Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 3===

“So did Heivia die or what?”

“No, he fell into the canyon while talking on the radio, but I think he’s still alive,” replied the Princess. “Distracted walking really is dangerous, isn’t it?”

It was an entirely casual conversation.

A long river flowed through the large canyon likely created by the river’s erosion and there were shelf-like ledges along the sides, creating several levels.

The Baby Magnum and its 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion generally disliked height differences, so they were moving north alongside that dry brick-colored line.

(This is pretty incredible…)

Vehicles the size of two-story apartment buildings were driving along a cracked and bumpy wasteland, but (even if they had slowed down some) it was a very smooth ride. That was necessary when they carried delicate equipment like the largescale computers and ammunition.

(Instead of the tires, it’s the hydraulic cylinders and springs attached to the axles that are supporting them, right? The old maintenance lady said it would be simplest to look at a toy RC car for comparison, but these things weigh more than 100 tons, don’t they?)

And it was not just the Legitimacy Kingdom military adding an abnormal element to the scenery.

They were on their way to one of the cities dotting the Greater Canyon.

They were a lot like truck bases with a gas station in the center and several supermarkets, motels, and the like gathered around.

However, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

“Silo cities, huh?”

Quenser spoke without thinking on the second-story platform circling the outside of one giant vehicle as it passed by. The Princess must have been bored on this transport mission because she spoke to him over the radio from the Baby Magnum.

“They apparently turned the old missile silos into cities. Weird, aren’t they?”

“Well, the temperature difference between day and night is pretty harsh in the desert, so you don’t gain much by staying out on the surface. And those missile silos are really roomy. I hear the entrance elevator alone can hold an entire large tractor-trailer.”

“They couldn’t have gotten the missiles inside otherwise.”

Most people thought of missile silos as giant holes in the ground, but there was more to them than that. There were guidance pathways to allow the launch smoke to escape, an armory to store more missiles, three-dimensional pathways that connected the main silo with the service entrance, a command input center, a large computer room, and facilities for security, power, barracks, and supplies. A real silo would place all that underground so its presence was not visible via satellite, so they were already like a sort of geofront city. It was on the same scale as the floating cities known as aircraft carriers.

The facilities were no longer needed in this age of clean wars brought about by the collapse of the UN and the end of the nuclear age, but even after the strategic weapons were removed, the underground space remained. Then civilians began living there and building homes until they had something like a giant ant colony that contained tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

“The safest form of nuke-proof city, hm?” commented the Princess.

“I doubt it’s just pure durability. I mean, those places have to have deteriorated a lot with time. And no one will be running durability tests anymore. The bedrock that supposedly makes them nuke-proof could collapse and bury them all deep underground. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.”

“Powering through it with durability makes them sound a lot like Objects.”

“Princess, have you never heard the legend of the Liquid Brain which had its cockpit elevator malfunction, trapping the Elite inside for three months? Toward the end of that survival experience, she apparently saw the beans in her own crap begin to sprout and she had to seriously debate whether or not to eat those sprouts.”

“Hard cover books are too much effort. I wish they would go ahead and make it into a movie.”

“Not a chance. It’d hurt the image of their holy knight girl.”

However, they could not visit the actual silo cities.

They were only passing by at low speed, so the most they could do was buy souvenirs from the peddler boys and girls. And they still could not let their guard down because one of them might be a disguised child soldier carrying a rocket launcher. They could not exactly buy anything edible, but they had relaxed somewhat after making it this far without incident.

But things were a little different this time.

There was a radio transmission from another one of the vehicles just as they were finishing passing by the silo city.

“Command to Baby Magnum.”

“Frolaytia?”

“We have an Object approaching from the north. Based on the footage from the drone we sent ahead, it appears to be the Faith Organization’s Generation Two Jack in the Box. It has apparently been frequently patrolling back and forth between the silo cities in this area.”

“Are they distributing emergency food as usual?”

“Or hiring people for simple military work to spread money throughout the region and gather support. Either way, they’re trying to spread their faith like always. You should be detecting it with your Object’s cameras and radar soon, so be on your guard.”

“Understood.”

“I’m sure you understand, but the second you actually fire a shot, it’s game over. Don’t forget that this is the Greater Canyon located between the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance home countries. Again, they’ve gone around providing food and employment, so we can’t expect the locals to give an impartial witness account.”

(Hold on, wait. Are all three other world powers working together to crush us here?)

Quenser gulped as he looked over toward the great cloud of dust that appeared before the 50m Object was visible. It was clearly taller than the base zone vehicle’s second-story platform. It looked like a filthy cumulonimbus cloud and it seemed to symbolize fearsome horsepower.

Tricky camouflage was not needed.

If it could not brute force its way through any obstacle, it could not be called an Object.

“So we’ll lock onto each other and remain as cautious as possible while passing by without firing a single shot,” said the Princess.

“Exactly right,” replied Frolaytia.

Quenser felt a change in movement from the two-story apartment building of a vehicle he sat on. All of the vehicles moved over to the right as if clearing the way.

“Talk about dangerous. A stray shot could fly right into the silo city at this range.”

“I won’t shoot, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’s that ''shouldn’t'' that scares me!!”

Meanwhile, the base of the cumulonimbus cloud came into view.

It was the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Jack in the Box.

(A jack in the box, huh?)

The 50m spherical main body was supported by static electricity using four floats arranged into a wide-open V-shape and a narrowly closed V-shape. It had a single main cannon on the very front. However, it was not a low-stability plasma cannon, a laser beam, a rapid-fire beam cannon, a coilgun, a railgun, or any of the other usual varieties.

Quenser checked the shape with binoculars and saw its main cannon was structured like a collapsible parabolic antenna or an auto-open umbrella. A single main pillar stuck out forward and eight arms were attached alongside that. And the sides of the main pillar were covered in something like gear teeth.

“The main cannon uses a powerful spring to launch a metal shell. One made of lead,” explained Frolaytia.

“A spring, huh?”

“That’s where its name comes from. The Faith Organization had a pretty bad accidental explosion with a railgun capacitor three years ago, and this Object was built from that trauma.”

“And did the metal industry use that mood of self-restraint to encroach on the electronics industry’s turf? One person’s misfortune is another person’s opportunity, I guess. …Then again, their factories are all state managed, so they’re cut off from all that business stuff.”

“Oh, you sound calm. Did hearing it uses a spring make it sound like a child’s toy? Keep in mind what it is in earthquake countermeasures that supports super high-rise buildings that weigh tens of thousands of tons. Then you should understand just what kind of power that thing contains.”

Frolaytia rattled off that comparison so quickly that Quenser had to imagine she had had a difficult time when writing up a report for the safe country councilmembers.

“And we even have some weapons that use springs as their primary source of power.”

“Yeah, those landmines that spring straight up and scatter a bunch of metal balls, right?”

“For a more direct example, there is also an anti-tank weapon that uses a thick spring in a portable launch tube to fire a warhead instead of an old-fashioned rocket propelled by explosives. They can hit a tank 500m away.”

…Quenser decided to stay silent when he sensitively picked up on the fact that she wanted to make use of the otherwise pointless information she had spent all night learning for an entirely pointless meeting.

[[Image:HO_v14_133.jpg|thumb]]

He sat there and listened to the much-appreciated radio lecture from Female Teacher Frolaytia who was desperately searching for a way to release the feelings pent up inside her.

“The simple structure makes the equations easier, so they can combine vectors to multiply the output force all they want. This might become more of a threat in the future when we hit an upper limit in the power of railguns and coilguns. Each of the eight arms contains an extremely powerful coil spring made of chromium steel and that power is made to gather in the main pillar and fire the ring-shaped shell. And don’t take it lightly because it’s so primitive. This is cutting-edge tech that was on the table as a possible non-linear motor mass driver.”

“But that was never completed, was it?” pointed out the Princess.

“You can be scary at times like this, Princess,” said Quenser. “So what does it have other than the main cannon?”

“The whole thing is a crystallization of elastic alloys,” explained Frolaytia. “The suspension uses physical-sensor inverted pendulums and it has a quick-dash tail on the back.”

“A tail???”

“Guiderails are located along the back 180 degrees of the spherical main body and a giant cylinder can freely move along that. Think of it like a giant pile bunker. It fires that in the opposite direction to negate the main cannon’s recoil and it also stabs it into the ground to make quick dashes without using its static electricity system. The power it uses to move left and right can’t be ignored. Its evasion accuracy is really quite good.”

“Four legs, a main cannon that can open and close, and a tail.”

“The Faith Organization apparently calls it Fenrir. So it’s a giant wolf.”

“Their leader is called the Venerable Elder, right? Can they not sleep at night if they don’t give everything cool names???”

Meanwhile, the moment of tension was fast approaching.

A transmission arrived from Heivia who was apparently searching for landmines on the front line (and had supposedly fallen into the canyon while not paying attention).

“I’ve got visual confirmation of the bastard. Their maintenance base seems to be vehicle-based as well, but they use treads. The round bastard is approaching with that convoy surrounding him.”

“Treads are probably a huge pain to fix when they break.”

“Worst of all, I bet they shake so much your pelvis just about breaks when you’re seated inside.”

“Everyone, review the ROE,” said Frolaytia. “We’ll be passing them on the right, so get behind the nearest cover and keep your firearm at the ready. But don’t put your finger on the trigger. This is a yearly event, so let’s get through it peacefully but with extreme caution.”

Quenser had not been issued a firearm, but even he could feel his fingertips itching for a trigger.

“This is strange… The Faith Organization is too close. We moved out of the way, but they aren’t moving to their right too. Who do they think they are? They’re just cutting straight down the center!”

“Don’t take it negatively. It’s a terrain issue. I bet they don’t want to get too close to the cliff’s edge. Listen, what we have to do doesn’t change. We pass them by without doing anything. The Faith Organization is also just completing a yearly event here, so they have no reason to start a pointless battle.”

The wind whirled around.

The vehicles were the size of two-story apartment or school buildings and some of them passed by only a few meters away. Before even thinking about their assault rifle bullets, they were close enough to jump to the enemy vehicle if they took a running start. It was not often they had time to stare at Faith Organization uniforms from so close up.

They wore skin-tight uniforms despite being in a blazing hot wasteland.

But instead of being highly disciplined, it seemed more like they were mocking the Legitimacy Kingdom troops for their rough appearance while passing by so close.

Shielded autocannons creaked on their rotating turrets with a metallic sound like a park swing set. The weapons slowly turned to match their relative speed and keep their sights on the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers’ chests. Those things had enough firepower to destroy a reinforced concrete statue like it was styrofoam. He knew nothing was going to happen, but his throat still grew dry at the sight.

(But is it really safe?)

Some very unpleasant doubts creeped into Quenser’s mind on the second-story platform.

(The Paper Bikini we ran into in the Mekong District was a Faith Organization Second Generation too, wasn’t it? That isn’t going to pull the trigger on a conflict despite what the calculations say, will it?)

He turned his gaze toward the Baby magnum up front.

The two Objects were also passing by at only a few dozen meters apart.

And that was when it happened.

The Faith Organization Object suddenly fired its main cannon and the Legitimacy Kingdom Object dodged to the side with all its might.

A metal shell was fired with unbelievable force using the combined power of eight arms concentrated on a single point.

The Princess dodged like swinging her torso away from a boxer’s straight right. That extremely swift footwork was unbelievable for a 200,000 ton mass of metal.

But this was no time to be staring in awe.

He did not even have enough time to do anything as admirable as get down on the floor. When the shockwave hit the two-story apartment building of a vehicle, it pitched forward and rose from the ground, causing Quenser to fall on his butt and roll along the steel surface.

Next, the Jack in the Box sprayed liquefied lead from something like a water pipe near the point of the floats at its feet. The lead collided with the base of the main cannon pillar. Only the base area spun around, rapidly cooled and hardened, and created a ringed shell shaped a lot like a baumkuchen. The next shell had been loaded.

“Bh!? Frolaytia, emergency!!”

“You idiots!!!!!!”

“Who is…that lovely comment directed at!?”

Now that they had been fired on, they could not just stand around. The Baby Magnum began dodging left and right, but it had yet to return fire even once.

“Frolaytia, what are my orders?” asked the Princess.

“~ ~ ~”

“What am I supposed to do, Frolaytia!?”

Quenser thought he could hear her grinding her teeth even from here.

If they did nothing, the enemy would maintain the advantage. The base vehicles might be directly targeted and the nearby silo city might be caught in the middle as well. The city was deep underground and protected by the thick bedrock in order to resist a nuclear explosion, but there were more than 10,000 people on the surface. They could not sacrifice those people.

The busty, silver-haired commander summed it all up for them.

“Ohhh, honestly!! Everyone, here are your orders: make sure every last one of you survives!!!!!”

The fact that she did not directly tell them to kill the enemy was a sign of her maiden-like bashfulness.

Non-Object gunfire began to ring out all around. Grenades were thrown back and forth across the gap of a few meters. When some Faith Organization guard soldiers tried to jump across like old-fashioned pirates, the Legitimacy Kingdom hit them with their assault rifle stocks and knocked them down between the vehicles. And that was a canyon of death where the ground was constantly being torn up by treads and tires taller than a person.

Quenser heard the creaking of a park swing set from quite nearby.

It was a shielded autocannon.

If that was fired, he would have a fist-sized hole blown in him even if he was hiding behind a bulletproof door.

“Dammit!! Is this violent bunch really going around doing heroic volunteer work!?”

It was time to make up his mind.

He prepared some Hand Axe plastic explosive he carried in his backpack and threw it a few meters ahead. The gunner was mostly protected by the thick shield and he could not even see their face, but that did not matter with an explosive. He could blast the entire autocannon to pieces at the press of a button.

There was only one problem.

(I didn’t have time to put a fuse in it!!)

“Okay…uh, kaboom!!!!!”

He had no choice but to shout it at the top of his lungs. When he did, the gunner jumped so much their head poked above the shield and then they rolled on out. They seemed to think they really were caught in an explosion. When he realized the tearful gunner – whose legs had given out and who was about to pee herself – was a 13-year-old girl with twintails, Quenser – a true man and a dandy with a discerning eye (for the difference between 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds) – gave a silent salute. He was glad he had not blown her up.

Meanwhile, the large vehicles passed each other by and the movable range of the autocannon prevented it from targeting him anymore.

However, it was too soon to breathe a sigh of relief.

100 vehicles on each side were passing by, so another one would be coming along soon enough.

But…

There was an explosion like a volcanic eruption.

The shock was so great that a Faith Organization special vehicle was torn to pieces and even Quenser was knocked from his feet.

“Bfhh!? Whah uh eh…!?”

Quenser’s jaw was not working properly as he held his head in his hands and yelled something unintelligible.

(Old-fashioned artillery!? That didn’t seem to be an Object…)

He felt like a solid mass of sound had taken up residence deep in his ears, but he could still hear something like a high-pitched whistle slicing through the air. And the noise was getting closer. It was an extra-large shell that had been fired up to the stratosphere in a parabolic arc so gravity would give it frightening acceleration as it fell.

More and more of the Faith Organization’s giant vehicles were enveloped by explosions. Each time, the two-story apartment buildings of metal were badly twisted and tossed straight upwards.

They were receiving unexpected artillery support, but Quenser could not just celebrate given the close quarters of the battlefield. Modern artillery shells apparently had wings attached and could be freely guided using GPS, but nothing in the world was perfect. And even if their aim was accurate, the blast propelled razor-sharp shrapnel and a ground-level fireworks show began as the machinegun ammo belts, artillery shells, and missiles caught fire.

“Tia-chaaan.”

Then a radio transmission arrived with the kind of encryption that looked like an amateur had given it a good try. So of course their military grade equipment could decrypt it just fine.

“You seem to be having difficulties, so I’ll be helping out. I was worried we weren’t going to get to use this railway gun anyway.”

“You idiot!!”

Frolaytia must have decided something properly encrypted would not reach him because she used something that would be more at home on a café’s free wi-fi.

“We don’t need your help! And what is a civilian doing here anyway!?”

“Wellll, nobles like us have a policy known as nobles oblige, do we not? That expands the definition of justified self-defense to include the entire city we happened across. The Greater Canyon is a blank zone, so I too am free to engage in combat if I deem the residents of this non-militarized region are in danger.”

“That is no more than a custom! It isn’t officially defined in military law! And it’s even more of a problem outside of Legitimacy Kingdom territory!!”

Incidentally, that crystallization of romance known as a railway gun was a gun so gigantic it could only be moved via train. But here…

(Did they go to the effort of laying rail or is it meaninglessly loaded on a truck? And how many people do you need to run a single railway gun if you include the surrounding guards? Then again, they might have automated a lot of it these days…)

“I’m on my way there, so do you best to survive until then.”

“Everyone,” announced Frolaytia. “Escape this threat before that idiot arrives!!”

Only that last transmission used proper military encryption.

And they could not just sit around listening forever.

In order to avoid the burning remains of the destroyed ones, the Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization’s monstrous vehicles moved even closer together.

Quenser saw some people in Faith Organization uniforms make a crouching start and begin running to jump over to his vehicle while he was knocked down.

This time it was two busty blondes wearing gasmasks. Since their hair color and heights were about the same, were they a pair of upperclassmen twins?

His life, or his moe spirit?

It was time for that true man to make the ultimate decision.

“Ah, ah, awah!!!???”

The idiot grabbed and raised a maintenance wrench about the size of a wooden sword, but he could not work up much motivation and was weak in the knees. Thus, the useless idiot simply stood on the front line in the spot the enemy planned to land and the gas mask girls ultimately collided with him and they fell to the second-story platform’s floor in a heap.

While being supplied with the softness of boobs all over his face, Quenser heard a voice from their radios.

“Enemy radar lock confirmed! Repeat, the Legitimacy Kingdom was the first to make a radar lock! That means we have no choice but to fight you to stop your irrational unit’s rampage!!”

“Mghfgh, is your Pilot Elite making excuses to their allies while they fight!? If you feel that guilty about it, then don’t do it!!”

Quenser was answered with a pair of brutal sounds.

His sommelier’s judgement determined them to be a D or an E. His vision was blocked by those lovely-smelling boobs, but he was pretty sure he knew what those sounds were: the gas mask girls had decided their assault rifles would be difficult to use in this situation, so they had drawn large knives from the sheaths at their ankles.

While his brain was filled with a bizarre mixture of adrenaline and endorphins, Quenser dizzily shouted at the top of his lungs.

“So are you cute, or not!? Don’t think you can get away with being ugly after all this!!!!!”

Still boob-blinded, Quenser swung his giant wrench around in the hopes of at least seeing their faces. He felt a solid sensation as the bottom of the giant wrench hit the filter can that looked like an octopus mouth. The mask did not come off since it was fixed in place with several rubber straps, but it was enough to shake whichever twin was on top.

That was a miracle.

He could not rely on it, so he had to escape.

Just as Quenser tried to crawl away, either Gasmask L or Gasmask R did something odd. They were about two meters apart. That was too far away to swing a knife and hit him, but she stayed down on one knee, held her right arm straight out, and pointed the knife tip at him.

To him, it looked a lot like she was holding the blade like a handgun.

He had a very bad feeling about this.

Now, a question: what was the Jack in the Box known for?

“Oh, no! Is that thing spring-loa-…”

He heard a dull sound much like a blade stabbing through the center of a thick and fully-extended rubber band. A silver flash flew out. A thick coil spring had been loaded in the grip. Quenser did not have time to even think about dodging. He just sat there as he felt an impact in his left chest like someone was placing their full weight on him in high heels. Then he collapsed backwards and writhed in pain.

“Bhoh!? Ghah!!”

The 20cm chromium steel tip had been launched into his chest with the power of a spring, but Quenser was writhing with far more energy than one would expect.

The gasmask twins tilted their heads and reached for their firearms once more.

They must have wanted to execute him with the muzzle to his head because the identical sisters slowly approached. The Legitimacy Kingdom scum looked up at them with a blank look in his eyes.

“Ugh…wait…at least let me show off what saved my life! Oh, thank goodness I bought this bargain double-length issue of a pinup magazine behind my commander’s back and had it hidden in my uniform to help me get through all that harsh and lonely work…!!”

Quenser had entered an odd high as the fear, elation, fighting spirit, and lingering sensation of boobs kept rolling around in his head one after another.

And that may have been why he overlooked it.

Even if they were freaks who walked around in gasmasks, girls were generally less than pleased to have a sexy Halloween magazine waved in their faces. (And the seal to prevent instore browsing of adult material acted as the limit breaker.) Plus, this was the Faith Organization military, so all of their soldiers had to be pure holy knights and pure warrior maidens.

The situation was hopeless, but as he lay on his back, Quenser saw something behind the approaching gasmask girls of unknown attractiveness.

Someone slowly stepped out from behind cover on this second-story platform. It was Myonri, a short girl from the Legitimacy Kingdom. And the weapon she held at her hip was a submachinegun that fired handgun bullets.

Quenser instantly understood the situation.

That girl did not understand moe.

“Wait, no!! Cute girls are one of the world’s most important resources!!”

With a merciless spray of gunfire, the twins were mowed down without their killer knowing why it was so important that they came as a set. The shock knocked a certain someone back down and his vision was blocked once more. This time, it was dead boobs that covered Quenser’s face. The idiot could not stop the tears, but then he realized that he could still feel a pulse in those boobs.

Myonri explained after shoving the gasmask girls aside with her boot.

“Bulletproof jackets. Those black-hearted people are bound to be wearing carbon or spider silk ones.”

“Oh, thank god. Thank all of their gods, Myonri…”

“Hm? You were actually scared to tears and snot???”

It was not the fear, but he had his reasons.

“Anyway, let’s tie them up and use them as human shields.”

“Hold on, I don’t like the sound of that! Myonri, I’m afraid of what would happen if I left them with you, so I’ll tie up those girls!!”

In the distance, the Jack in the Box had apparently been firing lead shells on the Princess the entire time, but their “skirmish” seemed to be over. The most frightening part was the skill displayed by the Princess in dodging every shot without returning fire even once.

The two sets of 100 vehicles had finished passing by at the giants’ feet.

But that did not mean it was over.

After they had used zip ties to bind the gasmask twins’ hands behind their backs, Frolaytia contacted them over the radio.

“Everyone, we will now construct our maintenance base zone. Prepare for the next clash. Split between a base construction team and a combat preparation team. We will hold a pre-mission briefing for those headed to the front line, so they need to gather separately.”

“Frolaytia, do you think they’re going to make a U-turn to attack again?”

“If that was only a provocation or spontaneous battle, I would say it was over, but if they had a planned reason for breaking our implicit understanding, then they will be back. While we only travel down this way once a year, the Faith Organization frequently moves back and forth providing food and employment as a way to spread their faith. Since we can’t tell what the enemy is going to do, we have to prepare for the worst. …If they plan to fight in this area, it’s sure to come down to speed. We have to settle this while the heads of the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance in their safe countries are still too afraid of all-out war to do anything.” She paused for a beat. “Also, if the Faith Organization does make a U-turn and attacks again, that silo city will be caught in the middle of it all. There is only one way to keep tens of thousands of lives from being trampled in that dance of giants: evacuate them ahead of time. Whatever the case, we have no time. If you understand that, then quit wasting time with pointless questions and get to work!!”