Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 11===

They knew Ichirei Shikon’s trump card.

The twelve reactors and the Megalodiver would be used to completely control the complex ocean currents and ocean temperature. That would create a global weather control weapon. That truly horrible card allowed them to freely control the food self-sufficiency of all nations and name themselves the king of the world.

Currently, one major problem presented itself.

“There’s nothing we can do if we can’t find a weakness in the Megalodiver,” groaned Heivia within the rusty tanker. “It may still not be able to dive, but it’s enough of a monster on the surface! Its Tatami Shield defense system lets it parry or sweep aside any attack!! Isn’t there something we can do about it!?”

“It’s technically known as the Hiding Clothes of Water and it has a few important points. Do you remember what they are, Heivia?”

*The Tatami Shield or Hiding Clothes of Water increased the viscosity of the seawater and then produced giant pillars of water to deflect enemy cannon fire. Raising the seawater’s viscosity was fine, but that would affect the seawater it used for its water jet propulsion, its reactor cooling, and its oxygen supply secured via electrolysis. How did it allow those elements to coexist?

*When they had run across it in the deep sea, the Megalodiver had presumably used a water intake on the top, but it had continued using the systems requiring seawater after surfacing. Did it have another water intake on the bottom? What was the condition for switching?

*The Tatami Shield defense system was overwhelmingly accurate. Simply relying on sound would not allow it to keep up with ultra-high speed laser beams, so how was it so accurately grasping its surroundings amid all the noise?

Those would create a problem while fighting on the surface, so some kind of system had to make up for that. Revealing that system could allow them to drive a wedge into the Megalodiver’s impenetrable defense system.

Quenser explained it to everyone there, but that was not enough to come up with a dramatic new idea.

Real work was needed.

They could only compare the data they had brought back from the tanker graveyard and search for any possibility.

“Do we have any data on pipes or pumps?” asked Heivia as he searched through the paper documents scattered on the rusty floor. “It’s constantly taking in seawater while fighting on the surface, so it has to have a water intake on the bottom. Unless it has a ridiculous system to take moisture directly from the air or something. Where is it, dammit? Where is that data!?”

“Hey, does this have anything to do with it? There seems to be a Y-shaped selector for the seawater pipes near the reactor. It might have more than one intake system.”

“It was holding back on that while at the bottom of the ocean, but why? Quenser, you remember when we dived down in those hard diving suits?”

“We used the submarine volcano’s lava to cover the water intake on top.”

“If it has more than one water intake system, it should’ve been able to continue its mission, but it didn’t hesitate to surface. And yet fighting the princess on the surface has to have held some level of risk.”

“It must have had an even greater risk,” said Quenser. “It has multiple water intakes, but in the off chance that all of them are plugged, the Object becomes a cold coffin at the bottom of the sea. That’s why it acted quickly. …There must be something to the water intake on the bottom. It must be an Achilles’ heel that it really doesn’t want to use.”

“Here we go!”

That hysteric voice came from the female soldier who had rescued Quenser on the island.

“Isn’t this it? It calls it the Bamboo Pipe. While fighting on the surface, it extends a water intake pipe about five meters straight down from the bottom of the Object. That’s what takes in all the seawater needed for water jet propulsion, reactor cooling, and oxygen from electrolysis!”

“Five meters,” groaned Quenser.

He showed everyone the backlit screen of his handheld device.

“I found some data here too. The increased viscosity seawater used for the Tatami Shield or Hiding Clothes of Water extends about two meters around the Megalodiver. That means the system is simple. It uses a thick pipe to directly suck in the fresh seawater below it.”

That allowed it to use seawater to cool its reactor and accomplish other tasks while also using the Hiding Clothes of Water defense system.

Heivia grabbed his radio.

“We need to report this. It’d be best to let our huge-breasted commander or the princess know about the Bamboo Pipe. The device extends beyond the thick onion armor. The seawater might get in the way, but it’s possible the Baby Magnum’s cannons can bend it.”

Suddenly, the rusty tanker shook with tremendous force.

A blinding flash of light entered from the opened watertight door. Quenser was sitting on the reddish-brown floor, but the impact was enough to almost knock him over. He could feel unpleasant sweat pouring from his entire body.

“That was a laser beam.”

He got up and shouted at the others.

“The Megalodiver is attacking! We need to get out of here!!”

“What? Wait, what is going on? Did it detect our heartbeats!?”

“If so, it would be attacking us directly. Ichirei Shikon’s soldiers probably found where we’re hiding. It’s attacking after receiving our coordinates, so it doesn’t have a direct lock. That’s why it’s thoroughly destroying the tanker, starting with the bow! It’s stabbing in countless ‘skewers’ from the side!!”

Everyone turned toward the tail of the ship and Heivia spoke while looking on the verge of tears.

“What good is running? Where are we even supposed to go!? If an Object is directly targeting us, there’s nothing we can do!!”

“I said they don’t have a lock on us! Ichirei Shikon’s soldiers are monitoring the tanker from outside and an Object’s cannons are so powerful they’ll turn any corpses to ash! That means the enemy has no way of knowing we’re alive if we make it through this attack!! If we can endure this bombardment, we can slip into the darkness once more!”

They had a chance and knowing that was enough.

They all ran toward the back end of the tanker and they abandoned the documents scattered on the floor. Quenser stuck the handheld device in his pocket and continued through a rusty watertight door.

More flashes of light swept across the tanker.

The explosions of light behind them hurt their eyes like welding.

Starting from the bow, high-temperature laser beams pierced large holes in the rusty tanker.

“Are you serious!? I think it’s catching up to us!”

“Don’t look back! If it catches up, we’re dead! Run, run, run!!”

At that point, the female soldier ahead of Quenser stopped.

“What is it!?” he shouted.

“The door is rusted shut!!”

“Quenser, the laser beams are getting closer! What do we do!?”

“Goddammit!!”

He swore and pulled a plastic explosive from his backpack. The task was simple, but it was unclear if they had the time to move to a safe distance and detonate it.

At any rate, Quenser ran to catch up to the group in the lead, but then something unexpected happened to him.

The reddish-brown corridor suddenly gave out and he fell straight down.

“Waah!?”

“Everyone jump down! That’s faster than trying to fight with the door!!”

Seeing his colleagues jumping down with no warning, Quenser frantically rolled out of the way. If he had messed up his timing, he would have been crushed to death by a body press from a filthy man.

“Get up, you idiot! Are you gonna wait here to die, Quenser!?”

“How about you thank me a little!?”

High-power laser beams shook the tanker once more, so they ended their scuffle and ran toward the stern.

“Hey, can we use the radio!? We should pass our information on to the princess and Frolaytia!”

“I’m trying, but I can’t get through!! We’re inside a giant tin can, so the signal’s cut off!!”

The entire ship gave a deafening creaking sound.

“Not good,” said Heivia as he ran.

An instant later, the entire tanker broke in two like in a hot dog commercial.

The tanker had been abandoned in the sea and deterioration had eliminated the safety standards and durability. With the laser blasts tearing large holes in the ship, it had lost its balance and it had tilted on the rocks like a seesaw.

If it had been stubbornly solid, it would have shaken back and forth like a set of scales.

That might have been a problem for them as they ran through it, but that had not happened here.

The tanker had been unable to withstand its own weight and it had broken down the middle.

Cracks ran through the ship right in front of their eyes.

“What the hell!? What the hell is this!?”

“Jump!! The laser beams are still approaching!!”

The cracks continued to expand and the jagged edge looked like a giant beast’s maw.

“That’s three meters!”

“So what? The hoarder’s house in my neighborhood had garbage piled up to five meters! Just hurry!!”

“Dammit, you’re even worse than my monster of a maid!!”

Quenser took a running start and defied gravity.

He felt the sense of weightlessness, messed up his landing, and rolled along the reddish-brown floor.

The back half of the tanker shook and toppled on its side.

“What? I just heard static from the radio. It’s connecting a little bit, but why!?”

“Because the thick tin can was split open. It isn’t exactly good news, so keep running while you give the report!!”

More and more blinding flashes of light lit up the area.

The Object seemed to be thoroughly burning away the front half that had toppled first. The attack was persistent and merciless. If they had remained in that half, they would certainly have been covered in orange molten metal.

Having survived, Quenser’s group continued running for the stern.

In less than two minutes, the laser bombardment would return to the back half and begin melting the jagged edges.

They had no time.

“There’s a water intake pipe called the Bamboo Pipe on the bottom of the Megalodiver! It extends five meters down and is related to all of the bastard’s main functions!! At any rate, think up a strategy to destroy-…”

“Oh, honestly!” shouted the female soldier up ahead. “Another door! It’s rusted shut!!”

“Do we have another route!?”

“Does it look like we do!?”

Quenser attached a plastic explosive and electric fuse on the mass of rust the door had become.

(If all the doors follow the same standards, it should be three centimeters thick with a single rod on the top, bottom, left, and right. But it’ll have deteriorated enough to ignore everything but the areas the rust is sticking on.)

“Stand back at least ten meters!!”

“I don’t think we have that much space,” said the female soldier.

Quenser looked behind them and saw that the Megalodiver’s lasers had already blown the corridor away up to a small crosswalk’s length away. The metal glowed orange and flowed like lava.

They had to destroy the door to advance, but their own bomb would kill them if they did not move a safe distance away.

They were cornered.

Quenser began to panic, but the other soldiers began jumping straight up on one person’s signal. Quenser did not initially understand, but he belatedly figured it out.

This was the same thing he had done before.

The burden of several dozen people landing was enough to break through the rusty floor.

With a crash, the soldiers fell through the large hole and Quenser and Heivia soon followed.

But…

“Shit,” groaned Heivia.

The corridor that should have continued ahead of them was blocked by a watertight door that had completely fused with the wall thanks to the rust that seemed to expand out from the wall. It was obvious at a glance that they could not get through in the normal fashion.

Directly behind them was an open hole with orange steel flowing down from the floor above like a waterfall.

“What do we do, Quenser? Should we try breaking through the floor again!?”

“We’re already at the bottom. We can’t go any lower!”

They could not use bombs.

Two especially large male soldiers tackled the rusty door with all their strength.

“It moved. It was just a bit, but we can do this!!”

The orange waterfall behind them was eliminated by the Megalodiver’s lasers.

“Dammit!!”

“Again, again. Do it, please!”

With Quenser urging them on, the two large soldiers stepped back away from the door and tackled it in unison once more.

With the sound of breaking metal rods, they toppled through the door they had opened.

“It opened! Hurry!!”

His urging was not needed.

The several dozen soldiers scrambled to be the first through the door.

But then they stopped again.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

The corridor was blocked, but not by another watertight door. This was one of the barriers used when a fire broke out inside the ship. The tanker was no longer in use, but it had originally carried fossil fuels such as heavy oil. The fire door was made much thicker and sturdier than the door meant to hold back water pressure. The steel door was meant to cut off explosions in addition to the standard flames, heat, and smoke.

Quenser traced his fingers across the fire door and then pounded his fist against it.

“I can’t blow this away with the bombs I have on me! And even if I tried to, the entire blast would turn right back towards us!! It’s simply impossible unless we drill a hole in it and pack the door itself full of explosives!!”

“Then what do we do? We can’t break through the floor again! You aren’t stupid enough to suggest we go back, are you!?”

Bright light as if from welding assaulted them and the corridor was melted away behind them.

It was much closer than they had thought. The limit was drawing close.

“Is prayer the only option left?”

They all pressed their backs against the thick fire door.

All the while, the laser bombardment slowly yet surely tore away at the corridor they had passed through. It would not take long to reach them.

“Is this the end, goddammit!?”

As Heivia raised his voice, Quenser squeezed his eyes shut.

His breathing sounded oddly loud in his ears as he waited for the final moment.

A second passed, then two and three.

Once his count reached thirty, doubt finally entered his mind.

He slowly opened his eyes.

“What? The laser bombardment isn’t coming.”

“It doesn’t seem to be attacking somewhere else either. The tanker isn’t shaking. The attack has stopped.”

“But why?”

They could not rest easy.

Their survival seemed like some kind of mistake.

It felt like being strapped into the electric chair but having the current not reach them due to a poor connection. They could not accept their survival because the cord could be reconnected at any moment.

“Did it run into some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it find a higher priority target?”

“Is it ignoring us because it can kill us later?”

An unpleasant silence filled the air and no amount of thought gave them an answer.

That deadlock was broken by Heivia’s radio.

“…via…”

The transmission quality was poor.

Even if it had been filled with holes, they were still in the bottom of a tanker covered in a thick hull.

Nevertheless, he immediately recognized the staticky voice.

“Can you hear me, Master Heivia Winchell?”

“Karen?” he asked in confusion.

Given the situation and the timing, a certain possibility presented itself.

Quenser had suggested that the Megalodiver might have found a higher priority target.

“Wait a minute. What the hell are you doing? What’s with that disturbingly kind voice!? Answer me, Karen!!”