Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 3===

The actual battle did not even last an hour.

Heivia pouted his lips as she stared at the flashing dots on the screen.

“Aww. The Old Fashion and Rush are moving away. Is that all you’re gonna do!? Are you running away!?”

“The Old Fashion was probably only meant to fight a quick battle to gather information. It didn’t have to settle this in the first battle. After all, the Rush can’t send in another Object or Elite, so the Rush is the one that loses its advantage as time passes.”

As Quenser listened to that conversation between Heivia and Frolaytia, he narrowed his eyes in thought.

“Is the Old Fashion’s main cannon what I think it is?”

“Yes. It’s an old Object, so we have all the data on it. It fires metal shells, but it isn’t a railgun or a coilgun. It’s a compressed metal cannon. That sounds fancy, but it really only fires them with gunpowder the old-fashioned way. You saw the gigantic cross-shaped muzzle flash, right?”

“Gunpowder? How can that break through an Object’s nuke-resistant onion armor?”

“It uses special shells. The energy from the Object’s reactor is given to a press that applies extreme pressure to a large mass to sharpen it down to a pin-like point. The destructive power of two one-ton shells varies a lot depending on whether it’s as thick as a bowling ball or as narrow as a pin. Think of it like the difference between being stepped on by athletic shoes versus high heels. Some of the outdated tank guns would increase their destructive power by focusing the heavy shell’s kinetic energy on a dart-like pointed core, but you can think of this as an extreme mutation of that. And that allows it to pierce the armor that a nuke can’t get through.”

“Ugh,” groaned Heivia, but Quenser looked puzzled.

“But just like with diesel, wouldn’t forcibly compressing the shell create a ton of heat?”

“It’s just like the earth’s core. The melting point of steel is over 1500 degrees, but the core reaches 6000 degrees. The pressure from all directions is so great that the liquid can’t act like a liquid and then it’s bound by its solid state. And when a magnetic substance is exposed to high temperatures, it’s spin is disturbed, which can apparently cause irregular changes in its magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistance. The method was left behind by the flow of time. The shells’ paths were too unstable for railguns and coilguns, so the method tends to fall back on old-fashioned gunpowder. It might look strange now, but at the time, there was a lot of resistance to the switch from giant cannons full of gunpowder to laser beams and railguns. It’s all about who benefits.”

Perhaps this Object was a freak specifically because it was old-fashioned. If just a little more time had passed, the firing method would have taken priority over the processing of the shell.

“That would explain why it has both a normal magazine and a drum magazine. One is for the explosive and the other is for the metal shells. I also don’t see any cartridges being ejected, so maybe the powder is being wrapped up and held in place like a giant roll of old paper.”

“It doesn’t really matter as long as that antique from the pirate age can slap up the Rush for us.”

“Also,” cut in Frolaytia. “The Information Alliance has taken another action. Some soldiers hidden in Second Venice seem to have broken away from them. And they are showing no interest in surrendering to us. They are currently holding the observation deck of the Pillar of Truth, a giant broadcast tower on the east side.”

“A broadcast tower?”

Quenser sounded skeptical and the busty silver-haired commander sighed.

“Assuming they aren’t just seeing the sights, they might have wanted to hijack the airwaves and broadcast something to the world. Now, the tower itself seems to have had backup power to preserve the broadcast infrastructure in an emergency, but the crucial broadcast equipment was apparently remotely locked by the Information Alliance and they haven’t sent out even a single 140 character comment. And that idol Elite’s online concert is still playing on all frequencies. That swimsuit girl jamming is truly frightening. Anyway, the rogue Information Alliance troops haven’t left the tower yet, so they’re probably still fighting to unlock the equipment.”

“So if we capture them…”

“We might be able to figure out what’s going on, even if we can’t get rid of the Rush. This group has broken free of the Rush to transmit something and the Rush is trying to stop them. It smells fishy to me.”

With that settled, they had a mission.

But attacking a broadcast tower was different from attacking a normal building. It was going to be a real pain in the ass.

“The Pillar of Truth is 400 meters tall and the rogue Information Alliance soldiers are holed up on the observation deck at 300 meters. The elevators are of course stopped and they’ve completely cut away the emergency stairs. That means we’ve lost the normal methods of climbing to the top.”

“What are they planning to do? Hole up there until they starve?”

“The observation deck has a restaurant and a souvenir shop, so they’ll have plenty of food and water for the time being. I don’t know how they plan to escape, but towers like that tend to have maintenance gondolas like window washers use. If they need to, they might be able to descend with those.”

Of course, those would be stored up top, so Quenser and the other attackers could not use them.

Heivia rubbed his chin in thought.

“It would be easy enough to send out some snipers or an attack helicopter to fill the observation deck with holes, but then we might not be able to get our hands on whatever information these rogue soldiers have.”

“How are they equipped, Frolaytia?”

“As infantry, probably assault rifles and military handguns. Maybe grenades too.”

They could not get in from below.

Nor could they directly attack the observation deck to exterminate the enemy.

“Then what do we do? If we can’t attack from below, are we supposed to attack from above? But I doubt that pointy tower has a heliport.”

“Close but no cigar.”

Frolaytia responded to Heivia’s complaint with a serious nod.

The two idiots were confused, but then she said something even more inscrutable.

“We’ll be taking the average of those two by attacking from the middle.”