Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 6===

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray looked highly sadistic, but (as long as she could use you as a pawn) she apparently did not completely throw out her kindness. She must have done her part because the Paper Bikini moved elsewhere and the tank unit was not exposed and slaughtered.

“I’m starting to think being on their side wouldn’t be all that bad. Being a New Yorker sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”

“Heivia, that’s got to be some brainwashing using the suspension bridge effect or the exhaustion effect. Look at this rationally, compare the size of their boobs, and you’ll remember just which commander is better.”

However, they had lost some of the carts attached to the backs of the tanks due to the infantry battle with rockets flying everywhere, so the infantry had to take turns walking and resting. Well, that or get into fistfights over who got a spot on the surviving carts.

[[Image:HO_v14_059.jpg|thumb]]

Then they heard a cute grunt of effort.

They looked up to see the hatch at the top of the tank turret open up. The person who climbed out was a small girl using a barrette to keep her red hair back in a pineapple shape.

“Uhyah. Man is it hot out here. I’m sweating already…”

To prevent hearing loss, she wore something like airtight headphones over her ears. She also had a different small earphone and a wireless mic on her throat, but she was not wearing any sort of helmet.

For that matter, she was not wearing a jacket and she was not wearing pants or a skirt either.

They were on the front line, yet she was wearing nothing more than a white blouse and panties. Her outfit was blatantly just sleepwear.

“Both her thighs and navel are exposed!? Are you a legit shut-in who’s forgotten what day of the week it is!? Just how casual are you taking this!? From this low angle, it’s impossible to miss those blood-orange side-string panties!!”

“Nn, hh…???”

After a slight groan, she removed the headgear and placed it around her neck with a puzzled look. She apparently had not heard him, but she was able to guess what his question was based on his lip movements.

“Shut up. We need to wash all this gore off my ride before it dries. I’ll give you a bucket, so go get some water.”

Based on her, the other drivers may have been wearing pajamas and negligee too. The boy hesitantly accepted the metal bucket dropped down toward him, but then he found some kind of trash in the bottom.

It was the plastic wrapper for a pack of trading cards.

The cards were from a series meant for a female demographic that anthropomorphized the world’s machineguns and had you build a unit and give them an idol debut. You were meant to raise the sharp-tongued AI characters through their school life in a boys dorm where they would clash with their rivals and solve mysteries at a café afterschool. Quenser remembered hearing something about using a smartphone app to read the code on the cards to reach even further depths in that inescapable quicksand of a game.

(Don’t tell me she’s addicted to this stuff? And is she what the Island Nation calls a fujoshi?)

Just as he started doubting his conclusion, he found something more.

It was a receipt for one body pillow and one bottle of men’s shampoo.

(She said something about loneliness countermeasures for when she’s alone, but if this is a complication of that ‘rotten’ disease of hers, her case is really severe…!!)

“?”

Not everyone was willing to be open about their secret interests, so he could not predict how she would react if he was honest here. In the worst case, letting that sleepwear girl – whose blouse was unbuttoned on the bottom and revealing her navel – know what he had seen could lead to her chasing after him in that 50-ton tank in the hopes of running him over and silencing him! Sensing danger, Quenser quickly changed the subject.

“The entire tank is covered in reactive armor, so where do you climb down?”

“Over there or over there,” she said while lazily pointing toward the corners of the tank which were likely the hardest points. Quenser used those paths to hold the seawater-filled bucket up as an offering to the pineapple-haired girl.

He had fulfilled her orders perfectly, but she still seemed irritated.

“Ohh, this is just the worst, the worst, the ''worst''… I normally wouldn’t want seawater anywhere near my precious ride…”

“Shut up, you’re the one that was driving it through all this seawater covering the mangrove!”

“If we start driving again like this, you’ll get all the gore right on your heads as you ride your cart. Are you sure you want that?”

The potatoes groaned and gagged as the pineapple girl’s words quieted them down. They could not exactly complain when they had done this themselves.

“This is the latest product of Rosenkavalier, a status symbol for the wealthy the world over. Its elegant form manages both a low hit rate and excellent aerodynamics. Plus, the engine provides both quick bursts of speed and high horsepower! Let the rumble of the engine intoxicate you! Well, I doubt some fancy-pants Legitimacy Kingdom nobles would understand when you people are happy in the back seat of something as overly-long as a dachshund and only worth a million bucks. Tanks are doing battle in a world worth ten times as much.”

“Then why don’t you go ahead and paint that lame penis logo on the front of the tank!?”

“P-penis…!? (blush)”

“What else is that curved thing supposed to look like!?”

It was actually based on the tower card in tarot and represented the company’s constant vigilance to make sure they never grew arrogant even when they stood at the top of the world, but that did not really matter here.

“There, I’ve finished replacing the reactive armor. That should make up for what you lost.”

“Th-thanks so much. Oh, you even got the color right so it doesn’t stand out. It loses points for not being the maker’s official product, but I still appreciate the effort☆”

“It really only needed to function properly, but once I got started, I felt my modeling spirit beginning to burn.”

“I know just what you mean.”

For the paint, he had used the kit meant to apply makeup to the face, hands, or anywhere else that stuck out from the camouflage. Everyone might have forgotten by this point, but those idiots had just returned from a serious job where they hid deep in the forest and blew up heroin factories. …This seemed to be a world where actual effort only made things worse for you.

“Okay, if we’re done sunbathing, let’s get back to work. I’m headed back down into my workplace.”

“Dammit, I can feel the chilly air-conditioning coming from that open hatch…!”

Their complaints were of course ignored and Dorothea even shivered in her navel-exposing blouse. The difference in temperature seemed to be affecting her. Now that they had washed off the filth and replaced the reactive armor, the girl ducked back into the hatch.

But she forgot to close it.

And that meant the indoor sleepwear girl’s odd comment escaped the confines of the tank.

“Ohh, did you miss me, my blond butler? Huggy huggy.”

(Is she talking to a two-sided body pillow made to look like a sharp-tongued butler?)

“Yes, I know you’re shy, but let’s aim your main gun forward. Hwa ha ha. Don’t cover your face and blush. That thing is impressive enough to show off to anyone.”

(Ehhh!? The tank itself is a guy♂!? Then why have I been working so hard for it? C-come to think of it, little Wraithy had a real butler serving her. She did warn me not to look into it, but what is this Martini Series…!?)

The hatch finally closed.

Had the red-haired pineapple girl noticed her mistake or not?

She once more began driving her prince or butler or whatever. The infantry figured out who got seats on the limited carts and the entirely self-driving tanks resumed their perfectly aligned drive through the submerged mangrove. But eventually, something changed.

“We’re about at the midpoint,” said Dorothea. “We should be reaching the levee soon.”

“We’re only halfway? That’s depressing as hell.”

“Stop complaining when you’re just clinging to a cart. You’re not even walking anymore.”

“It’s like riding on the slow train… Y’know, like when you’ve felt the shaking of the train for hours on end with no real destination in mind.”

“But why would they build a levee here?” asked Heivia.

He was probably asking because building a levee in the middle of this submerged area did not seem very helpful.

“It’s apparently to create a fish reef instead of preventing flooding,” said Dorothea. “Something about redeveloping the zones that were lost due to fires. At least that’s what it says on these online tourist guides.”

“Ehh? You have air conditioning ''and'' the internet on the battlefield? You really have it made.”

“Oh ho ho. I even have a simple shower and kitchen.”

“I’m really worried by the lack of a bathroom on your list there… I don’t want to hear that a girl like you is friends with drink bottles…”

In the distance, they could see a horizontal row of concrete masses with four legs arranged in Y-shapes.

The mangrove’s trees had thinned out, so they came to a stop right on the edge.

Quenser and Heivia ended their time as summer Santas of the southern hemisphere and circled in front of the first tank to join the other soldiers in investigating things from between the trees.

“Oh no…” Quenser groaned as soon as he gave a look through his binoculars. “Oh no, oh no, oh no! That’s a Faith Organization tank unit. They’ve set up a defensive line.”

“What!? How could they block off our route with such pinpoint precision!? Where’d they get that intel from!?”

They no longer heard anything from the radio.

Dorothea and the other tank operators had apparently shut down the radios to remain silent.

They were about 1.2 kilometers from the levee. The horizontal wall had gaps in places, so it definitely was not meant to hold back any high waves. It was a little hard to tell, but there were tanks waiting behind that wall. Only the turrets stuck up above it while they used the obstacle as a shield.

“It might not just be here.” Quenser thought for a bit. “Little Wraithy shook the Faith Organization for us, but that only changed their order of priority. The Second Generation Paper Bikini left, but it makes sense that they would send their tanks to investigate the combat region. They blocked off all the routes around the suspicious point and we just ran into one of those blockades.”

Would they break through here or send the less-noticeable infantry out ahead to search for a way to sneak through?

“We’ll just have to do this. The blockade will only grow thicker as time passes. Look at them: they only have three tanks and a bit of infantry. We outnumber them, so it would be better to trample them before their friends show up from elsewhere.”

“…”

“Trying to trick them would only make things worse. We might be in a submerged mangrove, but that won’t hide the tanks’ tread tracks forever. Once they start tracking us for real, it’s all over.”

“No, not that,” said Quenser. “What’s that noise?”

He then looked up at the roof of trees over their heads.

The noise of the main rotor had been reduced quite a bit in recent years, so he had heard they could get quite close before you heard them.

In other words, he heard the sound of a rotor beating at the air as a giant attack helicopter passed by overhead.

Helicopters came in many varieties, but this one was relatively short and stout. Instead of reducing its exposed surface area to avoid being hit, it seemed designed to deflect attacks with its thick armor panels. In addition to simple aerial firepower, it may have carried groups of soldiers.

Another attack had begun.

Instead of accurately pursuing a target, the rockets contained in beehive-like cylindrical containers were launched along straight lines that provided destruction over a fan-shaped area.

Quenser stood there helplessly with his mouth agape, so Heivia tackled him at the waist and tumbled along the ground with him.

“Get down!” he shouted. “Everyone, get down!!”

Luck was on their side.

The rockets raining down from above seemed to have their fuses set for an instantaneous detonation, so they detonated on the roof of mangrove branches long before reaching the ground. Thanks to that, the blast blossomed outside of lethal range and the tank armor was not penetrated despite an attack from their greatest weak point: above.

But what about the flesh-and-blood soldiers?

Razor-like fragments of the explosives poured down and their own tanks, which normally acted as their shields, threw deadly stones as their reactive armor detonated erroneously. The carts made from scrap parts were torn apart and blown away and the same amount of damage scattered over the soft and fleshy soldiers.

“That’s an attack helicopter!! It’s a tank’s worst enemy!!”

They could not just lie low and wait it out.

The large helicopter flew in a large circle through the blue sky and was clearly taking aim once more. Plus, the tanks waiting behind the levee of blocks with four legs arranged in Y-shapes began to take action.

The Tank 041s had been waiting in a line, but now they began to move. They broke their perfectly aligned formation and scattered. They had likely switched from self-driving mode to manual driving mode.

While nearly run over by their own side’s tanks and nearly hit by the morning stars that the wreckage of their carts had become, Quenser and the others desperately rolled along the ground in search of safety. And they were well aware safety was nowhere to be found.

The mangrove’s shallow seawater was stained with the red of blood.

A rusty smell mixed in with the scent of salt and mud.

The crabs and shrimp had been acting like docile little animals before, but now they grew energized. They had been waiting for all that nutritious bipedal meat to stop moving.

“Get the injured sitting up and prop them against a tree trunk! Calf height water is enough to drown in! Then gather below the thicker portions of the ‘roof’! Another downpour of rockets in an open area and we’ll actually be directly hit!!”

“No, that ‘roof’ would be in the way,” said Dorothea. “I’m heading out into the open, so give me a smokescreen.”

Just as she said that over the radio, her tank left the mangrove and entered the open battlefield.

The attack helicopter naturally took aim and rushed in toward her, but the other tanks fired smoke and blocked the enemy’s vision.

It seemed modern tanks had anti-air equipment.

The Tank 041s had four vertical missiles located behind the turret.

Quenser just about groaned when he saw the missiles fired upwards with the sound of a champagne cork popping amplified over a hundredfold. They were not just short-range; these were the same missiles as the shoulder-fired variety used by infantry.

Attack helicopters were probably easier to target than a supersonic fighter, but this one still twisted around and scattered firework-like flares. That was enough for the puny missiles, which looked like two fire extinguishers attached end to end, to fly off into empty air like rocket fireworks.

And it did not end with that failed attack.

Just as the Tank 041s had moved forward, the Faith Organization tank unit at the levee took action. There were a few lights similar to a camera flash.

Yes, a tank’s muzzle flash was faster than the sound of it firing.

“Oh, no!?”

Dorothea’s tank tried to return to the deep forest while crushing the cart it was dragging, but a shell flew toward it at Mach 5 from a distance of about 1.2 kilometers.

Dorothea immediately released the pressure from the hydraulic suspension to abandon her support and let the tank’s body sink down. By effectively ducking, she avoided the first shot targeting the top of the turret. The second shot targeted its gut from a different angle, so she turned the body at an angle – so the shell would hit the solid corner of the rectangle – to redirect the shell upwards while the armor was torn away.

She was not using lasers, EM waves, or some other lock-on medium to detect and predict the ballistic path.

Most likely, this was Dorothea Martini Naked’s skill which could not be reproduced by the self-driving mode.

(She did that by eye!? She was only basing it on the sunlight reflected from the muzzles!?)

Her defensive actions seemed like a superhuman combination of the digital and analog, but it was obvious where the missed shell was headed: into the forest where the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers hid.

“Goddammit!!”

They had agreed to no hard feelings, but it felt like the ground they had been hiding on had been flipped upside down. A rusty flavor spread inside Quenser’s mouth and his inner ear seemed to be having issues because he could not get up. He had no idea which way was up and the shallow seawater blocked his mouth and nose.

“Here’s some information…!! I think…enem…shells…rmor pierc…chemical…get through…armo…so be careful!!”

Dorothea was shouting something over the radio, but no whole sentences were getting through to him. Was that because of the seawater in his ears or had something gone wrong in his head?

“These aren’t anti-personnel rounds! Don’t act like the shockwave alone was too much for you! If you’re gonna die, do it after killing the enemy, you dumbass!!”

Quenser finally returned to reality after Heivia kicked him in the gut. He coughed up all the seawater in his throat and nose.

“Uegh, cough!!”

“This operation has failed!! We can’t continue on!! There are too many injures and there’s an attack helicopter flying around! Dorothea, if you have some extra shells, give them all timed fuses and prepare to destroy the evidence. We just have to make sure no one finds out the tanks were loaded in the Flagship 019, right? File off the serial numbers, get out of there, and blow it up from the inside!!”

“No!!”

But the girl vehemently rejected that idea.

“We have to get these five tanks to the former airfield no matter what. Protect them with your lives! I repeat, protect them with your lives!!”

“Set aside that slender-chinned blond butler in glasses, sleepwear blouse girl!!”

“Sbh!? H-heh hee hee. How did Sir Quenser discover my true form? …No, no!! We can’t! It isn’t about that! We just can’t give up on them!!”

“…Oh, hell.”

Quenser got up and pressed his back against a broken tree trunk.

“Dorothea, you can complain if you like, but what’s the actual situation here?”

“This RTS session is not looking good. The attack helicopter overhead is especially bad!!”

“But what if it was just their tanks?”

“If they think they’re invincible with just their heads sticking up over the levee, they can’t be all that skilled. Unlike a stationary turret, a tank is all about its mobility☆”

“Then get to work silencing them. We’ll deal with that thing in the air.”

Just as he said that, the five Information Alliance Tank 041s left the mangrove forest and entered the open battlefield. If they simply aimed from there, they should not have been able to hit the Faith Organization tanks located behind the levee wall, but…

“Everyone, load explosive shells. Let’s do this!!”

“What!?” shouted Heivia. “Aren’t those anti-personnel!?”

But his complaints did not change anything.

All the nearby potatoes were knocked from their feet by the tremendous noise of shellfire.

Dorothea and the other tanks were not targeting the enemy tanks. They had fired on the levee in front of them. And instead of a single thick wall of reinforced concrete, the levee was made from blocks that supported their weight on four legs arranged in Y-shapes. There was no adhesive or welding. By firing shells that scattered an explosive blast and shrapnel in every direction, the blocks were shattered and knocked from their supports before tumbling back down.

There was no need to crush the tanks themselves.

Their mistake had been taking up a position so close to the levee. Concrete blocks larger than a human head rained down on the long and narrow tank guns, denting and bending those metal tubes.

“Enemies A, B, and C have all taken damage to their guns! The tank unit is useless, or at least not a threat to the Tank 041s. How about the sky? What about the attack helicopter!?”

They had left the mangrove forest for that simultaneous attack. That position allowed the attack helicopter to fly in a straight line and slaughter them all with rockets.

Quenser leaned against a broken tree trunk while holding an Information Alliance radio.

He breathed in and out.

He placed his finger on the button.

But he did nothing.

And said nothing.

“Wait…?”

Dorothea was clearly shocked. Her tank pitched forward in a way impossible for the self-driving mode and then it frantically backed up toward the forest.

“What happened to our deal!? You said you’d do something about that chopper! Could you not come up with any clever plans!?”

“No, what happened to ''our'' deal?”

Quenser did not back down.

He did not lose sight of the odd feeling he had noticed.

“Protect the tanks with our lives? Get them to the former airfield no matter what? Why!?”

“Did the blood rush to your head after seeing your allies killed!? If the affiliation of these tanks is found out, the cooperative action surrounding the Flagship 019 will be nullified and a point-blank battle between the Information Alliance and the Legitimacy Kingdom will break out. To prevent that incalculable amount of bloodshed, the existence of these tanks must be hidden. Wasn’t this explained to you!?”

“That’s not quite right, Dorothea! There’s no point in hiding them at the airfield when we have a bunch of enemies on our tail! I thought that was a temporary hiding place and the tanks would be picked up at a later date!? That won’t work if the Faith Organization ransacks the place in the meantime!!”

“…!?”

“Besides, if all we have to do is hide the existence of the tanks, there was no need to keep the Paper Bikini from noticing them! If we managed to escape before that extra-large main cannon blew them away, no material evidence would remain!! …What have you gotten us involved in, Dorothea? What secret are these tanks hiding!?”

“This is not the time…!!”

“Then I’ll just wait until you’ve been blown away. The attack helicopter will target the large metal readings first. Since the rockets detonated in the branches earlier, it must not be loaded with proper anti-personnel sensors like an Object would be. If we fall back into the forest and wait for the heat to die down, we can check the scorched wreckage and determine the truth. I’m fine doing this either way.”

“You!!”

“Choose, Dorothea. Which will it be? Tell us now, or have us find out later?”

The approaching footsteps of death reverberated through the sky overhead. They squeezed at the impish girl’s heart more than the ticking of a time bomb.

And…

And…

And…

“Okay, fine! I’ll tell you everything! This is a project using the tanks’ drive-by-light systems to manipulate the number of deaths by self-driving cars in safe countries!!”

The wireless device he had borrowed from the Information Alliance vibrated.

It had received a file via short-range infrared instead of using a military server.

After checking the large attached file on the small screen, Quenser slowly stood up.

“I have your commitment.”

“What are you going to-….!?”

“All tanks, use your smoke!! Make sure you can’t be seen from a distance!!”

In addition to naked-eye sight, the smokescreen spread by the tanks obstructed mechanical cameras and sensors by blocking various media, including electromagnetic, infrared, and ultrasound.

The attack helicopter had three options:

1. Recapture its targets using a different type of sensor.

2. Increase the power of the current sensor to pierce through the smokescreen.

And…

3. Simplest of all, move in closer so its radar waves and IR signal could pierce through the smokescreen.

It was the same as asking whether the same voice could pass through a thin wall or a thick wall more easily. That was the fastest way to strengthen its sensors with no need for extra equipment.

But to move closer, it would naturally reduce its altitude.

And that brought it within reach of the group on the surface.

“What are we supposed to do about that thing, Quenser!?”

“We can reach it once it’s below 30 meters! Even if it has armor panels, an attack helicopter’s belly should be thinner than a tank’s!!”

“30 meters!? The missiles from one of those crashed fighters covered in greenery aren’t going to work anymore! Or are you thinking of throwing a balled up piece of clay at it!?”

“There isn’t time to explain!!”

Quenser shouted back as he pulled a small cooking knife from his survival kit, grabbed a piece of wood floating in the water nearby, and carved something into it with the tip of the knife. Heivia glanced down as if peering at a smartphone, but it was filled with functions and equations that might as well have been an alien language to him.

“Okay, a helmet should work… That just leaves filling it in and adjusting the angle…”

Idiot #1 grabbed a helmet from the ground, filled it with the sand and gravel at his feet, and adjusted the angle. He then attached a thin layer of Hand Axe plastic explosive over the top. For the finishing touch, he stuck a pen-like electric fuse into the deepest part in the center.

There were two varieties of directional landmines: concave and convex.

It worked the same as a mirror. The convex variety would scatter the blast thinly across a wide fan-shaped area. By mixing it with lots of metal balls or something similar, it would become a brutal anti-personnel mine that made short work of all the enemy soldiers in front of it with a single explosion.

So what if it was concave, like Quenser’s here?

Just think of it like a mirror again.

Concave mirrors were made to focus light on a single point.

“Directional mines meant for armored weapons can split the door to an office safe from 30 meters away. And it doesn’t matter if that distance is horizontal or vertical.”

Needless to say, he already knew what aerial course the attack helicopter was using.

It would be unable to resist the straight line that allowed it to slaughter all five tanks at once.

He only had to toss the helmet to a point on that line.

“Did you think you were safe up there in the sky? It’s time a landmine dragged you down to earth, you ruler of the air!!”

A lance of fire shot up as if to pierce the heavens.

Concentrating the blast on a single point produced penetrative power that was normally impossible and that tore through the belly of the attack helicopter and fried every last centimeter of space inside.