novelWhere Has the New Model Disappeared To? >> Minesweeping Battle in the Far West Pacific District (2)
| ← Ch.063 | Ch.065 → |
It made sense, but it seemed the New Model had been designed with the main cannon being its primary means of attack.
And it was meant to unilaterally attack Objects on the surface rather than something else in the ocean.
"Its direct combat ability might not be all that great. Then again, it might be too much to expect mixed martial artist footwork in the intense resistance of the ocean water."
"So what? Thanks to the changing layers of heat created by the volcano, our lasers are bent and metal shells can't reach it. Not even a nuclear torpedo or mine will work. It may just be sitting here, but we have no effective way of attacking it. I'd be proud too."
"..."
Quenser silently thought as they continued circling the New Model.
Eventually, they arrived directly behind it.
"Is this its propulsion device?"
A giant circular part was pressed against the back of the spherical main body while supported by a few pillars. That circular part had two pairs of wing-like parts extending from it.
Quenser saw countless holes on the wing-like parts. They resembled the heat radiation cover on an autocannon.
"This is a water jet. It takes in a ton of water and ejects it with enough pressure to propel itself forward."
"What does it matter!? Whether it has that, a propeller, or an electromagnetic method, we still can't destroy the sturdy parts used!!"
"Don't be so sure."
Quenser shined his light around again.
He observed the objects floating in the water.
"Look, Heivia."
"What? There's not gonna be a bikini girl this deep in the ocean. Or did you spot a mermaid?"
"It's a deep sea fish. A real ugly one, " replied Quenser seriously."There's an optimal environment for them. They live near the volcano, so they must need warm seawater to live. But doesn't this one's movement look weird?"
"What?"
"This one's left the volcano and started swimming around the Object."
Quenser pointed it out.
Heivia finally looked up and began observing the deep sea fishes' movements.
"What's going on? Is it gathering the heat of the volcano cause it's made of metal?"
"I have a more interesting theory." Quenser sounded excited."The New Model takes in the seawater, but not for its water jet propulsion. It uses water cooling. In other words, it takes in cold water and passes it through metal pipes in order to cool the neighboring reactor and regulate the temperature elsewhere."
In other words...
"Let's find where it takes in the water. If we cover it with a plastic sheet or something, we might be able to take out the water jet propulsion and the reactor cooling."
Part 6
Mission Report B-03
March 21 – 2300 Hours
Legitimacy Kingdom New Caledonia District – Special Political Prison "Château de Rouge"
"It's about time, " muttered Quenser."We're leaving, so get ready."
"Wh-what!? Wh-why?"
"I said a military unit was coming in after a virus was sent in to take over the prison's system, right? There's a piece missing before that can happen. The facility's core isn't connected to the outside, so we have to manually mess with the wiring."
"B-but, um, get out... ? Heh... eh heh heh. The cells are locked from the outside."
"There's a slot in the door to receive food. We can get metal parts and wires by dismantling the hand washer and toilet. That just leaves picking the lock. If you bend a fairly long wire, you can stick it in the keyhole directly above the food slot."
He got down to work as he spoke.
After a heavy click, the lock's deadbolt released.
"E-eee!? I-it only took you thirty seconds? A-and I thought these were electronic locks."
"I didn't release the lock; I destroyed the internal components. There are rumors that the developer intentionally left this vulnerability. We ordered an identical lock and I spent two or three days learning how to do this. I couldn't open any other lock."
He took a step outside his container cell.
As soon as he did, his head was covered in a downpour of rain as warm as human blood. Either due to the salt water or the metal, an odd raw smell rose up from below.
If he was discovered, he was dead.
That simple fact gradually entered the tips of his fingers and toes and spread to the core of his body.
But standing still would not help, so he adjusted his grip on the wire and opened Mariage's cell as well.
"Let's go!"
"W-wait, wait!? Th-they have surveillance cameras outside!!"
"Messing with the camera here was the most they could do. The rest is up to us! We have to connect the line!! Unless we take control of the prison's system, the unit outside can't move in!!"
He mercilessly pulled her from the cell.
Mariage was a girl with an unbalanced build. She was short yet had large breasts. Her glasses looked like they would slip down at any moment and tears were welling up in her eyes that looked like those of a small animal. She wore the prisoner's uniform of a thick jumpsuit with no pockets to hide anything in, but hers was baggy and did not suit her at all. It seemed to implicitly state how unfortunate her circumstances were.
He dragged her on and whispered to her while the blood-warm rain washed over them.
"Guide me to the third watchtower."
"Eh? Eh? B-but if you're going to mess with the communication wiring, you would need to go to the security server in the center-..."
"If we went straight there, they'd catch us right away. Instead, we'll cut the wiring somewhere less secure and reconnect it. Now hurry."
"W-will we really be okay?"
"I'm not an expert in undercover operations or infiltrations. This is a job even a student can handle, so don't worry."
The prison was a large birdcage. The walls, floors, and everything else were all made from metal pipes and wire mesh, so there were plenty of gaps too small for a human to pass through. There were no absolute blind spots.
However...
"They may have left their vision wide open, but they only point the lights straight forward. That's because they don't want to look up and have the rain cover their faces. After all, this isn't any old rainwater. This is the filth that's passed through the floors the other jailers have stepped on."
"A-and they can't tell a jailor from a prisoner if they're walking in the dark?"
"They think the surveillance cameras are working properly, so they'll assume everything is okay until they hear something from them. As long as we don't press against the walls or crawl around, they won't catch on."
Quenser was of course not a specialist. He was giving all this knowledge secondhand.
"B-but won't it seem weird that we're walking together? And we don't have lights or guns."
"They can't tell if we have guns or not in the dark."
"And the lights?"
"I have a suggestion concerning that. Mariage, grab onto me."
"What!?"
"This prison has no morals, so there have got to be jailors who go have some fun together during their patrols. There's no other entertainment here. In the worst case, there might even be relationships between jailors and prisoners. At any rate, we can make it so the other jailers make their own assumptions about why we don't have a light on."
"U-ugh... I'm not seeing much of an upside in this for me..."
Despite her comment, Mariage did as Quenser asked.
Quenser had assumed she would simply grab onto his hand, but she went further.
"Wait! Ah! Why are you embracing me like that!? And why would you rub your cheek against me!?"
"Eh? But..."
"W-well, if you're fine with it, I won't argue."
Quenser walked on while almost dragging her along with him.
The soft sensation sent a tingling along his spine, but he was also concerned going this far would make them stand out more.
But none of the other guards shouted any warnings their way.
It seemed he had been right in saying the place had no morals.
"Honestly. This rain is horrible. I guess that's what you get with a tropical area."
"U-um... I think this is probably due to a meteorological weapon."
"So it's artificially created rain? But why? Is there a huge plantation on a nearby island or something?"
"No, the rain is unwanted. It's apparently a way of avoiding natural disasters by scattering the rain to other places before flooding occurs."
(I'm more afraid of the lightning. )
Quenser kept that thought to himself.
If that light illuminated them like a camera flash, the jailers might notice the truth. As long as no one was watching in that instant, they would be fine, but there was no 100% guarantee.
But as there was no way of resolving that issue, there was no point in telling Mariage. It might even make her refuse to cooperate and that would 100% guarantee their failure.
"Anyway..."
Mariage began to speak as she led the way to the base of the third watchtower (and pressed up against Quenser).
He could feel her quickened pulse through her chest. She seemed to be desperately trying to suppress her anxiety. Given the depressing "legends" of the prison, that was not surprising.
"One thing bothers me. If the Object itself emits a lot of heat, why did the Megalodiver hide in the zone of altered temperature around the submarine volcano? It could have scattered hot water around itself to create that mirage-like anti-laser wall."
She was clever.
Without seeing it for herself, she had accurately found the question needing answering.
"We have a number of theories concerning that."
"Like that it wanted to prioritize controlling the reactor's temperature and thus wanted to avoid letting the situation adjust the amount of emitted hot water?"
"Or that it was using the two different types of hot water to construct a more complex and difficult to analyze temperature difference."
Quenser was unsure what expression to give as he noticed the sweet scent coming from Mariage's hair, so he simply continued down the walkway she indicated.
As expected, there were no metal bar barriers on the way to the third watchtower, so they would not have to attack a jailor from behind and swipe the key.
The smell of the rain and the smell of iron vaguely mixed together. It may have been coming from the wire mesh floor or the metal pipe railings, but he had no guarantee it was actually the metal he was smelling. In a place like this, other possibilities presented themselves.
"To sum it up, we never found a part that seemed to handle water intake. We're assuming there was a hole on the top we couldn't see from below or it has a mechanism to open the armor when it needs to take in seawater. We're guessing the former because it should be constantly circulating seawater."
"And Objects' are meant to be sturdy. You would either hide the water intake because it would take damage if attacked while exposed or you would design it to withstand a nuclear attack even while exposed. If I was designing it, I would choose the latter." She trembled a bit and strengthened her grip on Quenser, but she finally continued."Putting the water intake on the top might be to prevent it from mistakenly taking in sand from the ocean floor."
"It's possible, but there were deep sea fish gathered around it and it didn't have any trouble from mistakenly taking in a small fish."
"Well, it is an Object."
"That it is."
They continued pleasantly speaking for a while, but then Mariage asked a question as if she had only just remembered.
"U-um... Then what did you do?"
"A bit of sand or a deep sea fish wasn't enough to block the intake and we hadn't brought anything like a large plastic sheet with us. Not that we could have placed one on top of a fifty meter Object even if we had. The sound of air bubbles when we used the air to surface would have likely given us away, and we would have been heard climbing up the spherical body in our thick diving suits. There was no way to reach the water intake on the top."
"No, no, no, no, no..."
Mariage Nightcap seemed to be panicking just from hearing the story.
"Th-there was nothing you could do."
"But we had to do something." Quenser let out a short breath as he walked."And there was one 'material' we could use to block up the New Model's water intake."
Part 7
Mission Report A-04
March 17 – 1740 Hours
Ocean of the Far West Pacific District – 1500 Meters Deep
Heivia switched to camera mode and observed the seawater. He checked the temperature at the spot where the cold water of the deep sea mixed with the water warmed by the submarine volcano.
"Wow, this is hopeless. It's got a great marble pattern going. A supercomputer might be able to analyze it, but it would probably take a while. Can it even get this complex naturally?"
"The New Model could be gently stirring up the water with its water jets or ejecting the hot water from its reactor cooling into the hot water from the volcano. At any rate, it could easily be helping it along."
"Whatever the case, it'll bend an Object's laser beams. If it won't fly straight, you can't hit."
Even from 1500 meters deep, they had a way of communicating with the fleet on the surface. If they requested assistance from the Baby Magnum, it would fire laser beams at the locations they gave.
But those beams would not hit like this.
And since they could not predict where they would ultimately hit, there was a risk of them hitting the two idiots who gave the location.
"There are two important points here, " summed up Quenser."First, we haven't found a way to defeat the New Model. We might be able to manage if we blocked up the water intake used for both the reactor cooling and the water jet propulsion, but with the equipment available to us, we have no way of getting up on top of it without it noticing. We would have to climb fifty meters while wearing these heavy masses of metal."
"Wait. That's the only important point here. What's the other one?"
"The volcano, " concisely answered Quenser."The Object might be interfering, but it's definitely hiding in the zone of altered temperature created by the volcano, right? If we could seal off that volcano, it can't maintain that temperature shield on its own."
"Seal it... ?"
Heivia was at a loss for words.
Quenser had a feeling the other boy did a double take through his thick helmet.
"Are you stupid? No, really! Are you stupid!? That's a spring of 1500 degree lava and you think we can put something over it to plug it up!? A plastic sheet isn't gonna cut it!!"
"Hypothetically, would a destroyed Object work? It did destroy a few Objects before the princess arrived, right? If we let them sink to the bottom of the ocean, don't you think they would work to plug it up? And it doesn't matter if it notices partway through and fires its laser beams. The giant mass just has to fall on top of the volcano in the end."
"Those things are filled with valuable tech. No one's gonna agree to that."
"Then gypsum."
"... ?"
"When they melt down soft iron at the ironworks, they use a giant bucket made from hardened gypsum. That means it can withstand the heat of molten rock. Even with a burner, it will only grow red instead of burning or melting. If we prepared a hunk of it the size of a warship and dropped it into the ocean, it could cover the volcano."
"That's a wonderful idea, Quenser." Heivia sounded annoyed."Now, how many days would it take to create 300 meters of calcined gypsum and then carry it out into the Pacific? They can't just throw it into a gigantic furnace, so they'd have to make it in small bricks and put it together. Even if we're using a caustic soda circulation system instead of an oxygen tank, we can't last down here for three months."
"I had a feeling it wouldn't work. And even if we already had the gypsum, the New Model's lasers would slice it to pieces on the way down."
Quenser looked up in irritation.
He could not see the sky beyond the transparent seawater. The pitch black darkness made it look like he was buried alive below thick bedrock.
"That leaves only one option."
"Hm? Why are you acting all self-important? You make it sound like you have an idea you'd rather not use."
"We have the volcano." Quenser pointed his thumb toward the orange light."We can have the princess blow it away with her laser beams. If an explosion blasts the lava everywhere, it'll cover the New Model while it sits there. Wherever the water intake might be, it'll be plugged if we cover the entire thing in lava."
"That's even worse than I was expecting!! Y-you really are an idiot!! We're here too, remember!? If you send out enough lava to cover a fifty meter machine, we'll meet a fate worse than a shrimp going into gratin!!"
"C'mon, Heivia."
"Eh? What? What's with that look of pity? N-no! I'm not stupid! I was using common sense to stop you from being stupid!!"
"We'd be contacting the princess via radio to have her attack, so we can just leave the area beforehand."
"I-I knew that!! I did!! I told you to stop looking at me in pity!!"
Heivia very nearly grabbed at Quenser, but their thick diving suits could cause a dangerous noise if they struck together and doing that right in front of the New Model would be suicide.
While separated by such a thick wall of water, even their long-range communications were cut off. If a submarine was going to use its radio, it would send a wired buoy to the surface and use it as an antenna.
"I can't believe this." Heivia sounded annoyed."They catch fish, stick a relay antenna in their stomachs, and let them loose, right? And they have these marine antennae every three to five hundred meters?"
"It's the same as embedding a locator chip in an endangered species. The tech is even available to civilians. If you choose species that stick to their turf instead of migratory ones, it's perfect."
"I can't tell if we're protecting them or abusing them."
Quenser and Heivia hesitantly turned their lights toward the New Model, but its cannons only moved a bit and it showed no sign of attacking that kind of antenna. It seemed to truly focus only on the artificial noises of propellers and clacking.
Quenser began wondering if a rugby ball sized nuclear mine stuffed inside a large deep sea fish or giant squid's stomach would be enough to melt the surface of the New Model's armor, but he decided this was not the time to think about that.
"Anyway, let's move away from here."
"Hey, the temperature change will bend the lasers, right? Even if we ask to destroy the volcano, can the princess even hit?"
"She just has to keep firing until she does hit. And unlike with an Object, she doesn't have to be too accurate. She just needs to split open the ocean floor so a bunch of lava bursts out. It doesn't matter if the shots stray some."
They slowly walked across the fine sand of the pitch black ocean floor.
It felt like walking on the moon.
"One hundred meters is a long way."
"Don't you think this is far enough? I can't see the New Model anymore."
"And yet there's no cover around here."
"There's the dead plankton and the water itself isn't exactly clear. Anyway, let's just stop here. This soft sand is fine, but reaching an area of hard rock would be a bad idea. It might hear our feet clacking against it."
"Aren't we a little close?"
"No, we aren't!!"
They just had to attack the submarine volcano.
It sounded simple, but it would be a great risk for the princess.
The New Model would be targeting the Baby Magnum with laser beams the entire time while her attacks could not reach it. She would be exposing her defenseless self and firing everything she had until the volcano exploded.
"Firing a few shots sounds simple enough, but will it actually be that easy?" asked Heivia in annoyance."After all, this is 1500 meters deep. She evades Object laser beams by analyzing the movements of the targeting lenses' subtle movements, but no one can see an Object this deep in the ocean. She has nothing to help her evade and she won't last long if she's leaving it all up to luck. She might even be hit with the very first shot."
"That's why we'll give her some help, " suggested Quenser.
A muddy darkness filled the deep where no sunlight reached, but the dark silhouette of the New Model was visible in the volcano light like a piece missing from a jigsaw puzzle. Even the movements at the end of each cannon were visible.
"We can film the New Model the entire time. Even if we don't know what it means, the princess should be able to use the footage to determine what its main cannon is doing. We'll act as her eyes, Heivia."
"Dammit. So we're risking our lives either way? I thought we could leave everything to the princess."
"Remember. This is war."
After using several marine antennae to explain the situation via radio, they received an extremely displeased response from Frolaytia. That response can be summed up as follows: "I sent you to find a safe way of defeating the New Model, so why are you asking to expose our precious Baby Magnum to danger?" The original text had about 500% more military slang, but it is for the best to stick with this version.
"That huge-breasted commander isn't trying to use this mission to kill off her problem soldiers, is she?"
"Give it up, Heivia. Once that thought excites you, you finally reach the level of half a man."
At any rate, the princess and Frolaytia would not allow them to flee, so a suicidal fight was the only option if they could not find a weakness.
Frolaytia must have decided to use whatever ideas they had even if they were risky.
"Just to be clear, you did not coax me into doing this, " she said."This is the only time I will order an attack on an Object on the advice of individual soldiers."
"I think sending the two of us down here instead of the trained frogmen is even more unusual!! I'm an amateur student!!"
"Stop it, Quenser. Fight back too much and we'll be sent into space next time."
Quenser and Heivia had to wait until the time finally came.
As they watched from a distance, the edge of the New Model's silhouette moved slightly in the dim orange light of the volcano.
It must have already detected the movement of an Object on the surface because its upward-aimed main cannon began making slight adjustments.
The princess could not see those minute movements, but that also meant the New Model had no way of seeing the princess's small movements.
The water resistance prevented the New Model from making quick movements, so it had no way of evading its enemy's lasers. The temperature change barrier seemed to make it invincible at first glance, but it was also a desperate measure created out of necessity.
It had its advantages and disadvantages.
It was a double-edged sword.
But it had not reluctantly and desperately tried to make up for its weaknesses and flaws. It was designed with an awareness of those disadvantages and those disadvantages had been twisted into an even more honed and powerful advantage. Quenser did not know who had created it, but had the circumstances been different, he would have wanted to have a long chat with them. He felt he could learn a lot from them beyond simple technical skills.
"What's going on?" asked Heivia."I can tell it's noticed the princess from the movement of its cannon, but it's letting her continue on instead of firing right away."
"The temperature change both protects it and bends its lasers. To target the princess, it has to leave its shield, so I think it's waiting for the perfect timing. It's worried about being hit by the princess's main cannon the instant it steps outside to shoot."
"So that's it. And it's invincible as long as it stays inside the area with the temperature change. It can search out sounds using those tuning fork torpedoes we saw, so it can take its time and aim over the course of hours or days instead of going with the normal high-speed combat. I can see why it would become a coward. He's like a boring rookie who makes nothing but two pairs at a casino."
"But this time it's working in our favor."
An instant later, the promised time arrived.
An orange beam of light pierced through the water and ripped apart the darkness.
That was not the laser beam itself.
That afterimage created by dead plankton roasted in the laser beam's path burned into Quenser and Heivia's eyes. It felt less like their eyes hurt and more like their skull was splitting open, but they could not even rub their eyes due to the thick diving suits.
"Bhah!? Gah!!"
"What... ? What is this, Quenser!? The area's bubbling up. That laser didn't boil the seawater, did it!?"
The sudden sound of bubbling caused the New Model's secondary cannons to begin moving around. It was searching the area. If it suspected the presence of a diver and fired a blind barrage, it could easily hit them on accident and waste all of their efforts.
"N-no... The seawater isn't perfectly clear, so the energy of the light might built up, but it should only boil along the line the laser passed through. It shouldn't make the entire area boil."
"Then what the hell is this!?"
Heivia's question was followed by a second laser beam falling from far overhead.
It struck surprisingly close by and a great mass of air bubbles filled their view.
"The laser beams aren't boiling the water."
They heard an unpleasant cracking noise from below their feet.
"It's the volcano!! The bedrock split open further away and the lava is about to come out from a new spot!!"
"... !?"
Orange light showed through.
They could no longer worry about appearances.
The two of them tried to move away as quickly as possible while with movements similar to someone walking on the moon. Heivia moved at full speed, but Quenser walked backwards. Heivia thought he was joking around, but it seemed he was actually continuing to film the movements of the New Model's main cannon with his camera. From 1500 meters up, the princess could not see the subtle movements of that weapon, so she could not evade.
"This is no time to be doing that! If that lava bursts up, we'll be completely melted! But first we'll be boiled to death by the water around us!! If I'm gonna take a bath in a hot spring, I want it to be with a beautiful woman!!"
"The New Model has begun to move. It's realized that the volcano creating its temperature barrier is crumbling! This is going to develop into a quick exchange of cannon fire. This camera footage is absolutely necessary!!"
"If we melt away while filming it, the princess will still lose her information, you idiot!!"
A low rumbling shook Quenser's gut.
After remaining motionless for so long, the New Model began smoothly crawling forward. Looking with the naked eye, its movement made little sense, but it had likely left the temperature shield.
The extreme high level laser shootout was beginning.
The flash of light left what Quenser could perceive and a thread of intense pain stretched from his eyes to his temples. This was enough light to cover up the laser beams the princess was firing down from above.
"Wh-what!? Shit, my eyes!!"
"We're 1500 meters deep. The princess's lasers were weakened on the way down, but the New Model's weren't. That's why this is hurting our eyes even more!!"
"Is that so!? And what's the point of filming this!? The screen's gonna be nothing but white!!"
"It's better than nothing. The princess is fighting a wild beast blindfolded and she's doing it for us!!"
The area the two of them had been waiting in a moment before had split wide open and orange glowing lava was spewing out.
It was much closer than they had thought and their plan had been for the lava to attack the New Model.
"That ain't good!! We're gonna be caught in the middle of it!!"
"Don't worry. It isn't falling this way!"
"Do you know how many thousands of degrees that is!? It'll boil the water in a matter of seconds! We need to get the hell out of here!!"
The way they walked like an astronaut on the moon was frustrating, but they continued on with very last ounce of strength they had.
The two steel monsters continued exchanging blasts with no concern for the puny humans.
Countless orange pillars of fire rose up.
The small ones were a few meters tall and the large ones were over one hundred meters tall.
Layer after layer of them cut off Quenser and Heivia's vision in an orange curtain. Even the giant silhouette of the New Model was swallowed up by the sea of flames. They saw deep sea fish fleeing once they could not endure the rapid temperature change. Once those fish started floating belly up, Quenser and Heivia's lives would truly be in danger.
"We can still make it! Don't give up!!"
"You can't trust your normal sense of pain, you idiot!! If a drop of lava gets on you, you won't feel the pain of a burn, but it'll damage your diving suit! Don't forget that even a millimeter hole is enough to kill you!"
They were only able to continue through rapidly heating seawater because of those thick diving suits, but they would not last forever. If the sea around them was truly boiling, the heat would reach the inside in just a few minutes.
Rather than simply being burned to death, they feared being cooked alive.
The caustic soda used to circulate their air was also a worry. Its melting point was over three hundred degrees, but they did not want to provoke it unnecessarily.
As Quenser persistently filmed the New Model with his helmet camera, Heivia wanted to grab his shoulders and drag him away. But if the metal of their two suits came into contact, it would dramatically raise the risk of the New Model detecting a manmade noise. That would lead to a threat far worse than the lava. That threat had a 100% possibility of death.
"Fall back, dammit! Fall back, you idiot!!"
The New Model was barely visible anymore.
The many pillars of fire and the air bubbles they created had created countless curtains covering their view.
They all of a sudden noticed that the laser fire from the ocean floor had stopped.
The princess's spears of light unilaterally swept across the ocean floor.
"What happened?"
Quenser spoke the question on his mind.
This was the same as darkness. He felt instinctual fear at not knowing the situation.
"What happened to the New Model!?"
Part 8
Mission Report B-04
March 21 – 2335 Hours
Legitimacy Kingdom New Caledonia District – Special Political Prison "Château de Rouge"
"Th-this is the third watchtower."
"Stand back. I'll do the work."
Quenser was reluctant to say goodbye to Mariage's softness and warmth, but he did not want to lose track of what mattered and be shot by the jailers.
He approached the watchtower alone and checked around carefully while the blood-like rain poured down on his head.
The watchtower itself was made up of countless metal pipes. This kept the jailers' view open, but it also exposed the wiring that would normally be hidden in the walls. It would not be difficult to rewire a few things.
"Sh-should you really be touching that?"
"As long as it isn't a high voltage power cable, I'll be fine. I just have to make sure I don't grab the wrong thing."
He selected a few communication cables and ripped off the plastic covering with his teeth. They were normal copper wires instead of fiber optic.
"How are you going to reconnect them?"
"This prison has updated its security system a few times and the old cables were left in place. You can even see the unused cables hanging right there. I can tear off pieces of them to make bypass lines."
"Wow... You're really good at this."
"Don't tell anyone, but I once messed with the insides of a slot machine back in my safe country. We all gathered our knowledge to take revenge against a cheating casino."
He had no tools, but he finished the work in no time.
He was like a fish given water.
"Done. Now the security server that manages the prison's closed system has an opening to the outside."
"Wh-what now? Do we return to our cells and wait?"
"No. Once the electronic simulation division detects the open line, the military will take action. We'll head somewhere where we won't be caught in the crossfire. We're supposed to meet up at the abandoned boat pier, so we can hide underneath it and wait for the retrieval unit."
"Ughh..."
"Please lead the way. I don't want to get lost after all this.... Don't worry. The military is fully supporting this attack. The prison can't hope to stand up to them when it comes to pure firepower. We only need to fear unpredictable stray bullets."
"Um, uh..."
"More importantly, have you figured anything out about the Megalodiver!? I've told you everything I have to tell you, including the plan to seal its water intake using the volcano's lava!! Is there anything else?"
"That's not it. Heh... eh heh heh..."
Quenser frowned.
(That's not it?)
Why was she rejecting what he had said? Why had she felt the need to end the conversation?
After coming this far, there was nothing else to do and it was not like she could have other plans, so why?
"U-um... I'm really sorry, Quenser."
He heard a footstep.
It was such a frightening noise that he hesitated to turn around.
(It can't be... )
He had a bad feeling about this.
He felt like he had made a faulty assumption at the very, very beginning and had only noticed after the theory was complete.
(It can't be!!)
"Quenser Barbotage."
He heard a voice, but it was not Mariage Nightcap's.
It was the deep male voice of a jailer and it came from directly behind him.
"How about we discuss this large-scale jailbreak that is supposed to occur tonight?"
A vise-like grip squeezed his shoulder and he was forcibly turned around.
He shouted out, but there was nothing he could do. Several men rushed up with the full-auto shotguns known as Don Chicago Can Openers. He had his back slammed into the wall and a shotgun barrel shoved into his mouth. Another man then beat the side of his head with another shotgun's stock. He felt like the roots of his teeth had bent. As he held his mouth and curled up, a rain of blows came from every direction.
His consciousness flashed in and out.
Partway through, he even forgot to remain balled up to protect his organs.
He was grabbed by the hair and thrown into a passageway that reeked of the salty wind.
All of the jailers looked the same to him, but one smiled and asked a question.
"Are you gonna talk or not?"
The man shoved his shotgun barrel under Quenser's jaw to force him to look up.
"Listen. Reality isn't like the movies. If I pull the trigger now, you won't die. Your face will be smashed to pieces and some of your brain's frontal lobe might splatter out, but you'll keep living. Do you want to see what that's like?"
"What... is she?" groaned Quenser with the taste of iron in his mouth."Mariage Nightcap is a prisoner here... I thought that meant she was sent here for a crime she didn't commit."
"And so she hated being here?"
The man's smile deepened to something vulgar.
He violently grabbed the bespectacled and fainthearted-looking girl's arm, but she showed no sign of struggling or trying to run. In fact, she gave a stiff smile as the jailer embraced her shoulder.
"I... don't think this place is all that bad. I can write ebooks and trade stocks from here. Breaking me out would be a biiiit of a problem. Eh heh... eh heh heh..."
Quenser doubted that was what she actually thought.
Even the smile on her face was broken.
He did not know what kind of life she was being forced to live, but her own will had grown remarkably feeble.
Quenser himself had said the prison had no morals.
He had also said there might be relationships between jailers or even between jailers and prisoners.
"Did you give into them, NTR girl?"
"Don't say that, " said the smiling and shotgun-wielding jailer."Virgins are the easiest. When they've got something to protect, they'll do anything you say in exchange. She's even the one that suggested earning a little money from book royalties and stocks. She offered to give us a cut as long as we spared her that."
The smile on the man's face made it clear he was willing to kill for no good reason.
"Anyway, it looks like hacking into our system was the first stage of your plan, so we switched the entire facility to offline mode. The military likes surefire methods, so they'll call off the operation if it falls apart at the very beginning. That way they can search for a better method. Château de Rouge will fall eventually, but it isn't happening today. The cavalry isn't on the way to save you."
"..."
"Tell me what unit you belong to. We tame troublesome people for the nobles and royals' convenience, so we've got plenty of secret connections. We'll have them act on our behalf and take care of your commanding officer. And while all that's going on, we can escape. We'll be able to make a new secret prison soon enough. The nobles will never stop having their fun, after all."
Quenser slowly opened his mouth, but not because he had given into the jailer before his eyes.
The boy laughed and spoke to Mariage.
"Why do you think I was the one doing this?"
"What... ?"
"I'm just a student. I've never even been properly trained to shoot a gun. The military has countless specialists in all sorts of fields, so why do you think they left this to me instead of an infiltration expert? Doesn't make sense, does it!? Normally, a team of commandos from the intelligence division would have rescued you and then we could have talked at our leisure at a military base. That's the textbook path to success! But we didn't do that. The hardheaded military left the standard path. Why!? If you really are smarter than these guys, don't you find it strange!?"
Quenser was not from the intelligence division. It was out of the ordinary for him to be ordered on a mission needing high-level training in infiltration.
"Um..."
"Remember what I told you? Our enemy is a marine Object built in secret by the Island Nation. And it doesn't float on the ocean like normal. This second generation is made to submerge! And where is this prison built!? It's on the ocean, isn't it!?"
"You can't mean..."
Mariage gulped and Quenser shouted out despite the shotgun pressed against his jaw.
"It's after you!! It's trying to eliminate the 'monster' that might find a weakness in it!!"
As soon as he got the words out, the whole world was tossed about.
A tremendous vibration shook the entire facility that looked like a giant birdcage built on the ocean. Every single one of them was tossed along the passageway. Quenser used the confusion to kick the jaw of a jailor lying nearby.
"Due to the formal paperwork, it wasn't clear if the rescue operation would make it in time, so I was unofficially sent ahead!! That way I could get any information out of you before the Megalodiver could kill you!!"
One of the jailers grabbed a Don Chicago Can Opener while lying on the ground.
He shouted something, stood up, and tried to aim at Quenser, but then he stopped.
He seemed to be looking off into the distance.
His gaze was turned toward the dark ocean visible past the jungle gym-like third watchtower.
Quenser knew the name of the despair before the man's eyes. He had seen it himself in the past.
The boy sprang to his feet and tackled the confused Mariage Nightcap to the ground.
A moment later, a tremendous flash of light surged out and everything evaporated.
The laser beam fired by the New Model was just as thick as the third watchtower that acted as a pillar supporting the birdcage.
Everything melted into the color orange and scattered about: the metal watchtower, the passageways, the barriers blocking them off, and the jailers in charge of them.
"Run."
He was half-blinded and sharp pain assaulted his temples, but he did not have time to worry about it.
He grabbed Mariage's collar and forced her to her feet.
"We have to get out of here!! You may be a slut who gave into fear and surrendered your heart to the jailers, but you don't want to die with them, do you!? Then run!! That was its smallest anti personnel cannon. If it fires its main cannon, we'll be evaporated along with this part of the map!!"
"No, no, no, no, no..."
The two of them ran along the passageway and Mariage asked a question with tears in her eyes and while gasping for breath.
"What is that!? I thought you dealt with the Island Nation's New Model at the bottom of the ocean!"
"If it had ended that easily, we wouldn't need your help! We weren't good enough!!"
"B-but you said the Megalodiver was a submerged Objet! Why is it firing from the surface!?"
"We caused a certain amount of damage. It seems the water intake is used for the reactor cooling, the water jet propulsion, and the pilot Elite's oxygen supply. It creates oxygen from seawater using electrolysis!"
"What's your point!?"
"It seems to have a few different water intakes and we sealed the oxygen supply one with the lava."
The entire prison shook once more.
The container cells hanging down started to fall into the dark ocean. There was a living human in each and every one of them and they were all poor innocents who had earned the wrath of nobles or royals.
"In other words, it was able to keep fighting after surfacing! On the surface, it can take in air directly!!"
"But! But!! Wasn't its greatest selling point the way it neutralized all attacks by blocking metal shells with the thick layer of water and bending laser beams with the temperature change created by the volcano!? Can't another Object easily defeat it on the surface!?"
"We thought so, too!!"
Suddenly, the passageway itself fell. It tilted and the two of them tumbled down to a lower level like it was a slide.
"But it didn't work. Its true terror doesn't come from its ability to dive underwater."
Gravity vanished.
By the time they realized the entire prison was collapsing, it was all over.
Quenser and Mariage were thrown into the lukewarm southern ocean along with all the other prisoners.
Part 9
Mission Report A-05
March 17 – 1800 Hours
Ocean of the Far West Pacific District – 1500 Meters Deep
"Hey, " muttered Heivia as he looked up."It's going up. The New Model is surfacing! Was the lava attack that effective!?"
Quenser watched it as well.
"That isn't normal air. It must be using a special gas to get that kind of buoyancy. It also seems to be using its water jets for attitude control. I don't think its reactor is on the verge of exploding or anything. It may have had another reason to take in water. Maybe it uses electrolysis for oxygen."
"I don't care why. If it's surfacing, we win! The thick wall of water and the temperature shield are gone. Our princess can't lose to that shut-in now that it's been stripped bare!!"
The New Model was surfacing quite quickly, so it had already disappeared from view.
That was a great difference from Quenser and Heivia who had to wear thick diving suits and spend hours descending. It would reach the surface in twenty or thirty minutes.
"What should we do?"
"Let's wait for the princess to defeat the New Model. I don't want to be killed by the last shot of an enemy we've already pretty much defeated."
After reporting that the New Model had begun to surface, the two of them began walking once more. Ferocious pillars of fire were still rising from the submarine volcano. They did not know how far they had to go to reach safety, but they did not want to remain where they were.
Nevertheless, they had both relaxed quite a bit.
Their job was complete.
They only had to wait for the princess to shoot her floating target. With its defense system gone, the New Model would be unable to keep up with the high-speed battle. It was a fish on the chopping block.
Or so they thought.
"Are you two still alive?"
After a while, they received a transmission from Frolaytia.
"What is it?"
"Did the princess finish off that irritating freshman? Oh, right. If she destroyed it, it'll sink down here again, won't it!? We need to watch out above!!"
"That isn't the issue."
Frolaytia's voice sounded somehow heavy and she continued before they could determine why.
"The Baby Magnum was badly damaged. I repeat, the Baby Magnum was badly damaged!! The princess just barely avoided being sunk, but she can't continue fighting. We are falling back in order to replace the equipment. If you're still alive, then play dead. This is its ocean now!!"
"You're... kidding..."
"W-wait a second!! But we did our job! The New Model specializes in fighting from underwater and we made it surface. It doesn't have its thick wall of water or temperature shield. Wasn't it just a metal drum rocking in the waves!?"
"It had more than that." Frolaytia's tone was bitter."It was only looking down on its enemies like that because it viewed defeating the enemy unharmed to be the best option. You two woke a sleeping tiger and our princess couldn't stand up to it!"
It was two hours later that the New Model left that area of sea.
In the meantime, Quenser and Heivia remained motionless at the bottom of the cold ocean.
But they did not rejoice when they began surfacing.
The ocean surface was its kingdom.
The New Model now held dominion over 70% of the planet.
Part 10
Mission Report B-05
March 22 – 0000 Hours
Legitimacy Kingdom New Caledonia District – Special Political Prison "Château de Rouge" (Remains)
Quenser once more floated in the dark ocean.
He was worried about the container cells, but it seemed they were well sealed. The metal boxes filled with air rocked in the waves like a can or bottle. They did not sink.
"Are you alive? Hey, Mariage!"
"Bhah! Cough cough!!"
She breathed in some seawater and started coughing, but the gentle glasses girl managed to grab onto a wooden panel floating nearby.
"Grab onto me."
"What!? Wh-why!?"
"Hurry up if you don't want to die! That thing can search the battlefield using sound. It's probably targeting you using your heartbeat, but we managed to avoid its attack a few times already. If you think about it rationally, we wouldn't normally be able to escape laser attacks that can easily shoot down fighters or cruise missiles!!"
"O-oh... Its scan fails when multiple heartbeats overlap."
"In the ocean, all it needed to do was shoot individually diving frogmen or sink a huge ship."
"B-but!! Its specs are good enough to accurately analyze acoustic signatures in the middle of all the sounds made in Object battles, right!? Th-then overlapping our heartbeats won't be enough!!"
"It wasn't made to select an individual out of a close-packed crowd! It also hasn't shown any sign of locating us from our voices. Even if it can detect the sounds, its algorithm was made to detect mechanized units, so it eliminates it as background noise!! When you search for recipe sites on a search engine, you don't find any car sites. This is the same! The Megalodiver is normally at the bottom of the ocean, so it didn't need to think about anti-personnel combat because a huge group of frogmen would never reach it in the first place. To not waste its time, it doesn't even have the most basic algorithms for that kind of thing!!"
"Th-that's all speculation. You have no proof of any of it!"
"You want proof? If it was fully-equipped with anti-personnel functionality, it would have killed us while we discussed this!! So hurry!!"
"E-eeee!?"
Mariage frantically clung to him from the front.
Even so, the ocean was cold in the middle of the night.
Quenser felt as if his organs themselves were shivering and he thought his very life force was being sapped away by the cold.
But the sight before him made him forget even that.
An Object battled an Object.
The damaged Baby Magnum had tried to attack the prison and rescue Mariage while the Megalodiver had tried to kill the "genius monster" who might find a weakness in it. The two of them now clashed on the ocean surface.
The restriction to only laser beams no longer applied. The Baby Magnum switched out its seven main cannons and fired metal shells, plasma, lasers, and other types of attacks. Sometimes its attacks spread out in a fan shape, sometimes they cut off the enemy's escape route, and sometimes they focused on a single point as the enemy came to a stop.
That magical division between spreading out the fire and concentrating it held something that went beyond skill.
It seemed to be possessed by the divine.
The Megalodiver obtained tremendous propulsion by drawing in massive amounts of seawater and firing it backwards like wings, but it could not fully evade even with that high-speed movement.
In addition to direct attacks, the seven main cannons also fired on the enemy's predicted evasion routes. No matter where it tried to run, it would be hit.
But...
"What... is that?"
"That's the enemy we must defeat."
"But... There's no way we can!!"
"Even so, we have to!!"
The New Model's strategy was simple to put in words.
It fired its many secondary cannons straight down at the same moment.
This was of course not meant to target the Baby Magnum. Anything but a main cannon could not do any real damage to the sturdy armor of an Object.
Then what was the Megalodiver targeting?
What did it gain by firing straight down?
That too was simple.
It created a wall.
A colossal pillar of water rose in front of the New Model and that thick wall diverted the princess's cannon fire.
The angle at which it altered their path was not all that large.
It was just a few degrees or a dozen degrees at most.
But the Megalodiver would move hard in the opposite direction. The two actions created a large gap that allowed it to just barely escape the princess's supposedly unavoidable bombardment. It was a magnificent performance, much like a bullfight.
"We've been calling it the Tatami Shield, " said Quenser with a gulp. No matter how many times he saw it, the fearful awe did not fade."The metal shells are diverted by the water resistance. Lasers are light, so they're bent on the same principle as a prism. Plasma and electron beams have their path altered by the wall of water absorbing their heat energy. There's only so much it can absorb, but it's enough to bend them."
"The concept is simple enough, but how does it match the timing so perfectly!? Those laser beams are flying at the speed of light and it's blocking every single one with those walls of water!!"
"Lamenting is easy."
A large group of transport helicopters and hovercrafts from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion approached to retrieve Quenser and the other prisoners whose container cells had been thrown into the ocean.
As he watched that, the boy spoke to Mariage.
"But we can't escape alive unless we find out how. And the same goes for you."
"... !?"
"Welcome to war. This is the true face of this era, so quit complaining and enjoy it. That's the only way to survive!!"
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