Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 8===

The Princess yawned like a sunbathing cat in the middle of the vast empty desert of Africa’s Turkana District. She was in the cockpit of the First Generation Baby Magnum.

She had gotten bored of watching desert reference footage while eating popsicles from the freezer behind her seat. Her stomach was feeling kind of full.

(I’d really like something a little more interesting. Like a shaved ice machine. Or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a large frappe with iced milk tea on top of that.)

The old maintenance lady spoke to her over the radio.

“Stay focused, Princess.”

“I am.”

“I can see in the data when you snap back to focus like that. Your vitals don’t lie.”

The ground base at the bottom of the Mother Lady space elevator was stationary. The Capitalist Corporations’ Federation of Elevator Industries had provided generous amounts of money and supplies to win over the local guerillas and us them to defend the elevator. Now that the Legitimacy Kingdom had taken the ground base, there had been concerns that they would be worn down by never-ending attempts to retake the base, but that had not happened.

The only attacks came from the occasional mortar shells.

That was nothing to fear with an Object’s anti-air lasers that could accurately shoot down a MIRV long-range ballistic missile attack that scattered countless warheads through the air. When the explosives flew in like a long throw in baseball, she shot them down easier than clay pigeons at a shooting range. Sending in an Object had helped immensely. The Capitalist Corporations had thought they could use the guerillas as disposable pawns, but the locals were not rushing in to attack anymore.

The Princess rapidly moved her eyes behind her goggles.

But she was not accurately tracking explosives tearing through the air.

“Hey, how many different birds are there in the Turkana District?”

“According to a conservation group’s records, there are 150 species of wild bird…although this data is from before the rapid desertification. Why? Explosives disguised as birds have existed as far back as ancient China, so did you find a special drone?”

(So I’ve found half of them. Now, where are the other half?)

The old maintenance lady’s worries were unfounded because the Princess was locking onto every bird-sized reading and marking them down. Once she got bored with that, she planned to scale the radar down to the insect level. The guerillas must have had their spirits broken and given up on even the mortar attacks because those were the only things she could find in the air here.

It was strange.

This elevator was sponsored by the entire Capitalist Corporations and had been constructed with joint funding from 7th Core.

Surely there was more than just the guerillas making cautious attacks with borrowed weapons. When was the ultimate Capitalist Corporations Generation 2 going to arrive from beyond the horizon? The Princess yawned again while filling in her hand-drawn bird encyclopedia.

(Do I not even get to fight this time?)

“Yawwwwn… This peace is boring me to death.”