Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 10===

His entire body groaned with dull pain. It was like all the cartilage in his body had been replaced with instant glue. It was hard to move and forcing it felt like it would cause something to snap.

He was soaked with cold sweat.

He could almost forget this was the 40-degree desert.

“…Rosa…” groaned Quenser while trying to catch his breath.

The Rush had tried to jump into the line of fire, but how effective had that really been?

“Are you okay, Rosa?”

Even the weak whine he got in response may have been a blessing.

There was an unnatural dent in the dog’s bulletproof jacket. Had a shard of stone hit it?

Spots of the desert were melted orange. When they cooled and hardened, they would likely become muddy glass. The shape of the rolling dunes had been torn away.

“Dammit, did they really kill their own boss?”

Grinov Quarterdeck had “disappeared”. And he had passed on the temporary 20-digit code needed to approve a deal without their godfather’s biometric ID. Now on one could overturn the Gangster’s verbal promise.

Was it now impossible to stop the dirty business deal of the Parasite Plan? Was there no preventing the Objects of the four world powers from continuing to tear each other apart with this needless fighting?

That man had acquired a vast fortune by selling weapons all so he could rise above the existing hierarchy of power and have his way.

It was possible to view him as a predecessor to Quenser on his journey to be an Object designer.

But that man was now dead.

And his death had closed off the future.

(No.)

“Not yet, Rosa! Bring me that head over there!!”

With a woof, Rosa ran over while avoiding the boiling sand puddles. It was a horrific game of fetch, but it contained a glimmer of hope.

It really had been a scattershot weapon.

Its aim was poor at mid-range. Grinov Quarterdeck had been killed instantly and mostly vaporized, but a few body parts remained. The Gangster’s Elite might claim the man was still alive if it was only a hand or a foot, but the head was a different matter. The brain and heart were too decisive. If Quenser brought that back to the maintenance base zone, he could prove Grinov was dead. Without their charismatic leader, the arms dealer would fall apart and they could not guarantee their verbal promise. The Object’s Pilot Elite had been given the temporary authorization code, but it was only temporary. It was not enough to overturn Grinov’s actual biometrics.

(It had secondary cannons on its spherical body and float, but that Second Generation is illegal and it wasn’t built under normal circumstances. It might not have been given proper anti-personnel weapons.)

Yes.

Grinov had used a scan of his inner ear to identify himself.

As long as his head remained, they could stick the earphone in his ear and pass the biometric scan.

The godfather’s official code would have greater authority than the temporary authorization code.

And who would trust the Elite who had directly killed Grinov Quarterdeck?

They may have been a faithful subordinate who only did as told, but the dead boss could no longer vouch for the Pilot Elite.

The Elite was on the precipice.

“Wait, Grinov’s…head!?” exclaimed Oh Ho Ho. “What am I supposed to do now!?”

“Do you really think the deal is still on? From here on, Operation Southern Cross Grim Reaper is all about staying out of last place. Will you continue spending money throwing attaché cases at each other, or will you pull back your hand while the burn is still light!? Think for yourself, idol of newspaper clothing!!”

It would have been too grotesque just to carry it around, so Quenser pulled the windshield sun shade from the flipped-over electric car and wrapped the bearded head in that.

“This is an economic shock. All four world powers are carrying some debt thanks to that idiot’s manipulation. At the very least, you aren’t making money here! So whoever ends up with the least debt is the winner!! It’s the logic of the insurance industry: think of other people’s misfortune as your profit. You want to take a relative view and get the last laugh, don’t you!? You win this battle if you aren’t the world power in last place!!”

“Argh, I can’t stand feeling like an amateur maid is bossing around an idol like me!!”

“Hear me out, little lady. I’ll treat you right.”

He could not flip the car back over, so he was facing the nightmarish visual of a maid making a deadly trek across the desert with only a severed head and a German shepherd for company.

There were of course those who pursued him: the Gangster who did not want Grinov’s death to be proven, and the Faith Organization that was still after their tech.

Incidentally, the previous conversation was held over the coalition force’s shared datalink.

That meant it had gone out to all four world powers who had initially been allies. All four armies had learned which side would benefit them the most and how the battle’s win conditions had changed.

It probably took them a few seconds to think about it.

And then everything changed.

The masses of metal belonging to the Legitimacy Kingdom, Information Alliance, and Capitalist Corporations turned to face the Gangster.

At this point, it was bizarre that the Faith Organization was still siding with the arms dealers, but they were working off of the mysterious idea that both success and failure were a gift from god. So once they had a plan, they intended to stick with it to the end.

It was now 3-against-2.

The Princess’s Object was barely functional, so it may have been more like 2-against-2.

In the initial thunderclouds, the Gangster had come out on top despite being outnumbered. This was not enough to say anything for sure, but the situation was much better than when everyone had been ganging up on the Princess.

This was the beyond.

Grinov had called it an unreasonable world where 1 plus 1 did not equal 2 and white could become black. Quenser was protected by the world powers, so he could not even imagine what kind of reality the man had faced in that bloodstained forest. But the world was gradually catching on to the all too obvious result of letting a criminal organization influence them.

He had to keep this going.

He had to return everything to the original rails

“Pant, pant!”

It was only 5km. No more than that. Traveling across a scorching desert of fine beach-like sand and rolling dunes was completely different from walking across asphalt. It was a lot easier than dragging around an entire hostage, but if not for the situation, he would have tossed aside the head which was far more disturbing than a roast turkey. Rosa the German shepherd easily passed him by and repeatedly looked back and waited for him to catch up.

Quenser did not care what happened to the other Objects as long as the Princess was safe.

He could determine the flow of battle as long as he brought the big boss’s head back to the maintenance base zone as material evidence of Grinov’s death.

(Almost there…)

His exhaustion was at the limit.

His thighs and calves would have started convulsing if he let his guard down.

(Almost there!!)

A deafening roar blasted his naïve assumptions to smithereens.

The attack had come from the side. By the time he flinched back, an orange river cut across the desert before his eyes. It was the reflecting attack made from a mixture of a metal coilgun and a rapid-fire electron beam cannon. This cut off the direct route. There was more than one kind of glass, but pure silicon glass required something in the neighborhood of 2000 degrees. He was almost to the maintenance base zone, but this had stopped him.

The Object must have shot down some of its own drones because the destructive power was so great

The Gangster’s “winged eyes and ears” covered with arrow-like patterns had crashed into the scorching desert in a few places. Quenser’s sense of scale had been thrown off when they were flying in the sky, but now he could tell they were larger than a light car.

“Kh!!”

He heard a low rumbling coming from the side. The Gangster had approached surprisingly close.

It aimed its scattershot main cannon at a mere human. It wanted to erase any and all proof of Grinov’s death.

“Rosa!!”

Quenser practically rolled along the desert to slide down one of the large dunes. There was a deafening blast and blinding light, but the massive mountain of sand would be melted instead of blown away. It would function as a shield.

But he doubted it would last forever.

He looked down at the wreckage of a drone that was half broken and stabbed into the sand.

The large cross section was larger than a small bed and broken shards of silver metal were strewn across the hot sand.

(That’s not steel. Is it aluminum? Or silver? No…)

“Ugh, what!?”

He traced his fingers across the brick-sized chunk and then tried to pick it up, but it was so unusually heavy he nearly hurt his back. It was too heavy to lift with one hand.

The density was much greater.

Lead wasn’t enough and not even silver would provide this kind of weight.

Quenser could only think of one option.

(Platinum…? Why would they use that?)

“No, wait. Is this the imitation alloy I saw in Grinov’s mansion?”

But even so, it was made to imitate platinum, giving it a density of 21.4. Enough to fill a 1-liter carton of milk would weigh 21.4kg. He could see why trying to lift it with one hand had nearly hurt his back.

But that only raised further questions.

Why?

In every branch of the military, vehicles were generally designed to be light and sturdy. Whether the power came from an engine, a motor, or a sail to catch the wind, it was a set amount of power. That meant the key to harnessing that power was reducing the vehicle’s weight.

Objects were the 200,000-ton behemoths they were because they had been crammed full of everything needed to end the nuclear age. That was their completed form with nothing going to waste.

Why would someone intentionally make something heavier by filling it with weights? This was different from a rich person covering a vehicle with gold metalwork to show off. When Quenser looked inside the cross section again, most of the car-sized drone looked like a weight made from the imitation alloy.

(Were they designed to make ramming attacks if necessary? Do they use the absorption of hydrogen? No, then they would use a cheaper and more effective material like lead or titanium. Also the imitation alloy is just an imitation. It only resembles platinum, so it doesn’t have all the same traits. But it does have the 21.4 density. Was Woodstock attracted to its weight, like with tungsten or depleted uranium?)

Rosa barked next to him.

It was hard to find anywhere to hide in the desert, so he could not just stand out here in the open. He knew that, but he could not stop thinking either.

This was something he could not afford to slip past him.

It was crucial.

(Think…)

The Gangster could circle around and fire on him from a different angle and, even if it missed, it would only create more deadly orange rivers. If he was surrounded by that melted glass, he would be stuck here.

Fortunately, the business deal had almost entirely collapsed. The other Objects would fight the Gangster as long as that was in their best interest. Quenser did not need to charge toward it with a bomb in hand. What was its weakness? Where was the weak point that could take it out in a single hit!?

(It’s a blind killer that can see through all forms of camouflage, deception, and cover. But if it was really that convenient, they would have built the entire Object around that. Think back to the attack from the thundercloud. How did it overturn being outnumbered? The scattershot weapon? Why is that most effective!? The two different systems have to add to the maintenance costs, so why bother with the dual main cannon system!? It shouldn’t have been able to see through the cloud and the lightning would have affected radar. What’s the purpose of the drones swarming it like flies and why are they filled with that imitation alloy!?)

He heard a loud sliding sound as a bunch of sand pushed toward him like something from a surfing video.

“Quenser! I don’t know where you are, but check your map. I’ll create a path for you!!”

It was the Baby Magnum. The Princess was intentionally scraping the ground with her static electricity propulsion device to cover the orange river with a mountain of sand. Sand was the most primitive firefighting method, but it was also the most effective if you had enough of it. The scale was quite different, but the principle was the same as a campfire. If a thick layer of sand covered it faster than the heat could propagate, you could walk over the top.

(She’s such a good girl, but she’s way too reckless!!)

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The Gangster’s dual scattershot weapons would be aimed at the intruder. The coilgun and rapid-fire beam cannon were powerful enough at midrange, so what would they do at close range? A clean hit could blow away the already-damaged Princess’s reactor.

This called for a gamble.

Quenser hit his radio’s switch.

“Fire either a railgun or coilgun into the sand below you!!”

This attack was like a smokescreen.

Sand burst up in front of the Baby Magnum like a cumulonimbus cloud and the hit to the ground knocked Quenser from his feet.

But that did not matter.

The thick cloud of sand was immediately torn apart as the frightening scattershot attack flew toward the Princess.