Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 15===

A while before when the Baby Magnum and the Rush were firing at each other at high speed, a small figure was moving through the snowy plain that was littered with Water Strider wreckage.

It was Heivia.

He was listening to Quenser’s voice coming from his radio.

At first, it sounded like he was using the Rush’s communications equipment to give advice to the princess. However…

(“I’m cornered over here”. That was the code phrase to indicate a secret discussion about a porn magazine check. The “foreign girl” must have been referring to the Rush. Since he also used the name “Angelina”, the term AI can likely be taken at face value.)

“Ugh. Dammit Quenser. You rely on your beautiful genius of a noble partner a bit too much,” Heivia said to no one in particular.

His handheld device was displaying the design of the Water Strider. It was the one the Legitimacy Kingdom military had drawn up from an analysis of the technology in the enemy Object.

(Heading to the right and turning to the left. Why do his instructions have to be such a pain in the ass?)

Just the main body of the Object was 50 meters across, so the design was quite large. Heivia scrolled the screen as Quenser instructed and marked the necessary components.

(Now I just have to use the map to check where those parts are on the battlefield.)

“Made it! Made it!”

Heivia stopped at one of the places he had marked.

It was a main cannon-class low-stability plasma cannon lying bent in the snow.

“Y’know, I’m little disturbed that I was able to figure out what Quenser meant so well. I’d rather have this kind of tacit understanding with a girl.”

He lowered his bag from his back.

Inside were a large number of batteries. They were the backups prepared for the electric drill.

Heivia’s original mission had been to work with Quenser to drill holes in the cliff wall, stuff explosives inside, and efficiently bring the wreckage down. Heivia had been carrying quite a burden to support Quenser.

However, those batteries were nowhere near enough to power an Object’s main cannon.

Luckily, Heivia had no intention of doing that.

“Well, just getting the infrared targeting system running should be enough to fool it.”

He peered in through a tear in the armor on the side of the cannon where it had been bent in the middle. He stuck his hand inside and pulled out a giant electromagnet. He unwound the lead wrapped around the cylindrical container to create a coil and then rewound it to create a different coil.

“Electromagnetic induction~. That’s what transformers use~,” sang Heivia as he used the square-shaped metal core to prepare a large coil and a small coil.

He then faced the infrared targeting device that was as large as a log.

It was surrounded by armor that a normal bombardment would not budge, but it could not be maintained if there was no way of getting at it. Heivia used his tools to open a panel on the armor. He attached a battery to the cable and transformer inside. Then, he removed the wireless detonation device from a Hand Axe electric fuse and added it to his impromptu device.

Now, he could freely run the Water Strider’s infrared aiming device with the flick of a switch on his radio.

“The Water Strider had 8 main cannons, right? Well, just 3 of them should be enough.”

Heivia looked back at the design from the Legitimacy Kingdom military database that had been created with the intention of using the technology from the destroyed enemy Object. He then began moving again.

Partway there, he found an off road vehicle that had likely been abandoned by the Information Alliance when it could not make it past the giant pieces of wreckage.

He climbed aboard and said, “The plan is to confuse the Rush’s AI by adding in unnecessary calculations, but why am I the one running around doing all the work?”

Heivia’s goal was plain and simple.

He would fix up just the targeting devices for the Water Strider weapons scattered about the snowy plain and set them to run when he sent a radio signal.

Using that, he would make the Rush’s strategic AI mistakenly conclude that the Water Strider’s main cannons were still functional and so the Rush had to constantly keep that danger in mind.

After that, Heivia had switched the 8 main cannons’ targeting devices on and off at high speed and in a certain pattern. By continually giving the strategic AI unnecessary calculations and having it “learn” unnecessary and incorrect things, the high level calculation ability would work in vain for a while.

He had the source for this information in his hands.

The Angelina List.

That report had been put together by the Legitimacy Kingdom military and it contained countless records of problems and failures of AIs that had led to AI research being declared “unrealistic”.

Of course, that alone would not function as a weakness of the Rush’s strategic AI.

The Information Alliance had the most advanced AI research in the world, so they would have already come up with countermeasures for those things.

It was like using a computer virus on a computer that had a proper countermeasure for that virus.

However, just the foundations were enough.

Heivia was not simply going to use the Angelina List. Like he was creating a subspecies of that virus, he just had to create a new problem right then and there.

He already had the knowledge and skills required.

While he usually seemed to do nothing but run around the battlefield with a rifle, Heivia Winchell was a radar analyst.

He was an expert when it came to viewing the battlefield as a board and the Object as a game piece in order to search out the idiosyncrasies and weaknesses of the enemy machine from its movements.