Lisolette

Lisolette (リゾレッテ), also known by the codename Break Carrier (ブレイクキャリアー), was an Object of the Mass Driver Conglomerate, a group who seceded from the Capitalist Corporations.

Design
The Lisolette has an uncommon design. Its spherical body is supported by three leg-like parts, the ends of which have ski-shaped planks attached to slide smoothly over the ground. The most noticeable feature is probably the giant cannon, twice as long as the main sphere, attached to the right side of the Object. This cannon is supported by two leg-like parts similar to a sniper rifle’s bipod, as it is so large that it would probably bend under its own weight if not supported.

At the back of the main cannon, there is a rotating part similar to a revolver. However, giant magazines storing the railgun shells stick out from five evenly spaced points to the sides of the cylinders. A normal magazine would have been too large, so the design was made more complex in order to split the magazine up. On top of its spherical body, the Object has giant missile launchers attached, holding the chaff missiles used to reflect the targeting signal for its main cannon. The Lisolette was estimated to carry around 25 shells and another 25 chaff missiles.

It was designed by Sladder Honeysuckle.

Technology
Without a doubt, Lisolette's most impressive asset is its main cannon, a high output railgun. Normally, the sheer volume of armor used by Objects means that combat generally occurs at ranges below ten kilometers.

While most main cannons can fire at greater ranges, atmospheric drag reduces the velocity, and thus impact force, of a railgun or coilgun as range increases. A laser suffers from increasing beam diffusion and atmospheric attenuation as range increases. Individual photons will interact with air molecules and be deflected or absorbed, and the imperfect collimation of the beam inherent in any physical system means the footprint of the laser, the area 'illuminated' by the beam, expands at greater ranges and reduces the lethality of the weapon with the square of the increase in footprint radius. A low-stability plasma cannon will also lose effectiveness at range; plasma will disperse due to its, as well as losing heat to. However, the Lisolette was capable of destroying a cutting edge Object like the Bright Hopper with a single shot from a distance of 500km; Quenser speculated that if the liquid nitrogen cooling system in Lisolette's shells was used at full capacity and the round was allowed to reach a high peak altitude in its trajectory, it might be able to reach as far as three thousand kilometers, a figure which was later confirmed by Lisolette's designer.

The main cannon is an immense railgun firing a large rocket-assisted shell. First, the giant shell is fired by the railgun and immediately afterwards. This focuses all the kinetic energy on the center rocket, accelerating it further. After splitting apart, the shell ignites its rocket motor to accelerate to Mach 25, about 8.5 kilometers per second. Just before impact, ten or so smaller impactors made of tungsten or a similar material are deployed in a ring pattern. This concept is derived from the interception missiles from the age of the Aegis ship. This is intended to ensure the destruction of the target in the event of a slight targeting error, though it was never demonstrated to be effective.

The high output railgun shoots at a high-angle trajectory ideal for bombardment, allowing it to pass over minor terrain features such as intervening mountain ranges. Unlike the parabolic arc of a thrown ball or howitzer round, the shell travels to a point several thousand meters above the target and then adjusts its trajectory to intersect. This allows the weapon to strike targets in a timely manner; an object launched at 8.5 kps could take upwards of half an hour to move through a ballistic trajectory, making it useless against a moving target. Quenser originally proposed that it did this by forcibly changing its trajectory using tail fins like a dive bomb, but a video analysis found no tail fins and concluded that 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.

To deal with the heat from air friction it uses an active cooling system that employs liquid nitrogen to manage the surface temperature of the shell, the evaporated nitrogen leaving a line like a contrail tracing the path of each shot. The effectiveness of this cooling system appears to be the limiting factor on engagement range; several shells failed to reach their targets during Lisolette's attack on the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion, likely destroyed by heat-induced structural failure or detonation of trajectory adjustment charges.

In order to aim the Lisolette uses chaff missiles to create clouds that reflect electromagnetic signals. It sends its locking signal up at an angle so it is reflected back down by the clouds and at the target on the ground. That way it can accurately lock onto its target while keeping its own location hidden, and it can also aim from above even in a mountainous area that tends to cut off electromagnetic signals. This method normally wouldn't work since the signal wouldn’t just be reflected straight back to them, it would be reflected in pretty much every direction and the Lisolette wouldn’t have a strong enough signal to accurately aim with. Quenser reasoned the Mass Driver Conglomerate had to possess some kind of compensation program that can accurately pick up on the location of the target from the weak signal that is sent back amongst the diffuse reflection. Since they specialize in space development they could have based it on a project to intercept signals or lasers from military satellites that have been slightly reflected by the earth’s atmosphere.

Despite being focused towards long range bombardment the Lisolette is not defenseless at close ranges. The main cannon's barrel can extend and retract like a police baton and it can strengthen or weaken the voltage to freely change its power. If an enemy Object does get near it, the length of the cannon can be reduced to lower the inertial force and allow it to fight at high speeds like other Objects. It's also possible it could keep the railgun shell from breaking apart so the entire mass strikes the enemy Object. The outer armor would be crushed and the sharp inner core would shoot out and pierce the target’s armor. Normally when the barrel is shortened there would be less space for the electricity to affect it, but the shells could switch modes as well to maintain the main cannon’s great power.

Specifications

 * Class: Large-scale Bombardment Weapon
 * Type: Second Generation specialized in land battles
 * Length: 150m (including main cannon)
 * Armor Material: 5cm x 200 layers (Including welding impurities)
 * Propulsion Engine: Electrostatic propulsion system
 * Top Speed: 410km/h
 * Main Armament: High output railgun x 1
 * Secondary Armament: Railguns, multiple missile launchers (chaff missiles)
 * Main Color: Gray

An Audition War
After the Mass Driver Conglomerate seceded from the Capitalist Corporations they began a great migration, leaving their headquarters in Los Angeles and moving south to the Iguazu area of South America. The 37th Mobile Maintenace Battalion of the Legitimacy Kingdom was sent to attack them out of concern they would attack a space development base being built nearby in the Amazon area. The Conglomerate supposedly had its Elites kidnapped by the Capitalist Corporations, rendering all of its Objects useless, though there were rumors and unconfirmed reports of them possessing a secret Object. After they reached the coast of the Iguazu District, the 37th was reinforced by the 52nd and its cutting edge Object, the Bright Hopper. Its Elite intended to use its greater speed to do a pincer strike against the Conglomerate forces. However, the Charlemagne assault landing aircraft carrier detected the launch of a chaff missile meteorological weapon.

The Bright Hopper was suddenly destroyed. It was soon revealed to have been the work of the Lisolette, who had shot its main cannon in a high-angle trajectory over the mountains from a hidden position 500 km away from the Bright Hopper. Quenser realized that the Lisolette was using the cloud created by the chaff missile to aim its main cannon, so he instructed Milinda to blow the clouds away with her low-stability plasma cannons. However, she could only open a few holes on the clouds and Quenser urged her to dodge. She tried to put a mountain between the cannon and her, but the second shot of the Lisolette destroyed half the mountain, peeled part of her armor and damaged 3 of her 7 cannons plus her propulsion device.

The Lisolette put more distance between itself and the Baby Magnum and then proceeded to bombard the 37th's maintenance base. This heavy assault added to the fact that the Baby Magnum's damage prevented it from fighting a high-speed battle prompted Froleytia to consider calling off the mission and trying to retreat by sea in hydrofoils, spreading out as much as possible to minimize losses. However, she and Quenser were contacted by Bilany Saronno, who offered to collaborate with the 37th to destroy the Lisolette. She informed Froleytia that the Baby Magnum had hidden in the mountains, keeping multiple mountains between her and the Lisolette thanks to Heivia's analysis of the Conglomerate Object's movements. Bilany proposed that the Baby Magnum hide in an abandoned alpine vegetation mass production plant and shoot the Lisolette when it passed by. The soldiers of the 52nd would blow up the Iguazu Dam, flooding the area and immobilizing the Lisolette, which used an electrostatic propulsion system.

This plan would sacrifice tens of thousands of civilians living in the Iguazu District, but Bilany considered them acceptable sacrifices due to not being Legitimacy Kingdom citizens. Quenser decided to search for another way to destroy the Lisolette while Heivia stopped the 52nd from blowing up the dam. The Baby Magnum, Quenser and Froleytia prepared another ambush in the mountain routes. However, they encountered a problem when trying to decide which of the 3 routes should the Baby Magnum choose. The echoes of the electrostatic engines of both Objects made nearly impossible to determine which of the routes the Lisolette was taking by ear. Quenser decided to separate from Froleytia, wait in another route and have visual confirmation of the Lisolette.

Quenser confirmed the Lisolette was taking the middle route but found his radio had broken when he had fallen down a slope. He used a PDW he had picked up earlier to send a simple message through gunfire to the Baby Magnum. Milinda received the message and used maps of the mountains' tunnel network to shoot at the Lisolette using one of the tunnels. The plasma cannon shot destroyed the Lisolette's reactor, ending the battle.

When the Lisolette was destroyed, the conglomerate's forces also lost their commander, the Object's Elite, causing command to shift to Sladder Honeysuckle.

Trivia

 * The codename Break Carrier, "the one that carries destruction", is a tentative codename that Froleytia came up with in the spot once its existence was confirmed. Since this was the first time the Legitimacy Kingdom faced this Object, it didn't have a codename for it.
 * Ironically, if a manufacturing error or other flaw allowed heat to reach the liquid nitrogen for the cooling system, the resulting acute internal overpressure could quite possibly destroy the shell.
 * If fully operational, Lisolette's main gun would have had coverage over slightly less than six percent of the Earth's surface. This becomes far more impressive when accounting for concentrated nature of human civilization; if stationed near Dallas, Texas, Lisolette would have been able to engage targets anywhere between Vancouver and Panama, and an identical unit near Warsaw or Kiev would cover the populated regions of Russia as well as all of Scandavia, Europe, and North Africa.