Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume19 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 1===

''Mariydi Whitewitch.''

''On charges of disobeying orders, unauthorized combat outside of the operation zone, and attacking an unidentified craft not designated an operation objective, you are to be detained by Royal Air Force Inc.''

''You are relieved from all duties until an accident investigator from your Sky Blue Inc. arrives from Los Angeles. At that point, a court martial will be held in accordance with Capitalist Corporation military regulations.''

…''I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.''


“…”

She was a small girl of around 12.

Her long blonde hair was splayed out on the floor while she lay motionless in the fetal position. This 5m cubic space made of a special alloy was her entire world at the moment.

This was the Northern Restricted Zone and it was currently February.

She was indoors, even if the building wasn’t exactly luxurious, but she could see her breaths. In this environment, turning off the heater was more than enough to function as torture. Yet if she tried to complain, the general public would scoff at the idea of a war criminal deserving anything as nice as a heater to warm her cell.

It was surprisingly hard to find sympathy when it came to the true necessities.

“Mariydi. Mariydi Whitewitch.”

Someone in the next cell over knocked on the metal wall, but only weakly. He was starved for entertainment, but solitary confinement had drained him of all his strength. He had a habit of ending up in these cells. He was a known troublemaker within the Royal Air Force PMC. His instincts may have told him either his mind or body would break if he didn’t distract himself from the cold.

“Heh heh heh,” laughed the vulgar man. “So what’d you do this time? I’m sure a picture-book lady knight like you’s got a good story. Especially if it got you a night in the same filthy detention barracks as me.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m in here for the same thing you are: breaking the rules.”

The small girl grumbled back without getting up from the hard floor, but that only drew the man’s attention.

“You think you’re on the great Klarheit Rubyhunter’s level? You wish. I’ll have you know I’m in here for emptying three bottles of vodka before flying a nondescript stealth fighter. And now that I’ve sobered up, I’m in the mood for a fairy tale, so hurry it up.”

Mariydi felt fairly certain this man needed counseling with a doctor, not a date with a cell, but the battlefield was always cruel. Not everyone would get the care they needed.

She gave in and sighed, disgusted that she could see the breath. She sat up and her long blonde hair fell on her shoulders. But she was less interested in talking than she was in getting her cheek off of the cold floor.

“I disobeyed orders and left the Northern Restricted Zone.”

“What led you to do that?”

“I happened to detect a Longshot CM flying at low altitude toward a large safe country city. That’s the type of cruise missile that snakes along in an S-shape to slip past the ground-based radars. If I hadn’t shot it down, Warsaw would’ve been wiped off the map. It had an FAE warhead.”

“Ah ha ha hya ha!!”

Klarheit guffawed in legitimate amusement.

Mariydi had been altered by the same technology used for Pilot Elites, but she hadn’t been involved in any esper research. Still, she could easily picture the man holding his sides and rolling in his cell beyond the thick metal wall.

“I had no idea that kind of fairy tale was going on while I fought the tremor in my fingers in this frigid box! Goddamn, I chose the wrong time to get thrown in here again. If I’d joined you, I could’ve used the nearly 10 Gs to enjoy the best drink I’ve had in a while!!”

“You like drinking while holding the stick and doing the cobra? It takes a certain kind of talent to drink while experiencing gravity as strong as on Venus.”

“The high Gs constrict your blood vessels, so the alcohol hits your body different. Don’t worry, you’ll understand once you’re older. Once you’ve had a drink while dancing with the angels in heaven, you can never go back.”

Humans had the weird ability to pour any amount of effort into their personal hobbies and entertainment. But maybe Mariydi had no right to judge his obsession since she had never had any alcohol to drink. The sharp-eyed girl had been personally obsessed with coffee and chocolate since she first had them. Although that was less an intentional obsession and more just something that happened on its own. She could guess that alcohol was the same thing for some people.

Then she heard a heavy metallic creaking.

That was not the door to any of the cells in here. It came from further away. Most likely, that was the entrance at the very end of the hall.

“The emperor has arrived in his new clothes.”

Klarheit’s mockery proved accurate.

Solid footsteps approached with the precision of a ticking clock. The face Mariydi spied through the door’s slit made it clear this was someone who had never had any difficulties in her life and handled everything with digital financial data. The woman wore a professional tight skirt suit.

This emperor was in fact an empress, which changed the lush’s attitude entirely. He even made a poor attempt at a whistle.

The cold woman either wasn’t interested or was tuning him out entirely because she placed a hand on her hip in front of Mariydi’s cell door.

“You are the criminal, Mariydi Whitewitch, I assume?”

“Until the court martial, I think you’re supposed to say ‘alleged’. I fully expect that court martial to be rigged against me from the start, but still.”

“I am Samantha Beeskiss, an accident investigator from Sky Blue Inc. It is my job to supervise all court martial proceedings, indict any employee behavior that would harm the company’s bottom line or public image, and to defend you in your court martial which is sure to involve a lot of classified information.”

Was that supposed to be comforting? This was one of the problems with the Capitalist Corporations where the companies held judicial and legislative power.

How could Mariydi expect a fair trial when her attorney was also tasked with protecting the company? The woman was openly announcing she worked on the side of plaintiff and defendant at the same time. Even a fair judge could be manipulated any which way if the prosecution and defense were colluding behind the scenes to control how the trial played out. She could do just about anything in her position.

The woman swiped her finger across a tablet she held like a clipboard. Maybe all the legal calculations were made by the machine and her only real job was to wait for the flat tablet to give her the result. If so, that was just plain sad. She would think she was on the path to a successful career without realizing she was just a pawn.

The computer age had arrived for aerial combat as well. No one flew a fighter jet without any assistance. But pilots still had their pride. They had the pride of a falcon telling them only they could take control of that unruly mechanical beast and bend its flight to their will.

“There are a few things I wish to confirm before the court martial.”

“As my defense attorney, or as the prosecutor?”

“On February 3, 19:20 local time, you ignored ground command’s instructions and left the operation area during Operation Freefall, a joint operation with Royal Air Force Inc. And at around 19:30, you attacked and shot down an unidentified craft flying rapidly outside the Northern Restricted Zone, without even confirming its affiliation first.”

“You can find all the records in my flight recorder.”

“Only wreckage was found from the unidentified craft. The investigation on the surface continues, but it is not looking promising. That means you may have shot down a civilian craft.”

“Nonsense. That was a Longshot CM flying at low altitude for Warsaw. Missiles don’t answer your hails last time I checked and if I hadn’t shot it down then, 1.8 million people would have been roasted.”

“With no way to objectively prove that, the current situation is not in your favor.”

How was she supposed to find objective proof while stuck in a cell and unable to contact anyone? But Mariydi wasn’t stupid enough to ask that out loud. The company clearly wanted to get the trial over with and bury the entire incident ASAP.

“Did that missile scare you that bad?” she asked with a snort of laughter.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That Longshot CM weaved right past all the ground radars. That means it could also slip past one of your precious Objects. The Sky Blue executives, or maybe someone even higher than that, want to preserve this peaceful age, so they don’t want the fear of missiles making a recurrence. Because…”

“You should fix your habit of speaking based on unfounded speculation and delusions. Unless you’re trying to anger the prosecutor into making a ‘mistake’.”

“The fear of missiles leads right to another fear. The fear humanity supposedly conquered with the adoption of those monstrosities you call Objects. This one was only FAE, but they could always load a more powerful warhead in one. Like – oh, I don’t know – a nuc-”

The metal door gave a scream.

Samantha Beeskiss may have drawn her sidearm and shot the door.

And without batting an eye, she continued speaking.

“Do try not to spread careless rumors. It leaves a poor impression.”

“…”

“You shot down an unidentified craft without permission and without even attempting to identify it. Those are the facts. Any baseless speculation beyond that has no place in a court martial.”

''This world is diseased,'' thought Mariydi.

People claimed they had overcome their fear of nukes, but nothing could be further from the truth. They wouldn’t have spread “nuke resistant” Objects all over the world if nukes really were a relic of an older age.

They were terrified, so they did everything they could to defend themselves.

And they failed to realize their actions were based in fear.

Almost like someone guzzling pain killers every day and then claiming they needed the medicine because their stomach was constantly upset. And when someone pointed out the source of their fear, they would react violently.

Just like people reacted very differently to self-deprecatingly calling themselves stupid and being called stupid by someone else.

“Heh heh. You claim you shot down a Longshot CM that can slip past a radar network? You had better hope the court martial accepts that a fantasy like that exists.”

“It did exist. I know because I shot it down myself.”

“Personally, I would find it more believable if you claimed you had captured a ninja on the battlefield.”

The woman on the other side of the door didn’t seem to care what happened to Mariydi.

The look on her face said she had no intention of protecting a Sky Blue Inc. employee. She was here to protect the company, not Mariydi.

She pulled out a satellite phone with a thick antenna.

“This is Samantha. The interview is complete. Even if it is just a ritual required for the paperwork. God, I hate the Northern Restricted Zone. I can’t wait until I’m back on the company plane where I can take a shower and- eh? What’s that? Hello? You’re breaking up.”

“Hey.”

“The court martial will proceed as scheduled. Yes, a secret trial with a predetermined outcome. Now, if you will- what? Um, hello?”

“Hey!!”

Mariydi shouted through the door’s slit and Samantha clicked her tongue and removed the satellite phone from her ear.

“Yes? Are you under the false impression that I am accepting complaints?”

“It’s not that. …Are you having signal trouble? With one of the PMC’s specialized satellite phones?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“That’s not good.”

Mariydi Whitewitch looked up at the ceiling and groaned.

Climbing under the bed wouldn’t do any good. She thought for a moment and moved to the very corner of the cell, which would structurally be the sturdiest part, and curled up as small as she could manage.

“Like, really not good!! If the interference is coming in intermittent bursts instead of gradually but steady, then this isn’t the aurora. You need to get down too! Hurry!!”

“?”

Samantha Beeskiss looked puzzled and probably never did realize what Mariydi was talking about.

Now, what was it Mariydi had mentioned several times now? The enemy was using cruise missiles that took a curving, low-altitude path that could slip through the gaps in a radar network.

And needless to say, a flying object could interfere with an EM signal.

Even if they had been programmed to avoid the stationary radar network, they had no way of avoiding more irregular communication signals.