Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 17===

And the two idiots began a race against time.

After ending his conversation with the designer Claire, Quenser shouted to his partner.

“Heivia, get to the emergency power! Mikfa and I will cut the cables for the defense system!!”

“No fair!! I want to be the one working up a sweat with a maid!! I want to hear what a maid sounds like breathing heavily right next to me!!”

“So your vulgar talk has finally reached me as well…!!”

They complained, but they all knew they had no time. The enemy had already fired two shots. It was difficult to calculate out how much time they had left.

The two idiots headed off in different directions.

Heivia headed down a flight of stairs while Quenser and Mikfa ran across the top of the float.

“He can probably only shoot once every 7 minutes! But it’s still astounding that he can fire a battery unit into orbit, have it decelerate, and then connect it in that time!!”

“Dimiksy cannot fire containers repeatedly like a machinegun, can he?” asked Mikfa.

“The system uses extremely high temperatures to explosively expand the air. It takes time for the rapid cooling. And once it does cool, it has to take measurements to ensure the elevator’s guiderails have not been distorted. …But when you compare this to the old rockets that took days of preparation to fire, he’s still shooting his load extremely prematurely!!”

“Are you enjoying this verbal sexual harassment by any chance!?”

Quenser attached bombs to the cables coiled around all over the place that were thicker than his arm. They were much too thick to cut with any kind of blade like wire cutters.

Meanwhile, Mikfa used the strength of her powered suit to rip the cables apart while watching the Broad Sky Saber with the digital magnification of the suit.

“The base of the elevator is moving. A cylindrical part is being loaded… That is probably the container!!”

“You mean that fat old man is groping at his swollen crotch!?”

“Do you want me to punch you!? And don’t think I will hold back just because I am in a powered suit!!”

A separate building-like rectangular unit was equipped alongside the steel tower elevator. If one viewed the elevator like a gun, that was likely the magazine.

“Not good. Shit, is Heivia okay!?”

“He didn’t just flee down below on his own, did he!?”

That was when they heard gunfire.

They were already short on time, but now some soldiers presumably from Dimiksy’s faction were firing at them from behind a large passenger plane that was tilted to one side due to broken wheels.

Quenser did not hesitate to hide behind the maid (who was wearing a powered suit).

“What a pain in the ass! Why are they still alive!?”

“If they survived, they must be the unit that left with Lady Staivia. I will never forgive them!!”

The next thing Quenser knew, the maid was making a dash for the men. With his shield gone, Quenser immediately ran for cover, but he was not the only one surprised by the situation. It looked like one of the soldiers frantically tried to prepare a shoulder-fired missile, but Mikfa’s amateurish and fearless dash proved successful. She got there first.

She crossed the approximately 150 meter gap at greater than a safe driving speed and used the giant hands of the powered suit to grab a panicked flesh-and-blood soldier.

“German☆suplex!!”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!? That giant weight and tremendous strength turned a sport into murder!!” screamed Quenser as he watched from the side.

Whenever Quenser had heard the term “inhumane weapon of murder”, he had always laughed to himself and wondered what a humane weapon of murder would be. However, this scene taught him all too well why such a term was needed. There were many ways to die, but not many would want to die by being half-crushed like an empty can.

Having charged into the center of the team of enemy soldiers, Mikfa continued her attack. Enemy Soldier 1 (who had just started to overcome his shock) was sent flying into the side of the passenger plane with a dropkick, Enemy Soldier 2 (who had panicked and was firing meaningless bullets from his submachine gun) had his upper body turned to spray with a lariat, and Enemy Soldier 3 (who had started cursing the goddess of destiny) was turned into a stain on the ground with a body press. By the end, it was impossible to tell which soldier had been which.

The scene was so horrifying it was almost humorous.

But Quenser would have preferred to see the maid’s zettai ryouiki as the skirt of her maid uniform fluttered around her. The scene was humorous, but it was not cute in the slightest. And there was no hope for it at all.

Only now that she had been thoroughly dyed in red did Mikfa realize the situation she was in.

“Honestly, that was not enough to quell my anger. All of you need to hurry up and die!!”

“Um… Could you wash off all of that blood and guts before coming back over here…?” asked Quenser.

“Why are you looking at me like I am filthy!? I will hug you!!”

“Noooooooooooooooooooooo!! You’re all stickyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

Despite receiving the truly rare experience of being hugged by a real maid and having his face buried in her bountiful chest, Quenser let out a cry and had real tears streaming down his face. There was nothing there but tough armor and the stench of iron. And that was probably not the armor he was smelling.

“Cough!! Cough cough!! That is too horrible to pass off as a joke!! And more importantly, we need to sever all of the power cables connecting to the defense system! Ugh…peh peh!!”

After the bloody maid finally released him, Quenser scurried off to blow away the remaining cables with bombs.

“Six minutes have passed since the last container was fired!” warned Mikfa.

“We’ve silenced the defense system. Now it’s all up to Heivia!!”

That was when Quenser heard horrible static coming from his radio.

“Did we make it in time…?”

“No, we need to change the direction of the antennae! Hurry up and turn them towards the Broad Sky Saber!!”

The powered suit ran. It forcibly grabbed the van-sized object that had been staked directly into the float. The suit’s great strength forced the antennae to turn without their hydraulics.

In the next instant, something fell.

An orange beam of light struck a location further out in the ocean from both the floating international airport and the Assault Signal floating on the ocean next to it.

“We did it! It miss-…!!”

Mikfa did not have time to finish her exclamation of joy.

Quenser did not have time to warn her of the danger. He jumped behind a large passenger plane that was lying on the surface of the float with its main wing broken.

For a few seconds nothing happened.

And then…

There was a pure white explosion.

The giant laser beam had not lasted even a second. The tremendous amount of heat it had supplied to the ocean water had evaporated all of the nearby water. That large-scale phreatic explosion was reminiscent of the old-style rocket and space shuttle launches that Quenser had seen in recordings. A white cloud-like mass quickly spread out in every direction.

It spread for hundreds of meters and maybe even further than that.

Quenser was hiding behind a broken passenger plane, but nowhere was safe. The plane that was supposed to be acting as his shield rolled over when the white wall struck it. Quenser realized he was about to be crushed, so he frantically got up and ran back from the plane as quickly as he could.

“Damn, and after we went to the trouble of saving those tiltrotors!”

The troop transport tiltrotors flying through the sky were struck down by that mass of air. But there was nothing Quenser could do. He could only hope they made a successful emergency landing on the ocean. Even if those aboard were the disagreeable honor students, he would be left with a bad taste in his mouth if they were wiped out by something like that.

And then Quenser spotted something out of the corner of his eye. It was a powered suit rolling across the float after being ripped away from the antenna equipment.

He had no idea if his voice would make it through the storm, but he shouted anyway.

“Get out of the powered suit!! If you fall into the ocean, there’s no hope for-…!!”

He trailed off. As soon as he breathed in, a burning pain filled his throat. Quenser immediately stopped breathing, but the burns were already spreading. He grasped at his throat with his hands and writhed around, but the pain would not go away.

“Cough!! Cough cough!!”

He had only breathed in a small bit of the hot wind, so his throat had only been slightly burned. If it had made it to his lungs, he would have been having trouble breathing.

That was when he heard a dull reverberating noise.

The Broad Sky Saber which had been sitting still in the distance now began to move.

Dimiksy may have been mad about having his strike turned aside.

No, that was not it.

(The cannons on the front of the Object are only meant to hold an enemy in place. They may be enough to wear down the enemy’s armor, but they aren’t powerful enough to pierce the cockpit! That means he has no choice but to use the sky saber if he wants to kill Princess Staivia to ensure his spot on the throne!!)

In that case, he would focus on destroying the ECM equipment that was jamming him.

But even if Quenser knew that, he had no means of stopping that giant machine that could move at around 500 kph. As Quenser helplessly watched the Broad Sky Saber approach the float, the Object first used its six cannons to fire on the Assault Signal.

The maid Mikfa was about to fall from the float, but she let out a shrill voice with no concern for herself.

“Lady Staivia!!”

“You idiot! He’s targeting you! If he could kill her with that, he wouldn’t have bothered with that over-the-top sky saber!!”

Fragments of armor melted off from the Assault Signal and with an explosive roar that was similar to a shockwave rained down from above. Normally thinking, Quenser could not risk moving from behind the broken passenger plane.

But if he did nothing, Mikfa would be caught in the blast next to the ECM equipment.

Even if she was not blown away, armor and all, she would definitely be knocked off the float and into the ocean.

Quenser was conflicted, but then he realized he did not have time to be conflicted.

He made his decision.

(Dammit. If I’m likely to die either way, I’ll choose the path I can brag about in a bar if I survive!!)

While crouching down, Quenser ran as quickly as he could through the downpour of armor fragments. When he saw a red, hot fragment fall right next to him and scatter orange sparks everywhere, he seriously thought he was going to cry. However, stopping now would not make him any safer. He continued to run towards Mikfa in her powered suit.

But he did not make it in time.

After that test shot told Dimiksy he truly could not kill Staivia with those cannons, he turned his countless cannons in a different direction. He turned them towards the ECM equipment set up on various parts of the float.

He fired on them one at a time.

The Object’s cannons thoroughly melted and blew away each piece of ECM equipment. Mikfa who was nearby and even Quenser who was trying to approach her were swept away too.

They had not been hit by the shockwave.

The float had begun to rock horribly.

A tremendous vibration created an unsteadiness beneath their feet as if they were on a suspension bridge that was having its ropes cut one at a time.

Quenser shouted through the sauna-like heat loud enough that the explosive noise would not drown him out.

“Mikfa!! Use the emergency eject!! Pull the levers in the wrists simultaneously! Activate it before you fall into the ocean!!”

He received no response. He saw no sign she was trying to exit the powered suit. She was merely tossed around by the impact as she rolled toward the edge of the float. Had Quenser’s voice not reached her? Had she panicked too much to carry out that simple operation? Or was she too afraid of the tremendous impacts to leave the suit?

Whatever the reason, only one path remained for her if she fell into the ocean while still inside.

Quenser used his scratched hands to struggle to his feet and began running once more.

The Broad Sky Saber may have been focusing on destroying the ECM equipment because it made no follow up attacks on the powered suit. The attacks continued on the equipment.

“Shit!!”

Quenser finally made it to the powered suit. If he carelessly approached Mikfa’s giant rolling form, he could be crushed. Quenser lifted up one of the thick cables coiled around the float surface and used it to catch on and decelerate the rolling powered suit.

The bombardment from the Broad Sky Saber continued.

It was supposedly focusing its attack on the ECM equipment, but the side effects of that made great changes to the buoyancy of the float. The powered suit had supposedly been stopped, but the float tilted and it started sliding towards the ocean once more.

Quenser had no time.

As the float was rocked like a ship in a storm, he grabbed onto the armor of the powered suit.

(Shit, can you force an eject from outside!?)

The powered suit was a collection of delicate equipment and programs, so it was made to not open from the outside if it was locked from the inside. This was simply to prevent an enemy from opening it.

But there were a few exceptions.

(If the pilot has been injured too badly to operate it or has lost consciousness, the maintenance workers need a way to open it.)

While looking at his handheld device, Quenser pulled out a Hand Axe plastic explosive and attached it to the back of the powered suit. He attached a fuse shaped like a ballpoint pen and moved away from Mikfa as she continued to slide. Since he had no idea what state the jamming was in, Quenser chose a timed fuse rather than a wireless one.

After precisely 10 seconds, it detonated.

Just as Quenser had planned, a portion of the armor on the powered suit’s back came off.

Quenser climbed back up on the suit, used both hands to grab at a lever through the armor, and used his full weight to force it back.

The lever finally pulled with the feeling of some kind of stopper coming out. The rear hatch opened and the maid Mikfa rolled out.

The tilt of the float increased even further.

The empty powered suit, Quenser, and Mikfa fell off and into the ocean. Mikfa still had no idea what was happening, so Quenser grabbed her arms and somehow managed to pull them both up to the surface with only his legs.

If he had been just a dozen or so seconds later in getting that hatch opened, Mikfa would have sunk down to the bottom of the ocean along with the powered suit. Even if she had ejected then, her breath would not have lasted until she made it to the surface and she would have fallen victim to decompression sickness if she tried to rush her ascent.

“Cough! Cough cough!!”

With their faces above the surface, Quenser and Mikfa greedily gulped in oxygen. Quenser’s military uniform was bad enough, but Mikfa’s maid uniform grew very heavy as it soaked up the water. Pieces of wreckage from the exterior to the ECM equipment were floating nearby, so they grabbed onto a suitcase-sized fragment as a float.

As the bandages wrapped around Mikfa’s fingers grew wet with seawater, a dark red liquid seeped out.

“…Are you okay? It must be bad to be thrown into the ocean after being tortured.”

“L-Lady Staivia is more important.” Her voice was frail, but Mikfa was more worried about the princess still up on the cutting board than herself. “The ECM equipment was destroyed! The shield protecting Lady Staivia is gone! At this rate, the sky saber will hit her with its next strike!!”

As Mikfa lamented, they saw a brilliant white flash of light and a container was fired vertically from the elevator on the back of the Broad Sky Saber.

The countdown had begun until the sky saber fired.

They had only 7 minutes.