Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2 (section)

===Part 2===

Ominous rumors or not, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage still had the juices flowing through his brain.

“Uhohoi!! I see! I see!! The secret to the supports’ shock absorption isn’t a damper or suspension! It’s bearings!! Oh, hell. Why didn’t I think of something so simple!? Ohhh!! I need to take a note of this, but writing it all down’s too much of a pain!! Where’s the voice recording app!?”

Annoyed, the old maintenance lady spoke to him with a toolbox in hand.

“I do understand how exciting it is to see all this cutting-edge tech, but please try to control yourself. The rest of us don’t want people to start thinking you’re representative of all technicians. You understand, don’t you?”

“I don’t understand in the slightest! I snuck deep behind enemy lines with my heart in my throat to reach this moment! So I’m making the most of this. Whoa!! This is what cleans the terrain sensors on the supports! I love the little bits of technology hiding in the corners like this!!”

“If you get it, then out of the way, amateur. If we can’t get our scaffolding set up, we can’t check over the entire machine.”

The old lady operated her tablet and several transport helicopters cut through the night to surround the Trinity Style. Flying aircraft was a task for the suicidal in the modern age of anti-air lasers, but once they were flying around like this, it was proof that the battle was over and the enemy Object had been completely stopped. It demonstrated the same arrogance as an animal napping calmly on its back with its belly exposed. Sour looks came over the Faith Organization soldiers tied up around the area.

The transport helicopters opened their cargo doors and threw several wires down. However, they were not simply to lower people down. The soldiers grabbed onto the spherical main body and manipulated the wires by swinging their arms. Some wrapped them around small cannons and others wrapped the wires together like a spider web or a cat’s cradle.

Next, they tied sandbags to them to complete makeshift elevators. It was an extremely primitive design that lifted up the one side when the other side was dropped down.

They only had three hours, so they did not have time to put together metal scaffolding.

The old lady placed one foot on a small loop made from a knot and gave instructions via the glowing screen of her tablet.

“By the way, boy, you can’t get any Object tech if you’re going to cry about a fear of heights.”

“Ah! No fair!! Let me on too!!”

Quenser grabbed at the wire just as a sandbag was dropped from above. The two of them were carried up to the top of the sphere quite quickly.

A man in a black assault uniform saluted the old lady at the top.

“Excellent work, Mrs. Ayami. …By the way, who is that?”

“Leave him be. He has no lifeline, so if he falls, it’s his own responsibility.”

“Wh-whoaaaaaa! Standing on this round body is pretty scary. I better hold onto these wires.”

Some of the elevators were meant for humans and could carry several dozen kilograms while others were meant for equipment and could carry several tons. In addition to the ones dropped from above by the helicopters, the armored trucks on the ground fired their own wires up. Instead of using gunpowder, they used five meter crossbow-like devices on their roofs. They resembled the ballistae used as siege weapons since the time of the Ancient Greeks.

“That’s dangerous!! Our own people are shooting arrows up at me!?”

“This is still war. Did you think you could make a ton of money without any risk of death?”

The arrowheads did not stab into the armor that could withstand a nuke. Instead, they used chemical reactions such as aluminum or iron oxide to weld to the armor upon impact. Quenser saw flashes much like from a camera and he smelled a very unhealthy odor.

The student was losing his nerve already, but the old lady ignored him with a sigh and shouted instructions to the maintenance soldiers around her.

“We don’t have much time! Run nondestructive tests and take samples! Don’t think about stealing the technology in its entirety as that wouldn’t be possible. Focus on taking back some cheap but clearly-defined data over some vague classified information. Start by sounding it out and grabbing at the soft points for some souvenirs!!”

“Sir, yes, sir!!” energetically shouted the maintenance soldiers.

Even if they were technicians, they were still soldiers. They always had an athletic side to them.

Quenser was only a burden, so he received no orders and had nothing to do. He decided to start investigating the nearby area.

First, he moved to the omnidirectional microphone at the top of the spherical body.

“I see. They combined directional parabolic mics like a soccer ball to make it omnidirectional. I’m not sure if that counts as analog or high-tech.”

When he approached the microphone and glanced around, he quickly found the giant magazine that stored the main cannon’s container shells. It looked like a diagonal roof covering the entire left side of the Object. A closer look showed a row of long and narrow magazines sticking into it.

The Baby Magnum’s cameras must have been viewing the same thing because a transmission arrived from the Princess.

“That’s a drink vending machine.”

“Hm? Oh, I get it.”

Quenser caught on after a short delay.

“The container shells are divided up by type and the proper type is supplied on demand,” explained the Princess. “Are the shells supplied in order from the top or are the entire narrow magazines pulled out?”

“It can probably work either way. But…”

From near the very top, Quenser looked to the back of the Object. He could see the thick tunnel-like ammunition belt connecting to the bottom of the main cannon on the right.

“Those heavy shells have to slide a few dozen meters in the middle of a high-speed Object battle, but wouldn’t that create a time lag? It doesn’t always use the same type of shell, so they can’t be stored in the belt like with a Gatling gun.”

“Most likely, it uses an air conveyer.”

“That thing used to sort postcards? But those container shells have got to weigh several tons.”

“Oh? But the vacuum pumps for wind tunnel experiments can create Mach 7 winds.”

“…”

She was talking about a world that defied imagination.

That alone sounded like a deadly weapon to a flesh-and-blood human.

He pulled himself together and looked in a different direction.

The main cannon that used a laser space elevator was located on the right side of the Object.

“Are you interested in that?” asked the Princess.

“Of course I am. The reactor, the main cannon, and the propulsion device are the standards. Although…”

He trailed off.

As previously stated, the Trinity Style’s laser space elevator main cannon had taken a direct hit from the Baby Magnum’s ablative shell, so it had bent and had a metal flower blooming from within.

“It looks like a shortcake some hysterical person threw against the wall. Well, I guess there’s still a chance I can steal the pastry chef’s recipe by tasting it.”

“…Well excuse me for being so rude.”

“Huh? Why are you in such a bad mood all of sudden?”

He was hesitant to touch the jagged edges and it was also sizzling from the residual heat. For the time being, he aimed his handheld device’s lens and snapped a few pictures. It was smashed to pieces, but he decided to view this as a chance to see the internal parts that would normally not be visible. It also revealed their damage control structure. How did one have to hit it to crush it and how had they intended to divert the damage? That was valuable information too. He doubted the Princess would smash her own machine just because he told her he wanted to see this.

“?”

But then…

“What is it, Quenser?”

“Well…what is that?”

He sounded puzzled as he peered inside the destroyed cannon through the giant flower.

A brick-sized mass was caught inside the barrel. It had tires with countless small suction cups, so it was probably some kind of work robot.

“Is it a cleaning robot for the inside of an air conditioner? But…”

He took a picture while frowning.

There was a depression inside the barrel, almost like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle was missing.

(Could it be…? But surely they wouldn’t go that far.)

His mind began racing, but…

“Hey, I know you’re having the time of your life here, but have you managed to cool your head yet?”

A voice from behind snapped him out of his thoughts.

He turned around and found an exasperated noble boy.

“Huh? Heivia, why are you up here too?”

“It’s simple. First, since they have so little time, the old lady insisted I look after you to make sure you don’t get in the way of their work.”

Then that awful friend pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.

“But second, it looks like they’re going to force the cockpit hatch open, so all those technicians want someone who knows how to fight. Come with me and you can get the first shot at the piloting system and the Elite. What’ll it be, pervert?”

“I’ll go, I’ll go! Of course I’ll go!!”

“I see you’re too worked up to deny the pervert part,” added the Princess.

He walked across the spherical surface with Heivia to reach the back of the machine. Several maintenance soldiers were already gathered there and they were using a metal mask and a welding torch.

Quenser and Heivia spoke to the old lady who was waiting for them to finish.

“What’s this about?”

“Objects can withstand a nuke, right? Can a welding torch really get it open?”

“Not normally, no. But we found an external ejection device for when the Elite loses consciousness. …In fact, it’s a lot like the kind the Legitimacy Kingdom uses. As a defector, I’m not one to talk, but Frolaytia’s probably got her head in her hands over this information leak.”

Still, that had given them a way in.

Stolen technology was both good and bad. If one stole enemy technology and used it “as-is”, it was just like heading onto the battlefield with a glow-in-the-dark arrow pointing to your weakness.

A young maintenance soldier removed his metal mask and faced the old lady.

“It looks like it’ll work. Who’s going in?”

“Thanks for volunteering, youngsters. Now, go get yourselves some valuable life experience.”

She shoved on Quenser and Heivia’s backs, forcing them into the open tunnel.

“Wow. Are you sure you should be giving me a present when it isn’t even my birthday or Christmas?”

“I’m impressed. I really don’t think that was sarcasm.”

The old lady gave them one last instruction.

“This is already over. Avoid a firefight and do your best to get the Pilot Elite to surrender.”

“Is that because you don’t want bullets flying near the sensitive cockpit and reactor?”

“I want to hear some things from the Elite. …Let’s leave it at that.”

“Roger that,” casually replied Heivia.

The two of them did not hesitate to slip inside the Trinity Style.