bank."
"Um."
"With petroleum and any other mineral resource, a simulation is run before the prospecting process even begins. After all, you have to buy the digging rights for that land before you can actually dig it up, so no one wants to spend a bunch of money on empty land. Yes, if you earn a little more authority, you can learn just how long humanity has left. It's a readily available figure."
"I-I would rather not know. But what does that data have to do with this?"
"No one is going to dig somewhere worthless. That's just how the industry works. So if you want to hide some secret precious metals, those 'worthless' spots are perfect. The secret bank used the simulation data to find areas no one else was going to dig in and buried all the ingots they wanted there. My guess is the Police Queen chose the Uyuni Salt Flat because it was the only area within its reach that fit the multiple conditions they needed."
"..."
"And we happened across one of those - their Immortanoid vault - and pried open the door."
The Uyuni Salt Flat had been dug up like a labyrinth, but that was only to extract the salt. The secret bank's "buried treasure" would have been at the very edge of the salt flat where even the salt miners would not think to dig.
The Police Queen was the only Object the Capitalist Corporations police had.
They apparently wanted to overtake the PMC army, but that meant they had to stand out. The Capitalist Corporations in particular would not run full speed into an ideological war while forgetting all about the monetary factors.
Also, a bank could not make money on its own. It needed customers to deposit money and keep the cycle of cash flow going. They may have been protecting the secret bank they hoped would fund the mass-production of police Objects, but the Legitimacy Kingdom had driven off their guard.
"Um, doesn't that put us in a very dangerous position!?"
"It does. This is no longer a simple matter of the Legitimacy Kingdom vs. the Capitalist Corporations. We'll have made an enemy of all the wealthiest members of the world powers. Including those in the Legitimacy Kingdom." Frolaytia Capistrano blew out some sweet smoke in an exasperated way and placed a hand on her forehead."By the way, Elise, there's an interesting story from the past related to a secret bank. A local TV station began airing a show about locating buried treasure, so they kept digging up areas entirely unrelated to any mining simulation data. What do you think happened to them?"
"Th-they found something they shouldn't have and the show got canceled?"
That would have made for a strange enough legend, but the truth was even more shocking.
"Some of the mining explosives detonated early, so the host and all the shooting staff were killed on site. And during a live broadcast at that."
"..."
"Something similar might happen here, but on a much larger scale."
Whoever had done that had only been doing what they thought was necessary.
They had only wanted to protect their secret and their fortune.
It was not that killing the TV crew was the only method available to them. They had used that method because it was the optimal solution. So if they had to eliminate a military force, they might just crank up the scale accordingly.
The secret the 37th had stumbled upon was simply that great.
It was more than enough to start a war.
"To be honest, I really want to rebury it and pretend we never found anything. I'm not sure if I should even report this to the higher ups. Because I know some of them will be stupid enough to want to snatch it up despite knowing how dangerous it is."
The rules of the military said she had to report it.
But if she did report it, her name might go down in history as an unbelievable fool.
The busty blonde-haired woman's face clouded over and the busty silver-haired woman whispered one last thing.
"So, Sergeant Elise, you need to prepare for a major battle. If this goes beyond the limits of the clean wars, I am certain we will need to rely on your unique skills."
Between the Lines 2
"Coming through!"
The Royal Cleaner was all the rage in the Information Alliance as well.
It probably helped that their maintenance base zone was deployed to a relatively stable battlefield country. The ringlet curls Idol Elite known as Oh Ho Ho held a large mop while wearing only baggy overalls over her naked body. She had dried paint on her in places, so she looked something like a painter. Needless to say, the areas around her neck and sides were looking much more risqué than she was aware.
Almost everyone on the base was dressed up like it was a costume party.
In addition to Oh Ho Ho, there were all sorts of men and women dressed so they could easily wash themselves off. Several wore bikinis or raincoats, there was a woman in a doctor's white coat and a woman in a nurse uniform working together, and there was a mysterious maid spy group. Oh Ho Ho herself could not be too open about her identity since she had to keep her secret, but PR campaigns were common for the military. Especially in the Information Alliance. So she always made sure to take part in events like these.
(Well, something or other has brought devastating chaos to the rare earth market. Oh ho ho, so the military has to keep a big smile on our face to show the world things will be just fine. )
That said, the Information Alliance Pilot Elite was not very interested in any underground resources if they could not be used for semiconductors. Converting things into money was Capitalist Corporations territory.
"Oh, you're so cute!!"
"Ho ho ho. Do not upload that to a video site. This is classified information!!"
She immediately pointed at and gave a warning to a pair of female soldiers she came across (one in a skintight riding suit and the other in a baggy track suit top and bloomers), but she still made sure to strike a pose for their cameras.
The soldiers had divided onto two teams and they were competing to see who could get the other side more covered in bubbles. Coordination between the water gun group and the soapy mop group was the key.
After running around a bit and circling behind one building, Oh Ho Ho found Lendy Farolito leaning against the wall and grinning at her phone.
Was she somehow participating in the big Royal Cleaner event too?
"Heh heh heh. Money laundering☆"
"..." The ringlet curls girl's mouth formed a small triangle, but the brown-skinned, silver-haired commander did not care.
"You sometimes see talk of the dollar crashing, but setting aside how realistic that is, I very much welcome the rush of people wanting to convert their bank accounts into precious metals. Tah dah! I convert their money and take some for myself as a commission!!"
"The world's true heroes should not be saying that kind of thing. Oh ho ho. Is this about that Immortanoid again?"
"The new year will be here soon, so I will wash my hands of this then. Yes, we should be able to ring in the new year in the most pleasant way. By which I mean we can all stay in royal suites at a Caribbean luxury hotel during our military exercise☆"
"Why do I get the feeling you're setting yourself up for disaster?"
"Nonsense! By the way, I am on the red team."
"Geh!? You're an enemy!?"
"I hope you're prepared because I happen to know a naughty Elite who needs to be absolutely coated in bubbles!!"
| ← Ch. 155 | Ch. 157 → |