Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 9===

“Quenser, do you have your survival kit?”

Froleytia was asking about the small set filled with medicines for first aid and tools meant to acquire and prepare food in the wild.

Quenser searched through the pockets of his military uniform.

“Are you going to fish for a quick meal or something?”

“The items in the survival kit have been designed so they can be used for more than acquiring food.” Froleytia checked the contents of the small box her subordinate had handed her. “In other words, they can be used to kill.”

Quenser recalled how the princess had used the metal skewer meant for cooking to stab an enemy soldier in the gut back in Alaska.

“The skewer can be used for stabbing or throwing and the fishing line can be used to strangle or as a wire trap. Combine it with the weights and it can be used as a blunt weapon.”

“What about the miniature fishing pole?”

“It works as a carbon fiber whip. It’s more convenient than a knife in close quarters combat. It can take out the trachea or an artery in a single strike.”

Having explained herself, Froleytia armed herself with the “weapons” she thought she could use and then tossed the kit back to Quenser with only the first aid medicines remaining.

“Of course, once the commander is relying on things like this, the unit is pretty much done for.”

She then headed back alone to the ruins of the destroyed base zone. She was hoping to find a military vehicle they could use to travel.

Quenser checked his leg, but he could still only manage a slow walk. However, he hardly had time to complain. If the Mass Driver conglomerate Object continued on it would blow everything away. Also, Bilany’s front lines scouting unit was going to blow up that dam to stop it.

They both had to be stopped.

With that thought in mind, Quenser looked around the area. It would likely have been better to set his sprained ankle, so he was trying to find a branch or something. However, he found something else instead. Much to his surprise, he spotted a gun. It was a Legitimacy Kingdom military PDW.

(Was this blown from the base all the way here by that railgun blast? It’s like a volcano erupted.)

The PDW was like a shortened version of a submachine gun, so it was only about 20-30 cm long. The gun was small enough that it was actually difficult to carry in both hands, but a complexly folded up stock was located at the bottom of the grip, so it would likely be difficult to fire one handed for someone with the arm strength and grip strength of Quenser.

So it could be used in the right hand or the left, it was made so the shell cases passed through the grip and fell out the bottom.

The magazine was inserted parallel to the barrel, so it could actually hold around 70 shots. The magazine was actually longer than the gun itself. It seemed to be made for a maintenance soldier who would never stand on the front lines. They wanted plenty of ammunition to stop any spies they might run into on the base.

Froleytia had said someone who had not finished their training could not be given a firearm, but Quenser figured it was best to have as many weapons as possible in an emergency. For that reason, he hid the PDW in his uniform. He would never be able to defeat an Object with something like that, but he might run into enemy foot soldiers.

Froleytia then arrived in a military off-road vehicle. The body was horribly dented and it looked like it was barely running.

“Sorry about all this trouble I’m putting you through.”

“You’d better be. Afterwards, I’m putting you through a hell of giving me shoulder massages,” said Froleytia as Quenser climbed into the passenger seat.

However, she somehow seemed to be enjoying herself. She might have gotten over something.

The Iguazu district sloped upwards as one moved inland from the coast. The slope continued forever as if the entire continent was tilted.

“…It’s gotten a bit cooler.”

“That’s because of the change in elevation. The inland area is over 900 meters up. We’re still relatively low here, but the temperature should be even lower up at the dam Heivia is at.”

“With Antarctica, the Iguazu coast, and now this mountainous area, the earth’s temperature is really all over the place. Will global warming just cancel itself out in the end?”

As Quenser was chatting mindlessly, a transmission came in over his radio.

“Charlemagne to Froleytia. We doubt you are still planning to fight, but we have learned some things from the analysis of the Mass Driver conglomerate’s main cannon.”

“So how many people do you think have seen through that façade?” asked Quenser quietly.

“All of them, of course. Otherwise, they would have abandoned ship long ago given the situation. Legitimacy Kingdom troops aren’t that stupid.”

“I see,” replied Quenser tonelessly.

That must have been why the bridge of the assault landing aircraft carrier sounded so happy.

“Froleytia to Charlemagne. We have a general idea that the enemy’s main cannon fires a railgun using a large scale high-angle trajectory. It uses the clouds created by the chaff missiles to reflect the locking signal from the sky in order to accurately aim in this mountainous region. If you have any information beyond that, I would like to hear it.”

“The enemy main cannon seems to actually be a combination of a railgun and a rocket. First the giant shell is fired by the railgun and immediately afterwards, the shell splits into three parts. This focuses all the kinetic energy on the center rocket, accelerating it further.”

“So it’s like a tank shell. Then the real shell must be rather small.”

“Just before hitting, ten or so smaller shells made of tungsten or something spread out in a ring shape. That must come from the interception missiles from the age of the Aegis ship. That is supposed to ensure the destruction of the target even if there is a slight targeting error, but it does not seem to be too effective. It fails to spread out properly more often than not.”

“Even so, if even one of those smaller shells hits…or if you are even in range of the blast, you will be instantly killed.”

“At least it isn’t using any kind of bacterial weapon,” commented Quenser. 

“Also, about the high-angle trajectory of the shell,” continued the Charlemagne. “Its trajectory is rather unusual. Unlike the parabolic arc of a thrown ball, it travels to a point almost directly above the target and around 2500 meters into the sky, and then rapidly descends.”

“Is it forcibly changing its trajectory using tail fins? That’s less a high-angle trajectory and more a dive bomb,” added Quenser.

“That may be an attempt to more consistently avoid any objects in the way in a mountainous area. However, that sudden curve will create tremendous inertial force. They must have wanted to make this dive bombing a reality even if it presented the risk of having the shells break up in midair,” said Froleytia.

“We analyzed a video of launch, but no tail fins were seen. The small trajectory corrections are likely carried out by changeable grooves on the side of the shell or by intentionally damaging the side of the shell with special explosives to alter the frictional forces. However, we would need to analyze an actual sample to know more. …And that is only if there was enough left to analyze,” continued Charlemagne. “After splitting apart to concentrate the kinetic energy, the shell finally accelerates to the monstrous speed of Mach 25 by firing the rocket engine at the bottom. This seems like one of the world’s fastest prototypes. If it was launched from an already accelerated aircraft, it would probably set a record for the greatest instantaneous speed.”

“What about the cooling system? It has to have some kind of system to deal with the issue of heat from air friction,” asked Quenser.

The Charlemagne controller responded, “It seems to have a complete cooling system that uses liquid nitrogen. Its effective time seems to be directly linked to the distance of the target. The premature detonations when it attacked your base seem to be due to an error in the cooling system causing the shells to melt.”

“So is that contrail-like line you see after it fires due to evaporated nitrogen?”

“While we might find a way to use this to our advantage, even when the cooling system fails, it still causes such a massive explosion. It seems avoiding the Object and keeping it from finding you would be the best strategy.”

“I see. I will take that into consideration,” said Froleytia politely before ending the transmission.

She put both hands back on the wheel and looked forward before saying, “A mass driver, rockets, and the cluster technology of Aegis ship ICBM interception missiles. …This really is the monstrous weapon you would expect of a space development conglomerate. I have commanded units against Objects for a long time, but I have never seen anything that attacked like that.”

“With the method of aiming by reflecting off the clouds created by a chaff missile, this really is no normal layout. Whoever came up with this has to be rather eccentric.”

“As a future designer, are you jealous?”

“I’m more worried about my life right now. If that main cannon was beyond the prototype stage, we would have been completely wiped out.”

[[Image:HO v02 205.jpg|thumb]]

“It may be a bit soon to be using the past tense. If it gets close and targets the princess directly, she will be defeated. She will have a hard time evading at high speed with the damage done to her Object.”

As usual, the princess was in grave danger.

And her survival was directly linked to the survival of the rest of the unit.

Quenser fell silent, and Froleytia spoke to him as she pressed down on the accelerator.

“Now that we have officially confirmed the existence of the Object, we need to give it a tentative codename. It would save us some effort if the Capitalist Corporations would share their official information with us, but I doubt they would be willing. Maybe we should call it Break Carrier or something like that,” muttered Froleytia.

Break Carrier, the one that carries destruction.

That unpleasant name was perfect for that giant spherical body with the ridiculously high output railgun twice as long as it was. Quenser was not exactly pleased with the cynical naming.

“By the way, do you have an actual plan?” asked Froleytia.

“I’ll get the princess’s help. That would be fastest.”

“Oh, you’re relying on someone else from the get-go?”

“Bilany Saronno may be crazy, but the general form of her idea is good: hide somewhere the enemy can’t see you, and destroy the Mass Driver conglomerate Object in a single strike. That much is a good plan.” Some of Quenser’s focus was taken by the pain in his ankle. “To do that, we have to know what route the Object will take. Thanks to the chaff missile, we can’t use the satellite surveillance network. We need to give her a location and have her fire on it, and we need to prepare for that.”

As he spoke, Quenser took out his handheld device. The GPS map was still covered in clouds, so the details could not be seen. He switched modes and called up an offline map filled with data. That display showed the area better, but it was just like a paper map in that it showed no real time information.

“If the enemy is just going to pass through the canyons between mountains, it has more or less 3 routes it can take.”

“We don’t need to check out all of them,” quickly concluded Froleytia. “We can figure out its general direction via sound. The Object cannot hide the noise it makes. Let’s stake things out at the center route. If we hear it coming from ahead of us, it’s going through the center route and if we hear it from the right or left, we know which other route it is taking.”

Froleytia stopped the off road vehicle in a thicket just off the road and they covered it in fallen branches and dried grass to hide it. Quenser and Froleytia left the camouflaged vehicle and headed for the mountain slope. Since the Object had sensors and radar, it would be safest to distance themselves from the mass of metal that was the off road vehicle. Since a single shot would be enough to blow any kind of armor away regardless, they didn’t have to worry about defenses.

The mountain was over 500 meters tall, but they did not have to climb all the way up. They just had to stop somewhere high enough to hear the noise of the Object but where the Object would not notice them if it passed by, so they stopped a few dozen meters up.

The dark soil at their feet was damp and it seemed to be expelling thick hot air.

The slope was covered in foliage, but it had a manmade feel to it. The plants were likely there due to forestation rather than there naturally. There were a lot of short coffee and fruit trees. They were all sorts of plants that were useful to people.

(Did people replant trees after continually destroying the mountains for the mines?)

Quenser and Froleytia hid down in the plants and sat next to each other.

Quenser operated his handheld device with both hands.

Froleytia peered in from the side and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, just bookmarking this. The mountains around here have a lot of tunnels through them for the mines and for transportation. I thought putting the maps of all those a click away might be useful.”

“Well, keep it short. If the Break Carrier picks up on the signal, it will all be a waste.”

Quenser frantically cut the device off from the internet. He made sure the bookmark in the military database could be accessed by everyone in the battalion and switched it off. With a bored expression, Froleytia watched Quenser’s panicked actions and took a sip of water from her water bottle.

Their ambush was set.

The wind blew a bit and the short trees rustled around them. The crying of an unfamiliar bird echoed. The slope was more dark soil than it was green, but it also had concrete in places. They were the entrances to tunnels. Apparently, a lot of iron ore was buried there, but the map said that mountain had also been scheduled to have a geothermal power plant built on it. However, he could not hear any sounds of people working. The project may have been shut down due to financial troubles or something.

All they had to do was await the coming of their enemy, but that enemy was the monstrous weapon that had ended the age of the nuclear missile. The intense pressure seemed to increase with each second that passed. Quenser almost felt charging out while yelling at the top of his lungs would be preferable to just waiting.

“This waiting is nerve-wracking. Maybe that’s why my throat is so dry. Quenser, I don’t care what, but we need to start talking about something to get my mind off this.”

“Please don’t say that like some company boss demanding her employee show off some hidden talent.”

“You’re just a student, so don’t act like you know what you’re talking about. What a boring guy.”

Froleytia sighed.

Quenser munched on a flavorless ration.

“Come to think of it, I did hear that you’re a noble, Froleytia.”

“Nn…”

Froleytia seemed hesitant to reply to that comment.

Quenser thought he had brought up something he should not have, but then Froleytia nodded.

“The Capistrano family has an attractive – and rather famous – characteristic. It is really mainly suited to nobles. I suppose it would not sound all that valuable to a commoner.”

“A characteristic…?”

“We are a male family. No matter who we marry or how the child is made, the child has almost 100% odds of being male. It does not matter much to commoners, but in noble society, that is quite important. Especially when it comes to matters of succession and inheritance.”

It was well known that the royal and noble societies were highly biased toward men. Whether the ruler of the kingdom was male or female could create major changes to the very era itself, but the fact remained that kings were much more common than queens.

Froleytia commanded multiple units be it locally or remotely, but that was usually a job for someone with a rank higher than a major. Regardless of what she actually did, it was possible there were those who did not wish to give her a higher official position. There were those who did not view being protected by a woman as a virtue.

“As a commoner, does it seem rather trivial to you, Quenser?”

“Well, I suppose. The social standing for both men and women is relatively equal for us. Also issues of family or bloodline don’t quite click in my mind. It seems to me that people should be able to marry whoever they want. …Well, I am just a kid, so I guess even the idea of marriage doesn’t seem real to me.”

“I see. I’m jealous,” replied Froleytia offhandedly. “At any rate, my family has that characteristic. Whoever we marry and however the child is made, it is almost assured that a boy will be born.”

“??? You say males are born with almost 100% odds in your family, but you’re pretty clearly female.”

“That’s what makes me so attractive.”

Quenser did not understand what she meant by that.

It must have shown on his face because she laughed.

“I am a female noble who has an almost 100% chance of giving birth to a boy. Men who want to leave a male heir but have not been able to desperately want someone like me. After all, if they do not create an heir, their family will die out and their assets will be forfeited. By having negotiations related to having children, the Capistrano family can have the advantage while speaking with noble families so influential they would normally be well out of reach. Those other families want to borrow my womb no matter what.”

“You mean…like a political marriage?”

In a West European island nation, a king had split the country apart from a worldwide religion in order to leave the queen and marry his maid, but examples like that were the exception. In the Legitimacy Kingdom, nobles preferred to marry someone of a lineage of equal or greater standing to their own.

“Even if it is officially treated as marriage, I would be nothing more than a tool used to solve their problem of creating an heir. Due to the pride of nobles, the womb has to belong to a girl of the same social class as them.”

Quenser had thought his commander had a relatively angry personality.

However, Froleytia was thinly smiling at that moment.

Was there something different about that problem?

What had it taken to extinguish the raging flame that usually lived within her?

Wasn’t her family supposed to protect that flame and ensure it was not extinguished?

“But it could be worse. For a noble heir, it is best for both families to have legitimate bloodlines and personal histories. If that was not the case, it would not get as far as a political marriage. I might end up with a revolving door of men wanting male heirs coming for me. After all, we already have mountains of requests coming in wanting a surefire chance at a male heir.”

Froleytia had said that the Capistrano family created males with almost complete certainty and that she was the irregular girl born to that family.

That meant she certainly had brothers who could carry on the Capistrano family. Since her family was looking for the best possible terms, they were in no rush to marry her off. Her political marriage was not something that the family felt a pressing need to do. Since the issue of the family’s succession was already taken care of, her marriage was nothing more than a means of extending their power.

If it was something absolutely necessary, she might not have been able to make an excuse to get out of it even if it turned out to be a tragedy. However, not even consolation from that fact could be heard in Froleytia’s voice.

Even in the Legitimacy Kingdom that had influential royals and knights, that type of story was not often heard.

It seemed the Capistrano family was especially cold to women.

That may have been due to the family being almost entirely men.

Or perhaps it was because their lack of women led them to feel a need to construct a world where men had the advantage.

“But anyways…At some point, the rumors gained some strange embellishments. I have heard that the daughter of the Capistrano family will give a male heir even to the most impotent of men or that the daughter of my family is so good in bed that powerful nobles are desperately seeking her out. Besides those selfish people worried about an heir, some horrible dilettantes have also set their sights on me. Now even old men who have long since lost the ability to perform and horribly perverted men have joined in this auction to see who gains the right to have their way with me.”

Quenser had gone well past the point of being at a loss for words.

He had happily thought that nobles had their own worries and problems to deal with, but this problem was so much greater than anything he had imagined.

“That is why I prefer being out here on battlefields rather than in a safe country. If I leave the military, all that is waiting for me is the #1 candidate and a large bed. It would probably be some old man who I have never seen before in my life. …Remember that Halreed Copacabana man who piloted the Bright Hopper?”

“Yes…”

“He was the #3 candidate or thereabouts. Depending on how the situation regarding money and conditions developed, he might have ended up in the #1 spot. There are around 10 official candidates, but he was probably on the kinder side of those. Some of the candidates only want me to give birth to a proper heir while some want to try some Russian roulette-like game where they give me multiple partners and see whose child I give birth to.”

That was more than enough to make Quenser grimace.

That example was simply too extreme to compare. Then again, an example that extreme may have been necessary to show how Halreed qualified as one of the “kinder” marriage candidates.

Quenser could not imagine just how twisted their view of a family was compared to his as a commoner.

“When his Object was more or less destroyed, I was actually relieved. Maybe there is something wrong with me. After all, losing one or two means nothing because there is a line of other candidates waiting behind them.”

The person before Quenser’s eyes was an 18 year old girl.

She had not come to the battlefield only recently like Quenser or Heivia. He had wondered before when she had first arrived on the battlefield.

Now he really wondered when she had.

How long had she been hiding on the battlefield in fear of the auction selling off her very own body.

It was not about love. It was not even about lust. How much had she suffered in that situation where she could be dragged off to a bed at any time in order to carry out her function as a means to assuredly produce a boy.

“Well, don’t get so uptight,” said Froleytia indifferently. “It isn’t like I have no way out of this. If it was that bad, I wouldn’t have brought it up so easily. Basically, I just have to keep fighting on the battlefield until I am some old woman who has lost her value as a woman. …Well, even then there might be some people seeking my body to leave an heir for their family. It may be that I will have the most freedom in my life if I both live and die on the battlefield.”

Quenser did not know what to say.

He could sense that this was not a situation where he could get by with cheap words.

Froleytia would probably smile and ignore it as the opinion of a child, but Quenser knew he could not let himself hurt her like that.

So instead of trying to console her, he muttered his honest thoughts under his breath.

“(…Y’know, Froleytia smells really nice.)”

“To say that after what I told you, you really are some kind of genius.” Froleytia’s eyebrows moved up slightly in surprise. “Wait, be quiet.”

Quenser pricked his ears up too.

He could hear it.

A low rumbling was coming from the distance. It sounded something like approaching thunder clouds. It was the sound of the type of Object propulsion devices that used static electricity to hover the giant 200,000 ton form off the ground. It seemed the enemy Object used the same type of propulsion as the princess.

Yes.

The Mass Driver conglomerate Object was approaching.

“Where is it coming from?”

“I can’t tell. The sound seems to be echoing through the mountains…”

Quenser concentrated even further in an attempt to determine where the noise was coming from. If they misread which of the three routes the Object was taking, the Baby Magnum would be in danger. With the power it had, the enemy’s railgun could destroy the other Object even if it had to fire straight through a mountain.

The direction the noise was coming from was…