Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 5===

Quenser and Heivia climbed up the net like it was playground equipment and finally reached the surface.

The giant floats of the Tri-Core made an A-like shape. They were in the hollow center area where the surface of the water looked like an open fish pond.

Heivia removed his oxygen mask and started spewing out the curses that he had not been able to get across within the water.

“Fuck! I’m all sticky and shit! I’m like a wet dog!! What the hell was that about being safe if we dove!? I almost died!!”

“You only asked how to survive, not how to be safe! Anyway, where’s Froleytia!?”

“How the hell should I know? She’s probably floating around here somewhere,” Heivia said carelessly as he looked around. “Getting up above the surface is great and all, but how are we supposed to get up on the Tri-Core’s deck?”

“There’s a maintenance ladder over there.”

“!? Oh, shit! Hurry, up, Quenser!! The Tri-Core’s finished with its target practice and is starting to move again! We’re gonna be crushed by the blast from the air cushion!! The wind that lifts up this six hundred thousand ton monster is about to blow down!!”

“Shit! It isn’t going to head straight for some enemy country, is it!?”

“How the hell should I know!? Just climb up! That shark anchor is still a danger. Its retractable end functions both as a suction tube to bring in water for the water jet and as drainage. If that giant pillar retracts up near the surface, we’ll be sucked in!!”

And so Quenser and Heivia climbed up the ladder installed on the side of the giant float that was over 5 meters thick and arrived on the deck of the Tri-Core.

The float that kept the Object afloat was over 20 meters wide and giant cylindrical tanks that looked like something from an industrial complex were installed right next to them.

“…The Tri-Core can drill for oil, right?”

“I’ll set up the Hand Axe, but do you really think it’s enough to sink the Tri-Core?” said Quenser with a dubious look even as he stabbed the fuse into the explosive. “In Alaska, we managed to blow up the Object from the inside by setting the explosives up within the parts in the enemy base zone, but we don’t even know when the Tri-Core needs maintenance next.”

“Hey, look at that,” said Heivia as he removed his rifle from its shoulder strap.

Modern rifles were not made unusable just by being plunged into seawater.

“?”

Quenser looked in the direction Heivia indicated with his chin and he saw one of the other floats. As previously explained, the Tri-Core’s floats were A-shaped and many different facilities were constructed elsewhere. One block had giant cranes used for drilling for oil and one block was lined with giant storage buildings similar to what was normally found at a port.

Quenser glanced over the fish pond-like areas of open sea created by the shape of the floats.

“…Large storage areas? I see. The Tri-Core has its maintenance base built into itself!! That way it doesn’t have to protect a weak maintenance fleet-style base zone. With three reactors, it can pull something like that off!”

“No, not that!”

“Hah?”

“Enemy soldiers! Those facilities come with a full complement of soldiers armed with machine guns!!”

As Heivia spoke, he grabbed Quenser’s arm and pulled him behind cover.

They heard gunfire and then sparks started flying from the float at their feet and the metal panels they were hiding behind.

“Wait a second. Aren’t we hiding behind an oil tank?!”

“There’s nowhere else to hide!! Would you rather go stand out on the wide open float!?”

The few dozen Tri-Core soldiers seemed to have noticed where Quenser and Heivia were hiding because their gunfire grew very careful and sporadic. They did not use any kind of grenade.

Heivia held his rifle out from behind the oil tank and returned fired in short, two or three shot bursts.

“Hey, circle around the float and head to the maintenance area!!”

“And pull off the same thing as in Alaska? But when is the Tri-Core going to undergo maintenance!? If it isn’t for three days, we’ll be stuck running away for three days straight!!”

“Then find some weakness!! We have to find some way of taking advantage of this opportunity and damaging this thing somehow!!” said Heivia as he continued to pull the trigger, but the gunfire suddenly stopped.

“What, is it jammed!?”

“Shut up, I’m gonna fix it!!”

Heivia moved back fully behind cover and removed the cover to his rifle. He just had to take out the jammed bullet and replace the cover to put the gun in working order again, but…

Suddenly, the ground started shaking.

The Tri-Core seemed to be rotating clockwise and the two of them were almost thrown off as they fell down. As Heivia had been in the middle of taking apart his rifle, the small metal parts and springs scattered atop the float.

A truly displeased look appeared on Heivia’s face.

“…Can I cry?”

“Don’t get discouraged. Just gather them up!! Look, they’ve realized something’s gone wrong for us and are picking up their rate of fire!!”

However, a few of the parts had fallen off the float and into the ocean, so nothing could be done to fix the rifle. Heivia tossed the incomplete rifle to the side and pulled out his spare handgun to fire back.

“Hey, have you figured out where you’re gonna set up the explosives!?”

“Give me a second. I’m using my mobile device to access the military database.”

“And I thought the waterproofing option was only good for letting you surf the web in the bath.”

“You’d stay in too long and the heat of the bath would get to you if you actually did that. You were an analyst, right, Heivia? So you helped draw up predicted general designs of enemy Objects from distant observations? Then you might be able to find a weakness if you look over this.” Quenser looked down at the small screen. “Oh, c’mon! What a piece of junk. This signal is terrible. Maybe it’ll be better over here…”

“Wait, you idiot!! That’s right in the middle of enemy fire!!”

When Heivia frantically pulled him back, Quenser returned to his senses.

“Oh, I guess we don’t really have time to leisurely look over this diagram.”

“What, do you want them to prepare us a stylish café with free wifi in the middle of the battlefield?”

“Actually, the Tri-Core might really have a café somewhere,” replied Quenser with a serious expression as he lightly kicked at the ground. “But when you think about it, couldn’t this be the biggest weakness?”

“The giant floats, hm? Well, this giant Object does have three spherical main bodies, so it’d probably just sink down to the bottom of the ocean under its own weight if the floats were to burst.”

“The problem is figuring out how to destroy these floats using only the Hand Axe we have when direct hits from giant mines didn’t even scratch them. If we could focus some kind of impact to destroy one point…”

“Oh, fuck!!” Heivia shouted suddenly, cutting off Quenser’s thoughts.

Quenser looked over to see Heivia’s handgun’s motion stopping in the middle of its blowback.

“I’m out of ammo! This handgun was my only spare weapon, so I didn’t bring many magazines for it!! If we stay here any longer, we’re gonna get our brains blown out by normal soldiers!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do about the Tri-Core!?”

“How the hell should I know!? Just throw the explosives around randomly and then jump into the sea! Our only choice is to try to meet up with Froleytia wherever she is and get out of here. This may be our only chance to get away!!”

In the meantime, the gunfire from the enemy soldiers became even more sporadic. They seemed to be trying to circle around the large A-shaped float between short intervals of firing.

Quenser and Heivia were running out of time.

They would be cornered before long.

Quenser hated the thought of giving up on the Tri-Core, but it was true that he could see no weakness they could use to surely sink it with the Hand Axe. Drawing out the firefight would only be detrimental to him and Heivia.

(I guess that settles it…!!)

Quenser and Heivia gritted their teeth and started to jump off the A-shaped float and into the sea.

However, they ended up not leaving the battle.

This was not due to a noble reason like their heroic hearts refusing to flee.

The Tri-Core had been struck by a large caliber bombardment fired from a distance and the nearby shockwave had knocked Quenser and Heivia back.

That one strike had been enough to nearly eliminate their sense of hearing.

The damage must have reached the organ that controlled his sense of balance because Quenser was unable to get back up. He could only desperately try to suppress an intense headache and an urge to vomit.

“Damn…it…! What…was that?!”

Heivia was right next to him, but his voice sounded indistinct.

While collapsed atop the giant float, Quenser used only his eyes to search for the attacker.

He noticed something quite large approaching at high speed from the horizon.

Its main body was a giant sphere. Below that was a normally upside down Y-shaped static electricity propulsion device, but it currently had a marine battle-use circular float added on. Seven giant arms stretched from the back of the sphere and each arm had a giant main cannon attached to the end. It had likely been one or more of those that had fired.

Its method of propulsion must have been different than when it was on land because the dark thundercloud-like noise created by the massive amount of static electricity could not be heard.

(…The Object…?)

“Hey, this is bad,” said Heivia in a trembling voice to Quenser whose mind was still hazy. “This is very, very bad!! That’s the princess’s Object! If we stay here, we’ll get wrapped up in a bombardment between Objects!!”

“!?”

Quenser’s face suddenly twitched.

The 50 meter monstrous weapons that were Objects used weapons such as laser beams, railguns, coilguns, and low-stability plasma cannons. Their destructive power made a battleship look like nothing. If they got caught up in a battle between Objects, it did not matter if one was their ally. A piece of an Object’s outer armor blown off by an explosion would be more than enough to kill a flesh-and-blood soldier instantly.

They now truly had no choice but to leave the Tri-Core as quickly as possible.

However, their bodies would not move as they wanted them to due to the shockwave that had struck them.

The same thing had happened to the enemy soldiers who had been aiming at them from a different float. They were frantically trying to escape to the maintenance base zone atop the Tri-Core’s float.

Meanwhile, the two Objects were staring each other down and their steel pylon-sized main cannons were being moved into position.

The normal soldiers no longer had time to flee.

The battle had begun.

Tremendous explosions and shockwaves rang out.

Quenser and Heivia were not even able to crawl forward. All they could do was lie face down with their hands over their heads.

The Tri-Core fired its powerful railguns one after another, drawing on the full power of its three reactors.

The princess’s Object accelerated back and forth in short bursts to escape the enemy’s sights and repeatedly fired its seven main cannons in their coilgun mode that used magnetism.

A flesh-and-blood human had no way to oppose those giant weapons known as Objects. The surface of its armor came detached and scattered about like a firework. The scale of the destruction was so great that anyone watching was completely overwhelmed and Quenser and Heivia were stuck right in the middle of it all. It was more than they could bear.

“Fuck!! Objects really are synonymous with war! Our lives don’t matter at all in the middle of all this!!”

“No, I’m betting the princess just doesn’t know we’re on here,” said Quenser as he used his handheld device to try to contact the princess’s Object.

As usual, the signal was terrible.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m gonna have her switch over to mainly using her lasers. If she melts through the armor rather than blowing it away, we’re a lot less likely to die from a stray shot! It gives her no real advantage strategically, but she might just be willing to hear us out!”

“Hey, we’re not gonna be blinded by the bright welding light are we!?”

“Oh, would you rather die in a downpour of shrapnel!? At any rate, we just need to jump into the sea while the princess draws the Object’s attention with the lasers. Once we’re out of the way, she can switch right back to using the coilguns!!” Quenser then spoke to the Elite princess through his handheld device. “This is Quenser. We are currently on the Tri-Core’s deck! Please switch your weapon for a short time while we escape. Please switch over to the WL3B1s! I repeat, switch over to the WL3B1s!!”