Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 8===

Quenser and Heivia exited the building and circled around behind it. They sat down on the hard, dry ground and spread out the map.

“Oceania is huge,” groaned Heivia.

Quenser nodded and said, “Well, it is large enough to contain most of Western Europe. It isn’t called a continent for nothing.”

“So how are we supposed to find a single Object in such a huge area?”

“It would take years to do a thorough search, but it seems they have a general area they think it is in.”

As he spoke, Quenser used a red pen to draw a large circle around one side of the map.

The circle was on northern Oceania.

“They think it’s in the Northern Territory between the Kimberley region and the Tanami Desert.”

“So somewhere in here?”

Even narrowing it down that far left an area as wide as the wider portions of Honshu, one of the Japanese islands belonging to the Capitalist Corporations. It was not an area they could search by foot.

“Two years ago, when the Generation 0.5 was completed, the Oceanians held a parade around there. After that, it hid amongst the many mobile gas tanks with treads they sent scattering and entered one of the bases. However, we still do not know which one.”

“So that’s why the coalition has been going around destroying the bases despite knowing they’re likely dummies. If they keep taking out bases in the area, they’re sure to get the right one eventually.”

“To be honest, they would probably find it eventually even if they did nothing, but who knows how many villages would get attacked in the process.”

“Yeah, we can’t just leave this to them anymore.”

“But here’s the problem. There are over 100 dummy facilities and around 40 gas tanks have been brought up to the surface. The higher ups have no way of knowing which one is the real deal.”

“Could there be a base that has been kept completely secret so the higher ups don’t even know about it?”

“It’s not impossible, but I doubt it. Keeping the satellites from detecting a building to hold something that large is no easy task. And even if they hid it underground, it would need ducts and entrances that would give it away.”

“So it’s almost certain that it’s hiding in one of the buildings the higher ups know about, hm?” muttered Heivia.

Quenser stared at the area of the map he had marked.

“If only there was some sign that only the real one would have.”

“You mean like maintenance equipment constantly being brought in? In that case, wouldn’t the bases with large roads leading to them be the most suspicious?”

“The base we just attacked had a dummy road leading to it.”

“But not many of them have a space large enough for a 50 meter Object to pass through. Even the base from earlier was surrounded by the green forest and had no sign of an Object having passed through.”

“It seems the bases with Object-sized paths leading to them were attacked first. All of those have already been destroyed. That’s why we were ordered to attack a target that didn’t really seem like it could possibly be right.”

“But what else is there to go on? If destroying all of the suspicious places didn’t work, does that only leave destroying all of the less suspicious places one by one?” said Heivia carelessly.

Most likely, the higher ups had come to the same conclusion.

However…

“What if we turn this on its head?” said Quenser.

“Hah?” said Heivia with a stupid expression on his face.

“The Generation 0.5 was only ever seen two years ago when it was completed. Ever since, it’s been hidden in a base somewhere. Couldn’t they have grown up trees and plants around that base to cover up the path the Object used?”

“Why would they do that? If they surround the base like that, it would leave an obvious trail the second it left. They would basically be marking the base for us.”

“The base would be marked by the satellites anyway, so all the broken trees wouldn’t matter. After its attack, it could hide among a number of gas tanks and head to another base. Of course, that would mean we’ve been going around destroying its possibilities for its next base.”

“That means the suspicious bases would be the ones with thick obstacles around them. The most abandoned looking bases that the higher ups probably dismissed right away would be the most suspicious.”

“The bases most quickly covered in the forest over the past two years are these three here, here, and here. It seems the higher ups decided they were merely dummy bases that were abandoned and allowed to be overtaken by the forest.”

“That leaves two problems,” said Heivia as he stared at the points marked with the red pen. “First, the distance between the bases is still too great even after narrowing it down to three. We can’t search all three so easily. If we came to a dummy, we would lose a lot of time.” He lit the map up with a small light. “Second, even a dummy facility is going to be filled with soldiers. Even if we managed to take them out, they would still manage to contact the real base. Then they would simply scatter a number of gas tanks and the Generation 0.5 would be gone. The attacks on the villages would merely be delayed a bit.”

“And for a third problem, we can’t get any help from the military or the Objects.”

“Are you sure about that? Even if we were ordered not to do this, surely at least Froleytia would send the princess out if we actually managed to find the Genera-….”

Suddenly, an emergency alarm began sounding within the coalition maintenance base zone. The deep blare of the siren reverberated through the night sky. All the lights in the base turned on at once like during a night game of baseball.

“What’s going on? We haven’t left the base yet!”

“No, you idiot. The Objects have been ordered out! Have the higher ups figured out where the Generation 0.5 is!?”

Quenser folded up the map and looked around.

A great number of soldiers were pouring out of the buildings. He also saw the princess running to the maintenance area. The maintenance workers who had been working on the Object opened up the giant shutters.

Quenser grabbed one of the rushing soldiers to speak to him.

“What is going on!? Did we find the Oceanian Object?”

“Yes. I’m finally going to get to return home! The final boss is waiting for us on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. The coalition Objects are headed there at full speed, but we have to hurry there on military trucks. It’s first come first serve for the trucks with good suspension, so you should probably hurry. If you’re too slow, your back is gonna be hurting.”

“The Great Sandy Desert?” muttered Quenser blankly as he watched the soldier run off.

“Hey, that isn’t one of the three places we were predicting,” said Heivia, having realized the same thing.

“How odd. On what basis are the higher ups convinced the Generation 0.5 is there?”

This time, Heivia stopped a passing soldier. He had an indoor uniform and was apparently an Object analyst just like Heivia.

After a short conversation, Heivia returned.

“As I thought, it was from the satellite. When an Object’s reactor starts up, a faint energy signal leaks out. Apparently, the satellite caught that.”

“But the Oceanians have been able to fool our satellites this far! If we had a method that convenient to detect it, we wouldn’t have been fooled by those gas tanks!!”

“It was because of those bitter experiences that the higher ups had a new type of meteorological weapon prepared. That new weapon has finally been deployed. It’s something like the chaff missile used in Alaska. It scatters special particles at high altitude which temporarily turn the huge clouds themselves into giant sensors. When the satellite used those sensor clouds to search the surface, it picked up on the faint signal of an Object. We didn’t even know if that prototype Object emitted the same type of signal and the particles don’t always mix with the clouds properly due to the wind direction, water density of the clouds, and other factors, so it was mostly luck that let us find this.”

“But,” said Quenser who was still not satisfied. “Even so, wasn’t the Generation 0.5’s reactor stopped?”

“They have to raise its revolution speed bit by bit when they activate it and it must have reached the point where the satellite could pick up on it.”

“Really?” asked Quenser with a frown.

That military nation had constructed dummy bases across Oceania and used gas tanks with treads to trick the satellites, so would they really give away their location so easily? It was like they were asking for the over 20 coalition Objects spread out across the continent to focus their fire there.

After thinking for a bit, Quenser raised his head.

He seemed panicked.

“No, that’s the prototype reactor!!”

“What!?”

“With the prototype reactor, no one knows if it’s going to work or if it’s going to suddenly blow up. No one would put that on their Object! The usual method is to create a safer second reactor based on the first to put on the Object. Oceania probably has a prototype reactor, too. They’re trying to hide where they are starting the real reactor by running the prototype all out at the time when we know they will be activating their Object!!”

“Aren’t you reading too much into this? The sensor cloud is a prototype weapon that hasn’t been officially deployed yet. How could the Oceanians build a trick around the effects of a weapon that doesn’t even have a proper spec sheet!?”

“If this was the first time the prototype had been used, you’d be right. However, it’s been 2 years since the coalition army has been stationed here in Oceania. That toy may have been tested here a few times. If it has, the Oceanian army could have gathered the data on the failed experiments and guessed at what it was supposed to do. There’s still a risk that this is a trap!!”

“You have got to be kidding! The princess and the others are about to leave!!”

If Quenser was right, the princess and the others were headed to a dummy base. And while their attention was drawn elsewhere, the Oceanians’ Generation 0.5 could attack nearby villages.

The Oceanian military knew that they could not win in a straight fight against the coalition forces. That was why they were using the tribes that opposed their policies as hostages in an exceedingly military style of diplomacy. They were saying that even more tribal people would be killed if the coalition did not immediately leave.

Quenser and the others could see that more slaughtering in the name of forest preservation would not make the over 20 Objects leave, but many people’s lives were at stake regardless.

If the princess and the others continued, that ridiculous plan might actually be carried out.

“God dammit!!”

Quenser and Heivia frantically headed out from behind the building in an attempt to block the way of the Objects. However, the Objects were much too fast. The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance Objects cut across the ground faster than a bullet train. They shot past Quenser and Heivia before they could get near and exited the base zone.

Only the dark thundercloud-like noise of the princess’s Object remained.

“Shit! Can we call them back on the radio!?”

“Both Objects here were sent out, so they must have had an official order. And one with a high level of authorization at that. Our personal communication isn’t going to be enough to get them back. They’d definitely be punished if they did!!”

Quenser frantically thought as he watched the soldiers leave the base in truck after truck.

Seeing him, Heivia said, “What are we going to do? It is possible that the Object really is in the Great Sandy Desert like the higher ups say, but…”

“That’s it!” Quenser replied. “If this is the prototype reactor, then this is a trump card they haven’t used even once in the two years since their Object was completed. They’ve kept it hidden even while letting their soldiers be slaughtered in the dummy bases. Why are they all of a sudden using it now? Why do they want to trick us that badly? It has to be to get the threat of our cutting edge Objects out of this area! The Generation 0.5 must be nearby!! They realized we would soon find it if they didn’t do anything!!”

An expression of shock appeared on Heivia’s face.

“Then, the facility hiding the Generation 0.5 is…”

“Most likely, it’s the base closest to here of the three we were looking at! But this doesn’t prove anything. We need data showing reactor energy leaking from the facility!!”

The two looked back toward the nearby building.

If they could access the military database, they could check almost instantly. However, the database that contained Object designs and battle strategies was an especially sensitive thing in the military. If they disobeyed their orders and accessed it, it wouldn’t be surprising if they were shot without even being given a trial.

“Anyway, just sitting around isn’t going to help anything. The data we need will only be in one of the buildings, so we need to at least get inside. We need to find some way of viewing the information from the database…”

“Hey, Quenser. Were any of the old higher ups the type to not like digital things?”

“?”

“If any of them had the report for the pre-mission briefing printed out, the data we need might still be there on a piece of paper. That way we wouldn’t have to even touch the database.”

And so Quenser and Heivia headed for the large facility the briefing had been held in. Most of the soldiers had already headed out to the Great Sandy Desert, so barely anyone was left inside.

However, the two of them saw something that made them groan when they reached the briefing room and peered inside the cracked door.

“(Why is Froleytia of all people still here!?)”

“(She may look showy with those giant tits and all, but she’s actually a pretty serious worker.)”

After one last look at his large-breasted commanding officer operating a notebook computer, Quenser stepped back from the door. Even if the document was inside the room, they could not check with Froleytia there. If they made any suspicious actions, she would likely confine them for some arbitrary reason or another.

“(Is there no way to get a look at the printed out report without running into Froleytia?)”

“(What if we caused some kind of disturbance to lure that Japanese obsessed woman out of there?)”

“(If we did that, we’d definitely be court-martialed after everything was over.)”

While the two were only able to stand by wondering what to do, they heard a slight knock.

They turned around and heard a male voice.

“I know.”

The voice was coming from the other side of the door to the interrogation room.

The reporter named Sewax was speaking to them.

“(What the hell? Why is the interrogation room not soundproofed!? He can hear all of the goings on of the military from in there!)”

“(This place was only designed to maintain Objects. They probably never even thought of the possibility of taking prisoners. It looks like they threw that room together from parts they had on hand.)”

“I know!!”

Something banged against the door harder than before.

Quenser and Heivia were worried Froleytia would hear from the other room, but Sewax continued speaking.

“I could hear what they were saying from in here. The higher ups seemed split as to where the Generation 0.5 is hidden. I think they had two candidates, but they ended up choosing the stronger signal in the end. That was the Great Sandy Desert.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

“(What do we do, Quenser? Do we hear him out? He might just be making it all up.)”

“(From what he did before, he may be a terrible person, but I doubt he would do anything that would benefit Oceania. Let’s hear what he has to say.)”

Having made up his mind, Quenser spoke to the locked door.

“Where was the other location!?”

“Somewhere called the Tanami Desert.” Sewax must have really wanted to tell someone because he answered without hesitation. “Some of the higher ups were skeptical, but the Tanami Desert signal was just too weak and the Great Sandy Desert one was a much more realistic reading for an Object, so they abandoned the other one.”

“Just as we thought,” groaned Quenser.

The Tanami Desert was the location of the closest base Quenser and Heivia had decided was suspicious. If the Generation 0.5 activated there, it could attack the nearby villages or even the coalition base itself.

“Not good. It’ll take a while for the princess and the others to head out to the Great Sandy Desert and back.”

“That means we have to do something ourselves. We’re right back to the usual hell!”

Quenser checked the location on the map and Heivia mentioned that they would need a vehicle. However, they were cut off by Sewax speaking up once more.

“Wait. Please take me with you.”

“Ahhn? Hell no. We can’t take a civilian onto the battlefield with us. And we don’t have time to aid you in your escape.”

“No, not that. I want to make up for what I’ve done. I brought this situation on us all, right?” Sewax’s voice held a certain impatience to it. He sounded completely different from when they had first brought him back to the base zone. “All the footage we ever get is of close-ups of two Objects fighting, so we never get to see what happens to the local people. That is why we all see war as something not worth worrying about. I came here because I could not forgive that. But I was wrong. You build up your strategies with the insight of experts and I ruined it all with my amateurish ideas. I thought eliminating those Oceanian soldiers would improve the situation for the tribes, but all I did was doom innocent people to violent deaths. And many, many more people are going to be killed! I can’t overlook that. Surely there is something I can do to make up for what I have done!!”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a quick glance.

“You can use a sniper rifle, right?”

“Y-yes. I have no military experience, but I do go to the shooting range on the weekends.”

“As long as you can shoot someone, that’s enough. We’ll prepare something for you. We definitely can’t bring you along if you’re unarmed.”

“I understand. Thank you. Thank you so much! I’ll be waiting!! Please let me fight alongside you!!”

From the sound of his voice, Sewax may have been crying on the other side of the door.

Quenser moved a bit away from the door to the interrogation room and whispered to Heivia.

“(Hey, let’s go find a vehicle. It would be best if we didn’t have him fight.)”

“(I had a feeling that’s how this would go.)”

Heivia followed suit, turning his back on the interrogation room door.

As they headed for the exit, Quenser said, “If we brought him with us, he might decide a wonderful death on the battlefield was the only path left for him. He pisses me off, but I would still have trouble sleeping if he died right in front of me. Also, we’d get into a lot of trouble if we brought a member of the press to the battlefield and he died.”

“Well put, hero. But let’s work on not getting ourselves killed either. Waking up again is just as important as getting to sleep in the first place.”

The two of them exited the building.

Heivia ran off somewhere and when he returned, he was driving a military off road vehicle. Quenser climbed into the passenger seat and Heivia sped off.

As they exited the base zone, Quenser asked a question of his companion.

“Hey, do you even have a license? You’re my age, so aren’t you too young?”

“In the Legitimacy Kingdom, you can get a special military license. It only lets you drive on the battlefield, though. Y’know, when are we going to get past these four wheeled things? Not much has changed since automobiles first appeared on this earth.”

“All the cutting edge technology goes to the Objects. Why would they waste their effort developing other military items? Advances are being made bit by bit, but I heard that the speed of civilization’s development has slowed. Apparently, things like guns and tanks would likely have advanced at least 3 generations in the time since the Object was first developed, but that hasn’t happened. …Actually, if you don’t know all this, should you really be driving? Wait, does this model have a passenger side airbag?”

“Oh, shut up. No military vehicle has those balloons that blow up when they receive a shock. Look, we’re moving forward. Isn’t that all the proof you need that I can drive?”

The noble heir crudely drove the off road vehicle forward while manipulating the steering wheel in a way that would likely have made a proper driving instructor scream.

“Hey, hero. Do you have your explosives? This Generation 0.5 is still an Object, so this is still going to be the usual type of life-or-death struggle.”

“I have my usual complement of Hand Axe and electronic fuses. …But I doubt we can take it out just by attaching bombs to its armor.”

“Oh, right, right. What are we going to do about the princess and that prototype reactor? If they’re bringing out their prized dummy, they’ll certainly have set up some kind of trap.”

“You’re right. This could be bad. Can you contact them on the vehicle’s radio? I have my own radio, but I want it set to send out the detonation code for the electronic fuses. I can receive signals fine, but I’d rather not mess with the transmission frequency. All the recorded frequency slots are filled up with detonation frequencies.”

“Just a second. I’ll set the frequency.”

Operating the steering wheel with one hand, Heivia used his other hand to grab a small wired microphone similar to what a taxi driver might use. Using a shared frequency the entire coalition force would pick up, he started speaking.

“Umm, testing, testing. Can anyone hear me? I have a warning for all you diligent Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers out there. Sorry to disappoint you, but what you’re chasing after is likely a fake. The real one is in the Tanami Desert.”

An odd noise came in through the radio’s speaker.

Quenser ignored it and leaned in to speak into the microphone.

“Most likely, the facility in the Great Sandy Desert holds the prototype reactor rather than the Object. Also, there is a good chance a large scale trap lies in wait. They could even be planning to push the reactor’s output past its limits to make it go critical and destroy any nearby Objects in the explosion.”

Despite how many people had to be listening, no response came for a bit.

Everyone must have been trying to work out how credible that information was.

Finally, the Information Alliance Elite spoke up as if she was the representative of them all.

“Do you have any definitive proof of this? Oh ho ho.”

“No,” replied Quenser immediately. “We didn’t have time to verify it. We have one claim to that effect, but it was from someone we can’t exactly trust.”

“Then…”

“That is why we are suggesting both possible targets are destroyed. One thing we know for sure is that the energy readings of a reactor were detected in two different places. Oceania has only one Object, so one has to be real and one has to be fake. But what do we lose if we destroy both?”

“We feel the more hidden base in the Tanami Desert is more suspicious than the much too obvious one in the Great Sandy Desert,” added in Heivia.

After a bit of silence from their allies, Quenser spoke up again.

“As I said before, we believe the Great Sandy Desert base is a giant trap using the prototype reactor. Just to be safe, not even the Objects should carelessly get close. Stay at least 10 kilometers away and blow the facility away with your main guns. This isn’t some fast moving target, so I’m sure the princess can manage if she stops and aims carefully.”

“Oh ho ho. I am a bit annoyed that you do not seem to expect anything of me,” said the Information Alliance Elite.

In annoyance, Quenser replied, “Your main gun is a rapid fire beam Gatling gun, right? It may be overwhelming at close range, but it can’t aim precisely when it comes to distant targets, now can it? This is a job for our princess.”

“…I will do my best,” cut in the Legitimacy Kingdom princess.

Hearing that, Heivia whispered to Quenser.

“(Our princess finally got her reward. I can tell your guts made it across to her.)”

“?”

Quenser merely looked confused, but he didn’t have time to worry about what Heivia had meant. There was something else he had to get across.

“We believe the Object is actually in an area on the west side of the Tanami Desert. It’s only about 5 kilometers from our base and apparently a faint reactor signal was detected coming from there.”

“Basically, if you end up having nothing to do there in the Great Sandy Desert, we hope you’ll be kind enough to come lend us a hand.”

Suddenly, another voice came in over the radio.

It was Froleytia.

Her radio’s transmitter must not have been working properly before because the staticky sound of her fiddling with it could be heard.

“Wait just a second. Do you mean you two are headed for the Tanami Desert!?” she said.

“Oh, is this about that whole court martial thing? Let’s make a deal. If the Object turns out to be in the Great Sandy Desert, you can throw us into a detention room, but if it’s in the Tanami Desert, you have to do one thing we ask of you, no matter what it is. By the way, I’ve always wanted to have a beautiful woman do various things to me with the bottom of her feet!!” said Heivia.

In shock, Quenser shouted, “Wait, you’re actually asking that!? Oh, and I’d rather have the beautiful woman do various things to me with her armpit!!”

“Wh-what…? D-don’t make a bet like that without my consent and you could at least request more realistic things!!” shouted Froleytia.

“We’ve barely begun! There’s still the nostrils or the back of the ear!!” the two shouted in unison.

“Why even bring it up when you know I’ll never do anything like that!?”

Froleytia’s last shout brought Quenser and Heivia back to their senses. Why were they getting so oddly excited while on their way to fight an Object?

“The real problem here is that we’ll be more than heroes if we take out the Generation 0.5 on our own. Maybe we’ll get another medal. Actually, we might pass Froleytia right by if we keep this up.”

“No, Heivia. Whatever happens, we’re still disobeying our orders. We might even get our previous medals stripped from us.”

“No, you idiots! After everything you’ve done, I can’t let you go off like this!!” While the two boys had been half joking, Froleytia was truly angry. “The Generation 0.5 is still an Object!! If it really is in the Tanami Desert, you will be fighting an Object on your own! Don’t you understand that!? At least wait until one of our Objects arrives!!”

Quenser and Heivia fell silent when they heard their superior officer’s surprisingly kind words.

For a short bit, they seriously thought about what Froleytia had said.

However, they did not stop the off road vehicle.

Quenser and Heivia both spoke into the radio.

“But we have to go. If we wait around, the Generation 0.5 could start moving.”

“If villagers end up being slaughtered because we were tricked by Oceania, the coalition’s reputation will be in tatters. You might even get demoted.”

Froleytia started to yell something, but Heivia switched off the radio.

Silence continued for a bit, but Heivia finally spoke.

“Various things with the armpit, hm?”

“I’d say that’s more normal than the bottom of the foot.”

“(Hm, I wonder if the princess would be willing to offer up her armpit for you?)”

“?”

As the Object-destroying duo chatted, the off road vehicle continued on.