Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 1

Their first and last challenge had begun.

If they made a single mistake or were hit by a single stray shot while moving around outside the Julius Caesar, they would be literally blown to pieces.

They had just the one chance here.

“There it is. It’s here,” excitedly said Elise Montana while observing things outside through a gap in the curtain. “It’s the ice fog. The reflected sunlight is turning everything white!!”

“Good, now we can stay hidden!”

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance fleets had been trapped in the thick ice after moving unnaturally close in a large X-shape. The sensors had malfunctioned and vision had been poor, but the fact remained that the hastily-readied fleets had not been equipped for an extreme low-temperature environment.

They could do this now.

Or rather, if they let this opportunity pass them by, the fearsome festival of ship’s guns would begin blasting them away along with the scrap metal they were hiding behind.

The gathering of small ice crystals was a weather phenomenon, so it was all up to chance. They had no idea when it would clear up, so Quenser, Heivia, and Elise ran down the gangway and attached their Nordic skis to their boots. The snow covering the icy ground created a crunching feeling through the skis as they moved.

The disconcerting sound like the ground being torn to pieces reached them even at this distance. The Electric 019 was supposedly around 5km away, but the shaking reached their feet through the white ground.

“If they really intend to attack the aurora observation ship from one end to another, they’ll want to fire on it from as parallel a position as possible. It’s all over once they get into position. They have about 5km left, I think.”

“5km?” said Elise. “That’s only going to take them a few minutes, right? Even a battleship that big can move at several dozen knots, right!?”

“In the normal ocean, yes. But this one is forcing its way through ice thick enough to trap the average warship. It can only move about as fast as a bicycle.”

That still meant less than half an hour.

If they screwed up here, they would not get a second chance.

“Heivia, Elise. Do you remember the process?”

“Yes!! If you’re worried about anyone, it should be Miss Busty who finds miraculous new ways to be clumsy!!”

“I-I-I-I’m trying my best too!!”

Quenser glanced down at his mobile device and saw the display was almost entirely frozen. But not literally frozen by the Arctic cold.

There was another reason the military device was barely functioning.

“Let’s get started.”

On that signal, the three of them began moving toward the Information Alliance’s Electric 019 that had vanished behind a thick white screen. If they were right about this, they could never reach the side of that battleship no matter what. That meant they could not approach it and set up a plastic explosive like with the other ships.

Of course, nothing else they could do from the outside would damage a ship of that size. They would need Object-level firepower to defeat it in the traditional sense.

But they were not trying to fight in that way.

They had a single goal.

“It’s using microwaves,” said Quenser with his breath visible while he desperately stabbed his ski poles into the snow and ice. “The same as in a microwave oven! That battleship sends powerful microwaves out from that V-shaped icebreaker blade to vibrate the water molecules and raise their temperature enough to melt the ice!!”

“That does make sense,” added Elise while her large chest shook in time with the movement of her skis. “Something was clearly wrong when our mobile devices couldn’t communicate with each other inside the same ship. There had to be some kind of invisible signal getting in the way.”

“When coming up with a solution, they had to work with whatever they had on hand, so this was perfect for them,” said Heivia. “Do you think they maybe tore the radars off of the trapped cruisers and remade them into an icebreaker blade? A ton of military equipment emits high-power microwaves, after all!!”

“Oh, yeah. You’re technically a radar analyst, aren’t you? What are you doing out here on the front line when the pay’s the same???”

“I want to get back to the maintenance base so bad!!”

That meant they only had to cause some trouble there.

If they could get rid of the microwaves, not even that extra-large battleship could break through the ice. In fact, the ship’s own weight would work against it. The result would be worse than simply being unable to stop right away. What would happen if it was forced onward without being able to break the ice?

It would be helpless to stop it.

The battleship’s own power would crush it like an empty can.

“We can’t get anywhere near that battleship when it’s emitting microwaves powerful enough to melt meters of ice in real time,” said Quenser.

“I’m aware of that,” said Heivia.

“So we’ll have to stop it from a distance. And that’s where your sniping skill comes into play. It’ll be your finger on the trigger. We’re counting on you.”

Quenser let go of the object in his hand.

It too was handmade.

It was made from party decorations, so the materials had been easily obtained on that aurora observation ship: aluminum foil, helium gas, a rubber balloon, fishing line, etc.

In other words, it was a handmade silver balloon.

After filling the balloon with helium, he had fully covered the outside with aluminum foil.

“It’s at the 100m line!”

“I can’t see it in this whiteout!!”

“The ice fog is everywhere, so use the string extending from my hand as a guide. The balloon should be at the end of that.”

They circled around the Electric 019 until they had a tailwind toward the battleship. Since they could not approach the ship, they had to release a balloon and let it approach.

Also, the 100m was not its distance to the battleship.

That was its altitude.

“My hair is feeling all frizzy,” said Elise. “The small ice crystals in the air are colliding and creating static electricity, aren’t they? The electrification is starting even here on the surface!!”

“Heivia.”

They had no time for hesitation, so Heivia clicked his tongue and readied his assault rifle.

Lightning could in fact be induced.

A familiar example would be a lightning rod.

However, constructing a large metal pole on top of a building was not the only way. Basically, anything was fine as long as you introduced a highly conductive electrode into an electric field containing enough energy to induce a corona discharge.

For example, by dangling a metal wire from the bottom of a rocket.

For example, by unleashing a straight stream of pressurized water using a pump with even more pressure than a fire truck.

That field of research was known as lightning induction and it had seen partial practical results. It was no longer difficult to send lightning to a specific location as a form of divine punishment.

And lighting was a great mass of energy.

By sending it to the right location, it could distort and break down a powerful wall of microwaves.

So one hit to the Information Alliance’s Electric 019 would protect everyone.

“Ahhh!”

A loud gunshot rang out, but Elise let out a sorrowful cry.

Nothing more than a balloon covered in aluminum foil was fairly weak when it came to lightning induction. To use the corona discharge, they really wanted their conductive material to be as pointed as possible like with a lightning rod.

That was why Quenser had tossed some Christmas decorations inside the balloon. Specifically, pointed stars.

The conditions needed for lightning induction were finally in place once the balloon had popped and its contents flew out.

They had not wanted lightning to strike early, so they had encased the stars in the balloon as a sort of on/off switch.

That was the plan anyways. However…

“Did I miss? No!!”

The white curtain kept them from seeing what had happened 100m above them, but the string Quenser held had definitely gone slack. The balloon had popped, but it had not caused the lightning induction they wanted.

“Was the electric field at a different altitude than we expected? Elise, you said your hair was feeling frizzy, right? Let’s do it a little lower next time! 80m!!”

“How many chances do we have left!?” asked Elise. “I doubt this whiteout will last forever and anyone around here would have heard the gunshot. They have to know we’re here, so if they fire a ship’s gun based on the sound, only a huge crater will remain here!!”

“They’re breaking through the ice as they go, so they shouldn’t be able to accurately detect where the sound came from!!”

“You can’t know that when we aren’t on their ship!”

“Then do you think you can escape a battleship’s EM cannon on foot? Cause I know I can’t. That means destroying it before it can fire is our only chance!!”

They shoved the decorations made of colored metal leaf into the deflated balloon, inflated it with a can of helium, and attached the fishing line. Then they covered it with the decoy aluminum foil.

And they let go so it took flight.

“Reach it, reach it,” repeated Quenser as a type of prayer as the balloon rose at the other end of the fishing line.

Repeating the same thing after failing once was nerve-racking, but changing things up without thinking it through would only lead you astray. Their theoretical calculations had been accurate, so as long as they could make up for the slight margin of error brought by reality, they could induce this lightning.

Heivia let out a white breath and aimed his assault rifle into the sky.

There was no problem here.

They should be able to do it.

And then….

“I-it’s clearing up.”

They heard a fearful voice as Elise Montana looked all around them.

“The ice fog is clearing up!! If we don’t hide, the battleship will notice us and focus its fire on us!”

Quenser clicked his tongue and used a short cooking knife to cut the fishing line. Then he practically embraced Heivia while collapsing behind a nearby pile of scraps. He was still wearing his skis, so he nearly twisted his ankle.

They had to redo it all.

“Are you sure this will work?” asked Heivia in a dark voice while covered in snow and ice crystals.

Once the white screen cleared up, they were stuck in place.

Their makeshift cover was only good for hiding them. A shot from the ship’s guns would obliterate them along with the scrap metal.

And they could not wait forever. Once the Electric 019 arrived in position, it would mercilessly fire on the aurora observation ship.

It was a real dilemma.

“Are you sure this entire method isn’t just wrong!? We’ve trapped ourselves with this idea of ours and wandered into a dead end!”

“Quiet, Heivia. This is only a short gap in the white curtain, so we’ll have our safe zone back soon enough. We just need to get one hit in. If we can induce lightning where we want it, we can win this!!”

Heivia aimed his rifle at his ally.

You must never aim at an ally and we must all work together to win this battle. That sounded nice and all, but he had his own reasons for needing to survive this.

His finger was on the trigger.

And he quietly asked a question.

“ ‘I just need one more’ is a warning sign when gambling. You can get two 7s pretty easily at the slots and going from two-of-a-kind to three-of-a-kind in poker is really hard. You aren’t letting the pressure get to you because those kids’ lives are on the line here, are you?”

“That might be true when you’re relying on a meaningless jinx like ‘instinct’ or ‘luck’, but we’re talking about real logic and statistics here. You’ll lose big if you change your well-thought-out plans based on your fear of some invisible factor like an unlucky streak.”

“…”

The student looked the other boy in the eye even with the muzzle pressed against the center of his forehead.

He gave the obvious answer.

“Do you want to know how to win a million euros at the horse races? Prepare 100 million euros, use an emotionless program to purchase tickets in a way that gradually builds up a small profit margin, and keep at it until you have 101 million euros. After all, it’s a mere 1% difference from your starting amount. As long as the statistical and probability theory your program uses is accurate, you can win like that. It’s not about luck or a winning streak. Sound logic and repetition will earn you a surefire victory. Listen, even if you hit a temporary setback, you aren’t going to improve things if you get scared and change your plan on a whim. Doing that will only lead you away from victory and you’ll end up losing again and again until you’re drowning in debt.”

Elise waved both her arms at them.

“P-please get down! We can’t count on the whiteout right now, so you can’t let your colorful heads poke up above the scrap!”

“Tch.”

Heivia removed his assault rifle’s muzzle from Quenser’s head.

They endured the wait behind cover.

They endured it and suppressed so much tension it felt like their hearts were leaping out from their throats.

They could feel the shaking of the battleship breaking the ice.

And.

Quenser saw a change in the wind.

“I-it’s back,” said Elise. “The ice fog is back!!”

“That ate up a lot of time. We don’t have much to spare, Heivia!!”

They world was enveloped in white, but Quenser repeated the exact same process as before. After being stuck in place like that, this was so stressful it seemed to be taking years off their lives.

His hands were numb from the cold.

Or were his fingertips trembling from fear and tension?

He had trouble setting up the balloon in the same way as before. He wanted to lash out in frustration, but he told himself that would not improve matters.

Yes, they would not get many more chances at this. He knew that. It was all over once the Information Alliance Electric 019 detected them, but this frigid world might also cause the balloon’s rubber to crack. It did not matter how many spare balloons they had if all of them were rendered useless.

“This is terrifying,” said Heivia to honestly express his mental state while holding his assault rifle’s grip.

The air was cold enough to freeze his eyelashes, but he was pouring with sweat.

Anyone would be afraid.

Anyone would want to run away.

They could not run from the fear of death here and messing up this one shot would seal the fate of the aurora observation ship’s passengers and crew. There had to be something wrong with anyone who felt nothing in this situation.

“Then are you going to give up?”

Quenser was not speaking to anyone else.

He was really speaking to himself while working with the fishing line.

“Are you going to head back to that boy and tell him we can’t do it after all due to circumstances beyond our control?”

“Heh.”

In that final moment, Heivia Winchell laughed.

Quenser did not usually think about it.

He just saw that boy as an awful friend.

But the fact that Heivia could say this may have been the proof that he was a noble.

“I’d rather die than do that.”

He pulled the assault rifle’s trigger.

A moment later, a great boom and flash of light seemed to split the world asunder as it dropped straight down and mercilessly pierced the bow of the Electric 019.

It took a long time.

In fact, it took more than half an hour, but the gray ship made of steel and composite armor was slowly but surely destroyed like an aluminum can in a vise. First, the icebreaker blade was crushed and fell off. The ship was enormous, so it could not stop right away even though everyone onboard had to know it could not keep going.

The crew may have had a chance to escape outside.

Assuming the continuing bending of the walls did not seal the thick waterproof doors shut.

“The Information Alliance has made a temporary retreat. Or rather, they seem to be waiting to see what happens. They appear to be reassessing their fundamental strategy based on the assumption that an unknown meteorological weapon based around lightning has been introduced to the battlefield,” said busty silver-haired Frolaytia. “Anyway, it was fortunate that gave us the time we needed to evacuate the children from the ship. The greedy Information Alliance will gain nothing when they attack the aurora observation ship again. I say we let them waste months stripping off the wallpaper and tearing up the floorboards in search of some nonexistent gold.”

“Did anyone bother to remove the nobles from the ballast tank?”

“Leave them be. The Information Alliance is sure to greedily search every last part of that ship, so they might just happen across that bonus prize.”

That sounded a bit much for a simple scolding. Nobles would probably be able to find their way back home using diplomatic means, but they might still have to spend the remainder of the holidays in a cell the size of a phonebooth inside an Information Alliance internment facility.

“What will happen to those children?”

“We need to do something about their artificial joints and organs. If word gets out they are filled with valuable products, they could still be abducted by someone up to no good. Those will be replaced with standard-priced commercial products. Let’s hope this is the last surgery they ever need.”

“And who’s paying for that?”

That question might sound harsh, but unlike for nobles, it was an unavoidable part of life for commoners. If those children’s families had not been in financial trouble, the nobles could not have used the treatment of the children’s illnesses as an excuse to use them as their pawns.

But Frolaytia actually smiled in response.

“Their cooperation has eliminated the risk of all that Immortanoid being hidden in a foreign secret bank, so the proper taxes will now be paid. The government is most thankful. They say the additional taxes will add up to a large enough sum that a small ‘cooperation fee’ can more than cover for the surgeries. The strict government workers might actually send a fruit basket this time.”

Then she gently placed the long, narrow kiseru in her mouth.

After a pause, she continued.

“Immortanoid, huh?”

“Oh, are you interested in that too, Major?” asked Elise. “Um, are you perhaps interested in hot springs as part of your Island Nation hobby?”

“I have no interest at all in radiation therapy administered anywhere outside of a specialized medical facility. That just sounds dangerous. More importantly, Elise, are you aware at what percentage Immortanoid is found in the ground?”

“Um, it is worth 200 times the value of gold because it is so rare, right? I assume you would only find a fingertip’s worth if you dug through an entire desert.”

“You assume wrong,” Frolaytia smiled a little. “The answer is zero. Exactly 0.00%.”

This is the story of a world far removed from that battle.

Specifically, it occurs behind a domed stadium. A simple container-style building had been set up within the large material storage yard to provide a dressing room. In the modern age, a 3D printer was enough to build a house.

The silver-haired, brown-skinned Information Alliance officer named Lieutenant Colonel Lendy Farolito mentally gnashed her teeth while viewing the video news on a largish tablet device.

(A mission to shoot down Santa? Dammit, Legitimacy Kingdom, that’s actually a really good idea!! That kind of heartwarming military news is supposed to be our specialty. Ahhh, they beat us to it! They beat us to Santa Claus!!)

The Pilot Elite of her maintenance base peered over at the tablet from the side.

That girl with gorgeous ringlet curls had just finished passionately singing at a Christmas concert for about two hours, but she was intently focused on the screen here.

However, she was not interested in whether or not Santa existed.

“Ho, oh ho ho. This…this music playing in the background!! That is my Christmas song, isn’t it!? How dare they use it without permission! Royyyallltiiies, royyyallltiiies!!!!”

She started sounded something like a zombie from the Capitalist Corporations.

It was the Information Alliance style to start wars over this kind of thing, but Lendy figured nothing major would happen this time. War required the veneer of justice. If they squashed the Christmas spirit underfoot by starting a war over royalties for a major song, it would only hurt their public image. They would benefit more by playing the sensible adult and overlooking it just this once.

Similar to TV commercials and online banner ads, it was worth paying a lot of money for something as unquantifiable as a good image.

“What are you doing?” asked the Elite.

“We receive leave over the New Year’s holiday instead of Christmas, so I mentioned we are holding a military exercise at a Caribbean resort, remember? The budget for that is a little low, so I was thinking I could earn a little something extra to make it a really luxurious vacation.”

“So you’re investing tax money for personal gain?”

“Call it asset management of public funds.”

The Information Alliance was like a manifestation of virtual currencies and electronic money, but that meant it was difficult to get rich quick using the investment methods already widely known to the public. That was why Lendy was headed in a different direction.

“Immortanoid?”

“Hee hee. A bank. It’s a bank. The age of banks is upon us.”

“Huh? That’s where people store their money, right? I don’t see how that leads to profit.”

“Really? This is a new form of business where you spread disinformation among the residents of an unstable country to work up a panic, convince them their bank accounts are about to be frozen and all their assets are going to be worthless, give them a chance to convert that money into a rare earth that will ‘never lose its value’, and make sure to charge a commission for each transaction. Mwa ha ha. This gives me a 100% chance of profit! It’s guaranteed money!!”