Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 17===

The Strategic AI Juliet of the Information Alliance’s Gatling 033 had been shut off and the Elite girl who had mastered the technique of manually controlling the entire Object had ejected.

With the Gatling 033 truly unable to move, the war in Alaska came to an end. Naturally, the Legitimacy Kingdom was the victor.

“…”

After landing on the snow with her parachute, the Elite girl turned tail and ran, but the Legitimacy Kingdom Object did not pursue her. That was proof that she stood upon a clean battlefield ruled by a type of law and order. The Elite girl bit her lip in humiliation, but she had no way to fight back in her current situation. Retreating as quickly as possible when given the opportunity was the duty of the loser.

She ran for kilometer after kilometer across the cold snow.

Even inside her special suit made with cutting edge technology, she was gradually losing heat.

As she gritted her teeth at the bitterness of defeat, the Elite girl heard the sound of snow being crushed. However, it was too smooth a noise to be human footsteps. It was an Information Alliance off-road vehicle. Since the noise of an engine would draw in enemies, the Information Alliance usually used hybrids. The electric motor made much less noise. Issues of horsepower and driving distance prevented them from using fully electric vehicles. The gasoline engine would be used for terrain with harsher slopes and the electric motor would be used when enemy troops were likely around.

The off-road vehicle stopped in front of the Elite girl. The door opened and the commander of the Information Alliance’s maintenance base zone stepped out. Her name was Lendy Farolito. She was a woman of about 20 with brown skin and silver hair. She was one of the young officers who were growing rather common in recent years.

The fact that the commander had personally come to the front lines may have been a form of respect for the Elite. Or perhaps the commander simply had nothing better to do with the war over.

“Thank goodness… It seems you managed to survive,” said Lendy with a relieved expression.

The Elite girl remained silent and simply looked at her commander. Lendy seemed to interpret that hard look as coming from the shock of defeat.

“For now, we need to retreat. The intelligence department trying to analyze the technology from the Object wreckage will probably resent us. The facility they set up to transmit their data will likely be destroyed by the Legitimacy Kingdom now. However, we have no duty to continue fighting to the last man once our Object has been lost. We can deal with this digitally. A certain amount of data has already been gathered from the wreckage, so this was not without any results. And the higher ups do not seem insistent that we stick with this. Fortunately, we were deemed to be a card worth preserving.”

Lendy crouched down to put herself on eyelevel with the short Elite girl.

She looked like a parent or a teacher.

However, the Elite girl could not forget two facts.

The fact that a bomb had been set up inside the cockpit and the fact that a detonation signal had been sent to it after the situation had grown unfavorable.

“Losing the Gatling 033 is a painful blow, but the Information Alliance military emphasizes piloting systems and strategic AI, so we should be fine. The Juliet was backed up and you can still be used. Constructing an entire Object would take 3 or 4 years, but we can take one in construction and change the layout to suit our needs. That way, it won’t take too long before you can get back to it.”

“…”

“The biggest problem is the fear that the Legitimacy Kingdom will retrieve the Gatling 033 and analyze the data and technology concerning the Strategic AI Juliet. But we do not need to worry about that. The main circuits and memory devices in the Gatling 033 have heating elements installed to deal with that. With the circuits directly fried, all the crucial technology will be erased, so-…”

A high-pitched noise rang out.

It came from Lendy Farolito’s cheek.

The Elite girl had slapped her commander.

In a stiff voice, the Elite girl said, “If you try something like that again, I really will turn my main cannons on your base zone.”

Having been slapped, Lendy looked at the Elite girl with an expression of bewilderment. The Elite girl did not feel like dealing with her commander if she was going to feign ignorance. She headed for the back seat of the off-road vehicle while ignoring Lendy who was holding her cheek with one hand.

(That boy.)

The Elite girl thought while ignoring the driver who was remaining silent due to the odd atmosphere.

(It may be safer to keep an engineer like him as a confidant than a soldier who excels at giving suspicious pretexts for everything. …Oh ho ho. Now I want him even more.)