novelThe Season in Which the Flower of Hell Blooms >> Battle for the Arctic Course through the White Sea District (2)
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Once they were out of the picture, the Legitimacy Kingdom could fire their cruise missiles.
And once the coagulant was scattered from the air and the marsh quickly solidified, the Baby Magnum could be sent out. Once that happened, it became a perfect game for them.
But just as he thought that, he heard an odd noise.
"What's that?"
It sounded different from a car or motorcycle engine. It was higher-pitched and more like a whistle. Quenser grimaced as the high-pitched roar stabbed at his ears and he saw several shapes arranged in a horizontal line and approaching from the horizon.
But by the time he saw them, they were already incredibly close.
They were fast.
The formation carried a mass of air with them as they passed right by the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. A moment later, intense pain exploded in Quenser's ears and a dull pain spread through his chest like his lungs had been forcibly overinflated.
"Gyah!?"
"Dammit! What are those things!? Hovercraft!?"
Based on the direction they came from, they had to be weapons from the factory, but they moved right past Quenser and the others.
Their objective lay elsewhere.
"Frolaytia!! The barrage balloons might be filling the radar with readings, but something insane is racing around below them. They're probably trying to attack the maintenance base zone! Prepare to intercept them!!"
Even as he shouted over the radio, the second wave arrived.
They formed a reverse V-shape like a flock of migratory birds. When they saw that the hovercraft were equipped with heavy machineguns and multiple rocket launchers, the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were filled with fear as well as surprise. Some even aimed their assault rifles and grenade launchers toward the approaching enemy.
Fortunately, the enemy was moving in a completely straight line, so it was not difficult to target them even with their extreme speed.
There was an explosion, but it was large.
It was far too large. The grenade launcher was only meant to fire hand grenades farther than could be thrown by hand, so it could never have caused this explosion. Like an accident at a fireworks show, explosive flames covered dozens of meters and a shockwave swept out even further.
Quenser had been lying on top of an armor panel, but he was tossed into the air and slammed into the bottomless swamp-like mud.
"Bh... gah!? What... the hell? Did we set off something inside it?"
"Dammit, this isn't right. Something about this isn't right! Dammit!!"
To keep himself from sinking, Quenser grabbed nearby piece of wood and spat out the words with mud covering his face.
He looked to the wreckage of the hovercraft scattered about in the distance.
The wreckage continued to burn with orange flames even when it fell into the wet mud. There was plenty that could have exploded, like the ammunition or the rocket motor fuel, but no matter how much he tried to make sense of it, it seemed too unsafe. Pieces of the structure were completely unnecessary for an armed hovercraft. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces of an entirely different puzzle mixed in.
"You're kidding..."
"What is it, Quenser?"
"This is no joke. They're really using this ridiculous weapon in battle!?"
Part 9
Quenser's warning and the support of the maintenance base zone's large Doppler radar were both unnecessary.
The Pilot Elite Princess was on standby inside the Baby Magnum's cockpit and she had already detected the change through the monitor.
Enemies were quickly approaching on the surface or at extremely low altitude.
The first wave was eight craft and the second was ten.
"This is a little earlier than expected, but it's time to get down to business. Based on their movements, I'm guessing they're missiles. Please shoot down all of the enemy craft directly targeting us."
"Understood. I will intercept them without leaving the base zone."
It was a simple job.
The First Generation Objects had been originally designed to endure an attack by nuclear missiles. Even if they were moving at Mach 5, at Mach 10, or even faster, being able to perfectly intercept dozens of ballistic missiles scattered throughout the air was the bare minimum of what the Baby Magnum was designed to accomplish. These craft were only moving at the speed of a passenger plane and their numbers were low enough to count on her fingers, so this was hardly going to be a problem.
Anti-air laser beam cannons stuck outward from all across the spherical main body, making it look something like a sea urchin or a chestnut bur, and they began sending out massive amounts of silent destruction.
The five kilometers to the horizon became an absolute barrier.
That caused her to let down her guard.
And that proved to be a catastrophic mistake.
(Is this all? That's a bit of a letdown. )
As she accurately shot down the approaching weapons, she opened a small window to analyze what it was she was destroying. It was a lot like staring at the dust at the back of a shelf while cleaning. She did not particularly want to do this, but it did bother her somewhat.
And then she learned the truth.
"... Eh?"
These were not unmanned weapons following the zeroes and ones written into their guidance chips.
They were not missiles simply following the terrain based on a GPS signal.
They were hovercraft with a certain level of weaponry attached. They were only maintaining their ridiculous speed thanks to the rockets forcibly attached to the back.
The normally exposed top had a makeshift canopy added on to protect the human body from the overwhelming winds.
Yes.
There were people riding them.
Based on the scale of the explosion, these were more than mere weapons. They would charge into the maintenance base zone's barrier or even inside the base zone itself and then detonate the rocket motors on their bellies to cause the most damage possible.
They were used just like missiles.
The heavy machineguns and multiple rocket launchers were not the main weapons. Those armaments were only meant to eliminate anyone attempting to interfere with their course and thus raise the odds of the hovercraft itself reaching its target.
And that revealed the true form of these weapons.
"Manned... missiles?"
"Dammit!!"
The old maintenance lady cursed loudly while staring at a thin tablet computer in the Object maintenance bay.
She had lowered the device's voice communication volume to zero.
The Princess's voice coming in directly from the cockpit had exceeded the level of a mere voice. An earsplitting scream continued without end and she was not responding to anything the old lady said.
The old lady then contacted Frolaytia who was in the center of the maintenance base zone.
"Are you checking her vitals, too!? She's clearly rattled on the psychological front. Frankly, it's a miracle she hasn't vomited yet. If this keeps up, it'll affect her interception accuracy. They'll be able to push through!!"
"We've located the cause. The factory is most likely using handmade manned missiles. This wasn't accounted for on the Princess's chart."
Some people might call her soft.
After all, war was war, Objects were the symbols of war, and a single movement by an Object could kill countless people. So what was the difference if the gun-wielding infantry were now piloting manned missiles?
But that was not how it worked.
Not in the slightest.
"When people kill on the battlefield, they always have a reason or excuse ready for it. Some do it consciously while others do it unconsciously."
The old lady spoke with a bitter look on her face.
In older wars, soldiers ordered to kill had often aimed their rifles and only pretended to pull the trigger. Go back far enough in time and there were wars where over half the soldiers refused to kill. That was how difficult it was for a human to kill another human.
"That girl is used to the modern clean wars. She has a detailed flowchart used to accept all of the killing she does. We made her that way. But that means she'll stall if she comes across some code not in the script. Just like carrying a weapon in the city streets, the guilt of killing will stop her from acting! These people were aware of that flowchart, so they chose to throw away their own lives to bring about an invisible effect!!"
Precision machinery could not handle an unexpected situation, even if it was only a minute discrepancy.
She could understand a desperate enemy that continued fighting even after knowing they could not win.
But she could not process a battle fought to die and not to live. One where the enemy was prepared to lose their lives in vain and where mutual destruction was the best possible result they could hope for.
And so she would stop.
It was really only a difference in perception and both scenarios involved people betting their lives on their fight.
Something had driven these people to think this one-way trip strategy was their best option. That fact stabbed deep into the softest part of the human heart like a fish hook and the sharp barb kept it from being removed so it could continue causing pain.
If the enemy had simply entrusted their fates to outdated weapons and charged in with no thought to the difference in firepower, she would only have pitied them.
If they had the control system's remodeled to make unmanned hovercraft, she could have cursed them for being cowards.
But this was different.
It left a much larger and more definitive scar on her heart than any of the actual damage.
(Where did they dig up the plans for something like this? I hope it wasn't my country again. )
Physically, they could not win.
The difference in military power was overwhelming and the technologies the two sides were using were on completely different levels. No amount of equipment would get them through to their opponent.
And so they pleaded to the human heart.
They would win this war through the heart.
That alone may have sounded like a strategy born from the good of mankind, but they had rearranged it into this bloodstained method.
By highlighting the sin of killing and placing human death before her eyes, they would crush the girl's psyche.
"If she stops now, we'll be wiped out, " warned Frolaytia."Do you have any good ideas? I want some advice from the one person the Princess has opened her heart to."
"We have tanks and armored trucks for guarding the surrounding area, right? Send them all out!"
"Those can't replace the laser beams! If we use them to intercept those hovercraft charging in like cruise missiles, plenty of them will slip through!"
"What matters is that we show her we're fighting alongside her! It's just like pairing a spotter with a sniper. If we distribute responsibility, we can lessen the weight of killing that's bearing down on her. Our part of the fight doesn't have to be particularly effective! We just have to stabilize her vitals!!"
It was only an illusion.
It was a lot like a formless placebo effect.
It was an untested last resort of unknown effectiveness that they could only keep up for an unknown amount of time.
But if it failed, there would be definite sacrifices.
If the hovercraft made into manned missiles were allowed through, the maintenance base zone would be destroyed.
"This is all that's left."
Newsmaker wiped sweat from his brow with a tool in one hand.
He had destroyed all of the computers filled with dangerous data and he had burned all of the paper documents hidden in the ceiling. That only left the data remaining in the large machine tool. That mass of steel filled most of the factory, so he did not have time to carry it to the blast furnace by crane. He used a screwdriver to open the cover and pulled out only the pieces of the circuit board needed for the important memory. He knew the factory better than anyone, so only he could have done this job. He could not afford to leave it to a subordinate and have something missed.
He broke the circuit board in two like a chocolate bar.
He now had no reason to stay here, so he brought his radio to his mouth.
"Are any of the Flying Fish left? I'll head out too. These finishing touches are absolutely necessary."
What truly mattered was not whether they destroyed the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance base zone or not.
In fact, the odds were good they would fail there.
And even if they did cause some damage, it would not be enough to make the Object retreat.
Their objective lay elsewhere.
"I won't let it end here. We will have our form of victory. The defeat of the Crown of the Northern Lights will lead to the Sixth Branch."
Part 10
Quenser and the others paled when Frolaytia informed them that intercepting the manned missile hovercraft was wearing down the Princess's psyche.
"Are they insane? Are they trying to turn the clean wars in the exact opposite direction!?"
"There's the standard army, navy, and air force and then the marines as the fourth branch of the military. Lately, space development and cyber-warfare have been suggested as candidates for a fifth branch, but this isn't any of those. They've gone even further."
This was different from the simple information warfare used by the intelligence division.
Their tactics offensively used manipulation of morale and management of battlefield stress.
"This is a sixth branch of the military. They've made a unit to fight in the 'tiny world' inside the human heart."
"We're doing our best to lessen the burden, but it's only a stopgap measure, " said Frolaytia."Take control of that factory and stop this attack as soon as possible. If the Princess's psyche gives out, you won't have anywhere to return to!!"
Some Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers waved over from a short distance away. They had apparently found a useable hovercraft among the capsized ones. Quenser's group paddled through the mud using pieces of armor as body boards.
The light weight and small size of the hovercraft came in handy.
The deep marsh made it difficult, but with a dozen of them, they managed to flip the boat back over. The Crocodile Gatling gun was covered in mud and useless, but the rear propulsion fan was working.
They climbed on and got the boat moving.
They were exceeding the hovercraft's maximum capacity, but they still used it to reach the copied weapons factory.
"Here they come! Look out up ahead!! It's those manned missile hovercraft!!"
"Wait, don't shoot them! We'll be caught in the blast!! Let them pass and continue toward the factory. For now, just get down!!"
The weapons passed by like solid gusts of wind.
The enemy machineguns roared, but their hovercraft were moving at over 800 kph. They had no way to aim accurately and only punctured the mud like a giant sewing machine.
Heivia raised his head, looked back, and spoke.
"Did you see that, Quenser?"
"The rocket nozzle didn't have any adjustable wings and it can't adjust its speed. Once those things ignite, they'll take you to the moon or wherever else they're pointed."
The enemy had been unable to reproduce missiles, so they had attached rocket motors to hovercraft.
They had been unable to create rocket engines with adjustable thrust, so they had used an incomplete product.
The end result looked like a piece of junk, but that actually gave it more exposed humanity. The sight overturned the current system of war that protected the people who controlled the murderous machines that digitally dealt out death.
"This isn't even a war anymore..."
"They aren't an officially registered army and they aren't protected by the international treaties. They're trying to create a new framework or something."
The enemy was focusing on the maintenance base zone because their goal was to force the Object to intercept, not to destroy the base. They had barely sent any hovercraft out to intercept the approaching soldiers.
"Wait, does that mean what I think it does?"
"Let's do what we can. Turning back to the maintenance base won't help us protect the Princess."
The swamp came to an end.
They crossed the thick concrete embankment like it was a ramp. Beyond, they found a facility covered in asphalt like an airfield, but it had no runways or aircraft. There was an open space large enough for a soccer game in the center and buildings larger than port warehouses were lined up around it. A salty smell filled the air, so the freezing sea had to be nearby.
Quenser and Heivia jumped out of the slowed hovercraft and landed on the hard but stable ground. They had never imagined something so normal and expected could feel so reliable.
Heivia used his muddy hands to display an offline map on his handheld device.
"We have twenty people here, so let's split into groups of four and check through the buildings one at a time! One group for the production facilities, one for the warehouses, one for the port, one for the residential area, and one to protect the hovercraft. If we lose that, we can't escape the factory. I don't know what's going to happen, so protect it with your life!!"
"Heivia, how do we tell the production facilities from the warehouses?"
"The ones with smokestacks are probably the factories. We're checking them all either way, so it doesn't matter if you get it wrong a few times."
The soldiers quickly got to work and Quenser stuck with Heivia.
"Hey, Heivia, about what you almost said earlier..."
"Yeah, it's too quiet. It's not that I want a welcome party, but I don't want to find the place empty either."
The factory was divided into a few different sections. Some buildings were full of machine tools and lathes like a downtown workshop and others were equipped with blast furnaces. It mostly seemed set up for handmade work, so there were none of the conveyer belts and robot arms of automobile or semiconductor factories. The place seemed dangerous enough for a major accident to occur at any time.
Also, there was no one there.
The warmth and smells of people remained in the empty space, so they felt like they had stumbled into a bizarre story about a ghost ship.
"Did they all already escape?"
"Don't be stupid. There had to have been more than a hundred people living in a facility this big. Even with a submarine for smuggling stuff in and out, it wouldn't be some giant missile submarine. With the kind of civilian sub used by criminals, they'd be lucky to fit twenty onboard."
"Then..."
"Just as I'd feared, they've all gone out to attack! They're pretending they're some sixth branch of the military and using those manned missiles!! Shit!!"
They then heard an explosion from outside. The factory windows were double-pane to keep out the cold, but they shattered from the shockwave. Heivia held his ears, grimaced, and shouted again.
"What is it now, dammit!?"
"Sorry, " said someone over the radio."I found that command vehicle that controls the antiaircraft guns, so I blew it up. The explosion was bigger than I expected, though."
"Damn, he stole the best part, " muttered Quenser as he regretfully stroked his pouch of electric fuses.
They exited the building and saw black smoke rising. The source had apparently been a six-wheeled armored vehicle with TV antennae covering every surface.
The soldier who had blown it up spoke triumphantly over the radio.
"Let's search the warehouses now."
"Hey, wait a second. If the advance team is going to do everything, why are the rest of us even here? Just let us sleep in at the base instead!!"
Heivia complained while also heading to one of the warehouses, but Quenser was messing with his handheld device. The soldiers already inside the building were sharing the footage from their helmet cameras.
The space was large enough to hold an entire school building and it was packed full of countless "products". The weapons contained inside were an odd mix. There were old-fashioned tanks, armored vehicles, piles of assault rifles, and all sorts of shells. There was even a helicopter that had been thrown inside half-constructed. They may not have been able to reproduce all of the technology necessary.
Quenser spoke as he ran along the runway-like asphalt.
"The source and technology level of these weapons are all over the place. It looks like they tried to reproduce every single design they could get their hands on. I guess this is what happens when you rely on existing plans without building up your technology from scratch."
This was not a simple case of being at too low a level.
With the antiaircraft guns and the thermobaric rounds, even some excellent weapons had been left inside this toy box.
"Look, Heivia. There's even an electromagnetic pulse weapon. There hasn't been any news of that prototype since it was announced at a weapons show a few years back. How did they steal the plans for that?"
"Wait, please tell me that isn't the thing where they trigger a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere to fry all of a nation's electronics! That doesn't have a nuclear warhead, does it!?"
Heivia's eyes widened, but Quenser remained calm.
Or rather, he feigned calm while growing excited in a different way.
"No one would even indirectly use nuclear tech in the age of Objects. It's a meteorological weapon called an Elefish."
"A meteorological weapon? That sounds fancy, but wouldn't it just be something like dry ice or silver iodide? By changing the atmospheric pressure with an extreme temperature difference, you can change the density of the clouds and cause rain, but how do you make an electromagnetic pulse weapon out of that?"
"This thing scatters a ton of metal foil in the clouds to induce consecutive lightning strikes on a level you'd never see in nature. If I remember right, it can cause about twenty seconds of sustained discharge and even lightning causes an electromagnetic pulse."
"Twenty seconds? That's not even enough time to make instant noodles. Can you really fry a military network with that?"
"Heivia, even multiple lightning strikes in nature only last about 0. 2 seconds. This is two hundred times as much and the power of the electromagnetic pulse it causes is even more. The surge of electricity will apparently destroy any semiconductors over an area of ten kilometers. If the specs I've seen are accurate, it will blow away an entire city's infrastructure: power, water, sewage, gas, TV, phones, internet, etc. It would bring about a new ecological society without electricity."
However, modern military weaponry was built with countermeasures for electromagnetic pulses. Their cables were shielded and some of their semiconductors were inside vacuum tubes. Objects in particular would never have their internal circuitry fried because they had been designed for absolute victory over the nuclear age.
"Clear."
"The west end is clear too! No readings on my sensors!!"
Voices spoke over the footage on the handheld device and the multiple cameras finally started converging on the center of the warehouse.
Computers were stacked up on a work bench. There was also everything from cellphones to some kind of circuit boards piled up all over the bench.
"They've all been destroyed."
"Can they be repaired?" suggested Quenser."We could hand them over to the electronic simulation division or the intelligence division."
"We'll retrieve them of course, but it doesn't look good. They were opened up and molten metal was pumped inside."
Only one screen had light coming from it. The soldiers dug it out and found a cheap laptop computer. It had no disk drive or hard disk, so it seemed to run off of flash memory. The entire thing was as small as a handbag.
"What is that?" asked Quenser.
"We're checking.... It looks like most of the initial settings are intact. There's only been a single video file added and it's already been accessed."
The soldier on the screen messed with the laptop and moved the video player's slider along to play just the important parts of the file that was only a few minutes long.
Watching a laptop screen through his handheld device felt strange.
The video file seemed to have been filmed with a small handheld camera.
The shaky footage was of the factory grounds they had seen earlier. The only difference was the line of hovercraft equipped with rocket motors.
"We will leave this manual for the future. This message is meant for all of our latent comrades trapped in the quagmire of war around the world. Today, the Crown of the Northern Lights will challenge a new weakness in the Objects that rule our current age and we will guide us all to a certain result. This will lead to your age. Make full use of the psychological warfare we will present to you and create for yourselves a Sixth Branch of the military. Your righteous view is sure to bring this world back onto the right path."
The situation gradually sank in.
Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance outside.
"This is bad. Has this already been transmitted!? This thing is revealing the plans for those manned missile hovercraft!!"
"If this place is empty, where did their leader... what was he called? Newsmaker? Where did he go!? We can't have him follow through with this and die. That will only spread this idea of a Sixth Branch of the military. They've hit the switch for that!!"
"If he dies and is viewed as a martyr, we'll never be able to stop this. Everyone will stop fighting to live and will start fighting to die. How can we stop this?"
"We have to capture him alive. I just don't know how to do that!!"
The enemy did not need to win.
They only needed to leave behind the fact that they fought the Object and died in a blaze of glory.
Their deaths would place pressure on the Pilot Elite Princess and lead her to a mental breakdown. And if the so-called "latent comrades" viewed that as a success, similar attacks would be made against Objects all around the world.
Those ultra high-speed weapons were a one-way ticket.
The Sixth Branch would use aircraft, vehicles, and ships packed full of shells and rocket fuel and those outdated weapons would be used to crush the psyches of the maintenance base zones and Pilot Elites.
"No, wait, " said the soldier on the handheld device."The time of the upload to the video site doesn't make sense. It was only a few minutes ago."
"Couldn't it have been set to automatically upload?"
"There's no timer on this thing. It was uploaded after we arrived at the factory, so Newsmaker must still be-..."
The soldier trailed off.
The targeting lens of a hovercraft blending into the background behind him had made a whirring noise.
Part 11
Quenser and Heivia watched on as the warehouse's front metal shutter was blown away in an explosion.
"Oh, hell! Hide!!"
Heivia yelled a warning, grabbed Quenser's arm, and dove between two warehouses.
The Gatling gun on the manned missile hovercraft turned and started firing.
The metal warehouse walls and a forklift crumbled like styrofoam. The two idiots could only lie on the ground and cover the back of their heads with their hands as they waited for the storm of lead to pass. They could not even raise their head.
"What was that!? The Newsmaker guy!?"
"The big boss always sticks around to the end. More importantly, Heivia, can you target the hovercraft's float? Pop that balloon and he'll stop. And if we end this charge on the Princess, their proof of the Sixth Branch will fail!"
"You're kidding, right? It'll have aramid fibers woven in to make it bulletproof! Besides, I'll be killed if I raise my head now!!"
"Then what about a missile!?"
"I don't have any left! How about you throw a bomb!?"
As they argued, fire burst from the thick metal tube on the back of the hovercraft and an explosive sound followed.
A few Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were attempting to chase after Newsmaker, but that was enough to knock them a few meters back.
"Dammit! He's getting away!!"
The hovercraft surpassed 100 kph in only a few seconds.
It left the copied weapons factory grounds in no time and made its way out into the seemingly endless marsh. The shrinking dot was clearly moving too fast to catch up to on foot.
When Heivia finally poked his head out from between the warehouses, he gave an irritated shout.
"What the hell are we supposed to do!? That thing's a hunk of liquid fuel and shells moving at 800 kph. We can't catch up and the Object is sure to kill him. But if we don't attack and it reaches the maintenance base zone, it's all over. The path to the Sixth Branch will open either way. So what are we supposed to do!?"
"..."
Quenser fell silent and looked around the crumbled warehouses.
"Heivia and everyone else, is any of the heavy machinery still working? I want to drag an antiaircraft gun out from one of the warehouses."
"What good is that!?"
"Remember the electromagnetic pulse weapon we saw in the footage from the group who went in first? We'll fire that with the antiaircraft gun. With that Elefish in the clouds, we can fry the circuit boards of that manned missile hovercraft! If it stalls, we can capture him without killing him!!"
They all began moving immediately.
The antiaircraft guns were attached to the back of canopy-less midsized trucks, making them look like dangerous tow trucks, but there was no gasoline in those left in the warehouses to rot.
Heivia drove a different truck up, attached the two vehicles with wires, and towed one out. Quenser and four others worked together to carry the 10cm wide and 90 cm long shell. They only realized afterwards they could have used the truck to carry the shell out too.
They were all in a state of confusion.
"We only have one shot with the Elefish! If we mess up, it's all over!!"
"Then let's test fire with a normal shell first. We need to see how this thing fires!!"
Heivia shouted back that suggestion while climbing onto the back of the truck to operate the gun.
That was when a female soldier asked a hesitant question.
"Um, do we even know where Newsmaker is?"
"Oh, goddammit."
That most basic of facts had slipped their minds.
This swamp continued for one hundred kilometers in every direction. They knew the enemy was traveling from the factory to the maintenance base zone, but they did not know his exact course. They could only pray he had not arrived yet.
And the Elefish electromagnetic pulse meteorological weapon only had an effective range of approximately ten kilometers. That was enough to swallow up an entire city, but it could not cover this vast swamp.
That was not something they could do from the ground, so Quenser brought his radio to his mouth.
"Frolaytia!! Is the satellite surveillance network back up yet!? We need to locate one manned missile hovercraft in particular. What is the electronic simulation division even doing!?"
"Wait... Those intellectuals are finally showing some results. If this works, we might just have our eyes in the sky back."
That was good news.
If they could use the satellites, the odds were good they could end this without killing Newsmaker.
Part 12
"Wait just a moment."
A slender young man licked his lips in a part of the maintenance base zone where the air conditioning was on full blast year-round.
"I finally got permission to use the Cluster Brain. I won't let them get in our way any longer. I'll hack into the clone satellite system intruding on our military satellite and I'll burn it up in the atmosphere."
Even in her thick uniform, Frolaytia crossed her arms to stay warm.
She was irritated, but she had learned through experience that forcing this sort through physical training only made their performance worse. Letting them do what they wanted was the most effective method, even if she hated it.
"So do we have the satellite back?"
"The Cluster Brain is a special high-speed server built for the Legitimacy Kingdom's cyber operations. Well, to give away the secret, it's a 45. 5 kilobyte piece of spyware slipped into the base OS for the smartphones and tablets selling like hotcakes back in the safe countries. The excess processing power of over seven hundred billion devices is parallelized and used for our analysis work. It's a pain in the ass to get permission to use it since it would be really bad if this was discovered, but now that I have that permission..."
"Do we have the satellite back or not?"
"I can break through any defenses with brute force!! See!?"
Tons of windows started appearing on the LCD screen, but Frolaytia did not understand what any of the alphanumeric strings meant.
The young man seemed to think his division would be reduced if their results were not recognized, so his explanation was much more eloquent than necessary.
"This is the inside of the clone satellite's brain. I can shut it down, send it plunging into the atmosphere, or trace who's been sending it commands. Now, where should I start? Maybe I should visit the sites the bastard visits the most. Who knows, we might learn how to raise a cat."
"Recovering our surveillance network comes first. I don't care if they notice. Just stop the interference with our signals."
"Roger that, roger tha-..."
The young man trailed off and his smile froze over.
New windows filled the screen and even Frolaytia could tell that venomously red text was bad news.
"You've gotta be kidding me... This is bad."
"What happened?"
"Oh, hell. I can't pin it down... I can't seem to pin it down, but that clone satellite must have had a virus in it! This is what they were after this whole time. They infected the cracking system and entered the Legitimacy Kingdom's military network from there!! Shit. Who would go this far!?"
"Don't make me say it again! What happened!?"
When she shouted at him from close range, the young man finally gave up and confessed.
"Contact HQ right away and have them change the Object emergency shutdown codes."
"What?"
"They've stolen all of them!! If we don't hurry, they'll shut down Baby Magnum's reactor!!"
A quiet electronic tone beeped.
The woman known as Yog-Sothoth tried to pull a fancy little device from her skiwear's coat pocket, found she could not with the thick glove on her hand, and removed the glove before trying again.
Once she looked at the screen, she found she finally had some results.
"When you challenge the All-Knowing and recklessly peer into the abyss, you will always meet your doom upon facing the cruel truth.... That is the standard when coming into contact with the Outer Gods."
Thanks to the line between the clone satellite, the cracking server system, and the military network, more and more Legitimacy Kingdom military secrets were pouring into Yog-Sothoth's personal online storage.
When she spotted the emergency shutdown code for the First Generation sent here, her eyes narrowed a little.
(If I had gotten this earlier, I could have ended this without any bloodshed. )
The best-case scenario had been obtaining this information via the clone satellite back when the Legitimacy Kingdom was under attack by the tanks and armored trucks submerged in the swamp.
Unfortunately, the soldiers had cleverly broken through without waiting for the satellite to recovery.
When their attempt to scare the enemy had failed, Newsmaker and his men had switched to their "original plan" of psychological warfare using the manned missiles.
Where had she gone wrong?
What could she have done differently to reach that best-case scenario?
"No."
At that point, Yog-Sothoth shook her head.
(I can't let that distract me right now. I need to think about what I can still do instead of just regretting the past. )
She had the emergency shutdown code now.
A great number of Flying Fish manned missile hovercraft were charging toward the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance base zone.
The enemy's lifeline had to be the Object's laser weapons.
So if the Object were shutdown, they would sink into a sea of explosions. That would establish the methodology of the Sixth Branch that attacked people's psyches and it would destroy the current Object-reliant world. The world powers would begin using similar methods and the age would abandon the wars fought to live and begin wars fought to die.
That result had not been stopped.
In that case, what could Yog-Sothoth do?
Would she silence the impregnable wall of the Object so their determined deaths would not be in vain?
"..."
She looked down at the device's LCD screen.
And with a single finger, she decided the course of history.
Part 13
Frolaytia sent a shrill report and Quenser's group also felt like just giving up.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!! We were hit by a cyber attack now!? We can't locate Newsmaker without the satellite, so this electromagnetic pulse weapon is going to go to waste!!"
They could not rely on their allies.
If they did not know where the manned missile hovercraft carrying Newsmaker was, they could not stop him.
Was there nothing they could do?
This was a focused attack on the psyche of the Object's Pilot Elite. If the manned missiles were deemed effective, more would attempt the same thing, but could they stop that from happening?
"Wait, " muttered Quenser."Frolaytia, please give me some information!! There might still be something we can do. And where's that laptop we found in the warehouse? Bring that over here!!"
The student placed the laptop on the asphalt after a soldier handed it to him. The soldiers naturally gathered around as Quenser focused on the designs of the manned missile hovercraft displayed after the proclamation.
(I need to find a bargaining chip and there might be something in here. Focus as hard as you can and find it!!)
"Quenser, what kind of information do you want?" asked Frolaytia over the radio."We're about to seal off all our data, so access to the military network will be limited. If you have a request, make it now!!"
"It's simple, " he succinctly answered."You just have to tell me Yog-Sothoth's address from when she was in the Legitimacy Kingdom!!"
Yog-Sothoth frowned at the characters displayed on the screen.
Odds were good it was a trap.
After a thorough inspection, she opened a voice app and answered.
"Who is this?"
"You must be the type to drag your past around with you if you kept this old address around. Or did you not have time to clean up the contents of your computer?"
"Legitimacy Kingdom, you won't be able to trace my location by dragging out this conversation."
"I never expected to pull off something like that against someone skilled enough to hack into the core of the military network."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want to stop Newsmaker. Alive of course. So give us back our satellite surveillance network."
"..."
She fell silent.
She understood all too well how Newsmaker's group felt. She knew just how oppressed you were if you did not have an Object or were not allowed to join a group that had one.
She also understood how the Legitimacy Kingdom military felt. This would spread beyond their unit. If they handled this wrong, an age would bloom in which both enemy and ally drowned in bloodshed.
She gave the issue deep thought before answering.
"Why do you think I would help you? I assume you know who I actually am."
"I saw the plans for those manned missile hovercraft. You couldn't make those with the technological level of the copied weapons factory. The electronic controls in particular require software in addition to the hardware. Without a skilled IT person, they'd be stuck with the preset defaults."
"..."
"You brought the factory a copy of plans for an 'invisible bomb' with high level stealth functionality, didn't you? Those allowed for laser guidance, so were you originally planning to use those guidance chips to give them a safe and unmanned guided weapon? But they didn't wait around and were satisfied with the manned missiles. You were trying to repay them, but you instead sealed their fates! I doubt that was what you expected to happen here!"
"That's nothing but speculation. You have no objective proof of that alleged good will."
"If these were originally designed as manned weapons, then some of the space is unnecessary and a few of the circuits take odd detours. Almost like there was a spot meant to hold a guidance chip. I'm an aspiring engineer, so I can look at those designs and see where things were changed."
Yog-Sothoth let out a deep sigh.
She felt a little dizzy and looked at the thick clouds covering the sky.
"I can't understand what made them so happy."
"They might have been smiling, but if they're raised to the level of martyrs, their families and children will be placed on that same line. A Sixth Branch that surpasses space warfare or cyber warfare shouldn't be made and shouldn't see the light of day! That goes beyond what war should be!!"
She listened to him speak.
Her eyes wavered, as did the fingertips prepared to operate the screen.
"Please."
He sounded on the verge of tears.
"Please!! I need your help to stop the turning point Newsmaker wants to create!!"
He likely had no time to spare, but Yog-Sothoth closed her eyes for just a moment.
When she reopened them, she asked a question.
"Enough of the tear-jerking performance. What's your real reason? Why do you want to stop Newsmaker this badly?"
"The Elite on that Object is..."
He hesitated to continue but forced out the words.
And that was his answer.
"A girl I'm interested in. I don't want her to go down in history as the person who helped bring about this turning point."
Yog-Sothoth swore.
This softness and these emotions that could not be fully digitized and she knew they could appear to be an evil god indiscriminately spreading fear and chaos when objectively viewed by a third party.
Part 14
After a few quiet beeps, the maps on Quenser, Heivia, and the other soldiers' devices were updated. The amount of available information increased in the blink of an eye. The many dots charging toward the maintenance base zone were the manned missile hovercraft and each individual dot included information from a more thorough scan.
It did not go to the level of facial recognition, but locating the leader was simple enough by checking the amount of equipped weaponry and determining which hovercraft was most defended by their formation.
"Quensie!? What was that just now? D-don't tell me you're really working on winning over the Princess!"
"Kyah! I only said I was interested! That's all!! Besides, this really isn't the time to be getting into that!!"
If Newsmaker completed his attack while they descended into what amounted to the late-night gossip of a school trip, it would all be for naught.
They all looked like they wanted to say something, but they focused on the antiaircraft gun on the back of the truck.
"I don't think we have time for a test firing with a normal warhead. Shove the electromagnetic pulse weapon in there!!"
"Wait, wait, wait, wait! Are we seriously turning those wheels to manually aim? We might only have to launch the thing up into those thick clouds, but still!"
"He's at the very back... Even with a rocket motor, it takes time to get up to speed. He's between five and six thousand meters away. Thirty-five degrees is as low as we can go, so we can still make it now!!"
"You set the timed fuse based on the distance and initial speed. This would be meaningless if the shell detonates after breaking through the clouds!!"
"The shell has been loaded!!"
"Distance: 3200. Angle of elevation: 41. Let's shove this thing up the ass of the goddess napping on those clouds. Open your mouth and plug your ears! Fire!!"
With an explosive blast, the shockwave knocked Quenser over as he tried to get away from the gun.
The firing powder making up most of the shell was entirely burned up inside the gun and the rugby ball-sized bullet shot toward the thick clouds in the distance. Or they assumed it did. It was not a tracer round that emitted its own light, so Quenser and Heivia could not see it with their naked eyes.
"Did it... work?"
Just as Quenser asked that of no one in particular, the clouds exploded quite spectacularly.
It became an overwhelming vortex of electricity that could never exist in nature.
Meanwhile, Newsmaker heard the fierce explosion overhead. The earsplitting roar sounded like the staticky noise of salt water poured into a neon tube amplified more than one hundred times over. The roar of the rocket motor should have ruled the world of sound outside the thick canopy, but even that was torn apart as the strange vortex of noise assaulted Newsmaker.
There was no lightning strike.
The electrical discharge remained in the clouds, but it was powerful enough to nearly scatter the clouds themselves. As if a meteor had exploded in midair, the flash of light overhead was so intense that his vision was dyed white.
And a moment later...
"Wha-?"
It was like a switch had been thrown.
All of the electronic systems inside his Flying Fish manned missile hovercraft malfunctioned.
He detected the unpleasant odor of melting plastic coming from somewhere, but he soon realized that was the least of his worries.
The uncontrollable hovercraft did not come to an immediate stop. The rocket motor continued spewing flames, but the hovercraft floating on the mud was taken out first. It sank into the mud and gradually lost speed, but it had no way of avoiding any obstacles. It soon crashed into the turret of one of the tanks his group had placed there. The thick canopy broke, he heard the sound of his seatbelt buckle breaking, and he was thrown out. The bonds of useless seatbelt had already broken bones across his body by the time he was tossed into the air.
And then he rolled again and again across the mud.
Unable to sink, he skipped across the surface like a stone on a river.
He did not even have the strength to scream.
Finally, he came to a stop on top of the thick swamp. He tried to breath in some air, but he had trouble. He had stopped at an extremely shallow area, his arms and legs refused to move, and he may have broken his back or hip. The most he could manage was slowly move one arm.
Would he let himself sink into the swamp and die?
Or would he pull his handgun from its holster and use it?
(Either way, I'm not allowed to die in battle. )
He hesitated only for an instant.
Newsmaker pulled the gun from its holster and pressed it to his temple while ignoring his sinking body.
(Still, I will end this on the battlefield. I won't let this end with an accidental death after coming this far!!)
He was no longer focused on the actions of an individual.
His focus was on ensuring the group known as the Crown of the Northern Lights achieved a certain result against the Pilot Elite. Part of that was for him to die in battle. That alone would be an effective message and it would set the creation of the Sixth Branch in motion.
And so...
But that was when he heard the repeated gunfire of a rifle.
His arm was utterly destroyed as if by a giant sewing machine. Not only did he drop the gun, he lost everything past the elbow. As he groaned, he finally realized it had been gunfire from a soldier leaning out from a transport helicopter.
Synthetic fiber ropes were dropped from either side of the hovering helicopter and fully-equipped soldiers descended.
A female soldier's voice came from the speaker attached to the helicopter.
"I have a message from the All-Knowing."
They showed little concern for him.
As long as they captured him alive in some fashion, they assumed they could keep the switch for the turning point from being thrown.
"She says she sympathizes with your ideology, but she cannot turn a blind eye to your methods. She says there is meaning in spreading that ideology through peaceful means."
Part 15
"Over here, over here."
After watching the conclusion in the flow of data, Yog-Sothoth turned toward a male voice.
The cold ocean was still covered in ice, but one spot was broken. Poking up through that spot was the kind of smuggling submarine used by criminal organizations to transport weapons, drugs, and the humans to be their products.
It was not a military model, so it was colored blue with yellow lines like some unsold basketball shoes sitting on the store shelf.
The man who had spoken had his upper body sticking out of the top hatch and he waved cheerfully toward Yog-Sothoth.
"I can't get any closer. I know it's scary, but you need to walk across the ice."
She did as told and arrived at the submarine in her skiwear.
The inside was surprisingly roomy. It had enough space to hold a small truck and that was probably why it had been chosen for smuggling.
"I sent up an antenna buoy for communications, so I know the situation. It's a shame what happened to Newsmaker."
The man started speaking as the submarine dove below the ice. There did not seem to be any other crew, so he must have been able to control it all on his own.
"I'll take you to the Alaska district battlefield country. I don't care what you do then."
"Thanks."
Yog-Sothoth leaned against the wall instead of sitting on the floor.
"Newsmaker and the Crown of the Northern Lights were wiped out, so why did you still pick me up?"
"They paid me some up front, so I'll do enough to cover that. I'm a professional after all, " simply said the man."Also, Newsmaker accomplished the bare minimum, so I need to reward him for that."
"?"
"Of course, defeating the Object by successfully destroying the psyche of the Pilot Elite would have been best, but even the attempt will make the military panic. What mattered was getting the term 'Sixth Branch' out there. The Capitalist Corporations, Legitimacy Kingdom, Faith Organization, and Information Alliance are probably going to be in a rush to work together and put out this fire. That's exactly what we wanted. I'll make sure to help with what comes next."
"Wait a second. What are you even talking about?"
"Who do you think you're talking to right now?"
The man calmly turned around.
The gentle and cheerful atmosphere had utterly vanished. Instead, he had delicate but disturbing features that were realistic yet awkward, like a doll with thin rubber coating it.
Only then did Yog-Sothoth catch on.
This was the result of undergoing cosmetic surgery again and again, allowing the slight marks to accumulate. It all looked fine normally, but when the facial muscles moved too much, a distortion became apparent.
"Members of the Outer Gods do not know the identities of the other members. They only know the organization exists and that they are a part of it. It is the most secret and most unique intelligence agency within the Capitalist Corporations."
"You don't mean..."
"The information only ever moves in a single direction. The superiors know all about who works below them, but the reverse never happens. The older members know all about the new members, but the reverse never happens. Do you understand now?"
"You don't mean... !!"
A certain possibility finally occurred to Yog-Sothoth.
Newsmaker and the Crown of the Northern Lights had saved her, but what if they had been unwittingly assisting some other project entirely?
What if a world power had been trying to bring chaos to their enemies by supporting a terrorist or guerrilla group as they often did?
A deep, rubbery smile appeared on the face of this man who was in even deeper than her.
"I'm Nyarlathotep. Nice to meet you, newcomer."
That was an evil god said to have a thousand faces.
It was the name of a trickster that used great malice and an icy smile to drive everything toward chaos and despair.
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