Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 1===

“I’ll kill her!!”

“Stop, Heivia. That wouldn’t accomplish anything. We were the ones who destroyed the World’s End and we can’t threaten her into ordering its dead hulk back into orbit regardless! Myonri, restrain this idiot!!”

“Why do I always get stuck with the worst jobs!?” complained Myonri.

At any rate, they had no time.

All the cameras on the exterior of the space station had been destroyed, but when they pressed up against the double-layer reinforced glass windows, they could see an orange glow.

“The Elinabell is a hunk of metal weighing 200 thousand tons.”

Louisiana Honeysuckle smiled thinly in the heart of the elevator that was larger than a domed stadium.

Quenser clenched his teeth at having to stand up for her, but the genius scientist behind the Federation of Elevator Industries did not stop speaking.

“Do you know how small the ‘meteors’ from the artificial meteor shower are? Those rival a small nuclear warhead in power, but this is much larger. Can you even calculate the scope of the damage?”

The World’s End was a space Object.

Its altitude was already a good bit less than this space station. It was slowly falling toward the blue planet.

It supposedly no longer functioned, but was that orange light really only due to its fall? That sinister glow seemed to carry a much more horrific destructive power.

If that 200,000-ton mass continued to fall without any real deceleration, the entire world would be exposed to a fearsome impact and tremor. Even if some of the human race survived, they would be faced with an endless ice age thanks to all the dust filling the air.

Quenser could not believe it. Or maybe it was his common sense tapping the brakes here that prevented him from being a true genius. Those were the thoughts going through his mind as he faced this incomprehensible monster.

“Do you…?”

The Re Terraforming was meant to unify the world’s environment by spreading more soil and water from the space elevator than could be removed, but that had failed.

So what was this?

Was this meant as a Plan B???

“Do you really think this will make things equal? Triggering an ice age will only mean the death of all life on earth. There are no opportunities there for the Turkana District or anywhere else!!”

He had unwittingly pulled the trigger for the world’s destruction.

He had erred in his final move.

He should have kept going until it had been vaporized.

Louisiana Honeysuckle grinned as she raised both hands.

That demon whispered as her lab coat spread out like wings in zero-g.

“Now, here’s a question for you: what are you going to do about this?”

“Dammit!!”

Quenser began speaking over his radio.

The jamming was gone now that they had taken the elevator.

“Frolaytia! Princess!! This is an emergency! The space Object is falling toward the surface. It seems to be near the elevator, so can you intercept it with the Baby Magnum’s main cannons!?”

“Bff!?”

Their silver-haired busty commander spat out her drink all the way back down on the supposedly safe surface.

The Princess remained calmer.

“If it is no more than a mass of metal, then no. Is the reactor still running? If it has an explosive inside, I could aim for that to break it apart in midair.”

Louisiana gave a snort of laughter.

“What logical reason would the Elinabell have to continue running that dangerous reactor now that it’s too damaged to move?”

“Goddamn you,” groaned Quenser.

But even if he was a student, he could not just place all the responsibility on the surface team. They had pulled the trigger up here and ignorance was no excuse.

That planet was his home.

Coming out of all these wars as an Object designer and earning an obscene fortune would be meaningless if he had no home to return to.

This was not about anything as silly as “doing the right thing”.

He was fighting to ensure his own desires could come true.

“Understood. Princess, you work to intercept it from the surface. Its JPlevelMHD reactor isn’t running, but it is a Second Generation that uses highly concentrated oxygen. It has plenty of other explosives contained inside, so you might just be able to trigger an internal explosion!!”

“And if I can’t?”

“We can’t just sit idly by up here. We’ll be heading there too.”

He cut off his helmet’s radio and gestured Louisiana over.

“C’mere!! You need earth to survive as much as the rest of us and you’re the asshole that built that thing, so you’re fighting against our mutual destruction too.”

“Oh? I seem to recall this destruction was caused by someone else here.”

“Shut up.”

He grabbed her slender hand and pulled her along.

He had no time for her meaningless prattle. Every minute and second counted. She might not have a gun or a knife, but wasting their time was the ultimate weapon for her.

Heivia suddenly panicked.

“Hey, where are you going!? And what do you hope to do!?”

“Did you forget where we were, Heivia? This is the Mother Lady space elevator. It’s a next-generation platform connecting space to the surface.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“We’ll use their own elevator to catch up to the falling Object. Then we can get a look at it. We can’t prevent it from entering the atmosphere at this point, but this isn’t over yet. If we can cause it to break up in midair, we can avoid the worst-case scenario!!”

“So we just managed to pull out before blowing our load and now you’re telling us to take that smelly goo to the face!? You have got to be kidding me!!”

The space elevator could travel the 36,000km distance at about 200km/h. That made for an enjoyable space trip of about a week one way. But if they destroyed the safety equipment and let gravity take control, they could descend much more quickly. If they were wearing their pressurized space suits, they would not have to worry about barotrauma from the rapid pressure change.

Quenser pulled a Capitalist Corporations spacesuit out of a box. The elevator defense unit they had fought had only been powered suits and armored vehicles, so this was his first time seeing one of their spacesuits. It was quite slim compared to the puffy Legitimacy Kingdom ones. It was mostly black with yellow accents here and there. It was probably made from tech developed for a Pilot Elite’s special suit.

(Why would you color a spacesuit black? Are they even trying to survive?)

Quenser was speechless, but then he remembered this was the girl who wore red sports bloomers and a lab coat while in space. She saw the world differently from normal people.

At any rate, he pushed the spacesuit toward Louisiana.

“I doubt you want to become a pawn of the Legitimacy Kingdom, but you’ll be riding the elevator too. Help us customize the car. Make any intentional mistakes and you’ll burn up in the thermosphere along with us.”

“You’re a surprisingly trusting boy. Or do kids these days have no imagination now that they can look everything up on their phones? What if I decided to ensure my plan succeeded through suicide?”

“Can I just shoot her? Like right now!?”

“Heivia.” He stopped his awful friend with a quick word. “If you really wanted to kill yourself, you wouldn’t have put your hands up. If you had aimed a self-defense handgun at us, you would’ve died then and there. But you didn’t.”

“…”

“You want to see this through to the end, no matter how it ends, don’t you?”

“What solid proof of this do you have?”

“You’re a skilled weapons developer,” spat out Quenser. “Any Object designer would want to know what becomes of their creation.”

The 17-year-old genius girl smiled, but this was not meant as a provocation like before.

“Fine, but I will remind you it is already too late to accomplish anything.”

“Whether or not our world gets through this unsafe day is up to our efforts. It isn’t for you to say while you keep thrusting your hips for your own satisfaction.”

With that, Quenser and Louisiana walked to the carbon nanotube wires lined up in parallel at the center of the space station. They were interested in the bus-sized cylindrical “elevator car” attached to those.

Once they stepped inside the thick personnel-entrance door, Louisiana did something truly unexpected.

The genius immediately reached for her clothes and stripped them off with no hesitation whatsoever. Her lab coat, her gym clothes, and even her underwear floated around her in zero-g.

“Wait, what the hell are you doing!?”

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“We have no idea what is about to happen, so at least give me the right to change into my spacesuit as soon as possible, boy.”

“B-b-b-b-but you…and I…!?”

“Yes, yes, I can tell we will never see eye to eye. Here, maybe this will shut up you. In this hand, I have the panties. In this hand, the bloomers. Now, eat up.”

Quenser’s mind shorted out as the annoyed genius girl shoved some faintly warm and balled up fabric into his mouth.

It did not seem to bother her at all.

In this enclosed space, Quenser discovered an answer to exactly how a pair of breasts would behave in zero-g. Yes, without their original weight and without the support of any underwear, the boobs floated softly in the air!!”

Meanwhile…

“Ahh, I felt so naked without this on.”

“Bwah!!”

She was not talking about the underwear Quenser spat out.

Now that she was wearing a black special suit that showed off her figure even more than the gym clothes, she half-jokingly made sure to put back on the lab coat floating nearby. Instead of a spherical helmet on her head, she wore something like an old-fashioned gasmask with two round octopus-like eyepieces. That made her look somewhat like an extremely niche sort of bondage girl. She may have thought this protected her entire body, but it was troubling for Quenser. Specifically, he could not afford to look down at her crotch. The Y-shape there was ''very'' Y-shaped.

Louisiana turned the two round eyepieces toward him.

“Now I have my safety, so how about we get down to business?”

The number of Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had been reduced by a lot.

Louisiana spoke up so casually she might as well have been talking about cooking something.

“Accelerating in space is simple enough, so the problem here is actually earth and all its air. If you want to pick up speed in freefall, your only option is to destroy all the brakes, leaving the car entirely uncontrollable. Which will of course make the ride much less safe.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“We also need to apply new coolant to the surface of contact with the wire. Otherwise, we could burn through the carbon nanotube wires with friction.”

“Just friction could break wires sturdy enough to survive constant contact with the thermosphere?”

“Really? ''Just'' friction? You really do need to work on your imagination, boy. We’re talking about a drop of 36,000km. Do you have any idea how much force that will build up?”

“…”

“A constant high or low temperature is not an issue. An irregular jump in either direction is the real threat to the wires. That’s why we used so much water from the surface to smooth that out.”

So they were talking about literally astronomical numbers. Even the ordinary natural phenomena seen in everyday life could cause seemingly supernatural phenomena if the quantities were great enough. He would have to imagine things at a scale different even from Object design.

His only option was to trust the instincts of the expert.

Even if she was also the cause of all these problems in the first place.

“Why did you do this?” he asked.

“To save the world.”

“?”

“Did you think that was only a distraction? But here I am, still fighting. Although honestly, the world and the human race are only bonus prizes. I only wanted to bring happiness to the people trying to protect their simple lives and the incredible nature of the Turkana District. Saving the world is just what it’s going to take to save them.”

“Using the space elevator for Re Terra will only shorten the entire world’s lifespan. And creating an ice age to force a uniform global environment will be even worse.”

“This is nothing so hackneyed.”

He could not read her.

And not just because her gasmask-like helmet kept him from seeing her face. He was missing some fundamental piece needed to understand her.

Was this the difference between a superior genius and an average person? Staring into her eyes was like staring at a Halloween jack-o’-lantern. Was she lying or telling the truth? Was she joking or serious? He could not tell. Could Braskine have figured it out?

“This is just like finding yanderes to be sexy,” said Heivia from outside the door. “Take her seriously and you’re the one who ends up looking like a fool.”

He seemed irritated by how incomprehensible Louisiana was, but Quenser did not take such a simplified approach. As a battlefield student, he was far too inexperienced to call a pro, but even he could tell that Louisiana’s work was perfect. She was not broken. Her mind had to be working perfectly, just at a higher level.

There was something here he was missing.

Something that had yet to show itself after all this. Something felt terribly off and he rolled that feeling around inside him.

He gulped within his helmet before asking a question.

“What is it you see?”

“What do you think I see? The world of science is equal to all. Nuclear reactions were occurring everywhere even before e=mc<sup>2</sup> was proposed. The sunshine is the most obvious example, but there is also the legend of an ancient city being utterly annihilated by a mysterious light after being hit by the divine superweapon known as the god Agni’s arrow and that the victims suffered for an extended period of time while their hair and nails fell out. …You have already seen the answer, but you have failed to consciously recognize it.”

“…”

“All done. We can begin.”

She closed a metal clasp and then shut the small door.

The black and yellow gloves were slim enough to show off the beauty of her slender fingers. The puffy Legitimacy Kingdom spacesuits could never produce a silhouette like that.

“It seems the Legitimacy Kingdom has taken over the Turkana District ground base, but communicating with them would not be enough. Moving the elevator car up or down requires leaving a certain level of personnel in the space station too. But if you don’t maintain some control up here in space, the brave survivors of the station crew might just stage a counterattack.”

The clever potatoes who had survived this long exchanged a glance.

The answer here was obvious.

“I’m not going if I don’t have to, so whoever loses this game have to go!! Rock, paper, scissors!!!!!!”

Quenser and Heivia stared silently down at their hands after their scissors were instantly defeated.

Louisiana Honeysuckle had to take the elevator down regardless, so only she kept grinning throughout. Her octopus-like mask hid her face, but Quenser could still tell. She turned to face him with her figure revealed by her spacesuit.

“You were the one who told me to see this through to the end,” she said. “So let us take this journey together. Let us descend ever closer to the doomed world below on this journey to hell. But what is it you will discover at the end of that journey, my modern Dante?”