Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 2===

In the true desert away from the city and devoid of the asphalt and concrete that gathered heat, the nights grew cold quickly.

Quenser’s military uniform was made to handle the cold, but his teeth were chattering as he watched a 1seg broadcast on his military handheld device. The backlight dimly lit up his face as if he was holding a flashlight below his head.

“Oh ho ho. Welcome to the New York Miracle Net Festa! All of you around the world in front of your monitors, be charmed by this enchanting song and dance!! Yay!!”

“Yay!” shouted Quenser. “Bouncing breasts and a shaking ass!!”

“Quenser, you idiot! What are you watching in the middle of our night mission!?”

“It’s called escapism! I came to the battlefield to learn about Object design, so why am I freezing to death out in the desert!?”

“Just turn it off, you idiot! Do you want to die!? …No, wait. Let me see it before you turn it off!! Come to think of it, why do you have an invitation code to that net concert!?”

“I don’t know why, but I get emails from her a lot. She can monitor whether the code was used or not and she said she’d shoot me on the battlefield if I didn’t watch it.”

Suddenly, Quenser’s radio emitted a quick electronic tone.

The princess’s voice soon followed.

“Quenser, explain further.”

“Wow! I don’t know what’s going on, but the princess is pissed! Since she hasn’t realized her request to explain further contradicts that, she must be the type who doesn’t realize how angry she is. But why!?”

Quenser frantically asked Heivia for help, but his friend gave the wonderfully gentlemanly response of raising his middle finger and shouting “How should I know!! Maybe it’s divine punishment!!”

“All military transmissions are checked in the server, you know? What do you think you are doing there?” asked the princess.

“Wow!! Are you mad because I’m watching an Information Alliance idol’s ass on a mission against the Information Alliance? I didn’t realize you were such a stickler for the rules.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Comments of “this is very bad” started coming from the other soldiers spread out across the desert whose names Quenser did not know.

“If you’re gonna go with divine punishment, keep it to him!! If you use your main cannon, you’ll blow me away too!!” shouted Heivia without even trying to hide his self-centered fears.

“Honestly, why are boys so easily manipulated by girls who sing? Anyone can sing.”

“I can’t let that comment go, princess. I hope I can expect great things of your singing ability. If you aren’t aware, a certain island nation has this thing called karaoke!!”

“(Twitch) …Y-you’re on.”

“You can kill me!! As long as he dies, I don’t care if you fire the Object’s cannons!!”

Quenser ignored Heivia’s shouting and pulled the night vision goggles down from his forehead.

His vision was digitally corrected and filled with green light.

But he continued to make desperate jokes.

“So it’s finally come to this. I’m dressed in all black and wearing night vision goggles.” In the moonlight and the chill that seemed to stab at him through the darkness, his breath was white. “All right! Now I’m part of the special forces! I’m the same as the Capitalist Corporations’ Hollywood movie stars. You can shake my hand at an amusement park!!”

“Hey, Quenser. Could you quit being so annoying and get down? If one of their snipers blows your head off, I’m not gathering your remains. They’d be too heavy.”

Heivia was dressed in an all-black uniform as well. He was lying face down on the fine sand while complaining to his rotten friend who was approaching the limit of what Heivia could put up with.

The desert was cold at night.

Some deserts were made of cracked earth and some were plains with a few weeds growing at about the thickness of a filthy middle-aged man’s half-grown beard, but the ones seen in sightseeing pamphlets that were covered in nothing but sand had a large temperature difference between day and night. Because it was midsummer, the temperature did not drop below freezing, but Heivia still clicked his tongue after stabbing an electric thermometer into the sand and reading the display.

“Six degrees. It’s six degrees Celsius. You could throw some fish out here without needing to refrigerate it. What the hell is going on?”

“I think the distance is a bigger problem,” said Quenser as he lay down on the sand. “We’re ten kilometers away. Why did we have to get off the truck so far away? This isn’t a carefully maintained sports field. Walking there and back is going to shorten my life.”

“Shut up. Don’t act like you could even run a city quarter marathon with plenty of water stations,” spat out Heivia. “At ground level, you can only see about five kilometers away. The earth is round, so the horizon covers up everything beyond that. But this is the empty desert. If the tires disturbed the sand and created a dust cloud as we travelled, it could poke up above the horizon.”

“I know what you’re trying to say, but shouldn’t the dedicated scouts handle these long-range reconnaissance missions? This doesn’t make sense. Everyone may have forgotten, but I’m only a student who wanted to learn about Object design on the battlefield.”

“And I’m a radar analyst! That’s an indoor job!! I’m supposed to have a cool intellectual position in an air conditioned room and a bottle of mineral water in hand, so how did I end up on this hellish picnic where I’m freezing my ass off in the desert!?”

Their commanding officer then contacted them over their radio.

Froleytia seemed to be as annoyed as them.

“Quiet down, war criminals. Do you really think you are in any position to choose your job? You should be thankful we actually need you.”

“Wow. I’ve been wondering. Shouldn’t we add a monitor to our radios? Then we could be supplied with someone – anyone – in a micro bikini.”

“You don’t get it, Heivia. This is the world of imagination. If everything is out in the open, it isn’t as arousing.”

“Okay, war criminals. Keep in mind that I can dock your pay for disrespect at any time.”

Quenser and Heivia solemnly prostrated themselves in front of the radio.

However, their apology was cheaper than a movie theater hot dog.

“(Quenser, this is because of your creepy comment about the world of imagination!)”

“(Are you sure it isn’t because of your comment about wanting ‘anyone’!?)”

“Sorry, but I can hear everything the two of you are saying.”

After having that pointed out, the two of them travelled through the desert night while keeping close to the ground.

The desert reflected the moonlight, so it was a bit brighter than a thick forest. However, Quenser had not undergone the basic training to receive the benefit of that. He had been relying solely on the overall greenish image produced by his night vision goggles.

“My eyes hurt. You aren’t supposed to have light shining on your eyes from so close. Are you sure this isn’t going to ruin my eyesight? Is the blue light really okay?”

“You’re complaining about that on a battlefield where you could be blown to pieces in one second? More importantly, we need to keep following the remains of the pipeline. We’re surrounded by nothing but desert, so we’d lose our way even with a map.”

Heivia pointed toward a two meter thick metal pipe a few hundred meters away. It continued in a straight line from the horizon behind them to the horizon in front of them. However, it was brown and rusted, it had large holes in places, and it simply disappeared for a while at some points.

“Is that a remnant of the old Oceanian military government?”

“Yeah. It was a pipeline that drew water up from deep underground and carried it to large-scale farms.”

“It isn’t for oil?”

“It’s what you call water resources. These days, the trendy thing to do is add ‘resources’ to something and find a way to make money off of it. As long as it makes money, it could be anything. Water resources, underground resources, power resources, food resources, human resources, sightseeing resources, living resources, forest resources, IP resources, and so on. It feels like they wouldn’t worry about endangered species if they didn’t have a price tag.”

“Sounds like something the Capitalist Corporations would love.”

“The Faith Organization would probably love this too. There are rumors of ghosts appearing at the ruins of the purification facilities and water gathering facilities the pipeline is centered around.”

“Are you sure it isn’t people searching for anything of value?”

“Honestly, I don’t know why I even mentioned it. There’s no point in a test of courage when there isn’t a single girl around.”

The desert was not level. It undulated like a stormy sea. When they did not choose their route carefully, they were forced to walk up and down large hills again and again. To avoid exerting unnecessary energy, they tried to choose the most level route possible.

“I feel like I’m lost on Mars.”

“This is better than that. I hear there’s tungsten buried below our feet.”

“Tung…what?”

“Just to be clear, this isn’t gonna make you any money. It’s spread out too thinly for that. If this area had a valuable vein, the old military government would have dug it all up in search of funds.”

After continuing a little longer, they saw some faint light beyond the desert horizon.

Heivia crouched down even lower and whispered to Quenser.

“That’s gotta be it. They’re really going all out.”

“What is the Simple Is Best doing right now?”

“It is preparing to charge in from a position thirty kilometers from our maintenance base,” cut in Froleytia. “That’s much further out than that light you can see. It’s hiding beyond the horizon.”

There was no sign of any enemy soldiers, but the closer they approached their destination, the higher the risk of cameras and sensors. Quenser and Heivia hurried on while checking for those things using their night vision goggles’ sensors.

“This is insane,” said Quenser as he walked across the cold sand. “We haven’t heard anything back from the intelligence division team that went in ahead of us, right? Would you normally send a student somewhere that dangerous?”

“You are not the only one involved in this,” answered Froleytia.

“Still…”

“We are both professionals, so we need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. But if you run across the intelligence division team that screwed up there, take them back with you. Over.”

“I am ''not'' a professional! I’m a student!!”

Once they arrived within three kilometers of their destination, even those two idiots stopped speaking as much.

They began to crawl slowly across the undulating sand dunes. Once they arrived at the top of one dune, their vision opened up.

[[Image:HO_v07_155.png|thumb]]

“Ow…”

The night vision goggles’ display filled with fluorescent green.

Feeling a slight pain in his temples, Quenser raised the goggles to his forehead and used his naked eyes.

The dark and calm desert landscape had completely changed.

The brightness had come from countless lights, both large and small.

“Yeah, it’s just as we thought,” groaned Heivia.

The scene several kilometers ahead of them resembled a temporary supply base. What stood out the most were the twenty large truck-like vehicles. They also saw prefab lodgings for over one hundred soldiers, gondola-equipped cranes in place of watchtowers, a communications facility, and defensive weapons ranging from tanks to mobile surface-to-air missile vehicles.

The lights ranged from large searchlights held by cranes to vehicle headlights and military flashlights. The one common factor was the complete lack of concern about hiding the light in the darkness.

While lying on the sand, Heivia pointed at one of the large truck-like vehicles.

“That’s one of the Capitalist Corporations’ mobile barricades. Were they called Ex. Walls? This confirms it. Another world power has joined in to crush us along with the Information Alliance’s Simple Is Best.”

“That vehicle is a barricade?”

Instead of a container on the back of the truck, it had what looked like a cylinder lying on its side. Both the front and the back of the vehicle had what looked like a driver’s compartment. Overall, it was reminiscent of a train.

Heivia bluntly answered Quenser’s question.

“You’ll see soon enough. C’mon, let’s get moving.”

As soon as he spoke, the driver’s compartments on both sides of the vehicle began moving in opposite directions. The metal cylinder in the middle expanded like an accordion. In no time at all, it formed a giant spring-like barricade that was seven meters thick and three hundred meters long.

Quenser expressed his understanding with a displeased look.

“Oh, I get it now.”

“Stupid, isn’t it? By lining up two rows of ten of them, they can form three kilometer barbed wire walls on either side.”

“Are they planning to stop our princess with those so the Simple Is Best can crush her?”

Barbed wire was most often viewed as a tool to prevent intruders, but it could also be laid out on the ground in coils to wrap around tank treads and armored vehicle tires.

But Quenser frowned as he lay on the sand.

“Are the Capitalist Corporations really thinking that? Forget barbed wire. You could surround the world in walls made from the same reinforced concrete as nuclear shelters and it would mean nothing against an Object’s main cannon.”

“Look closely and think about it. Why do you think their toys are called Ex. Walls?”

“What?”

“The Ex. stands for explosion. Change the magnification and look more closely. That coil of barbed wire is made to break into pieces if it receives a powerful shock such as from a bombardment. And each individual piece functions as an anti-personnel mine. That one truck probably has somewhere between two and three thousand.”

“Why? Scattering landmines isn’t going to stop the princess.”

“It would still be a problem concerning the image of clean wars using Objects.” One corner of Heivia’s mouth twisted up in a smile. “The war treaties forbid indiscriminately laying or scattering mines. But they can weasel their way out of it in the international conference room by saying their enemy was the one that scattered them. In other words, the princess could end up being labelled the bad guy for pulling the trigger. It would be awkward to be accused with that while stationed in Oceania to help with the war recovery. That weapon is meant to stop her with that threat.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s a weapon that ignores its actual ability and plays word games? It sounds like the stupid games nobles play.”

“You should avoid saying that in a Legitimacy Kingdom safe country.”

Froleytia then spoke up over the radio.

“Those mobile barricades form a block three kilometers across. They are being prepared simultaneously in eight places to surround our maintenance base and the Baby Magnum. Once that is complete, they will approach to tighten the circle. If we grow impatient and send out the princess, the Simple Is Best will charge in at supersonic speeds.”

The missing intelligence division team had snuck into one of those eight places, but they did not know which one.

“Those barricades are mobile, so they can connect to their military network and move to match the Object’s location. Once they have sealed off the princess’s actions as best they can, they will create a path for the Simple Is Best to charge in. To be honest, this could be bad if they are able to work together well.”

The Simple Is Best’s strategy was quite broad. It used its thick front armor and the acceleration of its high-output ion thrusters to ignore the damage done to it and charge in close enough for an extreme close range main cannon blast.

The princess’s only chance was at the moment of intersection.

The Simple Is Best had a monstrous top speed, but that meant it could not make tight turns. And to reduce weight, its additional armor was only on the front. If its charge was evaded by moving quickly to the left or right, it would be the princess’s turn. If she fired on the Simple Is Best when its backside was showing, there was nothing it could do to avoid destruction.

Effectively sealing off the left or right evasive routes using the barricades could be called a fatal means of hindering the princess.

“And that’s why the intelligence division tried to do something about it. But they failed. I don’t know if it’s the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance behind this, but they aren’t stupid.”

“They’re connected by their military network. Even if someone can’t hack in from outside, that link can be cut off by sneaking a virus directly into one of the barricade’s communications facilities. A single 25 euro chip can bring an end to this.”

“And that’s what we’re on our way to do?”

“If we weren’t needed, we wouldn’t have been called out here. Also, all eight sites are being infiltrated at the same time. As long as the virus gets in at one of them, we win.”

“That means there isn’t a problem if seven of the groups fail. Doesn’t that make us expendable?”

Quenser was relatively useless in normal combat unrelated to Objects, so Heivia ignored his whining and double-checked the layout of the barricade facility they were about to swiftly attack. He checked the arrangement of people, the patrol routes, the directions and strengths of the lights, the presence of various types of sensors, and so on. When his life was at risk, it looked like a treasure chest of information that he never got tired of looking at.

“I see an unfamiliar armored vehicle. Is that one not from the Capitalist Corporations?”

“Does that make it from the Information Alliance?”

“I’d say so. It’s probably an Information Alliance officer’s vehicle. He’ll be here in order to make sure the Capitalist Corporations goes along with their secret arrangement. It has a lot of antennae on it too. It’s probably for a VIP.”

“A VIP? So does it have 24/7 air conditioning, a fridge full of sodas, a microwave to reheat fried chicken, a home theater system, internet access, a simple shower, and a sofa that turns into a bed?”

Despite Quenser’s comments, his expression showed no jealousy.

“Even if he has a bodyguard team, I can’t believe an officer would head alone into the middle of an enemy nation’s unit like that. If the Capitalist Corporations changed their mind and decided to get some information from this powerful officer, he could end up on the receiving end of torture and truth serums.”

“He was probably ordered here. As we know all too well, if a higher up orders you to do something ridiculous, you can’t fight it. …As a student, you may be unaware, but the military is a constrained and harsh place.”

“I would never guess that from looking at you.”

The two idiots began a light fistfight, but then the hatch for the VIP armored vehicle opened. They frantically resumed observation.

“Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait! What the hell? She looks twelve. That girl is about the same age as the one we saved from the human traffickers, but she’s arrogantly wearing a military uniform.”

“As I said, the military is a harsh place.”

“Yeah… She’s a young Information Alliance officer, so she might be a product of their genius girl project. I don’t know the official name, though.”

“Why is it limited to girls? Some old man’s tastes?”

“You joke, but that might actually be the reason.” Quenser’s expression was perfectly serious. “It’s an issue of the symbolism. There’s a lot of difference in nuance between a manly hero standing before the people and a feminine saint standing before them. By showing a delicate, weak, lovely, and fair maiden working towards the war, the people will confuse their desire to protect her with a desire to fight.”

“I want to send my applause and a bomb to the person who seriously thought that up. How long will the people continue to be innocently moved by some child actor hired with money?”

“That ‘oh ho ho’ is a popular idol back in the Information Alliance safe countries. It’s no different from that. I hear one’s status in the Information Alliance changes based on your ability to insist that clearly deviated justice is correct. Supposedly, a popular dog from some commercials gets better medical care than your average office worker.”

Quenser glanced toward the assault rifle hanging from Heivia’s shoulder. It was primarily used as a mid-range weapon, but its various sensors allowed it to be used for sniping to a certain extent.

“So are you going to do it? I bet you could shoot her right in the head or heart from here.”

“She’s just the poor overseer the Information Alliance sent here. She’s unrelated to the surrounding barricade, so shooting her won’t stop them.”

“That’s good.”

“Tell me about it. We need to thank god that we can actually choose our enemy.”

Also, causing a commotion before injecting the virus would ruin any chances of their plan succeeding.

After checking over the entire enemy formation, Heivia slowly stood up.

“Okay, let’s get this horrible job over with.”

“Are we really going to sneak in there? They’ll spot us immediately with those lights everywhere. Shouldn’t we at least get an invisibility coat, an infinite health recovery first-aid box, and a charged particle bazooka? It’ll be impossible otherwise.”

“Shut up. Didn’t you know human beings can defeat a demon king with only cotton clothes and a wooden stick?”

Heivia led the way and Quenser followed. Rather than heading straight in, the two of them circled wide to the side as they travelled through the darkness.

The massive amount of light seemed to cut off the barricade facility from the rest of the desert, but that created a large gap between the lit areas and the unlit areas. And because it was an outdoor facility, the lights did not illuminate everything evenly.

In other words, there were still dark areas.

“(Do you really think we can sneak through the darkness without being noticed? What if there are a ton of sensors that you can’t see?)”

“(I’m being careful. But you don’t set up traps along animal trails. No one wants the alarm going off all throughout the night because of every little boar and rabbit. While preparing to set up the barricade so quickly, they don’t want delicate sensors everywhere. Their own people would be setting off the alarm all the time.)”

Quenser tilted his head, wondering if that was how it worked.

This was hardly the first time, but it was still quite thrilling to entrust his life to something he did not understand himself. However, he did not want to be left behind by Heivia while so close to enemy territory.

“(We can’t hide our footprints in the desert.)”

“(They’re working all over the place. There are already footprints everywhere.)”

But just as they took the first step, they stopped.

“What?”

Quenser looked around in confusion with his goggles still on his forehead.

He was focusing with his ears rather than his eyes.

“I hear an odd rumbling noise.”

“!?”

Heivia immediately pushed Quenser to the ground. While getting down on the cold sand himself, Heivia whispered to Quenser.

“(Hey, you idiot! Turn off all your sensors! Goggles, binoculars, everything!! Don’t answer your radio even if our huge-breasted commander calls. We’ll be blown to pieces the instant we send out any radio waves, infrared rays, or anything else!!)”

“(What?)”

“(This is no time to be clueless, Quenser. Unless this rumbling is being caused by a legendary dragon, there’s only one thing big enough to cause it!!)”

“(Wait a second!!)”

An unpleasant sweat covered Quenser’s body in an instant.

But time was not going to wait.

While lying on the sand, he dug through his coat pocket. He pulled out an electric thermometer and stabbed it into the sand.

“(7.5 degrees!)”

“(You’re kidding. It was six degrees earlier. Damn, have all these lights raised the ground temperature!?)”

As they whispered back and forth, they reached for a different pocket. What they pulled out was nothing special. It was a cold spray used for wrist sprains and such.

Quenser stabbed the thermometer into his uniform and sprayed the cold spray over his entire body. He sprayed it enough to bring it to 7.5 degrees just like the ground.

“(Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!! It’s all over if its sensors pick us up!!)”

“(We can do this, but will it really fool that collection of cutting-edge equipment? It has tons of sensors to detect people other than thermo!!)”

“(From what I’ve heard, it’s the type that can detect a mole using a combination of body temperature and electromagnetic field disturbance. All the iron sand in the desert should keep that from working perfectly!!)”

Quenser’s ears were slammed by a sound like the roar of the wind or like the air being crushed.

He could not move a finger any more.

[[Image:HO_v07_168.png|thumb]]

The countless stars and the faintly colored moonlight in the cold desert sky should have spread thinly across the entire area, but a giant shadow seemed to devour one area of that. It was an artificial device. It was a colossal weapon. It was the synonym for war that had brought an end to the nuclear age and still reigned as strongest.

It was an Object.

This was a 1.5 generation Object from the Capitalist Corporations.

“It’s just as the final transmission from the missing intelligence division team said.” His voice sounded truly unhappy. “That’s the Hornet Storm from the Capitalist Corporations. Completely unlike any other Object, that demonic machine was developed to attack large cities.”

The giant spherical main body that was the symbol of Objects appeared to be supported by an air cushion propulsion device. The back of the Object was covered by several giant metal panels that looked like a rounded version of peacock feathers.

However…

The biggest oddity about Hornet Storm’s design lay elsewhere.

“It’s an Object without a main canon,” muttered Quenser. “It only has 100 anti-personnel laser beam cannons. When fighting another Object, it uses its peacock feathers to refract and reflect all of its lasers to create a concentrated attack on a single point of the enemy’s armor.”

The princess’s Baby Magnum also had its main cannon distributed over seven cannons that could be used to cut off the enemy’s escape and use the opening to focus an attack on a single point.

However, it was rare to take it to this extreme.

This was similar to tearing everything down to the ground in order to distribute and focus the attacks.

“That weapon wasn’t made for a clean war,” groaned Heivia. “When a dictator uses all the people in a large city as a shield, that Object can kill him without leaving room for negotiation. This modern day grim reaper can ignore the hostages, charge into the city, and accurately fire on only the target. Once that thing has you located, it can kill you as easily as entering a name into a search engine. It’s specialized toward human targets, so you could call it our natural enemy.”

Even if its weapons were known as “small” laser beam cannons, that was in reference to Object-sized weapons. A single shot had the destructive power to easily melt a tank or shoot down a fighter.

Each of the 100 cannons could accurately target anything in a five kilometer range and it could penetrate any obstacle to utterly destroy its target. And a flesh-and-blood human could not evade a laser beam cannon that approached at the speed of light.

In a single action, it could accurately and precisely eliminate 100 enemy soldiers.

And what if, with only a few seconds of lag for cooling and re-aiming, it could repeat that action indefinitely?

What if, no matter how many hostages were gathered as shields, it could slip its attack through the gaps and hit only the target?

What if any human counterattack could be completely ignored thanks to the thick armor unique to Objects?

That would no longer be a fight. It would be divine punishment unilaterally poured down on them. In a way, the overwhelming intimidation this brought was more than that of a second generation Object that fought a war in a distant country. That Object could be sent to battlefield or safe country alike. It opposed the idea of the clean war and it was a nightmarish existence for guerrillas and terrorists hiding in cities.

And that Object was calmly crossing the battlefield as its air cushion blasted sand into the air.

Unpleasant sweat covered Quenser and Heivia’s bodies as they held their breath and tried to hold onto their lives. It travelled extremely close by the Capitalist Corporations soldiers working to prepare the barricade in the artificial lights.

The countless cannons attached to its spherical main body moved slightly in the darkness and its targeting sensors constantly scanned the ground.

This was the king of the food chain.

It did not run or hide. It simply travelled the world searching for prey.

As Quenser was forced to lie on the ground when faced by its arrogance, he could not even feel frustrated by it all. He could only wait as time passed. He dreamed of the moment when he could think in the past tense that it had left. He wanted to shout out and run away, but he had to desperately suppress that desire.

For five minutes, the Hornet Storm moved slowly as if evaluating its surroundings.

That must have been its standard procedure because the Object did not find any prey and it quickly accelerated away from the barricade facility.

Quenser felt like he could not breathe.

Even after its giant form disappeared beyond the horizon, he did not immediately get up.

“It must be going around to the eight barricades in order like that.”

“Yes, but it is estimated to have a top speed of over 550 kph. If the alarm goes off somewhere, it’ll be there in no time. We can’t use this cold spray forever and there’s nowhere to run in the middle of the desert. Once it detects us, our lives are literally over.”

“So when will it be back here?”

“If it uses that same pattern for all eight spots, I’d say a little under an hour. Of course, that’s assuming we don’t trigger the alarm.”

They did not want to meet that monster again.

The two of them both wanted to finish their business here as quickly as possible.

The real mission was still to come.