Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 9===

What were they to do if they assumed the Martini Series was near collapse?

This was their answer:

“Can we really gather information with this thing?”

“Just watch. Besides, we’ve long since passed the days when actual people are sent in for spy work. Although this was originally a personal project to see if it could help with maintenance inside the Object.”

The excitement was occurring in the electronic simulation division’s space. Quite a few people were gathered in that filthy room that smelled of dried squid and was known as either the toy box or the junk room.

The chorus pounding on the roof had ceased, so the unexpected downpour must have ended.

But rain or shine, this person was just as talkative. The technician who was introverted but wanted recognition was Lilim Gazette, Age 17 (♀). She was the type who had few inhibitions on her blog but grew much more withdrawn at an offline meeting, so she was fairly flustered from all the attention on her.

“It was lucky this was a bluefin tuna breeding base. To determine the migration route the tuna take, they embed transmitters in a few samples and have them swim around. That means the Information Alliance should just ignore any suspicious signals coming from the ocean. More than that, we can use those transmitters as wireless routers.”

“And you attached thumb-sized spy robots on the back of those tuna?”

“Do you have any idea how fast those sushi ingredients swim through the ocean? They’re faster than some torpedoes. A toast to Sir Bloodrics and his Island Nation obsession!!”

“Let’s see,” said Quenser as he pulled out an analog paper sea chart. It seemed out of place in the electronic simulation division that wanted to turn everything into data, but spreading out the sea chart on the table and lining up kid’s meal toy ships made it feel more like a simulation game.

“We’re on New Caribbean Island which is here. The Information Alliance fleet is holding position 120km north of that. Umm, if I place the tuna migration route on the map…”

“This should work. And if it doesn’t, we can always place them on the backs of seabirds that will carry them over.”

The Princess seemed somewhat zoned out as she poked at a spy robot sitting on a shelf. It was three or four centimeters long, its shiny silver body was made of a few overlapping panels, and a bunch of tiny legs could be seen when it was flipped over. It may have been based on a pill bug…no, on a wharf roach.

The necessary tuna had been captured and set up in advance. That jewel of the sea had already been released and it was quickly approaching the Information Alliance ships. The indecent LCD screens in here normally only displayed fighting games or swimsuit models, but one of them now showed the giant propeller of a warship from below. Using the tuna had been even more useful than expected because the footage was surprisingly stable. The wharf roach that had hitched a ride both physically and signal-wise was doing perfectly.

“Incredible,” said Heivia as he watched from the side. “If we converted one of those into a tuna torpedo, we could sink them like this.”

“They would learn what to look out for after the first time and we’d be excoriated in an international conference. Those things are still protected ingredients that nobles spend a fortune on.”

Undaunted, Quenser tried to learn as much as he could about this rival technician’s technology.

“But how do you get the spy robot up onto the ship? Tuna don’t jump out of the water like dolphins, do they?”

“Heh heh heh. They’re lighter than water, so if they let go of the tuna’s back, they’ll float right up to the surface. From there, they just have to ride the waves to the side of the ship. They can also kick at the water with their feet when the waves aren’t enough or they need to adjust their direction. No matter how steep a slope it is, these cute little wharf roaches can climb right on up.”

''Is that how it works?'' wondered Quenser and Heivia as they and the other potatoes focused on the screen.

But then an accident occurred.

“Urp, ughh… Th-the footage…is rocking in the waves…”

“Keep at it, Lilim. Don’t let go of that stick that’s been so worn out from playing too many fighting games. This was your idea, wasn’t it?”

About half of the potatoes were hit by the motion sickness, but it was especially bad for Lilim Gazette, Age 17 (←Important), who was leaning forward and focusing more than any of the others. But all Quenser could do for the pale-faced girl was create a double-layer motion sickness bag out of a plastic bag and a paper bag.

But after a long and hard battle, she managed to attach the spy robot to the side of the ship by using the long-range remote control system that was hijacking the tuna tracking signal.

“That’s their command ship, the Flagship 019. Let’s see what they’re up to.”

“Wait, isn’t that the ship we saved before!? I knew helping someone was only going to come back to bite us!!”

“That captain was sent elsewhere, so I imagine it’s being run by someone else entirely.”

Once the spy robot had attached to the side of the 200m battlecruiser, the footage did not move around nearly as much. That said, it was still out at sea, so the movement did not vanish entirely.

While undergoing an internal struggle, Lilim used the hijacked signal to send the spy robot further and further up the ship. Some of the potatoes watched on from the side and others had been defeated and driven to vomit, so it was a dramatic scene of sweat and tears for a variety of reasons. It may have taken a different form than usual, but this was undoubtedly war.

After climbing the steel wall that leaned out further than vertical, the wharf roach arrived on the deck. However, this was where its mission truly began.

“Okay, let’s review, Lilim. Frolaytia wants to know who is commanding the Nitrogen Mirage. She wants to know if the Martini Series is interfering in any way, so let’s work at figuring that out.”

“While you’re at it, try to find any classified data or blueprints for the Nitrogen Mirage itself,” added the Princess. “It would be great if there was a maintenance manual lying around.”

Just then, something like a giant suspended ceiling of rubber fell down and the screen went dark.

“Eh? Ah!? What, what, what!? The signal just cut off!!”

“Was that…? I really don’t want to accept this, Quenser, but I recognized that zigzag pattern on the falling ceiling…”

“”Don’t pass this off to me! And don’t you say it! Don’t say that was the sole of an unsuspecting Information Alliance soldier’s boot!!”

“…”

“What’s wrong, Lilim!? C-c’mon, reaching for that motion sickness bag is like accepting defeat! Ahhh!!”

Something must have snapped inside her when all her effort went to waste, so the 17-year-old gave in quite spectacularly. Their dreams destroyed, Quenser and Heivia could not suppress the tears.

Good camouflage could be a problem in its own way.

But Lilim Gazette seemed to have recovered now that her stomach was emptied out.

“D-don’t worry. A bluefin tuna weighs 350 kilograms. We could fit tons of finger-sized spy robots on that thing, so we’ve got plenty of extra lives!!”

They had apparently scattered a lot of the small robots across the ocean surface like bait. The 17-year-old accessed another one and tried again at this instant-death action game.

“Wait, Lilim. You have to memorize that fat guard’s patrol route!!”

“…”

“Ahh, that’s a rat. You were eaten by a rat!!”

“……”

“Are you stupid!? How do you fall from the ceiling plumbing and drop right into the toilet!? Waaahh!!”

“Urp… I-I can’t take any more of this!”

She should not have had anything left in her stomach, but Lilim Gazette, Age 17, (who was quickly acquiring a new defining trait) grabbed the barf bag and began dry heaving. Still, she had made it pretty far. This was their chance to acquire some classified information, so they could not have her give up here.

“Lilim.”

“…(Tremble, tremble)”

“Please, Lilim. Do us a favor and gently grab this thick and curved stick again!!”

“Stop!! Don’t put that dirty stick in my face!!”

…She seemed to have been deeply traumatized. Even the potatoes started feeling sorry for her as they surrounded her and poked hard things against her cheeks that were puffed out to fight the rising urge to vomit.

Plus, Quenser and the others wanted to try their hand at this. However, this instant-death action game was too difficult for just anyone to play. In fact, if even the developer herself could not beat it, a real video game would have received nothing but complaints.

“Does anyone here know how to use joysticks like this?”

“Yes, we need someone with plenty of qualifications, who’s skilled with their hands, and could probably pilot just about anything…”

As Quenser and Heivia listed off the conditions, the potatoes’ gazes all gathered on one person.

The person pushed up to stardom in place of the 17-year-old vomit girl was a pure wildflower and their true jack-of-all-trades: Myonri.

“Eh? Ehhh!?”

“Please, Myonri.”

“Please wait! There’s someone on the floor right over there showing what this does to you! This is a demonic machine that no girl should ever touch!”

“We get that, but please just grab this stick. You can look down and slowly, hesitantly reach out your trembling hand. You can even shut one eye like you’re being handed a water balloon that might burst at any moment.”

Meanwhile, the Princess was adorably and silently puffing out her cheeks at receiving no attention whatsoever despite this being a piloting mission.

And despite how much she complained, Myonri got the hang of it super fast once she got started.

“Hmm. So you don’t move each individual leg. You just tell it front, left, or right and it does the rest for you. It can move forward or turn to the left or right, but it can’t back up. And when it reaches a wall head on, it automatically performs the action to climb up the wall. This is really neat.”

“…I see Myonri’s the type to intentionally let a few of them die to test things out.”

“And that smile on her face as she sends them to their death kind of scares me. Is this what girls are like on the inside…?”

The cute little wharf roach had left the simple floor and was instead crawling along the ceiling as it moved deeper and deeper into the ship. It could not pass through the watertight doors that did not leave any gap at all and the hijacked tuna signal could not reach too far inside, but other than that, it provided a high level of freedom.

“What can this thing do?”

“Umm, it was originally meant for Object maintenance, right? In addition to the standard camera and microphone, it can apparently intercept local signals. That means phone calls and emails too. Of course, it will all still be encrypted, so we’ll need another computer to handle the decryption.”

The spy robot was surprisingly high spec.

It was fun using it themselves, but they did not want to be on the receiving end.

“Zzz…mutter, mutter…”

The Princess must have gotten sick of being ignored because she had gone to sleep in the middle of the mission.

And since she leaned defenselessly against Quenser, the rest of the potatoes’ hostility focused in on him.

“Okay, that’s it. We need to kill him.”

“Okay, that’s it. We need to kill him.”

“Okay, that’s it. We need to kill him.”

“Hey, I thought it was my turn to be the center of attention!” protested Myonri. “I’ll quit on you, dammit!!”

When the less noticeable girl grew tearful, everyone focused back on her.

Everyone faced Myonri like they were looking at someone who had tried to up their popularity on a social network by announcing they were shorting some stock and then got arrested for it.

“Umm, we drew up a diagram of the Flagship 019 before, right? Y’know, when taking measurements for the rescue operation.”

“We wouldn’t know since we were looking after some tanks at the time. But is this it?”

“Hmm… It looks like they won’t let us into the bridge or combat command. And I’m afraid the tuna signal won’t reach very far inside…”

“Wait, Myonri, then where are you headed?”

“The best place to find sensitive information has always been the break room.”

She once more causally revealed the true face of girls. The potatoes’ balls shriveled up and they did not want to direct the conversation any further in that direction, but they were the ones who had put her in control. Quenser focused on the soft sensation of the napping Princess in order to tilt the scales toward his ideal image of girls. He would not have much of a future if he grew disillusioned with teenage girls at his age.

He watched the cute little wharf roach that was infiltrating the ship using a tuna signal.

A lot of girls in white sailor uniforms were gathered there.

“Wow, they’re squatting, wow! And they’re scratching ''there'' quite a bit! Ah, ahh!! I don’t want to see this! I don’t want to see any more of this group!!”

“Be quiet. I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

“But all they’re talking about is who slept with who and how someone got promoted so fast by screwing their commander!”

“I said be quiet!! Mhh, this is a big deal…!!”

This seemed to have lit some kind of fire in Myonri.

The potatoes tilted their heads and wondered if the entire mission had gotten sidetracked, but then something happened on the screen.

“Hi, everyone. Mind if I join you?”

“Geh! It’s Little Miss Perfect!”

“The name is Piranirie Martini Smoky. And being a genius girl can actually make it easier to get stiff shoulders. Oh, or is it taboo to mention stiff shoulders when you don’t have any boobs?”

A small girl of about 13 joined that no-rules death match.

Most of the girls wore sailor uniforms because they were in fact sailors, but this new girl with wavy black hair was somewhat different. She wore a blue parade coat with gold stitching on top of her uniform. The sleeves were baggy enough that only her fingertips poked out and the hem dragged along the floor. It actually seemed to accentuate how short she was. And it was blue. That color was used in the Princess’s special suit since it symbolized the Legitimacy Kingdom, but it was best avoided for a naval force. It was well known for making someone harder to find if they fell overboard. Since she had gone out of her way to wear something like that, she must have had the same privilege as a Pilot Elite to overpower a group with her own individual ability.

But she had given some important information for Quenser who had a girl’s head on his shoulder like he was being blessed on the train ride back from school. He looked to that girl who was skillfully spinning a fountain pen with the fingertips poking out of her baggy sleeve.

“One of the Martini Series…? So are they really interfering with this mission?”

He demanded someone quickly check with Katarina, but Heivia only dug out some earwax with a dubious look on his face. Quenser’s message had not reached anyone.

“But do you really need to hold this girls gathering in such a cramped place?” asked the girl on the screen. “You could always go somewhere with more space.”

“…We have our reasons.”

“Heh heh. So you still have enough innocence left to care what the boys think about you.”

“Why you…!!”

“Good, good. You’re so cute. …Oh, and you can punch me if you want, but leave a bruise anywhere visible and it’s game over for you. In fact, if I just so happened to trip and hit my forehead here, you would never receive another promotion. Never. Ever☆”

“…”

“That’s more like it. It has not been easy making all the necessary adjustments with those old men at the top, so let’s be more candid down here. I made sure to leave behind my safety device – that guy who looks after me – so I really was just hoping to relax.”

Piranirie sounded casual enough, but her cheerful tone hid a hint of mockery. She may have been used to this kind of treatment.

She controlled the people around her by taking advantage of how delicately she had to be handled.

Finally, one of the girls in the break room hesitantly opened her mouth.

“Um, does that have anything to do with why we haven’t seen any of the guys recently?”

“Yes. This is what I was trying to convince those old men to do.”

Piranirie Martini Smoky casually confirmed it.

And…

“If we really want to get that defector back, is this any time to be pitting Objects against each other? Save me this clean war nonsense. The only real answer is to put together a team of divers and attack the Legitimacy Kingdom base. I mean, it’s a remote island. Who’s gonna see?☆”

Just as a chill ran down all of their backs, the windowless electronic simulation division room’s lights went out and they were surrounded by complete darkness.