Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 13===

Quenser held the assault rifle he had borrowed from unconscious Heivia.

He needed the multipurpose scope.

He had thought he saw something flashing in the sky. Infrared and ultraviolet were not normally visible, but the diffusion and diffraction caused by atmospheric conditions and sand in the air could alter the wavelength. The lines in the night sky could be understood by anyone with the appropriate equipment and knowledge of the code.

“Wait, wait, wait! Why are bigshots in the base making that decision for us!?”

“Because the elevator attacked you.”

Quenser saw a small light in the darkness. The guerilla doctor named Braskine had placed a frying pan on top of a portable camping stove.

His response was made with a hateful tone even though that attack should have been exactly what his side needed.

“The elevator’s artificial meteor shower hits everything from the front line to the base in the rear. Those officers with chests full of medals assume they’ll be safe as long as they send their troops out as cannon fodder, so it was probably a surprise when they found they were in danger too.”

“You mean our busty commander…I mean, uh, Frolaytia feels that way too!?”

“Fro-? I don’t know how your chain of command works, but that artificial meteor shower can be sent anywhere in the world. Your safe countries and home country are no exception. It’s possible this didn’t come from the local commander in charge of your maintenance base. And if it was their higher ups who are panicking, then they would be powerless to stop it.”

The skinny boy blinked before asking another question.

“Um, what does that mean for us?”

“Exactly what you think it does, unfortunately.”

“What happened to them putting together a rescue mission for us!? Have they completely forgotten about us!? We’ll be slaughtered in their big aerial bombing mission along with all of you!! Dammit, if they’re gonna pretend I don’t exist, then I might as well go peep on the women’s bath!!”

It looked like he would have to figure something out on his own.

If the rules of the battalion would not protect him, then he had no reason to obey those rules. He plopped his butt down on the ground to eat some delicious food in violation of military regulations. If the man was going to poison him, he would have injected him with something while he was unconscious.

Also…

“Wait, you’re making pizza toast?”

“Yup. I can’t carry around everything needed to cook a whole pizza, but the toppings are a different story. Although there’s a trick to cooking even this with just a frying pan.”

“No, that’s not my point. I thought African food was more…well, not this.”

“You don’t even know what African food is, do you?” Braskine breathed an exasperated sigh. “I learned how to cook this kind of stuff when I was a poor college student in Europe. My roommate Louisiana loved this kind of junk food.”

“So like cooking pasta in salty water and only adding a bit of olive oil for flavor?”

“You think I had anything as fancy as that, boy? You aren’t a true poor college student until you’re figuring out what you can do with a cabbage core.”

The two of them shared a laugh.

They were in completely different positions and there might be no room for compromise between them, but they had both lived as students. That gave them something in common.

“What kind of toppings do you like?” asked Braskine while lightly shaking the hot frying pan. “We need to heat those up in a smaller pan before toasting the bread.”

“Cheese goes without saying, I assume? As long as the cheese isn’t too strong, then I like some basil and sliced olives. Oh, and some kind of seafood if you have it.”

“Hm, are you from a coastal area?” inquired the young doctor while opening a can of shellfish.

While gathering information even more crudely than with a blood type horoscope, Braskine added some cheese and tomato puree to his pizza toast and then placed some cooked chicken on top of that. It was all very formal and by-the-book. He was not the type to ever take a step beyond the basics.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a boring guy? Girls in particular?”

“All the time. But I can’t help it – I’m just an ordinary guy. I just can’t do pizza toast the way Louisiana did. She would pile on thinly-sliced melon and fries.”

“Melon?”

“It’s not even about whether it would be good or not – you never would have even thought of it, right? She claimed to like the mix of sweet and salty, but that’s what a true genius is like. You might want to copy them, but they’re too far out of reach.”

Quenser drank some of the coffee he was given and wrinkled his brow at how strong and astringent it was. It was probably meant to wake you up more than taste or smell nice.

“My time at school in Berlin was more fun than any other time in my life,” said Braskine while watching the portable stove.

“Couldn’t you have stayed in Europe? I mean, a medical license is a sign of being in the privileged class. I’m jealous.”

“There’s more to life than fun.” The words were soft and almost seemed to spill from his mouth. “You have to face reality. Besides, I decided to become a doctor so I could support the people who were dying because they could not receive the medical exams and treatments most people take for granted. I couldn’t protect my home if I remained in a world that already had everything it needed.”

Quenser fell silent for a bit before asking a question.

“Is it really that bad here?”

“When a child has to prepare to die after a simple mosquito bite. That’s how fragile lives are here. And it wouldn’t be that way if we only had vaccines that coast 5 dollars each.”

“…”

“Yes, only 5 dollars. But we can’t get them. Being declared a nature reserve actually worked against us because we can’t capture and sell the rare plants and animals here. I thought maybe we could dig out and sell some stones or sand if we only needed 5 dollars, but no. The small bits of quartz or iron sand mixed in makes them useless trash. Not something anyone’s going to bother sending a truck all the way out here to buy. The fuel costs would leave them in the red.”

He could not protect his home if he remained in a world that already had everything it needed.

Quenser was starting to see what the man meant.

The ordinary ways of doing things did not always protect people’s lives.

“That’s why we were all so thankful for that elevator. It dried up the ground and we couldn’t preserve our traditional way of life, but it ended an era where you had no recourse while your precious child was dying.”

Braskine smiled in a self-deprecating way.

He wanted to protect his home.

He had gone as far as earning a medical license, but he still found himself unable to save people without sufficient medical supplies. Ironically, it was Mother Lady towering up from the desert that had provided him with that.

It had saved their lives.

Their own and those of the people they cared for even more.

That was why the local people continued to fight even if it meant becoming guerillas. Even though they knew deep down it was wrong and even though they had an inkling that more people would die of this war than of disease.

If they lost, they would lose the benefits of the space elevator.

They had not wanted to return to an age when they were forced to accept so much as unavoidable.

“Louisiana, the college roommate I mentioned, apparently wanted to protect the entire world. The thing about ordinary people is that we restrict our own dreams and stuff them into a smaller box. She always found it puzzling why I was so delighted while restricting my own possibilities like that. And she was right. I was so busy polishing up a comfortable fish tank for myself that I never lived up to my potential. I couldn’t head out into the vast ocean to change the world like her.”

The pizza toast was like a feast compared to the soap-like rations.

And once Quenser’s stomach was full to give him some energy, he could no longer distract himself that way. The immediate problem weighed on him all the more.

At this rate, the Legitimacy Kingdom was going to begin a retaliation operation.

Quenser and Heivia had been forgotten thanks to the powerful jamming, so they would be blown away along with the enemy. And Braskine of course did not want the local people to be attacked.

No amount of prayer would cause a hero or powerful warrior to appear.

So they would have to solve this themselves.

However, Quenser Barbotage could not drive and Heivia still showed no sign of coming to.

Braskine seemed to want the stranded soldiers to leave before they brought disaster, but their plan for returning to base had been ruined by the Capitalist Corporations elevator. The Legitimacy Kingdom was so intent on retaliating they had completely forgotten about the cheap soldiers they had sent out there. Nothing about this was likely to change any time soon.

As things were, there would be a full-on clash between the Capitalist Corporations artificial meteor shower and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s ground-based retaliation. Neither side was giving any thought to the guerillas who were not part of the four world powers. If anything, the Legitimacy Kingdom might actively target the guerillas in order to add more to their kill count and preserve their honor.

Braskine used a special detergent to wash his cooking utensils with as little water as possible and he grimaced after Quenser shared what he knew.

“I need a vehicle,” concluded the student. “And I need your help.”

“Dammit, then you’d better give something in return. If I help you, then you’re fighting to protect my people!”

Quenser himself did not want the Princess to dirty her hands with unnecessary retaliation. He doubted attacking the local guerillas would cause any trouble at all for the Capitalist Corporations operators. And besides the armed guerillas, there would also be plenty of noncombatant residents in their villages. What if the Object was sent in to attack there? That kind of needless killing would not even be war – only a massacre.

So Quenser calmly nodded.

“We’re after the Capitalist Corporations space elevator, so we’re not interested in who lives in the area. So as long as you help us destroy that thing.”

“So what’s your plan!?”

“We find a way to take control of the elevator before the retaliation can begin. Or we at least bring back a way to do so as a souvenir. Then the Legitimacy Kingdom will lose its excuse to slaughter the guerillas. This battle is over the space elevator, so the guerillas are only a distraction.”

“That’s not a plan!!”

They argued back and forth as they walked to the beat-up truck.

The young doctor got in the driver’s seat and Quenser in the passenger seat. Unconscious Heivia, the buggy, and the camping supplies were loaded into the enclosed back.

They drove out into the desert night, but it was unexpectedly warm.

And not just because they were so close to the equator.

“It’s that elevator. It uses the chill of the night to cool the coolant once it’s taken in so much frictional heat. I’m sure you could calculate out the amount of energy from the length of the wires, but you only need to know it’s a lot.”

“I assumed they were cooling it with a nuclear reactor.”

“They use thermal power down below the parabolic antenna bases. Were you overwhelmed by the laser beams and coilguns? If you link together enough power generation facilities to supply an entire state’s worth of electricity, you can do most anything even with older tech.”

“Can you draw me out a map of those underground waterways?”

“What good is that? We never would have had it so hard if we could get water that easily.”

“Stick a thick metal sheet deep in the earth and you can block off those waterways. Then the elevator loses its supply of coolant.”

“Finally, an actual plan,” laughed Braskine.

He kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to draw something out in the notebook he had open on his lap. Then he tossed the notebook to Quenser.

With that souvenir, they might be able to stop the meaningless retaliation operation. But they did not drive the truck straight back to the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance base zone.

They kept the headlights off and Quenser kept an eye out ahead with night-vision goggles while they repeatedly drove around certain obstacles. The goggles were from the Capitalist Corporations. They were one of the kind gifts given to the guerillas. The rich had essentially told the locals to put those on so they could look stylish when they died.

“Can’t you wear these while you drive?”

“Are you sure you want that? Those old-style goggles blur your vision a lot when you turn your head too quickly.”

It was obvious what they were using the goggles to avoid.

“Another one,” said Quenser in disgust. “There’s a Lunchbox 500m ahead. Those things have finally gotten tired and decided to take a break.”

“Wouldn’t they normally be even more fired up and ready to go after a successful counterattack?”

“The operators probably think moving them will get them caught in the artificial meteor shower.”

“I believe those things’ batteries can last a week in standby mode.”

They made sure to steer clear of every single one they saw.

Since they had to repeatedly take detours, it felt a lot like they were driving around in circles. Especially since the continuing jamming from the elevator’s military station made the map on Quenser’s mobile device entirely useless.

“There’s no time to spare. Yes, I expect the retaliation will begin within 12 hours from now.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s the Legitimacy Kingdom way. You can’t help being take off guard at times. We aren’t Faith Organization fortunetellers, so there’s only so much we can predict in advance. So the royals and nobles prefer to defend their honor through appropriate retaliation. But if enough time passes after an attack, you’re labeled as a fool who couldn’t do anything to get back at your attacker. And 12 hours from now is about the limit on that. You can’t let a full 24 hours pass. You need to use that time to make full use of a huge-ass simulator and calculate out how much damage you need to do in retaliation for the damage you received.”

“…”

“The going rate is killing ten times as many people as you had killed, I think. Sometimes the calculation comes out closer to nine times or eleven times, though.” Quenser clicked his tongue. “We really can’t get back without doing something about those unmanned weapons. Could we go to the guerilla HQ and have them open a path for us? They’re on the verge of having their village razed after all.”

“We don’t control those things from our village. They’re directly controlled by Federation of Elevator Industries operators in Mother Lady’s ground base. We don’t have that kind of technical skill.”

Braskine made it sound like they were being lent equipment but not being trained in how to use it.

The Capitalist Corporations saw them as replaceable and disposable, so they were not going to increase the cost of each one by pouring money into training them. That would only lose the Capitalist Corporations money.

They slid the truck down into a V-shaped dip in the ground to avoid being seen by the unmanned ground vehicles. It was probably the remnants of a now-dried river. They saw the occasional remains of a wooden pier or small boats left behind there.

“We have 12 hours until the ‘swift retaliation’ begins. I expect they’ll repeat the simulation as many times as they can before the limit to make sure they can put together a mission that causes exactly the damage their calculations say they need.”

“Is there any chance they’ll remember you’re out here while they do that?”

“If they did remember, it would affect their timetable, so anyone who does will do everything they can to forget again. If they ‘unknowingly’ kill us in friendly fire, no one can be charged with a crime.”

The potatoes’ lives were just not that important.

Quenser sighed while leaning back in the stopped truck’s passenger seat.

“That means tomorrow at noon is the limit. Heivia and I need to return to the maintenance base zone before then so we can force them to redo the simulation based on a new calculation sheet. And if we don’t give them the information needed to block up the underground waterways used to cool the elevator, they really will begin their misguided retaliation against the guerillas. Since that means you, I know you don’t want that.”

Needless to say, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s enemy was the Capitalist Corporations, not the local guerillas.

But with only the immediate records available, they would satisfy themselves by attacking the guerrillas. Even though the Lunchboxes were actually being controlled by the operators in the air-conditioned elevator ground base.

“You world powers seem to think you can just dig into the ground around here and find an unlimited supply of guerillas, but the people dying are the kids raised in my village. No, not just my village. They come from all the villages and towns around the elevator. All of them had their own hopes and dreams and the idea was for them to realize those dreams by using the money from the elevator to get an education in Asia or Europe. You can’t just plant some seeds in a field to grow more of them. I want to avoid any more sacrifices here.”

Truth be told, Quenser was not 100% in agreement with Braskine. No matter what the man said, Quenser was on the side trying to destroy the Mother Lady space elevator. He felt it was too naïve to think he could just grab that outstretched hand and find a solution to the entire mess without going to any real effort.

Children had to be prepared for death after a simple mosquito bite.

The vaccine to prevent it cost only 5 dollars.

It was a moving story, but the Capitalist Corporations had not been offering help out of the goodness of their hearts. Given their intelligence-gathering capabilities, they must have known about the disastrous situation in this region long ago. They had ignored it for so long and only now approached with a smile on their faces so they could use it as a bargaining chip to get the land they needed.

Quenser was a commoner, so he would normally live his life having the nobles and royals extracting everything from him they could get.

But he also knew how risky it was to fight back against that. That was why he had come all the way to the battlefield to learn about Object design. He had made a powerful enemies and barely dodged death more than a few times to have his way.

You were free to break free of society’s role for you if you wanted.

But once you did, you were choosing to face the unnecessary dangers placed upon any who dared defy society’s rules.

Opportunities always came with risk.

Generally, the ones who won were those who made the rules and made sure they were paid first.

If you did not understand that and were not prepared to use it to your advantage, this is what happened. You would fail to see past the tempting promises. Just like someone who took out a generous student loan without realizing that was actually a debt system set up by the state.

What should they have sold instead? Could they have found a way to attract tourists? Quenser did not know the right answer here.

Regardless, he would have to rework his plan.

He started by double checking an important fact.

“Since those unmanned weapons aren’t run by the guerilla villages, there won’t be any hard feelings if we destroy them, right?”

“Right. But can you destroy them? Those Lunchboxes are the Capitalist Corporations’ latest model and they’ve repelled soldiers with advanced equipment a few times already. Not to protect our lives, of course.”

The conditions for that would depend on the time and situation.

For now, Quenser hopped out of the truck’s passenger seat, circled behind it, and opened the boxy enclosed back.

“Heivia. Hey, Heivia.”

“Ugh…where am I? Panty heaven???”

“I’m not expecting anything from you, so just hand over your water and rations. You can keep dreaming in here. Food is for people who actually work.”

Once he realized he would be slowly killed if he did not help out, Heivia rapidly woke back up. The mindset of cruel Frolaytia’s 37th had reached even the lowest levels.

As a doctor, Braskine was particular about a healthy diet.

He could not believe his eyes when he saw Quenser.

“What’s this? You only just ate some pizza toast. Maybe you’re in a growth spurt, but it’s best to avoid forming bad lifestyle habits.”

“Dammit, Quenser!! You were having the time of your life while I was out, weren’t you!?”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about. You really shouldn’t trust everything these guerillas say.”

They munched on the soap-like flavorless rations while holding a strategy meeting.

“The retaliation operation begins tomorrow afternoon, right? Then why not wait until then?” That was newly-awakened Heivia’s opinion. “It’ll be a ground operation primarily carried out by the mechanized unit, so we can find our way to an allied tank or armored truck and have them pick us up. I don’t give a crap what happens to the guerillas.”

That was an impeccably logical plan, but the idiot had left all of his kindness behind somewhere.

That was when Braskine pulled out a weapon even more frightening than a Gatling gun. It was a bottle rocket with a whistle attached. The doctor who saw all lives as equally important spoke with a blank expression.

“This is used to signal an enemy’s approach. People are sensitive to unusual sounds, so the villagers will rush in from all over even in the middle of a sandstorm. Whatever your reasons might have been, you’re the ones that killed these people’s sons and daughters. But if you think you can handle those grieving parents, then be my guest.”

“…”

“There was nothing a doctor could do. In the 9 months since the Elevator’s testing period began, I’ve attended so many funerals. I even helped dig their graves, but a lot of the bodies couldn’t be retrieved. Now, let’s talk about emotions. Do you think these people will care at all who started it now that they’ve lost their kids? Do you really think they’ll accept your logical explanation of events and back off? This is just my personal opinion as a doctor, but there is little violence as brutal as that of an enraged group that has never even heard of the various war treaties. Do you want a lesson – a deadly lesson – as to why the constantly bickering powers-that-be really need to sit down together and work out their differences peacefully?”

Heivia shut his mouth and raised both hands in surrender. While trembling.

Then Quenser got down to business.

“I want to know the basic specs of the Capitalist Corporations’ Lunchboxes. We can’t return to our maintenance base zone in time without doing something about them. And even if we do get back, we’ll still be forced to continue the attack on the elevator. It wouldn’t hurt to come back with a way to destroy those boxy machines as a souvenir. We were separated from the battalion thanks to some asshole’s friendly fire and I’m sure Frolaytia is absolutely pissed at us by now, so we need something to calm her down.”

“But that’s suicide,” said Heivia. “You aren’t planning to abandon our temporary safety to attack those cutting-edge murderous paperweights, are you? You’ll just get yourself torn apart by their heavy machineguns and grenades!!”

“That’s what will happen if you don’t hand over any useful information.”

He had mostly been on the run, but Heivia had indeed fought the Lunchboxes. They had to rely on his observations from then.

“First of all, they’re basically big hunks of armor. Firing a missile at them head on, from the sides, or even on the top won’t destroy them.”

Since unmanned weapons did not need space for anyone inside, they could add in more armor. That much Quenser had already known.

“It goes without saying that assault rifles and anti-materiel rifles are useless against them. You might be able to destroy the exposed lenses or sensors, but the act of shooting would also give away your position. Even if we were hiding behind cover, they could fire their fully-auto grenade launcher to fill the entire space with explosive flames. Explosives would be raining from the sky, so I wouldn’t call that an effective tactic.”

Quenser licked his lips before responding.

“That means they’re heavy, doesn’t it? Could we focus our attacks on the continuous tracks?”

“Maybe we could stop them from moving, but they’d still fire back on us and they have a longer range than us. Making the mobile turrets into stationary ones won’t prevent this used truck from being obliterated by bullets.”

In fact, they were currently stopped because of all the Lunchboxes in standby mode. Those things were not frightening because they made unpredictable patrols. Even if you immobilized them, they would already have you surrounded. Stopping them was not enough to escape.

“What about their power usage?”

According to Braskine, they could last for a week while in standby mode.

But on the other hand…

“They’re electric and it has to take a lot of power to move something so heavy. If we had them run a needless marathon to drain their batteries, they wouldn’t be able to shoot back anymore.”

“You want us to wait for their batteries to die while being chased by a machinegun that fires 700 shots a minute? Our bodies would be riddled with tens of thousands of bullets before that happened. It isn’t realistic.” Heivia breathed an exasperated sigh. “Besides, we got lucky and slipped through a gap in their circle. Just like some small fish left behind in a tide pool. If we do anything to stand out now, they’ll change their formation to include us. And once that tide pool is gone, we suffocate. The end.”

“…”

Their objective was returning to the maintenance base zone.

Beginning a misguided retaliation operation against the guerillas would not solve anything. The armored Lunchboxes were being controlled by the operators in the space elevator’s ground base, so the retaliation operation had to be reworked to attack them instead.

The data they needed for that could be found in the underground waterways Braskine had told Quenser about. Since the jamming prevented them from transmitting with a single tap of the touchscreen, they would have to bring it back themselves.

If they could do that, they could avoid carrying around that unnecessary guilt.

In other words, Quenser was not looking for any major upheaval on the battlefield. Finding a way to take out those cutting-edge unmanned ground vehicles would be best.

“If you’re going to act, you should do it soon,” said Braskine to hurry them along. “Those unmanned ground vehicles are worth more to the Federation of Elevator Industries than the local guerillas, so they’ll want to avoid having to abandon them after their batteries die. They periodically send around an unmanned power vehicle to recharge them. And the Lunchbox formation might change when that happens.”

This was all thanks to the elevator.

Everything needed for war, from lunches to bombs, could be sent down from the heavens. And in quantities of several dozen tons. The power vehicles, the work vehicles needed to maintain those, and even additional Lunchboxes to protect the work vehicles could be sent down in near limitless numbers.

Quenser agreed that it would be best to take action before the next time that happened.

“They’re covered in armor and taking out their continuous tracks only turns them into stationary turrets.” The student placed a hand on his chin. “We also can’t wait for them to run out of power. And they were designed to withstand the extreme African environment, so I doubt they’re going to malfunction all that easily.”

“There you go again, bragging about the enemy’s specs.”

Heivia sounded annoyed, but that was not what Quenser was doing.

He had wondered about something this whole time, so he returned to that question here.

“Then what do they do about ''that''?”