Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 2===

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A deafening sound similar to thick metal being scraped away continued endlessly around them.

“H-h-h-”

Pale faced, Myonri grabbed at the seatbelt strapping her in. She of course had her helmet’s thick visor lowered even inside the perfectly airtight elevator car.

“How far are we dropping!? It hasn’t malfunctioned, has it!?”

“We will be dropping a long way. The thermosphere alone is about 400km from top to bottom. Unlike the carpet bombing of the artificial meteor shower, a simple freefall will take some time to crash into the surface from orbit. The meteors can apparently reach speeds above Mach 5, but the Object’s size means more resistance. I imagine it will decelerate a lot once it enters the thermosphere. But if you do want to start the fighting here, I won’t stop you. If you insist on opening the incinerator’s lid, simply reach for that door.”

Was she simply accustomed to being in space?

Louisiana remained calm even while captured and plummeting toward the earth.

The two round eyepieces on her gasmask-like helmet were a problem. Quenser knew they were fake, but it still felt like having two giant eyeballs glaring at him.

“Also, the shaking is not due to a mechanical malfunction. It is due to the drop in speed needed for reentry and the periodic shaking of the wires themselves. The elevator might be a massive structure with a total length of 100,000km, but it is still bound by the laws of physics. Calmly keep count and you should find that it follows a set pattern and is not some irregular trouble.”

No one in the Legitimacy Kingdom could say for sure how much stress was being placed on the elevator car. They could only tremble and pray for their survival. As long as they made this one descent successfully, it did not matter if the rollers contacting the wire were worn down or if the axle was heated to a bright red.

Only one person held all the knowledge here.

That was Louisiana Honeysuckle, the cause of all this.

And that was why the genius scientist remained calm even now. Surrounded by the soldiers in puffy spacesuits, she crossed her legs in her black skintight special suit and looked out through the thick window.

“There she is.”

“…”

“My adorable Elinabell. I wonder if the Elite within is enjoying a small glass of poison to stay goodbye to it all. As elegant as that might look, it is not a pleasant way to die. But she was still willing to give up her life to save the world.”

The sky was a deep navy blue. They were clearly too high up for clouds, but the single color made it look like a navy blue greenscreen or like god had gotten lazy. And a giant orange ball of fire was visible through the half-frozen window. That was all that remained of the World’s End. The manmade shooting star looked so large and sinister up close. It was followed by a glowing tail for a different reason than a comet.

They were just about to pass it by.

Heivia removed the multipurpose scope from his assault rifle, switched the mode, and looked through it.

“An estimated surface temperature of over 2000 degrees,” he groaned. “What do we do about that? Just getting close will turn us into human torches. We don’t even have to touch it.”

“The solid wall of the sonic boom would tear you to pieces before even that. It should be entirely surrounded by something like a giant robot’s forcefield. That will have a teardrop shape it starts round at the front but narrows down as it continues on back.”

Louisiana seemed to be enjoying herself.

But that was going to be her problem too soon enough. The elevator was rapidly dropping and was passing the falling Object as they spoke. So instead of looking down on it, they would be looking up at it. If it crashed into the surface, she too would be obliterated.

They could see it, but there was still nothing they could do.

Just like Louisiana had said, their spacesuits were pressurized, but they could not even open the elevator car’s door until they left the thermosphere.

She spoke to Quenser in a provocative way.

“Now, how do you intend to reach a conclusion not even I could predict, boy?”

Even if it had a heat-resistant reactive material mixed in, that hunk of steel was holding together surprisingly well. It was not often that being nuke-resistant turned out to be a bad thing.

The shooting star did more than fall in a straight line. Even after the Pilot Elite’s death, the cannons must have been moving automatically to manipulate its air resistance. Its course had taken a gradual curve that made it fall in a large spiral around Mother Lady.

According to Heivia’s multipurpose scope, the spiral had a radius of about 10 kilometers.

In the astronomical terms of outer space, that was razor thin.

“We won’t have many opportunities,” said Quenser. “We passed the falling Object, but we can’t go after it whenever we want. We need to move out ahead of it, stop the elevator, and then concentrate our attacks on it. Then we move the elevator again to rapidly descend before it can pass us. Then we repeat that. The Object will continue to fall the entire time, of course. If each phase lasts a few minutes, then that only gives us two or three chances.”

A beam of light assaulted their eyes with the orange afterimage of burned air. It must have come from the surface, but they had not seen that part of the process. Only the end result reached them. The Baby Magnum had fired one of its laser beam main cannons.

Heivia’s eyes bugged out.

“What is the Princess doing!? She completely missed! When you pull out, the polite thing to do is go for some bukkake!!”

“Aiming for the face or boobs isn’t polite – it’s a fetish. Besides, that was a standard test shot. After all, she has the ionosphere between her and here, which will mess with her aim. Once she corrects for the margin of error, she’ll send a shower of cannon fire this way.”

That was exactly what happened.

A terribly unprofitable fireworks show began. An interception operation did not require the finesse of a sniper who could accurately hit a target from a distance. You could fire a million shots from the ground and the operation succeeded if just one of them scored a clean hit. All the likely coordinates had been marked and main cannon laser beams were fired at every last one of them. Objects had crushed the military theory of quantity over quality, so it could do that all on its own.

Also, battles between Objects occurred at distances of 10 kilometers.

Even a First Generation designed to shoot down ballistic missiles could accurately hit a target from that distance.

The fearsome white light was like watching a nuclear explosion.

It was several dozens of times brighter than welding light.

A laser beam struck the enemy Object’s armor.

“Owwww!! My eyes! My temples!”

“Did she get it!?” shouted Quenser.

The Baby Magnum’s main cannon did stab straight through the center of the burning fireball and the light grew all the brighter.

But that was all.

The main reactor had already been stopped, so this blast did not trigger a further explosion. The Object had already ceased to function and it was continuing to fall as a mere corpse. This only did minor surface damage.

“Are you kidding me?” muttered Heivia in a daze.

The laser beams from the surface could do minor damage. And even that damage was soon swallowed up as the armor was melted into an orange glow by the friction.

“This is insane!! Isn’t this supposed to be a battle between Objects!? Maybe it won’t blow up, but why can’t this at least be as damaging as tearing the legs off of a dead bug lying on its back!?”

“She’s just too far away. Not even an Object’s main cannon can produce its usual power at this range.”

It was a miracle that the laser beam had made it this high at all. In the pressure of the earth’s atmosphere, the energy would probably have weakened to the point of vanishing before traveling this same distance.

Quenser gulped, but still answered.

If they could not face the situation they were in, they could never make any progress.

“Also, an ordinary ballistic missile can be brought down with only minor damage to the surface. Missiles and rockets are mostly just big tanks of fuel with a bare minimum of sensors and tailfins added on. Do any damage anywhere and they’ll break apart on their own. But that doesn’t work with a 200,000ton mass with its reactor stopped.”

They could not just destroy it.

More beams of light shot out, but the Princess seemed to be having trouble enough just hitting it. She was only successful about 1% of the time and those hits caused no real change in the World’s End. It was looking unlikely that its trajectory would change or that it would break apart.

“D-didn’t the elevator have a long-range laser!?” asked Heivia.

“Getting the angle right would be hard. They wouldn’t want it to be able to damage their own space station.”

Heivia groaned while ignoring the pain in his eyes and temples.

“Isn’t there any way we can get that thing to blow up!? It’s moving its exterior weaponry to alter its air resistance and create that spiraling path, so it’s reactor must be running!!”

Louisiana shrugged at the delinquent soldier’s suggestion.

“It’s hard to say how intentional that is, but either way, I imagine it is using its spare batteries. It can still perform some emergency operations without its JPlevelMHD reactor. But that only means moving its main cannons, not using a propulsion device to keep its 200,000tons floating above the ground or firing raliguns, low-stability plasma cannons, or other main cannons.”

They had already known that the Princess alone could not solve this.

It was wrong to force responsibility for the world’s fate onto her.

That was why Quenser had chosen not to remain out on the space station and to instead make this descent.

The Princess was not alone.

The entire 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion would carry this burden together.

Quenser Barbotage stared out the window at the orange burning light that’s descent was a more accurate countdown than any time bomb.

“Now, it’s time to fight with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.”

“But can see you see yet who is saving what?” asked Louisiana.