Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 3===

“I don’t know.”

Quenser pressed his forehead against the table when that was the very first thing she said.

The student and Skuld were not speaking in specialized detention barracks meant to hold war criminals and POWs. That facility had collapsed during the attack by the genetically modified Draupnir insects, so the infantry barracks had been divided in two with the Faith Organization occupying one half. They had of course added locks to the doors and welded scrap materials to the windows to prevent the POWs from escaping.

As Quenser slumped down, the twintail girl was lying directly on the table.

Not only that, but she wore no clothes and only had a white sheet covering her.

“How am I supposed to know what exactly the Norn will try to do? I mean, there are two other Elites besides me and-…what is it?”

“…”

Quenser kept his head pressed against the edge of the table and glanced to the side. The green special suit, boots, and gloves were all draped over the back of a nearby chair.

After a moment, she finally caught on.

“Is this any time to be getting distracted?”

“It’s kind of hard not to.”

“It is my right as a POW to receive the treatment necessary to for my vital fine-tuning as an Elite.”

“Well, yeah. But still…”

“And in my case, that means this.”

As the twintail girl lay face down below the sheet, she tapped at the corner of the table.

A few aroma candle containers sat there.

The music player situated on a small stand was playing highly soothing environmental music at a moderate volume.

Perhaps to reap the benefit of negative ions, there were even pots with mossy plants growing inside.

Her pillow was small but made from an expensive-looking low-resilience material.

And this riddle led Quenser to a certain answer.

“Come to think of it, the Trinity Style’s cockpit was full of sleep products too, wasn’t it?”

“Honestly, I was pretty sure you wouldn’t have any of it, so I wrote down everything I could think of. But look at all this. You had pretty much all of it. I’m not sure if that means you’re well-prepared or overrun by personal items.”

''Curse that busty commander. What kind of a luxurious life are you living?'' wondered Quenser as a grinding sound came from his mouth.

“It’s not so much about sleeping though. It’s really about using the hallucinations seen on the verge of falling asleep.”

“Oh, you mean that thing where you can easily have a mystical experience by playing the right kinds of low frequency noise?”

He thought that sounded exactly like something the Faith Organization would do. Then again…

“But why are you naked?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t make that tightrope walk without the optimum performance. I can’t be awake and I can’t fall asleep either.”

But Quenser had to question whether he was really close enough to Skuld for her to let him approach while she was so defenseless. He had protected her from the Trinity Style before and maybe the bug panic had been the final push.

The battlefield student coolly analyzed the situation.

(Hm. Whatever the case, a naked girl is a wonderful thing. Hmm!! It feels something like waiting to remove the ribbon from a present, but I am 100% okay with that!)

“?”

“Now, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about me at all and continue! If it’s a humanitarian thing, I guess it can’t be helped! Yes, if you don’t do this, you’d probably get a migraine, lose your appetite, or feel sick!! So we have no choice in the matter!!”

Quenser stared at the smooth curves visible through the sheet and did his best to activate any latent clairvoyant powers he might have, but Skuld got back on topic with a blank sleepy look in her eyes.

“So, um, where was I? …Mumble, mumble… Oh, right, right. The Norn has two Elites besides me. Urd and Verdandi. The distance they fight from and the way they attack are completely different.”

“…The way they attack?”

“Urd fires a thorough barrage to cut off her enemy’s escape in something like a chess problem. Verdandi goes for a one-hit kill and never wastes a shot. Completely different, right?”

“Wow…”

“Urd prefers long-range attacks because she focuses on taking no damage while Verdandi prefers close-range attacks because she tries to finish off her target as quickly as possible to reduce the overall damage. But even that is only the standard. It’s possible they will move in close while pretending to be Verdandi only to attack with Urd’s tactics.”

That difficulty to predict worked to the Trinity Style’s advantage. A battle began before the actual fighting did, but this Object destroyed any pre-battle preparation and forced its enemies to adlib. Just as Frolaytia had said.

(But this time the battle is divided by a large river. If the Princess can use that to keep her distance and continue fighting, she can seal off the close-range attacks. That might just draw out Urd who prefers the long-range.)

“Skuld. Tell me how exactly Urd fights. Long-range battles can take a lot of different forms, right?”

“Chemical warfare.”

Quenser initially had trouble comprehending what the twintail girl said.

But as he repeated it under his breath, he grew pale.

“Chemical…warfare?”

The term was enough to distract him from the sheet-covered feast before his eyes.

It seemed to linger on his tongue.

Skuld must have felt she misspoke because she clarified.

“Oh, I’m not talking about poison gas or anything like that. Although it is possible it might produce some gas as a side effect.”

Skuld rolled over under the sheet.

She was now facing up and the curves around her chest were especially emphasized.

Plus, the sheet nearly pulled back from certain areas as she turned, so Quenser’s focus grew to more than 400% of normal. He felt like he was going to blast off into space at this rate.

“The Trinity Style’s main cannon is basically a laser space elevator tilted on its side. Urd’s container-style shells tend to contain various chemicals.”

Quenser replied coolly.

“When you say chemicals…you don’t mean an anti-personnel gas weapon, do you?”

“No matter how large the scale is, Object armor is still essentially special steel. And there are a variety of chemicals that can dissolve or damage steel, right? Sulfuric acid, aqua regia, liquid nitrogen, aluminum and iron oxide, etc.”

“…”

This was different from railguns or coilguns that punched through with overwhelming mass or kinetic energy.

Nor did it burn through with tremendous heat like laser beams or low-stability plasma cannons.

It used a chemical reaction.

It cut through the Object armor using a chemical approach.

“My sister Urd is an expert at that. She doesn’t just fire a chemical-filled container; she sometimes fires several containers to mix them directly on the battlefield. The Capitalist Corporations fearfully named it the murder cocktail strategy. Yawwwwn…”

She must have been growing drowsy because Skuld yawned and twisted her body. This stuck a full bare leg out in front of Quenser’s eyes. The student debated whether to lightly nibble at the thigh or to see how far up to the base of the leg he could see, but he made the mistake of hesitating too long and failing to do either before the bare leg was pulled back inside the sheet.

With a smile on his face and tears in his heart, Quenser replied with a cool voice.

“That doesn’t sound good… Even if it isn’t meant for flesh-and-blood soldiers, she’ll be firing a bunch of sulfuric acid around and the dissolving metal will produce chemical smoke.”

“Even if Urd isn’t after them, you should probably have your infantry prepare some chemical warfare defenses.”

But could they do that?

They already knew they lacked enough soundproofed suits for everyone. A small team would be one thing, but did they really have enough special equipment for a group of hundreds?

(The gas mask filters use activated charcoal, right? Maybe we should take apart some deodorant and try to figure something out.)

He made a mental note of that and Skuld made a comment.

“You seem confident.”

“Does this tearful face really look confident?”

“It does.”

The twintail girl answered his joke while squirming below the white sheet.

“I honestly thought you would line up the Faith Organization POWs on the front line, aim machineguns at us from behind, and order us to charge. No, it isn’t just that. When the detention barracks were destroyed, you didn’t build some fences outside and keep us there like farm animals. Giving up your own living space isn’t normal.”

“There are two major reasons for that. Do you know what they are, Skuld?”

“?”

“First, soldiers who are being forced to fight are useless. And if we carelessly sent the Faith Organization soldiers in front of the Trinity Style, it would probably blow up only our armored trucks to bring you all back to your unit. Plus, an infantry charge isn’t going to change anything here. We have to infiltrate the front line, so a machinegun induced charge would be meaningless.”

“What’s the second reason?”

Quenser grinned at that.

“It’s about our barracks. We’re actually quite thankful for that one. After all, we’re all crammed in together due to the reduced space. The guys and girls are normally separated, but now we’re all living together! But we have no real choice!! I mean, it’s only humane to give the POWs a roof over their heads! Ah hah hah hah hah!!”

An officer like Frolaytia and a Pilot Elite like the Princess had their own private quarters and their defenses was still as strict as ever, but that was a different matter.

And the twintail girl naturally looked at him like he was a dung beetle.

She still looked sleepy, but she grabbed the edges of the sheet and curled up like a human spring roll to protect herself.

“…You’re utter trash, aren’t you?”

“Bloodline is everything in the Legitimacy Kingdom, so our culture can’t exactly reject the act of baby-making. But I guess that might look strange to the Faith Organization and all its strict ideals that ignore our biology. Wait, but isn’t Norse Mythology pretty lax about that stuff?”

Quenser did not seem to mind at all.

“Personally, I find it stranger that you’re so willing to give us information on the Trinity Style.”

“Does it seem so easy that you’re starting to suspect a trap?” Skuld sighed with just her head poking out of the sheet. “Didn’t I tell you my sisters are going to kill me? If the entire Faith Organization sees it that way, I can’t return to the Norn. I don’t gain a thing by holding onto its secrets.”

“Then are you trying to defect to the Legitimacy Kingdom?”

“It’s hard to say.”

Skuld seemed to be enjoying the situation rather than keeping her cards close to her chest.

But if she really did try to join the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Faith Organization would never allow it. Having information on the Trinity Style leaked to another world power would be especially bad for Urd and Verdandi who had to continue piloting that Object and could not switch to another variety.

So they would kill her, no matter what it took.

It did not matter if she was their blood-related sister.

“I’m expecting a lot from you.”

That was all she said.

One of the world powers that colored the map was after her life and had sent in one of the Objects that had ended the nuclear age. A student like Quenser could not imagine what kinds of feelings were whirling through the girl’s chest.