Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 13===

The only explosives they had on hand were the C4 for destroying bridges or rock and the portable anti-tank missile.

Quenser and Heivia headed down from the watchtower and headed for the enemy’s Object maintenance base zone.

“…Should we really have left the princess behind?”

“All three of us going wouldn’t have helped any. If the Water Strider returns while we’re working, we need to escape from the base, so leaving a lookout behind like this is best.”

“Hah. Give me a break, Sir Knight. Even if rank and file soldiers like us are captured, there’s a chance they’ll keep the treaty and treat us as prisoners of war. However, an Elite would clearly be different. She’ll either be brutally tortured to get classified information on our Object or shot on the spot to destroy our army’s ability to fight at the root. You were just making sure she could still flee if we fucked this up.”

“Like I said: this is best.”

As Quenser trudged through the snow, a smile appeared on his lips.

Due to the cold, it was a stiff, awkward smile, but it was a natural smile all the same.

“You certainly have cheered up,” he said to Heivia.

“Of course I have. Charging into an enemy base with some scrawny bastard is so much better than being chased around by that monstrous Object.”

They had recovered mentally enough that jokes and sarcasm now came to them naturally once more.

They eventually reached the barricade at the back of the base. The enemy base zone was surrounded by a long net made of synthetic fiber, but it did not appear to have any sensors attached.

“What do you think? Should we climb over?”

“No, you idiot. The guards will definitely notice us if we climb two meters up. We need to cut a hole in the barricade,” Heivia whispered as he pulled a knife from his waist.

He used the large blade to cut through the synthetic fibers weaved into the barricade one at a time.

It took a while and they were worried a patrolling soldier would notice them, but one never did. It seemed they truly did leave everything to the Object.

“Let’s go.”

“Hey, where do you think the spare parts for the legs are stored?” asked Quenser as he slipped through the hole in the barricade.

It seemed like thick concrete buildings were placed here and there throughout the wide area of the base zone. A lot of them were large antenna facilities for assisting the Object. The area between buildings was unusually large either so an intruder could be spotted from the watchtowers or so the giant Object could pass through without obstruction.

Heivia answered while hiding behind the nearest building.

“I don’t know, but the Object has to be overhauled every half day. It’s probably the place the most people go to and from.”

“By the way, how long has it been since the Water Strider last started moving?”

“It should be coming back soon, so we need to blow up those spare parts before it does.”

If they could keep the Water Strider from being serviced on, it would be stuck at the base zone. However, if it was successfully overhauled, it could move around freely for another 12 hours. If that happened, their fleeing superiors and fellow soldiers would be slaughtered for sure.

Quenser used the scope of his rifle to look at the surrounding facilities and found one building that had a lot more footprints in the snow leading to its entrance than any other. The snowstorms made footprints disappear, but the white snow was a dirty mud color in that area alone. He could see footprints from 100 to 200 people as well as tire and tread tracks from a few heavy vehicles.

“That building isn’t big enough to fit the Object inside.”

“So are those footprints and tracks from taking the spare parts from there to the maintenance facility?”

“It might just be a popular strip club on the base. If so, we’re gonna end up in a firefight with 100 idiots pitching tents in their pants.”

Quenser used his rifle’s scope to look at the watchtowers at the four corners of the base zone, but the parabolic antennae of the many large radar facilities that had been built later blocked the view of any guards who might be in them. Once again, the Object took priority. At any rate, it looked like they were not going to be caught that way if they ran through the base zone.

Quenser and Heivia charged out from behind the building and ran across a wide open area of snow.

It only took 10 seconds to cross, but they thought their hearts were going to stop.

No gunshots from a sniper in the watchtowers were heard.

They pressed up against the wall of the storehouse.

“Let’s go in the back way. Do you know how to open an electronic lock?”

“If we have to, we can use the C4 to blow open the door.”

“That’s a great idea. If only it wouldn’t bring every soldier in the base to us.”

As Quenser and Heivia spoke back and forth, they circled around to the back entrance and found it unlocked.

“…I guess they decided there was no chance they would have human intruders.”

“And I thought having guards was a waste of money back at our base…”

They opened the small door and entered the storehouse.

The building was 50 meters wide, 100 meters long, and 15 meters tall. It was simply a large open area with no inner walls. Metal beams ran vertically and horizontally through the area. The metal framework was highly regular and created something that looked like giant bookshelves from a library.

And those bookshelves were lined with cylindrical parts.

The cylinders had a diameter of about a meter and a length of about 5 meters, making them look something like a fighter aircraft’s engine. From Quenser’s knowledge of Objects, he guessed they were the devices that created the massive amounts of static electricity by spinning the turbines.

“My guess is this is part of the undercarriage, but…”

“Yeah, at my station, we were analyzing the battle records and trying to come up with an expected design of the enemy Object. I’m pretty sure a part similar to this was drawn in the predicted diagram,” agreed Heivia.

Quenser looked at the side of the cylindrical turbines where a number was written. It was most likely a simple spec for the electrical power it used, but…

“…What the hell? Is this decimal point in the wrong place? If this is accurate, then it’s more than twice what I’m guessing the value is for the plasma cannons.”

“To keep such a large body afloat and moving at such high speeds, they have to go all out like that. The electrical simulation group estimates that each leg uses around 10 of these turbines.”

“Twenty times the power of a plasma cannon? And for just one leg?”

“Look,” said Heivia as he opened the maintenance cover of the turbine and peered inside. “The thing is jammed full of sensors. It almost looks like those horrible time bombs you see in movies. These are all for extremely sensitive security. They have to make sure they can predict ahead of time if control of one of these high output turbines is going to be lost so they can shut it down ahead of time.”

“…Come to think of it, I think I heard something about the turbines melting if they continually created energy.”

“It’s too late by the time they melt,” said Heivia. “Just because the turbine stops functioning does not mean the energy produced by the reactor is going to just disappear. The reactor and the legs have a few emergency transformers and discharge devices installed, but the amount of power they would have to get rid of would be orders of magnitude greater than what those can deal with. If all the turbines packed into a single leg went out, that would be 20 times the output of one of its plasma cannons. I’m betting the transformers and discharge devices wouldn’t even be able to function if the turbines actually melted and ceased to function. The devices would be blown to pieces.”

That was why the turbines had so many sensors installed. If they could predict a failure early, they could actually deal with the excess energy by discharging it in stages.

“Its functionality may be optimized…but the Water Strider’s design just forces a lot of things through, doesn’t it?”

“That’s just one aspect to creating an Object specialized for this snowy region. One like our princess’s that was designed to be almighty in any situation and the Water Strider that only works in Alaska may both be Objects, but they were developed with completely different ideas in mind,” said Heivia. “Deep snow can slow you down, so an Object that can move around quickly is a major advantage. …And that was what did our princess in.”

However, if the turbines could not be replaced, Quenser and the others would be victorious.

If the static electricity producer in the Water Strider’s undercarriage was destroyed, it could not be overhauled and then the enemy Object would be stuck.

And they had C4 they could use to carry that out.

But…