Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

And after all that…

“This is the worst,” someone groaned. “We only have two options here: die from a bullet or die from overwork…”

They were in a thick forest, but there was no solid ground below their feet. In fact, the seawater rose about halfway up their calves. This area was known as a mangrove. That meant it had worse footing than a normal forest, it was extremely hot and humid, and they could not even sit down to take a break.

Long ago, people had built cells that entirely ignored the captive’s human rights. The water cell had submerged the floor so the captive could not lie down and sleep while the Sisyphean cell had forced the captive to walk endlessly around and around in the small space by passing a long stick through the bars and prodding them whenever they stopped moving. Those nightmarish rooms had destroyed the captive’s mind through physical exhaustion, but marching through a mangrove without any rest was quickly reaching that level.

It was hellishly hot and humid, but they were surrounded by non-potable seawater. And even if they got desperate enough to try to cool off in the water, the osmotic pressure would still wear them out on the cellular level. This was the environment through which five masses of steel moved slowly in a line. It was an incredibly difficult route that kept switching between land and waterside, but the tanks managed to remain exactly the same distance apart.

Tropical mangroves were the perfect fit for the effects of global warming, so they seemed to have been taking over the landscape quite quickly. The greenery had swallowed up fighter jets, transport helicopters, and the like which had been shot down by an Object’s lasers. They could feel their balls shrivel up when they thought about how many small shrimps and crabs had to be living all through here.

“Are these those self-driving vehicles that are so popular lately?”

“Huh? Well, that does sound like something the Information Alliance would like.”

The tanks were clearly maintaining a walking pace so that the infantry like Quenser and Heivia could be positioned around them as guards.

“What the hell is this? There’s something wrong with placing flesh-and-blood guards around something with composite armor over a meter thick. What are we, a meat cushion used to protect that metal fruit?”

“I’d rather be here than out front. The ones who lost that game of rock-paper-scissors are taking the lead to make sure the tanks don’t trigger any tripwires or landmines, right?”

“So how far have landmines evolved these days, anyway?”

“I dunno. I’ve heard a lot of stories though. Like landmines that fly up into the air and fall right on top of the tank, or landmines that inform a remote operator when triggered and that operator uses video footage to confirm the presence of enemy soldiers before detonating it.”

“What happened to ''land''mines being something buried in the ground…?”

“There are apparently also landmines that have something like a parabolic antenna on the ground which automatically turns its head to target the side of the tank. Just like a concave mirror, it focuses the blast on a single point to launch the blast like a spear and pierce the armor from dozens of meters away.”

The weight settings for an anti-personnel mine and an anti-tank mine were different, so they would not explode if a person accidentally stepped on them. …But to reiterate, this was a mangrove with seawater covering everything. Even at a depth of a few dozen centimeters, the water pressure could add enough for a person’s weight to trigger them. And if the mine was made from glass or plastic, the metal detectors attached to the end of their rifles could not locate them, so they had to be super careful.

“Have we wandered into a post-apocalyptic world? The greenery has swallowed up all these weapons…”

“It only takes a few years for this to happen. That goddamn Oceanian forestation tech seems to have been profitable. Although that dictator said he couldn’t trust some words on paper, so he didn’t sell them the Object tech along with it.”

Unlike direct sunlight, this was the same stuffy heat as a plastic greenhouse. Heivia was completely sick of it and wiped away the sweat dripping down his chin.

“We’re doing our jobs and protecting the battalion from a threat, but our busty commander is never gonna see it that way. Will she just think we’re skipping out on our sand-digging job?”

“The focus right now is on preventing this information from leaking out, but we’ll just have to hope that little Wraithy will explain everything once this is over.”

And since the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were working together at the moment, this would not qualify as disobeying orders and deserting…or so the two idiots hoped.

The tanks in question – the Information Alliance seemed to call them Tank 041s – had been hastily painted with Legitimacy Kingdom-ish camouflage, but anyone who knew what they were doing would quickly notice something was wrong. The tanks did not look like a crude collection of straight lines. The body and rotating turret had streamlined curves that flowed front to back and it was designed to stay low to the ground. It made Quenser think of a sports car or the front car of a high-speed train.

They had to get those tanks to the remains of some airfield.

He made a comment while glancing over at the tank which was covered with small boxes about the size of a phonebook.

“I guess not even a tank can just knock down all the trees in its path.”

He received a clear voice transmission from the tank right next to him.

“Even if they’re masses of composite armor, they still weigh a few dozen tons each. It would probably be simplest to think of them like giant trucks. They smash through concrete walls in movies, but they can actually be stopped pretty easily. And when you do have to force your way through a barrier, you need to point the gun backwards so it doesn’t get damaged.”

“Who are you?”

“Oops, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Dorothea Martini Naked. Nice to meetcha☆”

The two idiots exchanged a glance.

“…Martini?”

“We’ve heard that name before.”

“Yeah, we’re…y’know, a part of that standard. The Martini Series,” said the voice. “Although I don’t recommend looking into that too much.”

This sudden operation existed outside normal operating procedures and it seemed to have some hidden connections to things they were not aware of. To sum it up, they had nothing but bad feelings about this.

“(Umm, have we been set up in some way?)”

“(That’s just how the military works. You’re either tricked by the enemy or caught in some conspiracy by an ally. It can come from the front or the back, but you get fucked either way.)”

Diesel exhaust filled their lungs along with the salty and muddy scent while Quenser and Heivia felt less than hopeful about the fate of the derailed train that was this mission.

Even the radios they carried felt different.

They had left their Legitimacy Kingdom format radios and handheld devices at the Disaster Rescue Base on the beach, and they had been given Information Alliance format ones instead. Everyone’s cute Wraithy claimed it was a way to prevent an intelligence leak, but everything looked suspicious once you entered that mindset.

Dorothea did not seem to mind.

“Man, it’s been a while since I worked in a group. It’s kind of exciting. And if I’m enjoying this, I guess I’m still not a true shut-in. Thank goodness I’m normal☆”

“Yeah, I’m sure it is enjoyable when the tank drives itself. Can’t you at least let us ride on top?”

“Every surface is covered in reactive armor to make sure an affordable $69.99-a-pop rocket can’t blow away a $9 million tank, so that would be a lot like sitting on top of a pile of anti-personnel mines. Ours are so sensitive they’d probably go off, but feel free to try.”

“Eeeeeek!?”

“Hm? Wait, it’s been a while??? Aren’t tanks run by groups of four or five?”

Dorothea answered Quenser’s question by waving the tank’s gun back and forth.

“That’s definitely been the tradition since tanks first appeared on the battlefield and those traditions are hard to break, but these days you can take everything from the driving to the firing control and concentrate it down to a single panel if you use a fiber-optic drive-by-light system. Even normal cars are going to be self-driving before long. It’s true you need some manpower when they break down or get stuck in the mud, but you can deal with that by keeping a movement-assistance suit or work robot onboard.”

There was a hemispherical multi-purpose camera the size of a basketball on top of the turret and there were small and narrow lenses on all sides of the tank, so a single person could control everything.

“Then why do we still use four people in each tank?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know what paradigm the Legitimacy Kingdom uses, but it might be a loneliness countermeasure. Being stuck in a metal coffin on the front line for long periods can be pretty taxing. So making sure there are several people in each one can mean a lot. Of course, here in the Information Alliance, we use a radio or infrared network to chat with each other. Your way is a waste of labor expenses. Nyahoo, Trevor, Magienz, Energy, and Roxeus, my friends on lonely nights.”

More calls of “nyahoo” entered the radio, so that seemed to be some kind of minor slang. Those online people holed up in their metal coffins were far from quiet.

“…Are all of them Martinis?”

“Of course not. We’re not just a dime a dozen, you know? Nyahoo.”

That pointless exchange did not last long.

Whatever they did, they were stuck walking on and on. Plus, they did not have flat asphalt to walk on. They were inside a mangrove forest with a bumpy floor of roots flooded up to the calves with seawater.

Even if they paced themselves properly, they could only march about 40 kilometers in 10 hours. And these Legitimacy Kingdom scumbags would put in any amount of work toward getting out of doing work, so there was no way they were just going to keep going like this.

“Hey, Quenser, it’s time to get creative! We can’t let them do this to us, can we!?”

“Not a chance. Okay, let’s grab some stuff from that moss-covered fighter. Its low-pressure tires are still intact. Then we’ll borrow the winch wire from that transport helicopter.”

“What about the crucial cart?”

“Won’t that broken main wing work?”

They could not ride on the tanks since their reactive armor was not much different from anti-personnel mines, but that just meant they needed to build a wheeled sled and have it pulled by a wire.

“Why are you two working up a sweat just to skip out on work?” asked Dorothea.

“I’m willing to do anything if it means taking it easy. Okay, Dorothea. You’re our cosplay reindeer crawling on all fours, so drag around this cruel Santa’s sleigh while we mercilessly whip you.”

That changed the nature of their journey.

If they ignored the diesel exhaust in the face and seawater raining down on them due to the lack of a mudguard on the treads, it was not that bad a ride. And it was sure to shorten the travel time. They wanted to finish this before the day was out.

“Yeehaw! Go, go! Whip, whip! Wah hah hah!!”

“…A-are they tormenting my butt in their imagination just from looking at the back of the tank? They don’t even know what I look like yet…”

Just then, something changed.

The deep roar of the powerful diesel engine suddenly stopped. But even if it had stopped moving, the tank’s flame had not gone out. It was for emergency use and only lasted about half an hour, but it had a fully electric mode. The idiots had not thought to add a brake to their cart, so they very nearly crashed face-first into the back of the tank. It sounded silly, but they very nearly blew themselves to kingdom come.

Also, all the chatter on the radio had suddenly vanished.

Something slowly filled their vision within a silence so great that the chirp of a bird was enough to make their hearts pound.

The giant mass was over 50 meters tall.

It was the Faith Organization Second Generation Paper Bikini.

Heivia just about rejected the truth before his eyes by taking off running, but Quenser grabbed him, got down from the cart, and moved right up next to the closest tank.

“(We’ll be killed! These metal coffins are useless against an Object!! They’re nothing but giant metal readings. Once it notices them, we’ll be blown to bits!!)”

“(Quiet down, Heivia!)”

“(We need to escape into the forest!! If we’re gonna try to wait it out, we’re best off far away from any metal readings! That fighter and transport helicopter in the forest were put there by that thing’s lasers, right!?)”

“(Are you stupid? How far do you think we’ve traveled already!?)

It did not seem the Object had a clear lock on them. It was slowly moving from right to left at a few kilometers away, but that was nothing to something the size of an Object. Dorothea Martini Naked had said the tanks could not knock over the surrounding trees, but that thing could likely plow right through the mangrove with no issue whatsoever.

It was the Paper Bikini.

It had a unique silhouette with the 50m spherical main body contained between diamond-shaped air cushion floats that looked like diagonally-flattened rectangles. It had a main cannon on either side, but they were not aimed forward. The ridiculously-huge coilguns covered the 180 degrees to the left and right.

Instead, it had two thick pieces of shield armor on the front.

Quenser groaned a quiet comment as he recalled what each part did.

“(The front is only used for charging forward. That Second Generation breaks through the barricades to move deep inside enemy territory before spraying gigantic shells everywhere.)”

“(That thing takes mobile weapon tactics back to the First World War. But it’s managed to use that to survive in this harsh age, so you can’t really criticize it either. You can’t exactly call those old methods smart, but if we’re caught, we aren’t going to get a pleasant death.)”

However, its most defining trait was not its shape or tactics. That would be the material used to make it: paper.

That might be hard to believe, so let’s say it again: paper.

[[Image:HO_v14_045.jpg|thumb]]

Objects were usually colossal masses of metal, but the Paper Bikini had been designed out of paper. In ancient times, a powerful Asian empire had used phonebook-thick bundles of paper to make armor. This was likely a similar concept.

It was the ultimate form of the shock-absorption and dispersion found in bulletproof jackets made from aramid fiber, glass fiber, or spider silk. The main cannon was a coilgun created by placing lots of electromagnets inside a cylinder given sufficient strength by combining hundreds or thousands of bulletproof papers. Even the shells were 750kg masses hardened with a special adhesive and given a pointed tip for a cone shape.

A single idea could change paper’s durability and other traits. For a close-to-home example, cardboard had caused something of a revolution. Similarly, the Paper Bikini was attempting to overturn the standard tactics by using a multi-lattice structure that was also being researched for the folding of tiny carbon nanotubes.

In the previous battles, the Princess had torn away the Paper Bikini’s armor a few times.

And yet here it was good as new.

It had an overwhelming advantage when it came to the cost per gram of armor. Melting down paper and remaking it was a lot more efficient than melting down scrap metal and reusing it. So as long as its reactor was not destroyed, it could replace its armor and return for a rematch. In addition to its simple combat specs, it placed financial pressure on its opponent as an economic strategy designed for the coming Age of Starvation.

“(So it’s a paper swimsuit that can never be removed, huh?)”

“(It pisses me off how that busty commander’s naming sense is so damn good only when she can be so malicious.)

The Faith Organization’s official codename was Hariti.

Since that name came from Buddhism which taught reincarnation, it had likely been designed as an Object made from reusable parts. Standard Objects used steel mixed with a powerful heat-resistant and reactive material, but overuse of that could easily lead to wars fought over the iron ore itself. Once that happened, the technology to build more Objects from a replacement material – especially one that could be replenished in a few years instead of the thousands or tens of thousands of years required for petroleum or mineral resources – would become a trump card against the world. And that was a realistic value for a selectively-bred mangrove.

Also, international society watched for secret Object constructions by monitoring the iron ore trade. Since paper was not monitored, it could slip right past those watchful eyes. That was another way the material could appear quite attractive.

“(No, I can’t take it anymore! If we stick with these old-fashioned tanks, we’ll be turned into some twisted piece of artwork along with all the melted metal! We need to go hide in the forest!!)”

“(Wait, that would work against us!! The Object’s thermal sensors don’t work with all the heat and humidity trapped in the mangrove. It’ll find readings of above 40 degrees everywhere, so it can’t detect human body heat!)”

“(What about the metal readings!? One look at the radar screen and we’re screwed!!)”

“(How many abandoned masses of metal do you think crashed here or were abandoned in the mud? Listen, stay here. Don’t even think about moving. It’ll overlook us if it thinks this is just a rusted hunk of metal.)”

“(So we just have to pray and hope for the best!? When we’re up against the Faith Organization!? Are you sure this isn’t their way of spreading their religion!?)”

“(It might have anti-personnel sensors, but it’s a Second Generation. If we stick by the tank, it won’t be able to tell us apart. When blowing up those heroin factories, twenty of us huddled together to create a rectangular mass it mistook for an abandoned vehicle, remember? Whereas if we run into the forest, the anti-personnel sensors will pick us up individually and it’ll grow suspicious. Then it’ll fire a shot ‘just in case’, blowing us all up in the process!)”

They could not use their radios to ask Dorothea and the others in the tanks why they had stopped, which only made their hearts pound all the harder. Quenser and Heivia had their idea, but Dorothea’s group might have a different one. If they screwed up their cooperation and the tanks suddenly started moving, the two idiots could easily get crushed by the treads.

They waited and waited as the sticky and rusty smell of steel and motor oil filled their lungs.

The beating of their own hearts was far too loud for their liking.

Their faces were soaked with sweat as they continued praying to some formless higher power.

And…

And…

And…

Finally, the Paper Bikini continued on to the left.

This action may have held no real significance for the Object.

The Paper Bikini, with its spherical main body held between diamond-shaped propulsion devices, had not noticed them, so it was simply continuing along an irregular patrol pattern that prevented anyone from predicting its course or timetable.

But to the puny humans clinging to the surface of the earth, it felt like the end of a herculean task. Even if their opponent had never even recognized them as an enemy.

They waited a lot longer to make sure that giant form had entirely vanished while restlessly moving its main cannons back and forth. Only then did a signal return to their close-range radios.

“Forward. Resume moving forward. We’re going to switch back to diesel, so move away, everyone. We do have anti-personnel radar to prevent that sort of thing, but the self-driving mode prioritizes the terrain. Make sure the treads don’t catch the bottom of your uniform.”

“Y-you have got to be kidding,” complained Heivia while wiping sweat from his brow. “How long do we have to keep playing this deadly game of Red Light, Green Light?”

Nevertheless, they seemed to have concluded that the threat had passed. The danger had shifted down to low gear, giving them a short interval to calm their body and mind before the next threat. Or so they assumed.

That was naïve.

A moment later, dry gunshots shot out from the depths of the mangrove.