Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 16===

Quenser, Heivia, and the Elite girl were brought to the center of the maintenance base zone. They were ordered to kneel down and put their hands behind their heads.

A soldier was placed behind each of them, holding a gun to their heads. A ring of people from the base zone had appeared to watch their public execution.

“Such a sad story, isn’t it? This is such a good example of a knight returning to save the princess.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Oh, shit. The Object is entering the maintenance area.”

As Heivia and the Elite girl spoke back and forth, Quenser remained silent and watched the Water Strider slowly move along.

“(…If I create some confusion, do you think we can get away?)”

“(…Ahhn? You mean the C4 we scattered about? If that somehow blew up the Object, we might make it somehow.)”

“(…I’m serious here.)”

“(…So am I.)”

Meanwhile, one of the enemy soldiers stepped forward and stood before Quenser and the others. While chewing on some gum, he spat some yellow saliva at Quenser’s head.

“We’re gonna roast you with the Object’s main weapons.” He then turned toward the Elite girl. “For you, we’re gonna use suggestion and electrodes to pull out everything in your head. Your personality will never recover, but it’ll all be over in about 30 minutes. Afterwards, we’ll strip you naked and hang you from the main weapons until you freeze to death. Maybe the savages running through the woods and mountains will give up once they see that.”

“…So you don’t care about the war treaties relating to prisoners of war. I think I know who the real savages are here, you fucker.”

Heivia let that comment slip and immediately afterwards he had a thick leather military boot fly at his cheek. It struck him and he sank down into the snow. As he coughed, he glared at the enemy soldier with a powerful light in his eyes.

“The maintenance is complete, so it’s time for the execution,” the enemy soldier said mockingly.

With a great noise like a church bell, the walls and ceiling of the Object maintenance facility opened wide. Appearing from it was the giant weapon with a 50 meter main body and main cannons stretching in each direction, giving it a total length of over 140 meters. The Water Strider ruled over the winter Alaskan land with over 100 weapons and thick armor. As it had just replaced the parts for its undercarriage, the dark thundercloud-like noise created by the massive static electricity it created seemed to have a sharper tone to it.

It was about 300 meters away, but it had such great power that it could ignore such distances. The scene seriously made them feel like it would crush them under its legs if they gave the slightest movement.

Seeing that Object, Quenser whispered to Heivia.

“(…Get down when I charge out. Use that snowplow tractor over there for cover.)”

“(…Hey!!)”

Heivia did not have time to stop him.

Quenser charged out toward the enemy soldier approaching them. The surrounding soldiers held up their rifles, but they could not bring themselves to pull the trigger because of the struggle. That may have been thanks to the fact that they were all maintenance soldiers that had not been properly trained.

The enemy soldier must have thought Quenser was trying to grab his rifle because he pulled the rifle away.

However, Quenser was not grabbing for the rifle.

He was grabbing the rectangular radio strapped on the soldier’s shoulder like a knife.

“Get down!!” Quenser yelled just as the soldier pushed him away. 

Quenser operated the radio with his thumb while rolling on the ground despite the fact that many rifle barrels were targeting him. Heivia assumed he was using the radio to detonate the C4 they had spread around the area, so he immediately jumped behind the snowplow tractor such that he covered up the Elite pilot.

However, that was not what happened.

Quenser was not detonating the C4 he had scattered as dummies.

He was detonating the leg of the Water Strider.

With an explosive noise, one of the four legs over 300 meters away exploded from the inside. It was not an external explosion. The explosion had clearly come from within the armor.

When Quenser had seen all the spare parts in the storehouse, he had determined it would be impossible to blow them all up. That was why he had searched out which spare parts would be put into the Object during its next maintenance and put C4 inside those parts. He still had plenty to learn, but his studies of the construction of Objects may have been what had allowed him to determine which parts were important and where he could stick the C4 inside them so it would not be noticed.

With its thick armor, the Object could not be destroyed even with a nuclear weapon. However, an explosive within the armor could destroy the equipment within the Object.

Also, he had blown away the turbines that consumed massive amounts of energy to create the static electricity that helped move the Object. Even one of them used twice the energy of a low-stability plasma cannon which meant each leg used 20 times that energy during normal use. This made it quite a delicate point.

So what would happen if that point was destroyed?

Tons of sensors were installed in the turbines to predict failures and shut them down in stages to minimize the damage. How much of a burden would be put on the emergency transformers and discharge devices – as well as the reactor itself – if one was blown up causing a chain reaction that blew up the rest of them?

The soldier who Quenser had stolen the radio from and who was now pointing his rifle at the boy looked over toward the sudden explosion.

But…

“…Did you think you could destroy the Object by causing an explosion within it?” he said triumphantly.

The initial blast had caused a few secondary explosions, but it had remained isolated to a single leg. It had not been enough to destroy the entirety of the Water Strider.

“Did you know that 5% of our Object’s weight is due to safety devices? A few rank and file soldiers sneaking into a maintenance facility and pulling a few tricks isn’t going to cut it.”

After causing the large explosion, Quenser had jumped behind the snowplow tractor and the enemy soldier was standing in the middle of the open snow aiming his rifle at him.

“The superiority of Objects will never be overturned. That is the battlefield we fight on.”

[[Image:Heavy_Object_v01_142.jpg|thumb]]

“Is that so?”

However, Quenser continued to smile even in that hopeless situation.

“Did ''you'' know that our princess’s Object and your Water Strider have similar devices installed? I saw it mentioned in your maintenance manual. Some Objects have security devices installed to ensure they will not fall into enemy hands. If it has not been destroyed but can no longer function, the enemy could retrieve it and analyze the technology. To prevent that, the special gas for the plasma cannons is used to blow the Object up.”

Something appeared in Quenser’s hand like he was a stage magician.

It was small enough to fit in his palm and looked like a rectangular circuit board.

“The device is controlled by precision sensors, so it almost never activates unnecessarily.”

The enemy soldier immediately realized what the rectangular circuit board was.

However, it was too late to do anything about it.

“But if that sensor is removed from a turbine that blows up, do you think it can make an accurate decision?”

After all, the C4 explosion had caused a malfunction in the Water Strider’s security device, causing it to activate. The special gas for the low-stability plasma cannons filled a special space within the giant machine…and caused a tremendous explosion shortly thereafter.

The great explosion caused by plasma within the Object enveloped the reactor in no time at all. However, it was an intentional explosion meant to destroy all classified information. It was set to only produce the destructive force needed to prevent any of the technology from being analyzed, so it was many times less powerful than a critical explosion of the reactor itself.

Nevertheless, all sound disappeared.

The giant sphere that was the Object’s main body explosively expanded and a pure white flash of light and an intense shockwave were emitted in all directions. The enemy soldier standing out in the open were struck by the shockwave. He doubled over and was tossed a few dozen meters before landing. Similar things happened to the other enemy soldiers.

The giant Object had been blown up at the hands of a flesh-and-blood combat engineer.

That was an unheard-of event that completely overturned the theory of war itself. That accomplishment had been carried out by the combination of the skills of Quenser, Heivia, and the Elite girl. A combat engineer who normally worked behind the scenes to blow up stones or bridges to create or obstruct paths had been raised to the level of a hero that could influence the outcome of an entire war.

However, he did not have time to enjoy that fact.

“Gwaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!”

Quenser had immediately taken cover, but he did not escape unscathed.

Even though he was over 300 meters from the Object and hiding behind a snowplow tractor, the explosive flash of light seemed to pierce into his retinas. The surface of the steel tractor became scorched and it slid to the side.

Intense pain ran through his head and his sense of hearing was almost completely gone. A burning pain covered his entire back. He frantically rubbed his eyes as his vision was filled with pure white and tried to find Heivia and the Elite girl who must have been in a similar state collapsed nearby.

He then heard a clanking noise from somewhere.

A few of the soldiers must have miraculously managed to survive just like Quenser and the other two. His vision finally returned and he saw a few soldiers desperately trying to aim their rifles at him while staggering due to the shock of the blast.

Quenser once more felt the radio in his hand.

He set the frequency and sent the detonation code for the C4.

The explosives he had scattered about exploded and the enemy soldiers holding their rifles nearby were thrown humorously into the air.

Quenser shouted at Heivia who was lying collapsed nearby.

“Can you run!? Grab one of the rifles from the ground and return fire!!”

“God damn you! That’s what you call ‘creating some confusion’? Something that big is going to make me panic, too!!” Heivia shouted as he picked up a rifle lying on the ground.

Even if they had managed to destroy the Water Strider due to countless coincidences, their goal was not the destruction of the maintenance base zone.

They just had to escape safely.

But…

“!?”

As Quenser and the others ran toward the exit of the base zone, a single enemy soldier blocked their way. He was already holding his rifle up and had it aimed squarely at Quenser’s chest. The two stared at each other in that hopeless situation. Quenser clearly saw a smile appear on the soldier’s face.

And then he heard a gunshot.

However, it had not come from the soldier’s rifle.

A sniper bullet flew from much farther away and pierced straight through the side of the enemy soldier’s head.

The rest of the enemy soldiers turned in shock in the direction the gunshot had come from just in time to see countless missiles and shells fly in from outside the base zone. The enemy soldiers were not the only ones surprised by this. Quenser and the other two had been saved by the unknown covering fire, but they just stood staring in disbelief.

“They actually came… That’s Froleytia’s unit, isn’t it!?”

“What the hell? It looks like that Japan obsessed pair of giant tits can actually be a decent commander!!”

The enemy base zone was filled with maintenance and radar facilities to support the Object. The rest of its forces were nothing but infantry units. They did not have any tanks or even armored vehicles.

On the other hand, Quenser and the others’ army had the full complement of tanks and fighters they had always complained were nothing but a waste of taxes. It had seemed almost certain that those outdated weapons would never actually be used, but they were finally able to show their true worth.

Several explosions were scattered about and enemy soldiers flew through the air. Amid it all, Quenser grabbed the Elite girl’s hand and ran for the exit. It seemed the sentry had been taken out by a howitzer.

Heivia ran alongside him while intermittently firing his rifle.

“Heh heh. Hey, Quenser! We’d have to be pretty stupid to die after coming this far, wouldn’t we!?”

“Yeah, Froleytia came all the way here because she believed in us. We need to at least live up to her expectations!!”

Had their superiors who had been fleeing come back because they had seen the clear sign of victory that was the Object exploding? Or had they felt some kind of responsibility after running off and abandoning the Elite girl?

As Quenser ran out through the base zone’s exit, he turned back to look at the base that had black smoke rising from it.

The battle was essentially over.

Both sides had lost their Object. All that was left was for the normal soldiers to fight it out. Once it came to that, there was a great difference between an army made up of maintenance soldiers and personnel for the radars meant for an Object battle and an army that had plenty of old-fashioned tanks and fighters.

(Flesh-and-blood soldiers blew up that Object…)

The boy who had carried out an act that had overturned the basic knowledge of war stared blankly at the enemy base zone where explosions and gunfire continued.

The Elite girl must have been thinking something similar because she opened her mouth to speak.

“…Those people may see us as monsters on the same level as an Object.”

“Not my problem,” Heivia said defensively as he stared at the base zone with his soot-covered face. “This is war. They’re the ones that taught us that when they ignored our white flag. We had all forgotten the weight of the word ‘war’ due to the Object.”