Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 12===

They came across a branch in the cave after travelling down it a bit and found a different exit shortly after that. After exiting the cave, the three of them buried the exit in snow. They actually wanted to blow it up with C4, but the blast could have easily drawn the Object to them.

The giant Object could not enter the cave, so flesh-and-blood soldiers would likely be sent to search for them. They wanted the enemy to think they were still hiding in the cave.

Quenser and the others hid in a conifer forest outside the cave. Quenser had thought there was no way hiding behind the trees would do anything to keep out the cold in that freezing land, but merely being protected from the winter wind did wonders for his body temperature.

While munching on a ration that tasted like an uncooked rice cake made of an eraser, Quenser looked over toward the cave entrance.

“Well, it doesn’t look like they’ve been able to figure out where we went.”

“I can still hear that low, thunder-like roar, so the Object must still be near,” said the Elite girl as she strained her ears and brought a small ration to her mouth with both hands.

Hearing that, Quenser focused on the distant noise as well.

“Most likely, dealing with the Elite that can pilot an Object takes top priority for them. It probably won’t leave until the search is over.”

That also meant their fleeing comrades would not be slaughtered until Quenser and the others were found or the enemy gave up the search.

Heivia still had the heavy-looking but useless portable anti-tank missile hanging from his shoulder.

“Hey, since the enemy’s lost sight of us, can’t we survive if we take this chance to disappear?”

“Maybe, but that would just lead to our side being slaughtered as they climb the mountain,” Quenser said.

“Shit!” Heivia cursed.

The Elite girl nibbled on the corner of the square ration and said, “But do you really think we can safely continue to act as a decoy until they get away?”

“We’d definitely die if we did that. If an enemy soldier so much as catches a glimpse of us, they’ll call the Object and have it send some concentrated fire our way from its plasma cannons! Even just darting out to act as a decoy is out of the question!!”

“Then are you saying we just leave!?”

“Yes!! I just said we should do just that!! Not even the princess’s Object could stand up to that monster! How the hell are we supposed to do anything!?”

The princess hung her head down at the mention of her defeat.

“…That was because the device suddenly started to activate. It took a bit of time to cancel that mode and that Object attacked while I was trying to do so.”

“The device? Oh, the security device.”

Basically, it was a self-destruct device. The Object was a giant mass of military secrets, so there had to be a means of ensuring it did not fall into enemy hands. If its sensors detected that it could no longer function even if it had not taken serious damage, the princess’s Object would seal the special gas for its low-stability plasma cannons in the space between the armor and the reactor and then detonate it.

“That doesn’t matter. Don’t try to escape the problem before your eyes with idle chatter! We need to come up with a way of dealing with that damn water strider!!”

“Are you still thinking of running away? You may survive, but you’ll be traumatized for the rest of your life! You’re a noble, right? Being the sole survivor here will be seen as a disgrace for you. You won’t get to be the next head of your family and your life will head into a downward spiral faster than you can imagine!”

“…!? Then what the fuck am I supposed to do!?”

“At this rate, you’ll either die here on the battlefield or back in the home country! If you don’t want that, then we need to do something about that thing!!”

The three of them fell silent now that they were faced with the obvious question of “How?”

Quenser tossed the last piece of his flavorless ration into his mouth.

He looked at the other two’s faces and had a sudden thought.

“I’m a student who’s studying to be an Object designer, you’re an analyst who searches for things that could lead to a winning strategy against Objects, and you’re an Elite who pilots an Object. With the three of us…”

“Hey, you’re kidding right. I have a feeling I know what you’re thinking, but please tell me you’re kidding.”

“…We have no choice but to try to find one, right?” said Quenser with the stiff expression characteristic of someone who was truly cornered. “We need to find some kind of weakness in that supposedly unbeatable Object.”



And so, Quenser and the other two circled around the slope of the mountain on foot, heading back to the cave entrance they had blown up with C4.

He hid among the deep snow and held his rifle out through gaps between the trees.

He was not preparing to shoot an enemy.

He was using the scope in place of binoculars.

Quenser was looking at the Object, so the rifle would not be much use anyway.

“(…Hey, don’t hit the infrared switch. If it notices the exposure, it’ll blow us away with those plasma cannons.)”

Heivia was lying down next to him and giving him unnecessary warnings. That was just how nervous he was.

Not that that was surprising.

They were about 300 meters from the Object, but if it noticed them, there would be no escaping. They would merely be mercilessly slaughtered. Just hearing the thundercloud-like roar spreading through the ground was enough to make them tense up with fear.

“(…What is that Object doing?)”

“(…Searching with its radar? …No. It might be able to find a tank or fighter with that, but I doubt it can locate people with it.)”

“(…It appears to be trying to access a satellite. However, it is not going well because the signal cannot get through,)” added the Elite girl.

“(…Oh, that’s right. A chaff missile was fired as a meteorological weapon. It scattered signal-blocking particles in the clouds which turned the natural clouds into giant anti-satellite shields.)”

If the Object could use the satellite, they could be found in an instant. Quenser was now immensely thankful for that waste of tax money.

“Okay, let’s review what we know,” he said while staring through the rifle scope.

Heivia stared at the Object through the sight of the anti-tank missile and forced his tone to remain light.

“The enemy’s Object is codenamed Water Strider. Oh, and that’s just our codename for it. We have no idea what name they developed it under.”

“The name comes from those legs,” said the Elite girl crouching next to Quenser while she stared at the Water Strider with her naked eyes.

Quenser moved the rifle to look at the Object’s legs.

The main body of the Water Strider was a giant sphere. Four insect-like legs extended from there and to the ground.

It moved by gliding rather than walking. It slid along the ground just as a water strider moved across water, and thus it received that codename.

“It seems to slide along the ground using static electricity. It’s basically the same as yours, princess, but with those four legs, it can regulate itself to move smoothly across much rougher surfaces,” said Quenser while especially focusing on the very bottom of its legs.

[[Image:Heavy_Object_v01_106.png|thumb]]

The princess continued for him. 

“The static electricity is only used to make the heavy Object float. It uses a different means to propel itself forward. For mine, it uses lasers to detonate the air, but the Water Strider uses its legs to directly kick off of the ground.”

In that aspect, the Water Strider truly moved like a real water strider. However, high-level calculations and minute adjustments must have been made instantaneously to ensure the Object’s weight did not become focused on a single leg which would crush it. It actually had to use a method where the legs only just barely touched the ground as they kicked off of it.

After thinking through all that, Quenser continued his explanation.

“Basically, the static electricity method is a relative of hovercrafts that blow air down to float on the surface of the water. Instead of destroying the Object, can’t we dig up the earth beneath its legs? If there’s enough of a difference in ground level, the power keeping it afloat will cease to be equally distributed and it might not be able to slide along anymore.”

“It can still walk using its four legs if it has to. If one leg is stuck, it can just pull it out. That may stop it for about 10 seconds, but it wouldn’t be enough to stop it from functioning,” explained Heivia. “Also, its plasma cannons and all its other firepower will still be active even if we do stop its legs. We’ll only have turned a mobile gun battery into a stationary one. Once it realizes we’re approaching to destroy its legs, it’ll blow us to pieces in no time at all. It might work if we were willing to die in order save Froleytia and the others, but I’d honestly rather not die like that.”

“In that case…” The Elite girl moved her gaze from the Water Strider’s legs to the main weapons attached at the top. “Can we make the enemy misfire? If only an Object can destroy an Object, then if we used the Object’s own power…”

“Maybe if we had our own Object, but this tiny missile can’t even scratch its cannons.”

Heivia lightly struck his portable missile as if it were trash.

They could not destroy the legs or cannons.

That only left…

“So we’ll have to deal with the main body.” Quenser looked at the giant sphere through the scope. “But isn’t that the toughest target of them all? A nuclear shelter-like wall surrounds the giant reactor. How are we supposed to get through that?”

“Hey, we had spare parts for our Object, right? Were there any spares of the main weapons for the princess’s Object in there? Only the firepower of an Object can destroy an Object, so this could work if we have one of its cannons, right?”

“Do you know how much of an output an Object’s reactor has?” Quenser shook his head with a bitter expression on his face. “It produces enough energy to have energy to spare while firing over 100 weapons that would not receive sufficient energy from a standard nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Those reactors are crystallizations of human technology. They are handmade by about 300 technicians with skills that not even precision machinery can match. Where are you planning to get an energy source to replace that reactor?” Quenser continued giving flaws in Heivia’s suggestion. “And even if we did have a reactor to use, those weapons are meant to be fired while attached to a 50 meters, 20 ton Object. The shockwave from firing the railguns or coilguns might be enough to kill us if we fired them and the radiant heat from the laser or plasma weapons could turn us into human torches. …Actually, a low-stability plasma cannon would probably shoot off like a rocket if we fired one.”

“I was just thinking out loud, dammit. And that damn Water Strider made sure to destroy all the maintenance facilities from our base to crush even the slimmest possibility of something like that.”

However, the two of them both stopped speaking there.

“Wait a second.”

“Yeah.”

The Elite girl looked confused as the two guys took their eyes from the scopes and exchanged glances.

“Even if we can’t destroy the Object itself, their base zone is still run by soldiers.”

“That monster is still a weapon, so it’ll stop moving if it doesn’t receive regular maintenance, won’t it?”

Quenser and the other two moved far away from the Water Strider and headed down the mountain slope. The three of them came up behind the Water Strider’s maintenance base zone.

They were inside a rusted metal tower.

It had likely been set up as a watchtower while the base zone was being constructed and the radars had yet to be set up. It seemed to have been abandoned since the base zone had been completed, so Quenser and the others made use of it.

While hiding behind the bulletproof metal panels attached to the watchtower, they looked out into the distance where the enemy maintenance base zone spread out before them. The base appeared to be about 500 meters square.

“…Hey, did you notice it?” whispered Heivia as they looked out at the base zone.

“Yeah, it has a lot of radar facilities. In fact, the base is mostly made up of radars.”

Most of the buildings made of thick concrete were either maintenance areas for the Water Strider or radar facilities for supporting the Object. It had almost no normal military force outside of the Object. The base had been constructed based on the theory that Objects were synonymous with war and therefore everything should be focused on it.

“Not only are there no tanks or fighters, but there aren’t even any armored vehicles or soldier transport vehicles. The few vehicles scattered about all look like tractors for plowing the snow.”

“I guess they made everything either for Object maintenance or radar in order to cut down on unneeded maintenance costs for the inspecting of the other vehicles.”

“It’s true that spending taxes on maintaining outdated tanks seems pretty ridiculous…”

Most likely, the only military force outside of the Object at the enemy base zone was infantry. And speaking of the infantry…

“I guess this isn’t too surprising,” muttered Quenser. “A student who had never actually held a gun before couldn’t take out four real soldiers. Those were probably just maintenance workers. They didn’t expect to have to capture an Elite like that, so they had to hurriedly throw together a team of noncombat maintenance soldiers to go after her.”

“Whether they were trained or not, those were still horrible bastards you killed. This doesn’t change the fact that you’re the knight that saved the princess,” said Heivia lightly.

Their moods had improved quite a bit just by getting some distance away from the object even if it was only temporarily.

“However, if they had to send maintenance soldiers to the front lines, it’s probably safe to assume they don’t have many normal soldiers. If we could just get rid of that gigantic Object, Froleytia and the others fleeing might be enough to take them out.”

“The problem is what to do about that Object,” said the Elite girl.

Quenser looked at the largest facility in the base zone that was likely the maintenance facility.

“? …It looks like the roof and walls can open.”

“Well, their only means of fighting is the Object. It’d be a major problem if they were attacked while it was being serviced. I’m betting they made sure some of the cannons can still function while it’s undergoing maintenance so they can intercept any attack.”

“But if the Object is still running, how can they service it?”

“The Water Strider has over 100 weapons, so they’ll still have 50 left over even if they stop half of them for maintenance. That way, they have a minimum number active at all times.”

Quenser looked back at the base zone as a whole while listening to Heivia.

“…So what should we blow up?” Quenser asked his comrades in arms while thinking about the structure of the various buildings. “What would cause them the most problems if it was destroyed?”

“You already know, don’t you? The legs. There has to be a storage area or something that holds the spare parts for the Water Strider’s legs.”

“?”

The Elite girl looked confused, but Quenser nodded in agreement.

“Even with that giant form floating, quite a bit of stress has to be put on the legs. It’s bad enough with a giant flat surface like with a hovercraft and its using just the ends of those four legs.”

“According to our battle records, that damn water strider always goes back to its base for maintenance once every 12 hours. Most likely, it’s getting an overhaul for those ‘glass slippers’ on its feet. Constantly producing enough energy to make that giant thing float must melt the metal parts.”

“My Object uses static electricity too, but it can go half a year without replacing the parts. I remember because it is generally replaced with the attached box that holds the compressed exhaust gases from the JPlevelMHD reactor.”

“That’s due to the effective area, don’t you think? The flat floating surface at the bottom of the upside down Y-shape undercarriage is a few dozen meters across, so the burden on any one point isn’t too great. However, that Water Strider floats from only the ends of the four legs, so it gets worn down much faster. That’s what makes the vast difference between having to replace the parts every half day or every half year.”

“…Since it’s a half day, does that mean the Water Strider would chase after us for another 12 hours even if we destroy the facility?”

“Sure, if it had just replaced its ‘glass slippers’ with new ones. It’s been a while since it last replaced them and it had to have been putting more stress on its legs than usual while fighting the princess’s Object. I’d say its undercarriage must be pretty burnt out by now. In fact, it’s surprising it hasn’t headed back to the base yet.”

“So if we blow up those spare parts…” muttered the girl.

“It won’t be able to replace them. The Object will burn out its legs and no longer be able to move. Even if it does force itself to continue moving like that, the tough barrier walls will melt its system from within.”

“We can’t destroy the Object itself, but we’ll be able to run away from the threat.”

“That means we need to think of a way to sneak into the base,” said the Elite girl.

Quenser and Heivia looked over at the short princess and she continued speaking.

“As an Elite that pilots an Object, I have an idea how we can sneak through their radar net.”