Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 7===

The Cape of Good Hope was stormy.

The tall waves of the ocean were gray, as if they had absorbed the color of the cloudy sky. The worker ants of the Legitimacy Kingdom advanced using the electric motors of their rubber boats and they quickly ran across some white “mines”. In other words, drift ice. At first, they were the size of a stone one could carry with both arms, but they soon grew to the size of bathtubs and finally a noble’s mansion.

“Damn, it’s that tits iceberg from before. Kevin, watch where we’re headed! I’m not about to crash into that thing and sink.”

“Wow, they’re covered in penguins. Do you think they and the ice came all the way from Antarctica?”

“They might just be taking a vacation in this area.”

There were about ten people per boat. The middle-aged man named Kevin was pointing his handheld device’s lens around taking photos.

“What are you doing, Kevin? If you’re analyzing the ice, could you share that data?”

“Sorry, Quenser, but I’m taking pictures of the drift ice. My son Wells absolutely loves penguins, so he’s sure to love this.”

“Hey, you aren’t summoning the grim reaper and getting us caught in the crossfire, are you?”

The ratio of ocean to ice gradually reversed and they found themselves sailing through rivers or valleys in the gaps between the ice. Eventually, there was no excess space and they had trouble getting the boats any further.

A white wall over a meter tall waited ahead of them. If it stuck up that far from the water, they could not even imagine how far it spread beneath.

“This ice really is weird,” said Quenser as he stroked its surface through his thick glove. “It’s like one meter dice were packed together like chocolate crunch. That gives it a lot of handholds though, so we shouldn’t have any trouble climbing up it.”

However, the student did not hear any of the usual complaints from his awful friend, so he sighed.

“Are you still in a bad mood, you gloomy noble?”

“A pat on the nose from some skinny SOB isn’t about to deter the Great Heivia. But I still can’t believe you would take Azureyfear’s side and treat me like a villain when you have no idea what’s going on there. Being a beautiful girl must be nice. A single teary look and you can overturn any law!”

“…”

Quenser looked like someone who had just noticed a pile of old newspapers after the recycling truck drove by, middle-aged Kevin looked nervous, and Heivia raised his voice because he could not stand the annoying “pressure” bearing down on him.

“Fine, fine! I’ll admit it. I may not know where exactly Azureyfear falls in my list of sisters, but I do know her!! She was pretty cute when she was a kid, but that completely changed after I started dating Lady Vanderbilt. It turned out she didn’t have a personality of her own and she was only following the program placed in her head by the Winchell family. She was completely done in by her noble blood.”

“So you started having trouble with your cute little sister because of your girlfriend? Do you want me to punch you again, you spoiled bastard?”

Seeing a boy pout his lips and sulk was only creepy. Quenser dealt with him and turned back to the rough ice wall again. The rocking rubber boat made for unsteady footing, but since it was higher than the ocean’s surface, the meter tall ice was between waist and chest height when he stood up.

Everyone on the boat crawled up onto the ice land where they found a different world covered in a flat plain of pure white. The ice literally continued to the horizon. It may have been bigger than a small megafloat airport.

“This iceberg is practically an ice shelf. It’s like a continent.”

“Quenser, I know your eyes only know how to stare at girl’s asses, so quit pretending to appreciate the scenery and help me with this work.”

“You get so hesitant, complain-y, and just an all-around pain-in-the-ass when it comes to your family. Are you in a rebellious phase or are you a kid with his parents at school for parent’s day? The problem is that you actually think it makes you look cool.”

They used the synthetic fiber rope prepared in the boat to pull the boat up from the ocean. Then the ten-person boat visibly changed form. The air inflating the balloon was released, the umbrella-like framework bent like an arm, and the alloy armor opened up. In less than twenty seconds, it had become a rectangular suitcase-sized mass. It had treads and looked like a miniature snowmobile or tank.

Kevin used his handheld device, but not to take photos of the penguins this time. He seemed to be controlling the miniature.

“It’s called an Armadillo. It normally follows along automatically to analyze images and monitor the situation, but it still needs some human help. Although that makes it kind of cute.”

Quenser scratched his head while listening to the middle-aged man.

“Will this thing really help?”

“We have a lot to carry this time, so a robot should come in handy.”

“True…”

There was not much infantry could do in a battle between Objects.

The mission these idiots had “gladly” received from Frolaytia was to take samples of and analyze the makeup of the unnatural ice as well as scattering decoy armor and shell fragments to interfere with the Spectre Q&A’s analysis work.

That meant carrying back containers of the ice they had carved off as well as carrying around some amount of trap fragments to spread across the wide range of the battlefield.

“Yeah, this is a pretty unwieldy job.”

“Ah ha ha. Well, it’s still better than going out for a firefight with other human beings.”

They did not know when, where, or how the Spectre Q&A would take its samples, so they could only place the fragments at evenly spaced intervals as if aligning them on graph paper. They had to carry around the equipment and measure everything out, so the robot was a lot of help.

“Come to think of it, they sent bull robots after us in the Rio Grande District. Everyone’s developing this kind of thing, aren’t they?”

“I would think this style makes more sense than adding legs. I’d heard whispers that the infantry is starting to need power station vehicles for all their electronic equipment. Having your soldiers worried about their phone battery would be pretty sad, after all.”

In his own stupid way, Heivia must have realized that his bad mood was not very productive because he casually replied.

“Basically it’s a durable caddy. It’s got power, water, food, and even that boat we were using. There’s more of a demand for these indirect weapons that don’t help fight but carry the equipment needed to maintain the front line. It can be used to block bullets in a pinch, but the electronic simulation division’s calculations didn’t recommend it. They said the gunfire could trigger a spark explosion in the transformer and we’d be caught in the blast.”

“Eh heh heh. Isn’t it cute? It reminds me of a cleaning robot. When we would run ours back home, Wells would chase after it.”

“Hey, you might be missing your family, but don’t draw a face on it with permanent ink. It’s military property.”

That said, they would not need to use it to block bullets.

Their enemy was not infantry with assault rifles or handguns.

“…”

The pure white land underwent a great change. An unbelievably large crack ran through the icy surface that continued to the horizon. Seen from a satellite, it may have looked like a pane of glass after it was stabbed with the tip of an umbrella, but it looked like a giant valley to those on the scene. The rocking of the waves caused an even greater height difference between the two sides of the fault.

“Here she is,” spat out Heivia. “That was our Princess.”

The icy land seemed to be made from one meter dice packed together like extra-large chocolate crunch and a giant form crashed into it with its naval float still attached. It was the Baby Magnum with its seven main cannons and reverse Y-shaped support.

And if the Princess was here, then the other Object would be somewhere nearby too.

The Information Alliance Second Generation was known as the Spectre Q&A.

It was an amphibious air cushion Object, so it smoothly slipped up onto the flat-looking ice in the distance. It looked like a fusion between a spider and a crab. It was supported by four long, narrow legs and it had four pincer-like arms on the front. The surface of the pincers was likely covered with vacuum cleaner-like suction devices. Those would collect the armor panel fragments or low-stability plasma cannon gas floating in the air, find their weak points with its optical sample analysis, and construct its tactics based on that.

This battle was one-on-one, so it was obvious what would happen next.

“Quenser, Heivia, and everyone else. Be on your guard.”

The Princess warned them over the radio.

Immediately afterwards, a frighteningly indiscriminate bombardment began.

They did not begin with their main cannons.

Instead, it was the many secondary cannons covering the spherical bodies like a sea urchin or chestnut burr that moved first. The Princess did not bother breaking the ice with her icebreaking blade. She started by firing metal railgun and coilgun shells to break the white scenery into countless blocks and then fired laser beams and low-stability plasma cannons to instantly vaporize the blocks. She advanced while turning the field ahead of her into the ocean and water she needed for her naval floats.

Quenser and the others had no choice but to watch.

But they did not have a chance to just calmly watch as the Baby Magnum and the Spectre Q&A exchanged fire with their low-stability plasma cannon and laser beam main cannons.

There was a white explosion near the surface.

The dangerous drift ice could have opened a hole in the side of a cruise ship, but the intense heat had forced it to flash vaporize, triggering an explosion of water vapor. But by the time they realized that, a white wall several kilometers long was approaching the soldiers with intense pressure.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

They got down on the ground. Quenser and Heivia both got down, realized they had nothing to grab onto, and got chummy with the suitcase-sized Armadillo power vehicle made from folding up the rubber boat. The white wall struck a moment later. The beads of ice stung their cheeks. Their vision was as poor as in a sandstorm and Quenser saw a large silhouette flying by at greater than his height. Rather than a UFO, it was a poor Legitimacy Kingdom soldier who had not been blessed with anything to grab onto.

“Keviiiin!!”

“I told you! This is what happens when you carry a picture of your family around on the battlefield, you idiot!!”

“We can’t investigate the ice or scatter fragments like this. What do we do!?”

“Shut up! Just focus on surviving, skinny boy! At this rate, they’ll grab our corpses and use their optical sample analysis to reveal the locations of every last mole and erogenous zone on our bodies!!”

Next, they heard yet another explosion like a balloon popping.

The Princess was not using these water vapor explosions to damage the enemy Object. They were simply meant to destroy the endless obstacles getting in her way, so these white walls would reach the soldiers again and again.

“You’re kidding! You have got to be kidding! Let’s head back to the crack in the ice shelf. If we stay up here, we’ll be just like a line of ants being sprayed with a hose!!”

“When the land is shaking this much!? The chunks of ice are rocking in the waves, so if we climb between them, we’ll be crushed by a giant mouth!!”

An icy South African wind blew through.

It quickly washed away the water vapor and the scenery opened up once more.

Quenser felt like he was seeing something he should not be.

A giant mushroom cloud covered a radius of one hundred meters. It looked like a scene from some old footage.

That too may have been a massive water vapor explosion and Heivia’s eyes widened as he shouted out.

“I don’t think the weather can get any more bizarre than this!!”

They did not have time to stick around.

They were assaulted by intense pressure, like an invisible giant’s hand was sweeping them away. This time, they were pulled up into the air. There were not given a choice in the matter and tossed right into the nearby canyon-like crack.

They plunged into the gray sea.

The Armadillo had fallen with them, so it opened on its own and instantly filled with air to form a rubber boat.

The seemingly depthless water squeezed at their hearts, so they frantically swam for the surface and grabbed at the boat. But then they noticed someone else with them.

It was Kevin.

He seemed to have fallen into the crack ahead of them.

“Cough, cough! A-are you two okay? L-let me grab on too.”

“Kevin, grab on here. That was the Princess. Our life insurance only pays out if the enemy shoots us, so you’ll lose big if you let that kill you.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not going to die. My son Wells gave me a good luck charm to ward off bullets. Dying here would mean rejecting his efforts and I’m not about to have him feeling down.”

“Ahhhh!! Someone please stop this guy from calling in any more bad luck!!”

Even soldiers decked out with cutting-edge equipment were superstitious. The two idiots covered the man’s mouth so he could not do anymore to summon an unknown grim reaper.

Also…

“I don’t care anymore! Why are we even out here again!?”

“There is a lot we need to do. Let’s review, Heivia. We’re supposed to get the Spectre Q&A to gather decoy materials so it performs an erroneous optical sample analysis and we’re supposed to gather samples from this unnatural ice. If we know the system behind its solidification, we might be able to use a chemical to instantly melt it.”

“Leave all that to the Princess! With all that firepower, what does a little ice matter? If she wanted, couldn’t she fire some plasma into the South Pole to wipe out all of mankind?”

“No, not necessarily.”

Quenser climbed onto the Armadillo boat, stood up, and observed the battlefield like a pervert peeping over the fence of the girl’s bath.

Kevin asked a hesitant question.

“Wh-what is it, Quenser?”

“She’s melting the ice before she moves. That means her route is visible in advance, so the Spectre Q&A can predict the Princess’s next move. Nimble footwork is everything in an Object battle. It can predict where she’ll be one second later and fire its laser main cannon there.”

“Then what do we do?”

“What we were sent out here to do: search for a way of melting these mountains of ice without relying on the Princess. If we can get rid of all this unnatural ice, we can overturn the Information Alliance’s advan-…”

Quenser trailed off and looked down at his soaking wet uniform. Then he looked to his surroundings: Heivia and Kevin who were still submerged in the water and clinging to the Armadillo boat, the gray sea, and the ice wall made from unnatural dice packed together.

“This is strange.”

“Eh?”

“Dammit, did my assumptions about the winter sea and this waterproof and cold-resistant equipment get the better of me? They did, didn’t they!? This isn’t right at all!!”

Heivia looked at his awful friend in confusion because Quenser removed his glove and stuck his hand in the seawater.

“And even if she’d been in a sauna, it was strange that Azureyfear could walk around the ship in only a swimsuit.”

“That pervert! Is my sister the type that says she can only sleep in the nude!?”

“It’s also strange that you two can soak in that seawater while only looking chilly and that my uniform didn’t freeze after I climbed up into this biting wind! And to top it all off, there’s this!!”

Quenser slapped the water’s surface from the boat.

“This water isn’t cold.”

“Eh? Eh?” asked Kevin. “What do you mean, Quenser?”

“It’s just your average seawater. This isn’t anywhere near the midwinter environment you need for it to freeze! That’s right. If this was cold enough to create an Antarctic-style ice shelf, we probably would have died a few minutes after falling into the seawater. The average temperature for the southernmost part of Africa is eleven degrees. It just isn’t the right environment for ice to form naturally!!”

Heivia and Kevin skeptically removed a glove and checked for themselves.

The idiot was right.

They did not feel the piercing cold of icy water. They felt the lukewarm temperature of water left sitting in a cup.

“Wait. Wait, wait. So what? This ice drifted here from Antarctica, right? Then it isn’t that strange that these giant icebergs are floating in normal seawater, is it?”

“One meter dice of ice were packed together into this giant ice shelf. It’s clearly manmade. And there’s no sign of the corners melting and rounding off. It wouldn’t look like this if it had been left in normal seawater for long periods of time.”

“Then what is it?”

“You’ll understand if you carve off a piece with a knife and taste it. While the surface has been exposed to the sea wind, the inside won’t taste salty. The trick to creating ice that won’t melt is to reduce the impurities. If this is a meteorological weapon, they’ll have used a filter or a centrifuge to remove the salt, dead plankton, and the like.”

“Wait a second. Then…you’re kidding, right!?”

“It’s making the ice here. Right here and now. No one else is supporting it.”

Quenser really did carve off a piece of ice with a knife, stuck it in a thermos, and continued chatting.

“And it’s made enough to create this white land that reaches the horizon. This is history’s greatest obstacle. Not even a tanker full of the polymer used for diapers could build a wall like this. If you’ve got to obey conservation of mass, it’s best to use the seawater that you’ve got a near unlimited supply of.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Then let me ask you something. How much coolant would they need to create a new continent for the planet? Are they using Freon, liquid nitrogen, or liquid helium? Whatever it is, they’re violating entropy or whatever! It would never work out. Even refrigerators and freezers need more than a ton of electricity. You need some kind of coolant and you can only cool as much as the coolant’s specs allow for!”

“…”

The student thought for a bit on his awful friend’s objection.

“No, it may not be cooling the water at all.”

“So…what? Are they using some kind of magical device from the future?”

“There isn’t a rule that says water only freezes after being cooled down to 0 degrees. Melting points and boiling points vary depending on the environment.”

“Yeah, the fact that cup ramen tastes worse when made in the Andes shows up on quiz shows a lot. Marie loves those shows, but Wells always pouts his lips when she doesn’t let him change the channel.”

“You can tell us more about your wife and kid later. Those cup noodles are what matter now. That’s because the boiling point for the water changes due to the difference in atmospheric pressure. Ice is the same. Apply pressure and the temperature at which it freezes will change.”

“What? So are we supposed to look at this in reverse? Like dig down 4000 meters below the ground?”

“No, normal water turns to ice at around 7000 atmospheres of pressure. There’s a professor at my safe country school that was always doing experiments related to that. Something about creating a holy bullet by making water molecules act like metal molecules.”

“Seven thousand!? How are they supposed to do that, you idiot!? That’s just unrealistic. This isn’t a micro-level lab. It’s the macro-level battlefield!”

“Oh, really? Objects are two hundred thousand tons. That’s twice the weight of old aircraft carriers. It could easily supply that pressure by creating a press that focuses its weight on a single point like stepping down with some high heels. Take those four legs for example.”

Kevin groaned, either at the crazy ideas Quenser could come up with or at the extraordinary specs of the enemy Object. Water froze at zero degrees. He never would have reached this point without first questioning that standard assumption.

Meanwhile, the student continued like normal.

“There’s also a paper on applying one million volts of electricity to a meter cube of pure water to solidify it into ice. The Object’s reactor can supply that, so that might act as a secondary method.”

The student placed the thermos in the rubber boat’s holder. When the boat folded up to the size of a suitcase, it would be safely stored inside the Armadillo.

“Anyway, it doesn’t need a ton of coolant that way, so it can ignore that limit. Whether it uses pressure or electricity, it can indefinitely produce ice without turning the entire Object into a giant freezer.”

“…”

Heivia and Kevin fell silent for a while.

Those conditions brought a troublesome problem to the surface.

“You understand, don’t you? The Spectre Q&A isn’t working with some other unit. It can create all this ice and block off the sea all on its own. No matter how much ice the Princess melts, it can fill the gaps back up. She’ll be a bird in a cage the entire time.”

“This is no joke. So we’ll be getting slapped around by our own Object the whole time!? Even those water vapor explosions will kill us eventually!!”

“About those water vapor explosions,” cut in Quenser. “Its main cannon is a laser beam using a dye laser, right? The unnatural ice and the screen of water vapor… They both interfere with light. If it was designed with both of those in mind, it might have some trickier tactics prepared.”