Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 7===

'''Mission Report A-04

'''March 17 – 1740 Hours

'''Ocean of the Far West Pacific District – 1500 Meters Deep



Heivia switched to camera mode and observed the seawater. He checked the temperature at the spot where the cold water of the deep sea mixed with the water warmed by the submarine volcano.

“Wow, this is hopeless. It’s got a great marble pattern going. A supercomputer might be able to analyze it, but it would probably take a while. Can it even get this complex naturally?”

“The New Model could be gently stirring up the water with its water jets or ejecting the hot water from its reactor cooling into the hot water from the volcano. At any rate, it could easily be helping it along.”

“Whatever the case, it’ll bend an Object’s laser beams. If it won’t fly straight, you can’t hit.”

Even from 1500 meters deep, they had a way of communicating with the fleet on the surface. If they requested assistance from the Baby Magnum, it would fire laser beams at the locations they gave.

But those beams would not hit like this.

And since they could not predict where they would ultimately hit, there was a risk of them hitting the two idiots who gave the location.

“There are two important points here,” summed up Quenser. “First, we haven’t found a way to defeat the New Model. We might be able to manage if we blocked up the water intake used for both the reactor cooling and the water jet propulsion, but with the equipment available to us, we have no way of getting up on top of it without it noticing. We would have to climb fifty meters while wearing these heavy masses of metal.”

“Wait. That’s the only important point here. What’s the other one?”

“The volcano,” concisely answered Quenser. “The Object might be interfering, but it’s definitely hiding in the zone of altered temperature created by the volcano, right? If we could seal off that volcano, it can’t maintain that temperature shield on its own.”

“Seal it…?”

Heivia was at a loss for words.

Quenser had a feeling the other boy did a double take through his thick helmet.

“Are you stupid? No, really! Are you stupid!? That’s a spring of 1500 degree lava and you think we can put something over it to plug it up!? A plastic sheet isn’t gonna cut it!!”

“Hypothetically, would a destroyed Object work? It did destroy a few Objects before the princess arrived, right? If we let them sink to the bottom of the ocean, don’t you think they would work to plug it up? And it doesn’t matter if it notices partway through and fires its laser beams. The giant mass just has to fall on top of the volcano in the end.”

“Those things are filled with valuable tech. No one’s gonna agree to that.”

“Then gypsum.”

“…?”

“When they melt down soft iron at the ironworks, they use a giant bucket made from hardened gypsum. That means it can withstand the heat of molten rock. Even with a burner, it will only grow red instead of burning or melting. If we prepared a hunk of it the size of a warship and dropped it into the ocean, it could cover the volcano.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Quenser.” Heivia sounded annoyed. “Now, how many days would it take to create 300 meters of calcined gypsum and then carry it out into the Pacific? They can’t just throw it into a gigantic furnace, so they’d have to make it in small bricks and put it together. Even if we’re using a caustic soda circulation system instead of an oxygen tank, we can’t last down here for three months.”

“I had a feeling it wouldn’t work. And even if we already had the gypsum, the New Model’s lasers would slice it to pieces on the way down.”

Quenser looked up in irritation.

He could not see the sky beyond the transparent seawater. The pitch black darkness made it look like he was buried alive below thick bedrock.

“That leaves only one option.”

“Hm? Why are you acting all self-important? You make it sound like you have an idea you’d rather not use.”

“We have the volcano.” Quenser pointed his thumb toward the orange light. “We can have the princess blow it away with her laser beams. If an explosion blasts the lava everywhere, it’ll cover the New Model while it sits there. Wherever the water intake might be, it’ll be plugged if we cover the entire thing in lava.”

“That’s even worse than I was expecting!! Y-you really are an idiot!! We’re here too, remember!? If you send out enough lava to cover a fifty meter machine, we’ll meet a fate worse than a shrimp going into gratin!!”

“C’mon, Heivia.”

“Eh? What? What’s with that look of pity? N-no! I’m not stupid! I was using common sense to stop you from being stupid!!”

“We’d be contacting the princess via radio to have her attack, so we can just leave the area beforehand.”

“I-I knew that!! I did!! I told you to stop looking at me in pity!!”

Heivia very nearly grabbed at Quenser, but their thick diving suits could cause a dangerous noise if they struck together and doing that right in front of the New Model would be suicide.

While separated by such a thick wall of water, even their long-range communications were cut off. If a submarine was going to use its radio, it would send a wired buoy to the surface and use it as an antenna.

“I can’t believe this.” Heivia sounded annoyed. “They catch fish, stick a relay antenna in their stomachs, and let them loose, right? And they have these marine antennae every three to five hundred meters?”

“It’s the same as embedding a locator chip in an endangered species. The tech is even available to civilians. If you choose species that stick to their turf instead of migratory ones, it’s perfect.”

“I can’t tell if we’re protecting them or abusing them.”

Quenser and Heivia hesitantly turned their lights toward the New Model, but its cannons only moved a bit and it showed no sign of attacking that kind of antenna. It seemed to truly focus only on the artificial noises of propellers and clacking.

Quenser began wondering if a rugby ball sized nuclear mine stuffed inside a large deep sea fish or giant squid’s stomach would be enough to melt the surface of the New Model’s armor, but he decided this was not the time to think about that.

“Anyway, let’s move away from here.”

“Hey, the temperature change will bend the lasers, right? Even if we ask to destroy the volcano, can the princess even hit?”

“She just has to keep firing until she does hit. And unlike with an Object, she doesn’t have to be too accurate. She just needs to split open the ocean floor so a bunch of lava bursts out. It doesn’t matter if the shots stray some.”

They slowly walked across the fine sand of the pitch black ocean floor.

It felt like walking on the moon.

“One hundred meters is a long way.”

“Don’t you think this is far enough? I can’t see the New Model anymore.”

“And yet there’s no cover around here.”

“There’s the dead plankton and the water itself isn’t exactly clear. Anyway, let’s just stop here. This soft sand is fine, but reaching an area of hard rock would be a bad idea. It might hear our feet clacking against it.”

“Aren’t we a little close?”

“No, we aren’t!!”

They just had to attack the submarine volcano.

It sounded simple, but it would be a great risk for the princess.

The New Model would be targeting the Baby Magnum with laser beams the entire time while her attacks could not reach it. She would be exposing her defenseless self and firing everything she had until the volcano exploded.

“Firing a few shots sounds simple enough, but will it actually be that easy?” asked Heivia in annoyance. “After all, this is 1500 meters deep. She evades Object laser beams by analyzing the movements of the targeting lenses’ subtle movements, but no one can see an Object this deep in the ocean. She has nothing to help her evade and she won’t last long if she’s leaving it all up to luck. She might even be hit with the very first shot.”

“That’s why we’ll give her some help,” suggested Quenser.

A muddy darkness filled the deep where no sunlight reached, but the dark silhouette of the New Model was visible in the volcano light like a piece missing from a jigsaw puzzle. Even the movements at the end of each cannon were visible.

“We can film the New Model the entire time. Even if we don’t know what it means, the princess should be able to use the footage to determine what its main cannon is doing. We’ll act as her eyes, Heivia.”

“Dammit. So we’re risking our lives either way? I thought we could leave everything to the princess.”

“Remember. This is war.”

After using several marine antennae to explain the situation via radio, they received an extremely displeased response from Frolaytia. That response can be summed up as follows: “I sent you to find a safe way of defeating the New Model, so why are you asking to expose our precious Baby Magnum to danger?” The original text had about 500% more military slang, but it is for the best to stick with this version.

“That huge-breasted commander isn’t trying to use this mission to kill off her problem soldiers, is she?”

“Give it up, Heivia. Once that thought excites you, you finally reach the level of half a man.”

At any rate, the princess and Frolaytia would not allow them to flee, so a suicidal fight was the only option if they could not find a weakness.

Frolaytia must have decided to use whatever ideas they had even if they were risky.

“Just to be clear, you did not coax me into doing this,” she said. “This is the only time I will order an attack on an Object on the advice of individual soldiers.”

“I think sending the two of us down here instead of the trained frogmen is even more unusual!! I’m an amateur student!!”

“Stop it, Quenser. Fight back too much and we’ll be sent into space next time.”

Quenser and Heivia had to wait until the time finally came.

As they watched from a distance, the edge of the New Model’s silhouette moved slightly in the dim orange light of the volcano.

It must have already detected the movement of an Object on the surface because its upward-aimed main cannon began making slight adjustments.

The princess could not see those minute movements, but that also meant the New Model had no way of seeing the princess’s small movements.

The water resistance prevented the New Model from making quick movements, so it had no way of evading its enemy’s lasers. The temperature change barrier seemed to make it invincible at first glance, but it was also a desperate measure created out of necessity.

It had its advantages and disadvantages.

It was a double-edged sword.

But it had not reluctantly and desperately tried to make up for its weaknesses and flaws. It was designed with an awareness of those disadvantages and those disadvantages had been twisted into an even more honed and powerful advantage. Quenser did not know who had created it, but had the circumstances been different, he would have wanted to have a long chat with them. He felt he could learn a lot from them beyond simple technical skills.

“What’s going on?” asked Heivia. “I can tell it’s noticed the princess from the movement of its cannon, but it’s letting her continue on instead of firing right away.”

“The temperature change both protects it and bends its lasers. To target the princess, it has to leave its shield, so I think it’s waiting for the perfect timing. It’s worried about being hit by the princess’s main cannon the instant it steps outside to shoot.”

“So that’s it. And it’s invincible as long as it stays inside the area with the temperature change. It can search out sounds using those tuning fork torpedoes we saw, so it can take its time and aim over the course of hours or days instead of going with the normal high-speed combat. I can see why it would become a coward. He’s like a boring rookie who makes nothing but two pairs at a casino.”

“But this time it’s working in our favor.”

An instant later, the promised time arrived.

An orange beam of light pierced through the water and ripped apart the darkness.

That was not the laser beam itself.

That afterimage created by dead plankton roasted in the laser beam’s path burned into Quenser and Heivia’s eyes. It felt less like their eyes hurt and more like their skull was splitting open, but they could not even rub their eyes due to the thick diving suits.

“Bhah!? Gah!!”

“What…? What is this, Quenser!? The area’s bubbling up. That laser didn’t boil the seawater, did it!?”

The sudden sound of bubbling caused the New Model’s secondary cannons to begin moving around. It was searching the area. If it suspected the presence of a diver and fired a blind barrage, it could easily hit them on accident and waste all of their efforts.

“N-no… The seawater isn’t perfectly clear, so the energy of the light might built up, but it should only boil along the line the laser passed through. It shouldn’t make the entire area boil.”

“Then what the hell is this!?”

Heivia’s question was followed by a second laser beam falling from far overhead.

It struck surprisingly close by and a great mass of air bubbles filled their view.

“The laser beams aren’t boiling the water.”

They heard an unpleasant cracking noise from below their feet.

“It’s the volcano!! The bedrock split open further away and the lava is about to come out from a new spot!!”

“…!?”

Orange light showed through.

They could no longer worry about appearances.

The two of them tried to move away as quickly as possible while with movements similar to someone walking on the moon. Heivia moved at full speed, but Quenser walked backwards. Heivia thought he was joking around, but it seemed he was actually continuing to film the movements of the New Model’s main cannon with his camera. From 1500 meters up, the princess could not see the subtle movements of that weapon, so she could not evade.

“This is no time to be doing that! If that lava bursts up, we’ll be completely melted! But first we’ll be boiled to death by the water around us!! If I’m gonna take a bath in a hot spring, I want it to be with a beautiful woman!!”

“The New Model has begun to move. It’s realized that the volcano creating its temperature barrier is crumbling! This is going to develop into a quick exchange of cannon fire. This camera footage is absolutely necessary!!”

“If we melt away while filming it, the princess will still lose her information, you idiot!!”

A low rumbling shook Quenser’s gut.

After remaining motionless for so long, the New Model began smoothly crawling forward. Looking with the naked eye, its movement made little sense, but it had likely left the temperature shield.

The extreme high level laser shootout was beginning.

The flash of light left what Quenser could perceive and a thread of intense pain stretched from his eyes to his temples. This was enough light to cover up the laser beams the princess was firing down from above.

“Wh-what!? Shit, my eyes!!”

“We’re 1500 meters deep. The princess’s lasers were weakened on the way down, but the New Model’s weren’t. That’s why this is hurting our eyes even more!!”

“Is that so!? And what’s the point of filming this!? The screen’s gonna be nothing but white!!”

“It’s better than nothing. The princess is fighting a wild beast blindfolded and she’s doing it for us!!”

The area the two of them had been waiting in a moment before had split wide open and orange glowing lava was spewing out.

It was much closer than they had thought and their plan had been for the lava to attack the New Model.

“That ain’t good!! We’re gonna be caught in the middle of it!!”

“Don’t worry. It isn’t falling this way!”

“Do you know how many thousands of degrees that is!? It’ll boil the water in a matter of seconds! We need to get the hell out of here!!”

The way they walked like an astronaut on the moon was frustrating, but they continued on with very last ounce of strength they had.

The two steel monsters continued exchanging blasts with no concern for the puny humans.

Countless orange pillars of fire rose up.

The small ones were a few meters tall and the large ones were over one hundred meters tall.

Layer after layer of them cut off Quenser and Heivia’s vision in an orange curtain. Even the giant silhouette of the New Model was swallowed up by the sea of flames. They saw deep sea fish fleeing once they could not endure the rapid temperature change. Once those fish started floating belly up, Quenser and Heivia’s lives would truly be in danger.

“We can still make it! Don’t give up!!”

“You can’t trust your normal sense of pain, you idiot!! If a drop of lava gets on you, you won’t feel the pain of a burn, but it’ll damage your diving suit! Don’t forget that even a millimeter hole is enough to kill you!”

They were only able to continue through rapidly heating seawater because of those thick diving suits, but they would not last forever. If the sea around them was truly boiling, the heat would reach the inside in just a few minutes.

Rather than simply being burned to death, they feared being cooked alive.

The caustic soda used to circulate their air was also a worry. Its melting point was over three hundred degrees, but they did not want to provoke it unnecessarily.

As Quenser persistently filmed the New Model with his helmet camera, Heivia wanted to grab his shoulders and drag him away. But if the metal of their two suits came into contact, it would dramatically raise the risk of the New Model detecting a manmade noise. That would lead to a threat far worse than the lava. That threat had a 100% possibility of death.

“Fall back, dammit! Fall back, you idiot!!”

The New Model was barely visible anymore.

The many pillars of fire and the air bubbles they created had created countless curtains covering their view.

They all of a sudden noticed that the laser fire from the ocean floor had stopped.

The princess’s spears of light unilaterally swept across the ocean floor.

“What happened?”

Quenser spoke the question on his mind.

This was the same as darkness. He felt instinctual fear at not knowing the situation.

“What happened to the New Model!?”