novelIn Search of the New Year >> Mont Blanc Borderline Mopping Up Operation (1)
| ← Ch.156 | Ch.158 → |
Part 1
The year was truly at its end.
It was December 31 and they were at Mont Blanc, highest mountain in the Alps.
"Okay, we will be using this snowy mountain for some overnight combat training."
"You really are trying to kill us, aren't you!!!???"
The potatoes could not stop complaining in Chamonix, a blank zone at the foot of that famous mountain that had given its name to a kind of cake. However, if they wanted to survive this dangerous night in the mountains, they needed to be a little more observant than that. Major Frolaytia Capistrano had the eyes of a dead fish as she stood on the stage in front of them.
The temperature was currently 0 degrees.
But they must not take that too lightly just because they expected the base of the highest mountain in Alps to be a lot colder. Human beings were creatures who could get hypothermia and die if the temperature inside their ass dropped by just one degree.
In the line of potatoes, Heivia let out a white breath and spoke quietly while shivering.
"What good is having an Island Nation obsessed commander if she won't let you spend New Year's curled up below a kotatsu eating soba or something?"
"You hadn't heard, Heivia? In that crazy country, they climb up a mountain in midwinter just to see the same sun you can see anywhere else in the world and they even swim in the frozen sea in nothing but a loincloth. In that sense, this fits right in."
"Then she needs to strip down to an Asian thong and jump into a lake around here!! I'll warm her up afterwards!!"
"Hey, tell her that, not me! You're scaring me!!"
Those potatoes could get into a fistfight over nothing, but perhaps they had instinctually sensed they would freeze solid if they stayed still.
Frolaytia ignored them and continued on.
As the important commanding officer, she had a thick bulletproof coat that kept her nice and warm.
"The training scenario is to eliminate the armed force occupying Mont Blanc Tunnel, a shortcut between safe countries that passes through Mont Blanc to bypass the rest of Alps. The Aggressors have set up bombs inside the tunnel and are threatening to blow up the tunnel so it caves in if their demands are not met. The tunnel is only 11km long, but without it, you have to take a 200km detour through the Alps. The economic losses during the holiday season would be around 1. 5 billion euros, which is worth far more than all of our lives combined. Everyone, attempt this recovery mission with the utmost care."
From beginning to end, the introduction was just about the last thing they wanted to hear. Why should they care about the economic effect? Their motivation would have been 100 times higher if they were told a tearful little girl or a sexy young wife was being held hostage in the tunnel.
"A helicopter will be sent out to draw the armed force's attention while our attack team climbs the mountainside from below. The goal of the exercise is to retake the tunnel. Simply killing the enemy is meaningless. Make sure you gather enough information before making your attack. At the very least, you need to work out the type, number, and detonation method of the bombs and secretly neutralize them before the fight begins."
"What about the Object?"
"The Princess is a poor match for this kind of delicate job and the Baby Magnum is too big to act as a useful threat. Thus, she will be focused on gathering information with her radar and sensors while also keeping our communication lines connected. This is about as deep inside a mountain as you can get in Europe, so don't expect your radios to work like normal."
The Princess was silently puffing out her cheeks in obvious displeasure. She may have felt like she was being left out.
But no matter how much they complained, the military obeyed a strict hierarchy. They could not defy Frolaytia's decisions and this may have been the result of Frolaytia herself being powerless to reject an order from someone further up the chain of command. The 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion was disliked by so many people it was hard to narrow down the list of who might want to harass them like this.
At any rate, they had to get started.
The city of Chamonix was seen as the entranceway to Mont Blanc, but it was already 1000m up. The white mountain they were headed for was over 4800m up, but Quenser and the others were not equipped to climb that far. Mont Blanc Tunnel was a part of the highway system and building it too high up would have been inconvenient.
"The Alps are surprisingly well-maintained for having a bunch of deadly mountains like the Eiger and the Jungfrau. Look, they've even got a cable car to the other side of the mountain."
"The Alps are like the holy land of skiing and mineral water. You need to study up on noble past times, Quenser. Gearing up and skiing down from 3500m up is pretty common around here."
"Who do you think the Aggressors in the tunnel are?"
"Whoever isn't with us here. Myonri would be a pretty dangerous option. She doesn't stand out at all, but she can do pretty much anything other than pilot an Object. You can never predict what she'll do next."
A bulky transport helicopter flew by over the two idiots' heads. A combination of a floodlight and a heavy machinegun was attached next to the slide door. Quenser let out a white breath while looking up at it.
"They sure are taking this exercise seriously. Can't they use that equipment to take out the Aggressors on their own?"
"In a real battle, they'd be too afraid of anti-air lasers to send in something like that. Also, if killing the enemies was enough here, I'd just cave in the tunnel. C'mon, let's get going."
They could see a humongous glacier clinging to the slope, but their workplace was in the area covered in soft snow below that. After climbing into the back of a canopied military truck, they rode to the scene along with the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers stuck doing the same thing.
"My friends back at school have got to be on winter vacation right now."
"Don't remind me. My family is probably relaxing in a lunar villa."
Their destination was Mont Blanc Tunnel, so the road was of course well maintained. But since the scenario said it was occupied by an armed force, they could not head straight to the tollgate at the entrance. Once the guide in the passenger seat spotted something through their binoculars, the truck came to a stop and the potatoes climbed out onto the roadside.
"They work fast. They've already got a camera set up?"
"There's just the one road in, so setting up traps would be easy."
They were focused on the tripod and camera placed on the curb. It was a lot like the device used to crack down on speeding drivers, but there was no one there with it. A long, long cable was connected it to some clay. The technology was not to blame. It only did what it was told. Just like criminal organizations would search out traitors using forensic techniques or hunt down people who owed them money using facial recognition with social media photos and video sites.
"Now, a question: why aren't they using drones, which would be even more convenient?"
"Because the mountain would reflect the signal to the point of uselessness. Not to mention the crosswinds and the cold. A toy's rotors would lose their balance almost immediately and it would crash as soon as the axes froze."
They discussed the matter while climbing over the guardrail and leaving the asphalt road. They had a panoramic view of the mountain, but the walkable paths were as limited as the veins on a leaf. They had no idea where they would run across any traps, so they were on the lookout for mines while climbing the slope. It was terrifying to think that the ubiquitous snow could be used to cover up traps.
The road itself zigzagged back and forth to climb the slope, so they only had to climb a few meters to complete their shortcut and reach the next higher level of asphalt.
They used the asphalt when that was an option and took shortcuts up the slope when there was a trap in the way.
After repeating the process a few times, their destination finally came into view.
"We have spotted the western tollgate of Mont Blanc Tunnel. No sign of any guards, " said Heivia.
They were in the parking lot of a log cabin rest area that looked like a combination of a small restaurant and souvenir shop.
However, this did not mean there was no one there. There could always be someone wielding a rifle past the tollgate or there could be a remote-controlled turret made from a camera and a swiveling heavy machinegun. For one thing, the criminals gained nothing by making an appearance when they were not making demands, making threats, or executing hostages. Doing so would be asking to be sniped.
Meanwhile, Quenser was already worn out, so he brushed the snow from the three steps up to the restaurant entrance and sat down.
"We've trained enough already. Gasp, pant. We've gotten stronger and gained some good experience, so let's head back. Urp, I feel sick."
"Grab your radio and say that again so Frolaytia can hear you while she scores us from her nice warm kotatsu, twig boy."
"Heivia, you're of noble blood, aren't you? Set a good example for this exhausted commoner. By which I mean, carry me."
"You can't ask for noblesse oblige on demand!!"
It was currently sunset.
Even professional climbers would avoid climbing at night lest they become stranded, but soldiers like the potatoes were an exception.
And since disarming the bombs was a necessary part of retaking Mont Blanc Tunnel, they needed Quenser. They did have other people who could use explosives, but keeping as many of those people with them as possible was best. That way another could take over if one was lost in an attack.
Also, the tunnel was 11km long, so it would take more than just one or two people to search out all the bombs. On the other hand, they would be spotted if they moved in with too large a group.
"Looks like we have to use this restaurant as a base, split into a few teams, and head in with a time delay."
"Do I really have to go?" asked Quenser."It says right here the cheese fondue at this place is good."
His desperate plea was rejected with a fist.
Quenser and Heivia were part of the lead group, but they did not head straight for the tollgate. A highway tunnel was sure to have emergency exits and smoke vents. They had plenty of ways to sneak in without using the dangerous front door.
"They do remote surgeries over fiber optic cable these days, so can't I just give you instructions while you do the work?" asked Quenser."Y'know, you could wear some kind of mech glove or something."
"Try to get me to use something like that and I'm siding with the terrorists. To tear down the entire goddamn system."
They left the asphalt road and started up the snowy slope again.
It did not take long to find an emergency exit seemingly cut out of the slope, but Heivia crouched down there. He tore off the end of a soap-like ration and tossed the piece toward that exit.
A slipper-sized creature chased after it while squeaking.
"No reaction to the rat. Looks like there's no one there. No wires or IR either. Well, assuming they aren't set up above knee level."
"That thing's huge! If I die here, will I have all the flesh stripped from my bones by those things?"
The transport helicopter passed noisily by overhead. Since their allies were drawing the Aggressor's attention, Quenser's group finally entered the emergency exit.
Once inside, they found bright fluorescent lights that still left the place looking dimly lit.
"Ugh, it's so cold."
"Waiting around in here couldn't be fun. Glad I wasn't chosen for the Aggressor side."
It felt like a refrigerated warehouse.
The bare concrete must not have stored heat well because the inside felt chillier than the snowy night outside.
These emergency exits had to be installed every so often throughout the tunnel, but the tunnel ran through the highest mountain in the Alps. Simply adding a door was not enough to get out. That meant there had to be a smaller pedestrian tunnel that branched off from the main one.
"This tunnel is so narrow and straight. There's nowhere to hide in a shootout."
"I don't see any bombs."
Quenser sounded a little too carefree, so his awful friend gave him a skeptical look.
"Hey, you aren't letting your guard down just cause it's training, are you? We're only 30 seconds in, so you aren't going to claim to be psychic now, are you?"
"There's no way they could use a radio signal in this thick tunnel, right? The armed force is stuck in here for an indefinite amount of time, so they also wouldn't use time bombs that will detonate on their own eventually. That means a wired signal is the only option left. As long as we don't see a bunch of thick wires bundled together, there are no bombs and we're safe."
That meant the disarming work would be in the main tunnel.
"Should we wait for the others?"
"When we have no idea when a door is going to burst open and masked soldiers will rush out at us?"
They slowly approached a metal door, checked for traps, and then cracked it open.
The one-way three-lane main tunnel was filled with orange light. They stuck just a mobile device through the cracked door and used its camera to view things out there. There were no obvious signs of people, so they opened the door the rest of the way and walked in.
Heivia aimed his assault rifle toward the tollgate at the closer entrance, but...
"Hm? There's no one there. So where are the Aggressors lying in wait???"
Quenser looked down at his feet instead of deeper into the tunnel.
A long, long cable ran alongside the wall at the far end of the curb meant for broken down cars. It started at the tunnel's tollgate and continued in from there.
"Found the bombs."
Clay was attached low on the wall at even more frequent intervals than the landline emergency phones.
They were puzzle-like devices similar to those seen in movies, so this was not something often seen on the battlefield. Setting them up and disarming them took a lot of effort and a small impact could set them off, so the shaking of artillery fire could trigger them unexpectedly. (From a purely logical rather than emotional standpoint) this type was useful for setting up a time bomb that gave you enough time to escape outside the expected checkpoint area while also preventing the police from disarming them if they were discovered early. If you could detonate them remotely and immediately at any time, this design was entirely meaningless. You could just hit the switch once the bomb squad got close.
This time, they were inside an 11km tunnel.
First of all, there were a lot of them.
They used a wired detonation mechanism and all of the bombs had to be detonated at once.
Which meant...
"Fiber optic cable. I'm guessing they're using a computer chip for the detonator."
"Meaning?"
"We don't have to use a knife or wire cutters to disarm every single one of these. Let's find a way to destroy that chip. For example, if we sent powerful magnetism through the tunnel from one end to the other, it would neutralize all of the bombs set up along here."
"Like a microwave oven?"
"High power microwaves would cause a malfunction in the delicate fuses and make them go boom, so instead-"
Quenser trailed off and stopped moving.
The delinquent noble frowned.
"What's wrong, twig boy?"
"Hey, Heivia? This was surprise combat training, right?"
"Yeah?"
"While plastic explosives are relatively stable, they wouldn't use real bombs for an exercise, would they? But this one-"
A heavy metallic sound rang out just then.
The cover to one of the drainage ditches popped up and then a soldier with his face hidden by a mask and helmet aimed a submachinegun their way.
Heivia fired a quick burst from his assault rifle, but the rubber bullets did not stop the man. Pissed, Heivia fired the rubber bullets toward the man's forehead.
"Dammit man, follow the rules!!"
While the masked man's skull was shaken, Heivia swung the stock of his rifle into the side of his head to finally knock him down.
Heivia tore off the collapsed soldier's helmet and mask to see who this rule-breaker was.
"Hey, who's this guy? I've never seen him before."
The 37th alone had nearly 1000 people in it, so they would not recognize every single person there, but this man had a tattoo on his face. Some units would have everyone get the same tattoo to increase solidarity, but Frolaytia did not let the 37th do that.
Quenser used his mobile device to snap photos of the bomb and the collapsed man.
"Heivia, check his gun. Specifically, the bullets he's using."
"?"
"This bomb and its fuse really are real! This thing will go off, so this isn't just training!!"
Loud gunfire erupted further down the tunnel.
The Legitimacy Kingdom issued 5. 56mm rounds (supposedly anyway), but the enclosed tunnel meant the gunfire was earsplitting even at a decent distance.
However, who was fighting who?
The two idiots should have been the only attackers inside the tunnel at this point.
Quenser looked over in a panic, but Heivia grabbed his shoulders and dove toward the wall. He opened the metal door back to the emergency exit and used it as a shield.
Someone walked briskly out from deeper in the tunnel.
They were soaked from head to toe in the blood of their enemies.
"Elise?"
"Hey, what's that she's holding? That's not the assault rifle we were issued."
The two idiots watched as Elise Montana raised the carbine she held in one hand and aimed it straight up.
With a loud burst of gunfire, a bloody masked soldier fell along with the cover to a smoke vent duct on the ceiling.
"You need to get out of here. Hurry."
Her voice was scratchy.
Either she was out of ammo or the barrel had gotten bent in the intense fighting earlier because the busty blonde glasses woman did not hesitate to throw aside the carbine. Strangely, she formed a smile on her lips.
"This training has been hijacked. They really do intend to detonate the bombs!!"
Part 2
From the far end of the tunnel to their end, the bombs detonated one after another, like a crowd doing the wave.
Part 3
It must have been a split-second decision.
"!!"
Heivia drew the large knife from his hip and threw it to sever the fiber optic cable crawling across the ground. Quenser grabbed and tugged on the slender hand of that busty blonde who was bloody even though it was not that time of the month.
With the direct wiring cut, the bombs stopped detonating at that point.
Nevertheless, the entire tunnel was blocked off. The blast of wind created by the explosions pushed in toward them like the cleaning of a bath pipe.
They all ran toward the emergency exit.
Fortunately, the door opened outward from their perspective. Otherwise, the blast would have torn it from its hinges and the immense pressure would have slammed it into them.
"What happened to the others?"
"..."
"What happened to the training!?"
Quenser asked those questions while sitting on the floor and holding her close, but Elise did not respond. A mystery group had taken over the tunnel and they had set up real bombs instead of fake ones. They also had real guns. Quenser and Heivia did not know how many Aggressors there had been waiting in the tunnel for the training, but it was a miracle that even Elise had survived.
The blonde glasses woman handed Quenser something with her bloody hand.
He looked down to see it was the same kind of mobile device they used, but he doubted it was hers.
"I stole this from a defeated enemy. I don't know the passcode, so I didn't try to get in. I don't want the data being erased if I get it wrong too many times."
"An enemy, huh? They were wearing Legitimacy Kingdom uniforms, but they had a weird tattoo on their face."
Quenser opened his own mobile device and accessed the photos he had taken before the explosion. The type of bomb and the type of computer chip they used would be crucial hints, but he was focused on the face of that masked man instead.
"Oh, " said Elise."A snake entwined around a branch. That's the symbol of the 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion, I think."
"Hold on." Something occurred to Quenser."The passcode changes every week, but isn't there a pattern to it? The base number is random, but it's altered with the date and the unit number like 37 or 21 to produce the final passcode. Although I've heard the commander and technicians are given different numbers to make it more complex."
That did not tell them the actual code, but the 37th alone had nearly 1000 members. Central command was not going to work out a bunch of different passcodes and distribute them to everyone. Basically, it was the same as the handcuff keys used by the police. They were meant to prevent outsiders from unlocking them, but members of the same unit, department, or rank were considered trustworthy. They had to accept some level of automated passcode generation.
And it was not like all the data would be deleted from just one wrong passcode.
Quenser tried recalculating the passcode and punched it in. It worked.
"That actually worked?"
"But most of the data looks corrupted, " said Elise.
There were a few surviving files inside, but not many would open. Each individual file needed its own passcode on top of the overall device's one. That must have been set manually, so they had no clues to go on.
However...
"Body File?"
Quenser noticed a term that appeared frequently in the unopenable filenames.
"What does that mean? It shows up so frequently I assume it must be important."
Necessity of Secrecy Regarding the Body File
Matters Concerning Erasure of the Body File.
ROE: Upon Outside Discovery of the Body File.
It was all couched in stiff, businesslike language, but it sounded very dangerous. They seemed to be taking a strict "dead men tell no tales" stance here.
"Let's wait till we get back to the maintenance base to continue with this. They might be able to find the password or recover the corrupted files." Heivia tossed aside his paint magazine despite the rounds remaining and loaded a magazine of real bullets instead."Something's up here, but we can't contact our busty commander without use of the radio. There's no point in staying in the tunnel, so let's head on out. The unexploded ordnance in here is scaring the hell out of me regardless."
Mont Blanc Tunnel had been rendered useless, so they had to use the emergency exit tunnel to leave.
"God, this unit really knows how to ruin the holidays, be it New Year's or summer vacation."
"Heivia, this might not be over yet. We don't know how far this goes."
They left the tall rectangular entrance cut out of the mountain slope and stepped outside.
And there they saw what was happening.
The Princess was fighting.
The colossal forms of two Objects were exchanging intense artillery fire while clinging to the white slope of the highest mountain in the Alps.
Part 4
Shortly before that...
"It's started, Princess."
"Hmph."
"Yes, this put our allies in danger, but it was a necessary military action. Please don't pout like that."
Frolaytia Capistrano let out a white sigh.
There appeared to be some hidden intentions at play in the commotion over Immortanoid, the artificial element disguised as a rare earth. But whatever it was, it was unclear who had set up the game. If nothing was done, they would have to live out their lives fearing assassins at every turn.
So...
"We had to lure them out."
"That's what Mont Blanc was for?" asked the Princess.
"This is a blank zone on the border between large safe countries. It is relatively out of sight despite how much traffic passes through, so you could send in a large unit and silence us without having to worry about witnesses. It's perfect. Almost too perfect."
"I am detecting a tremor. There seems to have been an explosion inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel."
"I know I said the economic effect would be 1. 5 billion euros for just the end of the holiday season, but if that was true, we never could have sealed it off for training."
The real battle started here.
They had drawn out their true enemy, so they just had to crush them and get them to explain what was going on behind the scenes.
"Princess, you get ready too. The satellite is detecting an enemy Object."
"But there's nothing on my radar."
"Because you're on the ground. The enemy is on the opposite side of Mont Blanc. It's probably a Second Generation specialized for use in the mountains, so it can climb over to your side like it's ski jumping."
"The altitude up here is more than 4800m, isn't it?"
"Not many Objects can pull off something like that. We are hurrying the video analysis, but unless it is disguised in some way, we're pretty sure we know who this is."
Since this was a conspiracy related to rare earths, the most likely suspect was the money-obsessed Capitalist Corporations.
That was who Frolaytia Capistrano had been focused on, but...
"The enemy is the Legitimacy Kingdom Second Generation Crystal Scrying. Some fragmentary battle records were still left in the shallow levels of the military servers. That's the one that went on a rampage over the buried treasure that the East India Company left behind when they withdrew from the area."
In other words, it was one of theirs.
Frolaytia held her long, narrow kiseru in her mouth as she continued.
"More accurately, this is the 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion. I said the rich people hiding their money by converting it into Immortanoid were found in all four world powers, didn't I? So it shouldn't surprise us to find fellow Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers stabbing us in the back."
Part 5
Heivia Winchell groaned to himself after learning what had happened via radio.
"I'm getting back alive no matter what it takes. I swear I'm stripping that busty commander naked, wrapping her in duct tape, and leaving her in a park bathroom."
"We now know our opponent can use enough bombs to cause Mont Blanc Tunnel to cave in, " said Frolaytia over the radio."Would you prefer to live your life terrified of being blown up in a terrorist attack whether you were in a safe country or a battlefield country? Plus, the enemy is part of the Legitimacy Kingdom, so they could waltz right into the maintenance base if they wanted to."
Frolaytia had essentially dragged the crocodile up out of the river. They knew they could not defeat it while it was hidden below the water, but they were the ones who would get bitten if they tried to change that. The two idiots vowed to survive this. She could make all the excuses she liked in that public bathroom that reeked of ammonia.
"Frolaytia, does the term Body File mean anything to you!?" asked Quenser.
"Where did you hear that?"
"On a mobile device that Elise stole from one of them. But the files themselves require separate passwords, so we can't open them."
"Bring that here. The electronic simulation division can break into it."
"Could I just transmit the encrypted data to you now!?"
"You haven't tried yet, have you? With some kinds of security, attempting to transmit it without entering the password will destroy the data. We don't know what kind the 21st uses, so physically bring it to us."
That level of caution showed Frolaytia understood the importance of that data.
"What we need now is information. I want to know what is going on behind the scenes, " she said."You can let the Princess handle the Object! But with her firepower, I have my doubts we can take the Pilot Elite alive. That device is important, but also search out a few 21st soldiers on the ground there!!"
"Is this really the time to focus on other things!?" shouted Heivia while looking up at the white slope.
This was not a metropolis flooded with light. They were in the middle of nature, so there were no real light sources at night. However, that thing was so enormous they could still see its silhouette.
The enemy was also from the Legitimacy Kingdom.
The 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion supported the Second Generation Crystal Scrying.
It probably used the same static electricity propulsion device as the Princess instead of an air cushion. It could generally be classified as a multi-legged type, but those legs were not even. The front legs were abnormally large and branched off, while the back legs looked like they could not possibly support that giant thing. The front legs were reminiscent of a stag beetle because they spread out to the sides from the front of the spherical main body and then gathered back in toward the center again. They were something like diamond-shaped scissors.
The main cannons...may have been the boxy containers on either side of the main body. Each side had a cannon made from strapping four barrels together.
"What is that? Is it combining them to increase the power and accuracy, or does it fire them in turn to reduce the lag of reloading and cooling???"
That question was soon answered.
The container-style main cannons on the left and right angled diagonally upward.
Then something happened.
Their eyes could not keep up with a metal shell flying at 5 or 10 times the speed of sound, but if they could trust the long, narrow contrails that seemed to slice across Mont Blanc...
"They curved!?"
A tremor seemed to shake the entire mountain and the slope's white makeup was stripped away. Avalanches occurred all across the mountain.
"What in the hell!? Those contrails mean those must be railguns or coilguns instead of lasers, but those main cannons curved partway through!"
A total of 8 shots had been fired.
The hypersonic shells attacked simultaneously from the left and right like enormous jaws snapping shut.
Luck was the only reason the Princess had not been blown away the first time it did that. In their high-speed battles, Objects would begin taking evasive action in advance by detecting the slight movements of the lenses and barrels, but that was based on the assumption that the shells would fly straight. That method was no use for shells that could freely fly around in the sky like this. Not even a pro boxer could respond if their opponent's second threw a beer bottle at them from the side while they were focused on their opponent's eyeline and fists. This was the same.
The Baby Magnum had not escaped unscathed.
One of its seven main cannons had been torn off and one end of its spherical main body had split open like a flower blossom.
"We need to get out of here."
"Heivia."
"That busty commander clearly screwed the pooch this time!! She lied to us to draw out the enemy, but now that we've found that enemy, they're going to chew us up and spit us out! The secret behind Immortanoid? The Body File? We never should have dragged this up out of the water, so why couldn't we have just let sleeping dogs lie!?"
Another left and right pair of four metal shells tried to tear into the Princess's Baby Magnum.
It was a close shave.
But in that case, why was the Princess still alive? It could not have been a fluke the second time.
"It uses threads, " said that lovely girl's voice over the radio."Probably fiber optic cables. It seems to fire railgun shells with wires attached so it can manually move the tail fins to alter its course in midair. But knowing that doesn't help much. We need to find some kind of weakness."
That was insane. It might seem like you could manually change the course of a railgun shell by attaching a camera and tail fins, but these were moving at Mach 5 or even 10. Only streamlines would be visible at that speed. Even with fiber optic cable, the pilot would only have a fraction of a second to think between the launch and the hit. Yet the 21st's Pilot Elite was pulling it off. It only took them a split second to manage image reconstruction on a higher level than police drive recorder analysis that required the full use of a supercomputer and AI.
This went beyond the Object itself.
The Elite piloting it was a monster as well.
Heivia shook his head. He judged this hopeless and then pointed toward the avalanche falling due to the rumbling of the cannon fire.
No, he was probably pointing toward where some of the 37th's people were gathered. The Crystal Scrying must have included that in the calculations when deciding on a course for its shells. The only possible explanation was that it had fired the right shells toward the Princess and fired the remaining left ones toward the humans on the ground.
"It is focusing on light." The Princess spoke clearly over the radio."Radar is not very reliable up here in the mountains and its own cannons are too loud to use microphones. That means using visual images should be the easiest method."
"What are you basing this on!?"
"It's aiming for you all instead of a large target like me because you're pulling out your radios and mobile devices. The shine of a pilot light or backlight is enough for it."
That thought froze Quenser's heart.
He wanted to throw the device away immediately, but that was not an option.
"Even the smallest light can lead to death, so the moonlight and city lights can be a threat too, " continued the Princess."Since it isn't using night vision, I can only assume the Elite's own calculations can't keep up with that. Quenser, I am going to fire a shot toward Chamonix to destroy the unmanned transformer substation on the outskirts and cause a power outage. You should be able to hide in the darkness then."
"G-got it."
"If that isn't enough, you can always play dead. If you try that, make sure you aren't anywhere near the light, okay?"
"I promise you we'll save you, so wait for us."
He heard a quiet breath from his radio that would summon death.
It sounded like the girl laughing.
Then a coilgun blast flew seemingly in the wrong direction to blow away the civilian transformer substation.
Everything was enveloped by a true and natural darkness void of all artificial intervention.
Part 6
Frolaytia Capistrano and the other officers were gathered in a conference room within the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion's maintenance base zone.
They had a reason for inviting the electronic simulation division and the intelligence division to the meeting.
"Let us review the situation." The busty silver-haired commander waggled her long, narrow kiseru."Our enemy is the Legitimacy Kingdom's 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion and their Crystal Scrying. The higher ups must be aware of this clash with our own, but I doubt they will order a ceasefire."
"U-um, " said the confused female officer who stood by Frolaytia's side like a secretary. She may have thought it was best to make a suggestion to the higher ups even if it was hopeless, but...
"Those in the home country know the 37th and 21st are clashing, but they are not sure which side is disobeying orders here. That means they are unsure which side to aim at and demand to stop. All this snow will have long since thawed if we wait for them to send in the Black Uniforms or a third-party inquiry committee to thoroughly investigate everything to their satisfaction. If we want to survive, we need to act here and now."
Frolaytia of course had no intention of simply relying on the Baby Magnum and the soldiers on the scene. She was the one who had used such extreme methods to lure out this enemy.
In addition to the military fight, she had to crush them with what influence she had.
She slowly blew out some sweet smoke as she continued.
"The 21st's commander is Bullrank Happy-Youth, right? As you can see, he's a pale and scrawny guy. Based on his musculature, he must be the type of soldier who never leaves his desk."
A photo of the individual in question was projected onto a wall of the conference room.
This was a pro and a con of fighting another Legitimacy Kingdom unit. There was no real reason to be refused access to data on an ally...but the 21st could search for information on the 37th and Frolaytia in the same way.
They would have to add on countless pieces of information branching off from that one photo.
The busty silver-haired woman glanced over at the electronic simulation division.
"What personal information do we have on him? It could be anything: his bank account, a relationship with someone other than his wife, or even an unusual hobby."
If Bullrank negotiated with the higher ups and had them overlook his misdeeds in order to delay a ceasefire order, they would have to silence him using some personal compromising information instead.
But all the unwarlike geeks shook their heads.
"That isn't going to work."
"Are you saying he's lived such a perfect life that you can't find anything on him?"
"No, it's the opposite. Through social media, we can find a few things he probably does not want getting out like receiving a parking ticket in a hotel district you wouldn't expect him to be in or like there being a false bottom in the trunk of the car he secretly ordered for the maintenance factory, but it's all too normal. All of his flaws are kept at the perfect level where it looks like normal proclivities and normal suspicions that he can explain away to his wife as a normal misunderstanding. In fact, it's so perfect I can only assume this was constructed after the fact."
If you knew how rumors and data spread through the modern digital society, you could use it to your advantage. Whether in an analog or digital format, you could "set things up" to make yourself look a certain way to the people around you. However, that was a technique used by Councilors trying to avoid scandals. It was not the kind of information security used in the military, even by an officer.
"This goes deeper than I thought. He would make a mistake eventually on his own, so he must have an ally in the government offices."
"What about civilian investigators?"
The paparazzi would chase around more than just those in the entertainment business. Once someone reached a high enough rank in the military, they would often have cameramen following them around.
An intelligence officer in black responded with a shrug.
"Over the past three years, three freelance reporters sniffing around Bullrank Happy-Youth's business ended up dying in seemingly natural ways. That smells incredibly fishy, but they must have dealt with things in such a way that you could dig into it for a century without finding anything definitive."
"..."
That meant there was a secret there worth killing over.
They might find something there if they spent 6 months to a year investigating it, but they did not have that kind of time. If they could not announce checkmate and end this battle somehow or another, their unit would be wiped out.
"This protection only applies to Bullrank Happy-Youth. I don't know what he did to get the higher ups on his side, but breaking through that barrier would be difficult on such short notice."
"Then what do we do?"
"But what about whoever is helping him protect his information like this? He has to have more than just one or two helpers in the government offices and nothing says all of them are doing the best job they can. You said his fabricated records are on social media too, right? Then send the social media companies a message saying their server has suffered a cyber attack. The people behind the fabrication won't want their handiwork discovered, so they'll want to act quickly to avoid an in-house investigation by the social media companies."
Part 7
First, they wrapped plastic tape around their radios to cover up the pilot lights. That was good enough there, but the mobile devices were trickier since those would be useless if they covered up the LCD screen.
"We can't use these anymore."
Opening Quenser's or the one Elise had stolen from a 21st soldier would be suicide. They had to put off figuring out whatever the Body File was. It was irritating to no end to have the answer in their hands but being unable to look at it. Especially when they were being pursued and a single wrong choice would mean having their lives snuffed out like a candle.
"Then how are we supposed to check the map?" asked Heivia."Even pro climbers avoid traveling in the mountains at night and this is the highest mountain in the Alps! Wandering around without knowing where to climb will obviously be suicide!!"
"We can't read a paper map without light either, can we?" added Elise.
"This is insane! I'm heading back! There's an asphalt road right over there, so I can follow it as it zigzags down to Chamonix. I'm leaving!!"
That was when they heard a sound much like fireworks being launched.
The basic idea was the same as ordinary fireworks. These were known as parachute fireworks.
Except instead of a weight, these were attached to magnesium that scattered a bright white light similar to welding.
"Flares!?"
"Get down, Heivia. We're dead if they see us!!"
Light shined down like on a baseball field during a night game. Quenser and Heivia hid behind a conifer tree and Heivia dove into the dark shadow cast by a large boulder. This was dangerous, but if they focused on the location of the light source, the unnaturally dark shadows worked in their favor.
The shrill squealing from the ground may have been hibernating marmots that had awoken in surprise.
Modern electronic assault rifle scopes could do IR and night vision, but activating those assistance features could produce enough light to give away their position. Allowing light to leak out entirely defeated the purpose of night vision, but it was a fairly common mistake in the goggle type due to defects in the rubber caps that covered the eyes.
Quenser clicked his tongue while sharing a single tree's shadow with the busty glasses women he held in his arms.
The Body File.
He did not know what it was, but the 21st had attacked in violation of the military regulations once they decided Quenser's group had found it. And that decision had happened before Elise had stolen that mobile device. He could not guess what had triggered this, but the other side would not have overlooked it.
Was it all a misunderstanding, or had they stepped on landmine without noticing it?
Either way, they were dead if they were located. Even if they threw down their weapons and put their hands up, they would only be blasted to smithereens.
They could not step out from behind the trees as long as the magnesium and other light sources were shining so brightly on their surroundings. And it did not look like they had time to wait for the parachutes to slowly descend to the ground.
"Heivia, can you shoot down those parachutes!?"
"Have you lost your mind!? I could, but the gunshot and muzzle flash would give away our position!!"
"The infantrymen that launched those flares are down here on the ground. If they get close, we're done for!"
(So Heivia's too much of a chicken to help. )
Some shrill squeaking ran between his legs.
It came from a slipper-sized rat, but while he felt fear clutching at his heart, the animal's oddly-timed warning cry produced no reaction from the colossus in the distance.
He leaned his back against the thick conifer tree while still holding Elise in his arms.
(The Crystal Scrying is focused on light. It isn't scanning using sound. )
"Sorry, Elise."
"What?"
"I'm going to knock over this tree to take out the flare overhead along with it. That will take out their vision!!"
"Whaaat!? Um, then we won't have a shield."
There was no time to listen to complaints. He stabbed an electric fuse into a Hand Axe plastic explosive and attached it to the thick trunk protecting them.
The blast had a range of 2 meters.
He reached up to attach the clay fairly high up and then lay flat on the ground with Elise to just barely remain out of harm's way.
The loud boom caused their eardrums to briefly forget how to function.
With a creaking sound, the tall conifer tree fell inwards and caught the small parachute supporting the flare still floating overhead. Once it was crushed, the bright light vanished too.
But two unfamiliar people were already racing toward them. One held a transparent shield in one hand and a one-handed machine pistol in the other. The one approaching from a little further back held a carbine that looked like a shortened assault rifle. If they tried to shoot these enemies, the shield would block it and the return gunfire would turn them to Swiss cheese.
Quenser grabbed some clay and raised his voice.
"Get out here, Heivia! Fight, you moron!!"
And...
"Hh!!"
He heard a sharp breath from Elise who he thought he had pushed to the ground.
She pushed the boy up with a knee kick and used the momentum of sitting up to throw a large knife. She aimed at the shin which was easily overlooked when holding that kind of shield. She showed no mercy even against a fellow Legitimacy Kingdom soldier. Once the knife scored a clean hit and the 21st infantryman collapsed to the ground, Elise ran over, swiped the weapon from the enemy's holster, and aimed it at the carbine-wielding enemy further back.
She had not stolen the machine pistol.
This weapon was forcibly kept at the size of a handgun while having a barrel as thick as a shotgun.
"A flare gun!?"
The light meant to be fired straight up was launched horizontally instead. It struck the second 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion soldier in the center of the chest.
"Gah, ah!?"
This was the same as a commercial parachute firework, so it was not deadly. The man aimed his carbine at Elise with the light source sticking into the bulletproof plates covering his chest.
"This isn't over. The Body File must not be made public!!"
But he should not have forgotten what the Second Generation Crystal Scrying used to decide who to target.
"Wait, what!? No, I'm not the-"
His cry of sorrow was erased.
A metal shell flew along a complex path and ultimately dropped down from above like a bolt of lightning with enough force to obliterate a human-sized mass. The hit sent powerful shockwaves scattering in every direction, so Quenser's group was blown backwards again.
Quenser had an awful headache and could not figure out how he was still alive.
He felt something odd while lying on the ground, so he wiped off his brow with the back of his hand and found something white and hard had stabbed into him there. It appeared to be one of the enemy soldier's front teeth. That was so creepy he nearly vomited.
But regardless...
"The light source has been eliminated."
Was this really something they could walk away from like they were crushing a cigarette butt below their heel? This was far worse than simple bad manners.
Quenser's ringing ears picked up on a sound.
In addition to the squealing of the small animals running around, he heard a woman speaking in such an icy voice it sent a chill down his spine.
"Now, we need to leave this place while we still can. We must utilize this opportunity."
"Elise?"
The Aggressors in Mont Blanc Tunnel had taken devastating damage in a surprise attack from the 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion, but come to think of it, how had Elise survived?
She had previously been used so cruelly as a shield and bait, so how had she managed to return alive each and every time? She was always tearful on the surface, but she never seemed surprised by her own survival.
Why was that?
Also, she was a very attractive glasses woman. If a busty blonde like her had been living in the same maintenance base zone as him, there was no way he would not have noticed, yet he had first learned of her existence in the Arctic.
"Since when can you fight like that? Who are you?"
"Ah ha ha. I arrived to fulfill a request from Major Frolaytia Capistrano who wanted to increase the average lifespan of her battalion members who rely too heavily on their Object and don't know how to adlib." She gave a quick salute while holding the machine handgun she had also stolen from the enemy."I am Sergeant Elise Montana. My specialty is the military band...but I am also proficient in marksmanship, close-quarters combat, and every other skill necessary for the army special forces. I am an instructor for the 7th Special Training Unit and I was sent to the 37th from the Legitimacy Kingdom home country☆"
Part 8
It was undeniable that the hurdles toward becoming a soldier had dropped considerably with the introduction of the clean wars. A lot of soldiers were sent to a maintenance base after spending only around half a year learning to use a gun and more as a game than anything. And for that matter, peopled like Quenser were not even soldiers; they were students.
So what good was a Special Training Unit in an age like that?
They were the elite of the elite who recruited promising individuals from within the military and gave them additional training to become the kind of special forces seen in movies. That additional training was not something you could complete just by spending enough time on it like with low-wage part-time work. There were documentaries on the harsh training those people underwent, but it was best described as giving them harsh external stimuli to change them. There was a famous story about a safe country comedian known for his crazy stunts explaining with a straight face how it had been too much for him: "I've ridden some creature I couldn't even identify, I've done a reverse bungee jump in the nude, and I've even been tricked into going into outer space, but the trial training I attended there is the one thing I couldn't handle." A strange survey even said the best way to get a stubborn child to go to bed at their bedtime was to tell them a lady from the Special Training Unit would come for them if they stayed up late.
Heivia looked dejected after regrouping with the others.
"Does that busty commander want to kill us? What did we ever do to her? I heard anyone who has received the 'TLC' of the Special Training Unit ends up being a monster who can trek across the Northern Restricted Zone barefoot. So even without all this trouble she got us into, she was already planning to work us to death this holiday season."
"No, um, I think Major Capistrano did this because she cares about you! It has apparently been bothering her how quickly she goes through soldiers, so she pulled some diplomatic strings to ask the 7th for some skills training."
"Hold on! Does that mean that Santa mission was a set up too!? You purposefully got the higher ups mad at us so you could train us on that hellish holiday tour!?"
"(Well, um, that was really just a mistake on my part and that made it hard to come out and explain who I am or why I'm here. No, I should probably keep that part a secret. )"
"Elise, did you just about let something crucial slip out there???"
The two idiots might have normally put her in some tortoise shell bondage and kicked her down the snowy slope, but they did not feel quite so comfortable doing so now that their relative positions were so unclear.
Also, there were plenty of things they were more worried about at the moment.
"Um, Elise? What if - hypothetically speaking! - what if - heh heh, eh heh heh - we said we don't want that skills training?"
"I happen to know the perfect way of waking up my adorable students when they start daydreaming about silly things like having a say in the matter. Soaking up to the shoulders in an ice bath for 30 minutes will erase most na?ve delusions from the mind☆"
Quenser's balls shriveled up more than any other time that year.
The glasses woman grinned.
"(Don't think I have forgotten how you treated me all this time. )"
"Teach, you need to have a carrot to go along with the stick!! Where's our reward!?"
This was the kind of brainwashing that would kill people. If they obeyed Elise, they would probably become the perfect soldiers, but they would also lose their free will as a human being. They were not about to live a life of adoring those boobs while shouting "yes, ma'am" with utterly pure and vacant expressions on their faces. They wanted those boobs as a standalone product, not part of a dangerous package deal.
But anyway...
"So, Elise, does your position outside of the 37th tell you anything about what the Body File is?"
"Unfortunately, no. Due to the 7th Special Training Unit's unique position, we exist outside the standard military hierarchy. After all, we are meant to train people, not fight on the battlefield. That Body File sounds like part of some kind of conspiracy, but I have no idea what it is."
Quenser was not skilled enough to tell if she was lying or not, but he decided it was unlikely she would be hiding some secret here. For one thing, they never would have seen the term without the mobile device she had stolen from the 21st. Even if they had stepped on the landmine itself without realizing it, Elise could have just not given them that device if she was trying to hide it.
"The enemy is working with their Second Generation to kill us by hunting down any light source on the mountain, " said Quenser."We'll be trapped like rats even if we try to play dead here. We need to get away from here and find a weakness in the Crystal Scrying before they can close in on us."
"Are you serious?"
Heivia quickly got down on the snow after hearing rotors beating the air overhead.
A military tiltrotor was aiming a searchlight around. It had probably carried a bunch of soldiers and snowmobiles from the opposite eastern side of Mont Blanc. Its bulky shape looked somehow brazen because it was showing off its belly while the Princess was still out there fighting with so many anti-air lasers at her disposal.
Heivia continued speaking while waiting for it to pass.
"Information on Object's is as classified as it gets. We aren't going to find a manual lying around on the mountain somewhere!! And that crazy-suspicious Body File thing is probably hidden in some vault or on a classified server. It isn't mineral water, so it isn't going to well up from the ground when we dig a hole here in the Alps!!"
"Elise."
"Oh, yes. When a student's innate determination is insufficient, it is a teacher's duty to kindly increase it for them. Shall I start by sticking a firecracker up your ass?"
"Okay, I'll do it, so please no!! Do you not know how the male body works, you ditzy teacher!? There's an etiquette to teasing that part of our anatomy!"
They started on an advanced and specialized topic of conversation, but they could easily imagine what they needed first if they were to get some information on the 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion.
Sexy Teacher (of the gentle and clumsy type) Elise Montana stated the simplest way to get the information they craved.
"We need a soldier from the 21st. The previous ones were blown to bits, but let's leave the next ones more intact so we can actually speak with them."
"I'm not sure they'll be willing to talk."
"Getting everything out of them might be difficult, but we may be able to get the passwords for the individual files on the mobile device."
"Why do I have to spend my holiday fighting fellow Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers and hunting down filthy old men? We're in the European wilderness, so can't we at least run across a slender, long-eared elf?"
That said, it was a simple answer. If they wanted to know about the 21st, it was best to ask someone from the 21st. And since the 21st was attacking the 37th with delight, they could hardly complain if they were counterattacked by those would-be victims.
But the 21st was not going to show up on their own.
Well, they would, but giving the 21st the initiative would mean being surrounded and waiting for certain death.
They had to make the move themselves.
They were in the complete darkness of a snowy mountain at night. Plus, they were not on a single route up to a log cabin or to the peak, so they had to wander around until they found their prey. The risks were endless: falling, slipping, getting lost, hypothermia, and ferocious animals awoken from hibernation. A mountain climbing guide might question their sanity if they heard about it.
"Okay, let's get started."
With that, they began their walk through hell.
Nowhere was safe. Snow blown from the slope created a cloud like cotton candy not far away. And that cloud formed an unnaturally straight line.
One of the 21st's tiltrotors was flying just off the ground to intentionally scatter the snow. Just like a summer mist shower, the small snow crystals would cause vaporization heat and make the already freezing mountain feel even colder. Once the 37th's potatoes could stand it no longer and used a fire to warm up, the Crystal Scrying would fire on them.
If they toughed it out, they would freeze to death. If they tried to warm themselves, they would be blown up.
The enemy was using unorthodox hunting methods here because the soldiers feared being held responsible if they tried to do everything as instructed and screwed it up. The 21st no longer saw any chance of them losing.
And in fact, the Princess did not seem to have the focus to spare to save her allies on the ground. Even if she did shoot down the tiltrotor with an anti-air laser, the flaming wreckage would only act as a giant light source. It would only make the 37th's soldiers suffer even more.
Was the Body File really this important?
They had no idea what it was and had no way of knowing if they really had stepped on that landmine or if the 21st was simply mistaken.
Elise Montana kept walking even as she clenched her teeth at being unable to help the allies she saw suffering so close by.
"The 21st is getting carried away, " she said while taking the lead."Because they caught us by surprise and are in fact keeping pace with their planned schedule. Also, hunters cannot truly hide themselves. Once they start viewing the fleeing enemy as their prey, the biggest threat becomes friendly fire instead of the enemy's small fangs or claws. So even when hiding, they need some way of saying 'I am here, so do not shoot me by mistake'."
Quenser and Heivia may not have seen it since they were following after that glasses woman's butt, but Elise Montana gently licked her lips while wielding the stolen machine pistol.
"And that creates an opening. It makes them easy to find."
"Ugh!?" quietly groaned a 21st infantryman who had made the mistake of checking the time on his watch, which had a cover but still used glow-in-the-dark paint.
The woman from the hellish Special Training Unit snuck up behind him, but she could not shoot him since a muzzle flash would cause the Crystal Scrying to immediately fire on them. Instead, she covered the victim's mouth from behind and pressed a pen-like pneumatic injector full of a sleeping drug against the side of his neck.
She did not need to worry about sterilization or disinfection with an enemy soldier. Or perhaps she was the type who felt more hostility toward embarrassments on her own side than toward foreign enemies.
| ← Ch. 156 | Ch. 158 → |