Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 11===

There was no dodging it.

Lots of sparks flew from the already-damaged Baby Magnum’s armor.

It was a direct hit.

And from close range, where the scattershot weapons could deliver their full power.

But.

But.

But.

“…?”

The Princess hesitantly spoke after receiving the scattershot storm.

“I’m…alive?”

The villain was apparently confused as well. The Gangster moved horizontally and fired its dual scattershot weapons from a different angle. By unleashing both metal coilgun shells and the electron heating beams, it should have produced a deadly storm that not even specialized armor could stop.

But.

Even so.

“Again, Princess.”

A massive cloud of scorching sand rose from the 40-degree desert.

There was a loud scraping sound and orange sparks blossomed wildly from the surface of her Object, but that was all. That violent scattershot weapon did not make its way inside the Object. It was deflected by the armor.

“What just…happened?” asked Oh Ho Ho.

“It’s the rate of convergence,” whispered Quenser. “Scattershot weapons are so powerful at point-blank range because the target is hit by all of the scattering shots. At mid and long range, the target is only hit by a few of the small shots, so it doesn’t do enough damage to kill instantly. The damage is spread over a wider area. …That must have felt like a waste, so they used the lead scattershot to reflect the electron beams to provide the optimal rate of convergence as the scattershot blast spreads out over a fan shape.”

The initial clash had happened in thick thunderclouds that rendered all forms of sensor unusable.

Yet the Gangster had unilaterally slaughtered its enemies.

How exactly had it done so?

And if its advantage had really been that unilateral, wouldn’t it have been racing freely across the battlefield?

No, that was not it.

The most effective attack with a scattershot weapon was to move in to close range, but the Gangster had made no real attempt to do so.

It had shown no real sign of moving around. It had fired its main cannon from one direction and then blown up the scattered coalition Objects one at a time. That was odd when its scattershot weapons could not use their full power unless it moved in close. It had instead responded from mid and long range.

Even while inside that thundercloud.

“So how did the Gangster accurately measure the distance from its target? Normal vision and laser beams were useless in the thick cloud, the electrification rendered radar waves useless, and the noisy thunder did the same for ultrasonic sonar! Come to think of it, those red wings in Hawaii were the same. And the Transylvanian Object never made its debut, but it may have used some kind of special sensor system too! That must be Woodstock’s trademark!!”

“What are you trying to say, Quenser?”

That was obvious.

Once you understood this, the fearsome Second Generation Gangster was a complete joke.

“The desert might look like pure sand, but it’s actually full of sharp rocks. GPS systems choose a single path through the vast desert to make sure you don’t blow a tire on those obstacles.”

“What…what does that matter?”

“If the density of the ground changes, so does the speed at which waves propagate through it. In fact, a ground of sand and a mineral deposit containing iron ore cause a slight different in the earth’s gravity.”

In other words, this was the crucial sensor system.

This was the secret behind the blind killer that could see through any camouflage, deception, or cover.

“It uses gravity surveying! It searches for the slight differences in gravity created by the giant hunks of metal that are Objects!!”

His hint had been the drone the Gangster had shot down itself.

It had contained a valuable and unnatural metal that only served as a weight.

At more than 20 euros a gram, platinum was the king of precious metals. Although this was only an imitation alloy.

“Gravity surveying? Isn’t that used for mining?”

“Yes. The earth’s gravity isn’t uniform. For example, there’s a bit of a difference between the North Pole and the Equator and the reading would change if there was a vein of heavy iron ore in this sandy desert. So by placing a bunch of sensors out there in a grid, you can tell if there’s a difference in just one spot. Dig there and you find the vein.”

“Heavy iron. So it works for an Object too?”

“That’s a bit too imaginative.” Quenser grinned. “The Gangster probably has high-precision electronic scales inside it. Some of those can measure down to a 10 millionth of a gram and it’s the exact same equipment gangs use to work with white powder.”

Of course, that would not be used to simply measure something’s weight.

Scales could be used for more than just that.

“It’s using those as accelerometers to measure its own speed. Usually, you only feel an inertial vector opposite to the direction of movement. Just like how you feel a floating sensation in an elevator. But the needle will wiggle if there’s a giant mass nearby. It’s small, but another vector is included and the value changes.”

“And?”

“The drones flying around the Gangster were loaded with a lot of imitation alloy. That alloy has a density of 21.4 and is normally used to fool the other party in an illegal transaction. Filling them with that sort of ‘decoration’ makes no sense when designs should be aiming for light and sturdy. That means the weight was necessary. And unlike tungsten or depleted uranium, this imitation alloy could be acquired cheaply and in large quantities. They wanted something heavy enough to cause a 10 millionth of a gram error in the electronic scale even at a distance.”

In other words…

“They’re an alternate form of remote sensor that uses gravity. There are invisible threads of gravity between the Gangster and the drones. If something – yes, like the tug of gravity from an enemy Object – slightly alters the movement of the drones, the Object can sense it through the invisible threads. It’s kind of like having your hair blowing in the wind. There aren’t actually nerves running through the hairs. It wasn’t light, EM, or sound. It was universal gravitation itself. With that information, no Object can hide from it!!”

That said.

The gravity surveying might be able to see through any form of camouflage or deception, but it was not without weaknesses.

“When you get down to it, it’s all dependent on a reaction in the invisible threads connecting the Object to the drones. It’s the same as a cheap wind gauge. If you prepare plenty of obstacles to tug on a bunch of the hairs at once, it will get a bunch of false readings! There’s nothing it can do when there are too many dots on the map to process. It blinds the Gangster like a stun grenade!!”

The thunderclouds and clouds of sand had obscured their vision back at the beginning, but those were natural phenomena. With accurate meteorological data, you could predict the flow of the clouds and sand and make corrections in advance. That Object had planted its roots here in the desert, so unlike the newcomers of the coalition force, it could respond to sudden downpours and other weather phenomena that were hard to see coming with no more than a satellite weather map.

But this was different.

It was intentional obstruction.

There was no way to predict it in advance and apply a filter.

Once you understood that, there was nothing to be afraid of.

No matter how powerful it was, a weapon you could not aim was the same as a gun with a broken sight. A main cannon that could not defeat an enemy head-on and at close range was meaningless. And like anything on the battlefield with no means of attacking, that Object was now a sitting duck.

The Gangster had plenty of secondary cannons on its spherical body and float, but there was almost no chance of those breaking through an Object’s thick armor.

“Attention all armies.”

Quenser held the radio to his mouth.

And he gave the death sentence.

“The Parasite Plan? Are you really going to keep throwing around attaché cases full of your own cash to get your hands on a defective weapon cobbled together by amateurs?”

Wartime interests could be truly coldhearted.

Woodstock had to understand that deep down after trying to use exactly that fact even if it meant trampling on the line between good and evil.

It was like taking an insect with excellent camouflage and throwing it onto a hot pink floor.

Once revealed, its grotesque insect side was all anyone could see.

This time, the entire coalition force aimed at the criminal organization’s Object.

Even the Faith Organization had snapped out of it.

The Gangster’s scattershot weapon was of no use and it had no white flag signal since it did not belong to a proper military.

This was the beyond, the ends of the earth outside the clean wars.

It was Operation Southern Cross Grim Reaper.

Woodstock had made a risky gamble that traded safety for freedom.

And the pig had just been dropped in the piranha-infested river.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Epilogue}}</noinclude>