Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 3===

The starry sky covered the dark ocean of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Quenser, Heivia, and the others were rushing around within the gray aircraft carrier. The soldiers were all pulling out the motor-equipped rubber boats made from the Armadillos. They stopped up on the deck and Heivia looked out to the horizon.

“I can already see the lights of the boats. Those people on the cruise ship are paying a visit to the garden of death.”

“…”

“Hey, Quenser.”

When the other idiot did not answer, Heivia asked about it.

Despite being an idiot, Quenser had a thoughtful look on his face.

“Did I do something wrong in a past life or something?”

“What?”

“It’s just…well…I’m not sure how to put it! First that Black Uniform named Meena and now the sexy little sister Azureyfear. Why!? Does every girl I flirt with end up growing a demon’s tail from her cute ass!? I’m scared! Now I can’t hope for any new love!! I’m gonna end up afraid of love!!”

“Talk about awful taste. Don’t tell me you actually had a thing for that monster Azureyfear. Ugh, just the thought is giving me the creeps.”

“Of course I did! She was walking around in a bikini and she even kissed me on the cheek! Yes, I’ll admit she was suspicious! But I thought there was more to it than that!! Why wasn’t there some kind of twist!? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!”

During that hopeless conversation, Heivia hit Quenser on the head. The student started to complain, but then he noticed something.

The Princess was walking over while surrounded by several maintenance soldiers. She was on her way to board the Baby Magnum after its hastened maintenance.

They did not even need to speak.

As Quenser and the Princess passed by, they reached out and slapped their hands together.

They were shifting their focus to the coming battle even if they had to force it.

“Oh, hell. This has already started, so I guess we have to do it.”

“Yeah. And if I don’t show off to my fiancée every once in a while, she’ll lose interest in me. Let’s blow up that remote-controlled Destruction Fes as the world’s biggest firework.”

“And once that’s over, it’ll be time to give Azureyfear some sexy punishment!!”

“Are you still going on about that? It’s scaring me!”

“You might have your girlfriend over there, but this is the only motivation I’ve got here!!”

Quenser and Heivia joined the other soldiers by throwing their rubber boat into the dark sea and then jumping down from the flight deck. After starting up the large motors, the boats scattered in different directions instead of heading in a single group.

There was a simple reason for this.

[[Image:HO_v11_223.jpg|thumb]]

Frolaytia spoke to them over the radio.

“We can’t use the White Flag here and the Destruction Fes has an overwhelming advantage. Listen. We can only roll the die of death to find out who dies first. Even if that turns out to be those of us here in the flagship, you all need to keep going. Don’t let them end this while just sitting there!!”

In addition to the low-stability plasma main cannon, the Destruction Fes could emit an ultra-high frequency acoustic weapon from its peacock feather-like speaker units. At close range, that could destroy an entire fleet or stop an enemy Object.

Anyone in an exposed rubber boat was out of the question.

However, the risk of being torn apart remained even inside a steel warship.

They did not know who would die first, so they could not allow the entire battalion to be wiped out at once.

That said, this was a lot like digging a bunch of small trenches and hiding inside them so they would not all be wiped out by a single bomb. There could be no hard feelings no matter who the bomb made a hole-in-one on. That was the only option available to them.

“That’s a hell of a way to motivate us. What ever happened to clean wars?”

“…”

“What is it, Heivia? Quieting down now isn’t going to trick anyone into thinking you’re an intellectual.”

“Why didn’t the Destruction Fes…no, why didn’t Azureyfear finish this off right away? Average speed for an Object is five hundred kph and hers is a Second Generation with its high-speed mobility as its main selling point. The attack should have begun before our patched-together cardboard fleet showed up.”

“Because she actually wanted Knight Quenser to stop her!! Heh. These delinquent girls are always turning their damaged eyes my way!!”

“I don’t care how hard you try, there’s no making that failure into some cute little girl!!”

“Then how should I know? I don’t know how nobles think. Maybe she wants to finish off her sworn enemy herself. Maybe she thinks it would damage the ‘legend’ if the Princess showed up and one of her stray shells happened to sink the Rose & Lily instead.”

“Or…she might just want to kill my fiancée in front of me,” suggested Heivia with a bitter look.

Then static ran through the two idiots’ radios.

Someone they did not remember having permission was sending a transmission over an open line.

“Heh heh heh…”

It was a noble laugh that sounded like rolling a piece of candy on the tongue, yet it also contained endless sadism.

“Azureyfear!!”

“How do you do, brother? Where do you think you’re going? Might it be a desperate struggle to save the Bitch of Vanderbilt that I have let live for the time being.”

“…”

Quenser looked to his own radio and prepared to send a certain signal to the Princess in the Baby Magnum and Frolaytia in the small aircraft carrier.

But…

“It is no use. No one can capture me. In fact, my own whereabouts mean nothing to the Destruction Fes. Even if Azureyfear Winchell is taken prisoner or killed, the ten thousand operators, the stealth submarines scattered around the world’s oceans, and the satellites in orbit will continue the fight. Not that I expect you would be able to hunt me down anyway.”

“Who do you think you are? Do you think you have an infinite stock of privilege as a noble?”

“Ah ha ha ha!! Brother, you are the one that needs to bear the responsibility and duty of Winchell. I am merely taking on the debt you failed to pay back. But don’t feel bad. We are family, after all.”

Winchell and Vanderbilt.

War and peace.

What was the reality on both sides and what were the delusions on both sides?

At the very least, it seemed Azureyfear wished to open Heivia’s eyes. And to do so, she wanted to kill in front of him.

Heivia clenched his teeth and a report came in from the Princess.

“The Destruction Fes is approaching from thirteen kilometers southwest of my position. Once it is within ten kilometers, I will engage it.”

“What? Isn’t that around where the Oceanic Driver was sunk?”

Quenser grasped the meaning of the data quicker than anyone else.

“Hm. You were acting like a god, but it looks like you weren’t all that almighty.”

“Commoner, I possess a tolerant and merciful soul, but you are not needed in a conversation between nobles. Know your place.”

The student ignored her and continued.

He was expressing his thoughts, something everyone had equally.

“Don’t act so full of yourself when you’re terrified of getting hit right in the ass. The Oceanic Driver was a Second Generation with several large capacitors in addition to its normal reactor. That allowed it to fire its laser beams with no gaps, but even after it was sunk, it might have had a program to launch an attack from beyond the grave using the massive power left in the capacitors. You were slowly making sure that wasn’t the case. You were afraid of being hit with a surprise attack!!”

Quenser’s guess was that the Oceanic Driver could not actually do that. No matter how powerful the capacitors and transformers were, they were no replacement for the extraordinary reactor. But Azureyfear’s faction had feared that risk. They had feared that formidable foe.

The Oceanic Driver had done more than fight to the death.

Even after its death, it had given the rest of them the chance they needed.

The Rose & Lily and the other five hundred ships were still intact with the hopelessly powerful Destruction Fes so close, but that was undoubtedly thanks to the time bought by the Oceanic Driver. The defender of Saint Helena had done its duty and fulfilled its mission.

How could they let that go to waste?

“Don’t let her get to you, Heivia. That thing isn’t perfect. They’re afraid like normal and they’re putting together countermeasures like normal! It’s nothing more than a normal Object! Our ally proved that. We just have to fill in the gap between the ideal and reality!!”

After saying that to his awful friend, Quenser shouted into his radio.

“Frolaytia, please get started! This is the starting line! We can still end this with zero sacrifices!!”

A massive machine passed by the rubber boats.

It was the Princess’s Baby Magnum.

The mountainous silhouette of the Destruction Fes turned their way in the darkness. The peacock feather-like acoustic weapon units were spread out wide.

A thunderclap-like noise continued without end.

It stabbed at their ears, but Quenser and the others were not knocked out at this range. However, the acoustic weapon’s power would grow the closer they got to the source. They could see the Baby Magnum’s speed dropping as if it was being buffeted by a fierce wind or invisible pressure.

“Dammit! This thing’s dangerous!!”

“Are all these waves due to the ocean surface vibrating? Shit! If we don’t pay attention, we’ll be thrown from the boat!!”

“Hee hee. Hee hee hee hee. The Orchestra System is working well. The ten thousand wolves will now devour the lone Elite.”

“Now you’re really pissing me off. I’ll show you what true piloting looks like.”

The Destruction Fes was not going to pay her any heed in a normal fight.

It was unmanned, so it could ignore the limits of inertial Gs that bound a manned Object. The boosters attached to the side of the insect leg-like units provided overwhelming speed and reversals while the acoustic weapon’s “wall” kept the enemy Object from moving. Their relative speeds widened to fatal levels, so it almost felt like it could control time. The Destruction Fes would calmly circle around to the blind spot of the Baby Magnum’s cannons and unilaterally pummel it to death.

“Eh heh heh. Heh heh heh. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Azureyfear must have had the same destructive vision in mind because her laugh reached the entire army over the radio.

But she was wrong. Quenser had a different vision in mind.

“It seemed strange once I thought about it.” He stared at that goddess of victory from the rubber boat. “That acoustic weapon uses countless speakers to create a wall of noise that vibrates the target, shakes and tears apart the molecules, and causes it to rupture at the weakest points, like the welds. But Objects move around at an average speed of more than five hundred kph. Even more so with the Destruction Fes since its high-speed mobility is its selling point. In that case, you can’t ignore how sound works. Even if you’re emitting the optimum wavelength, that wavelength can be stretched or squished depending on the situation.”

“You mean the Doppler effect?” asked Heivia.

“That means the Destruction Fes’s speakers have to emit a wavelength that takes into account the distortion due to the Doppler effect. It has to accurately read in the relative location and speed of its target. It has to do that initial checking and correction before emitting the sound, and that of course has to be done with something faster than sound.”

Quenser waved the radio in his hand.

“Namely, electromagnetic waves. As I’m sure you can guess from the existence of the term ‘Doppler radar’, electromagnetic wavelengths can’t escape the Doppler effect either. And while the wavelengths are different, light and electromagnetic waves are pretty much the same thing. First it emits microwaves in every direction to see how they’re distorted between itself and the target. Then it uses that data to calculate out the corrections needed for the acoustic weapon and sends out the corrected waveform at high volume. …To put it another way, restricting those initial microwaves will nearly defang the acoustic weapon.”

So…

“An acoustic weapon that creates a wall of pressure that can even stop an Object sounds like a big deal, but if you think about the nature of electromagnetic waves, it isn’t much of a threat.”

Of course, simply using jamming was not going to help just because it was using radar. It was an Object, so it was essentially a large-scale military fortress in and of itself. It could force its way through your standard interfering signal.

But that just meant they had to think bigger.

Quenser snapped his fingers and pointed up into the starry sky.

“The Celestial Flowers fireworks festival just so happened to have an interesting event planned! A collaboration of fireworks and an artificial aurora created with the help of a space station!!”