Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 5===

Quenser’s vision returned.

But he still could not fill in the blank in the back of his mind. He could only see things in unpleasant flashes and his brain could not figure out what the colors and shapes meant.

His senses did not return for a while.

It was a weirdly pleasant feeling, like having his fingertip freed from the fishing line constricting it.

“Pant, pant.”

He only now realized he had been breathing rapidly, nearly to the point of hyperventilation. His helmet’s thick visor was down, but that was the correct decision. He had been thrown out into the starry sky where he could not tell up from down or judge distance or direction.

He was in outer space.

(What – dammit – what happened!? How could I be thrown out into space when I was in the middle of the space station!?)

His memories were failing him.

But instead of the memories not existing, his weak mind was refusing to recall them.

“Heivia, Myonri! Is anyone still alive!?”

There was no response.

Had they all been reduced to chunks of flesh floating out in the vacuum of space, or were they afraid sending out a signal would give away their position to the enemy?

The enemy.

The 7th Core’s representative.

The symbol of the Federation of Elevator Industries’ power.

“…”

He could not calm his breathing. Beads of sweat swam through his helmet and he could not even brush them away with his hand.

(That’s right.)

It was like a jigsaw puzzle or like defragging a hard disk.

The fragments he had been refusing to recall began to piece themselves together, whether he wanted it or not.

(We were caught off guard. Louisiana fixed herself in place with a carabiner and pulled a lever while laughing. That opened a smoke vent in case of fire, so we were all sucked out of the space station.)

But how had Louisiana Honeysuckle managed to catch them off guard?

That lab coat girl may have been a genius, but a large group of Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had gathered there. She was not the star of a samurai movie, so it was unrealistic to think she could take on so many enemies at once.

Real war was much crueler and more boring.

They were not fighting in order to look cool, so that was not too surprising.

So what had happened?

(''It'' arrived.)

There was only one thing that could allow one side of a battle to crush the other: sending in greater firepower. It was a simple but absolute law.

(She did something…and then the whole station shook violently. Which distracted us enough for her to catch us off guard.)

He gulped.

Pain flashed in the back of his mind. The blinding light was coming from his brain, not his eyes. Was it really this painful to recall a traumatizing experience?

He did not want to believe it.

He did not want to accept that was real.

But his head moved all on its own. It turned. He could not fight the ultimate charisma carried only by the strongest weapon.

There it was.

It was a few kilometers away, which was nothing in space.

It was more than 50m tall.

He saw a colossal nuke-resistant mass.

The spherical main body was covered with so many laser beams and plasma cannons it looked like a sea urchin or a chestnut burr. The most notable trait was the large half-circle piece attached around the main body. That bridge piece was fixed in place like headphones and had cylindrical tanks attached at even intervals.

The large rings on the back and bottom of the main body appeared to be the propulsion devices.

But they seemed insufficient to support its 200 thousand ton weight. The rings probably had some kind of engine equipped at even intervals for a multipurpose attitude control device that could act as retrorockets as well.

“She cut her precious daughter loose from its huge umbilical cord,” said a dazed voice over the radio. It was Heivia. “Where the hell was that thing in the elevator!? In a higher station? Or in the weight at the top!?”

“How should I know!? And that isn’t what matters!!”

Quenser could not imagine what this thing would do.

What kind of main cannon did it have? What kind of propulsion did it use? Were its armor panels and reactor different from the surface Objects? What kind of tactics would it use?

It was right in front of him, but the information refused to enter his head.

Instead…

“Gyaahhh!!”

“Stay low. We need to withdraw. Find something to hide behind!!”

“That’s useless against an Object. What good is playing hide-and-seek with that thing!?”

Only the sounds of lives being shredded shook his eardrums and then his entire body too.

Then he realized this should not have been possible in space.

(I can…hear them? I’m in a vacuum, but I can hear the sounds directly???)

This was not reaching him through his communicator. He could tell the physical voices were reaching him. It was just like a movie or game where firing a laser beam filled outer space with noise.

He heard an odd sound of ejection.

It came from that Object. It had a main cannon on either side, but instead of from the front, some kind of gas was being ejected from small holes covering their sides.

In fact…

“Oxy…gen???”

He thought this had to be some kind of joke.

But that nightmarish waste of resources did not vanish from his view.

7th Core and the Capitalist Corporations as a whole had sent this monster out into the world.

The Federation of Elevator Industries was not your normal organization. That much had been obvious ever since Louisiana Honeysuckle made an appearance, but the nightmare had taken physical form here.

The vacuum of space was such a basic and fundamental concept, yet it had been shattered with a single attack.

“Are you insane!? That Object controls oxygen in the vacuum of space!?”

The sound of burning metal reached him.

It was like hearing a cheap cigar lighter.

But this was concentrated oxygen filling deadly outer space. Some of the soldiers had to be breathing a sigh of relief when they did not die after their spacesuit tore or helmet broke. Was there really enough oxygen there to have some level of atmospheric pressure???

They were surrounded by lifegiving oxygen.

But.

That very oxygen was used as fuel for a fire hot enough to melt steel.

There were screams.

Those death cries normally would not have reached him through the vacuum of space, but he could not get them out of his ears or brain.

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

He was on the outer edge of the oxygen area, so he was flipped over and thrown beyond the reach of the explosive flames. The flames had not hit him directly, but he still would have been roasted by the heat if not for his heat-resistant spacesuit.

He could not perform the calculations necessary to determine if this was possible with just oxygen.

It may have also used some other gas like hydrogen or acetylene. But it was not the technological issues that left him speechless.

He saw countless spheres the same color as flesh floating around.

It took him a second to realize that was the result of human flesh being liquefied, gathering together in zero-g, and then cooling. It had long been said that people became stars in the sky when they died, but that had finally been made a reality with technology. But this was not something anyone had wanted to be real. In contrast to the original saying, the reality had no hint of dignity or respect to be found. They were just round blobs. People were reduced to things. No more and no less.

This was not the only way to use oxygen.

It could be used to burn, to cool, and to oxidate. Since the Object had a near endless supply of the element necessary to maintain life, it could also be using some kind of biological weapon. Like a microbe that eats aluminum or a larva that chews through plastic.

“Louisiana.”

The Capitalist Corporations had completed their space elevator.

They had carried materials into space for war.

Was this why they had needed so many supplies in space that they needed to build Mother Lady?

“Louisiana Honeysuckle!!!!!!”