Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

The soldiers of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion were exhausted, but they were called to gather in the briefing room.

But not because some idiot had forgotten to attach the infrared ID marker to their truck’s roof and the aerial unit had wasted some bullets and reduced valuable equipment to scrap.

Frolaytia stood up on the podium and got down to business.

“Now, I thought we would be done here after recovering the baby panda, but we found a very concerning document in Ivory Garden’s truck. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Quenser whose sticky fingers led him to dig around in the dashboard and find this material.”

With shouts of “why couldn’t you have left well enough alone, you idiot!?” and “no one wants a hard worker!”, the overworked and angry potatoes surrounded the battlefield student and started kicking him.

And when Frolaytia saw the behavior of her shabby and unshaven subordinates, she only toyed with her silver bangs with an annoyed look.

“I bet that old man knew it was a dyed chick from the get-go. This is looking a lot more like one of those shitty odd jobs he always forces onto us, but we are civil servants fed by the people’s tax money and the military is especially picky about the chain of command. I might not have known what I was agreeing to, but I can’t back out now. This is a pressing situation, so we have to keep going.”

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“God, what a pain in the ass.” Heivia looked dejected. “Can’t we just have the Baby Magnum blow everything up and call it a day?”

“Hm, hmm.”

The Princess must not have cared whether it was a panda or a bear cub because she was busy looking after the baby animal with a bottle in hand.

“Here, have some milk. Once you’re full, you can take a nap with mommy, okay?”

She had been in full mother mode since they got back with the bear, so it seemed unlikely she would agree to a bloody battle. The old maintenance lady had been observing her while pretending to give advice, but she shook her head. It looked like the Princess would exercise her right to refuse this mission.

The delinquent noble held his head.

“Is there really no other option?”

“Relax, Heivia,” said Frolaytia. “I’m on your side this time. I say we all beat up Quenser together. Now, I really would like to end this with a long-range main cannon blast, but that won’t work this time since we need confirmation of the target’s destruction. I want to avoid spending months digging through piles of rubble to get that confirmation. Plus, Eastern Europe is headed toward its snowy winter. If the white snow keeps piling up no matter how much we shovel it out of the way, we’ll never be able to dig through the rubble. None of you wants to die from overwork, right?”

“The target’s destruction? This isn’t about retrieving some rare animals that the something-or-other groups are up in arms about?”

“Ivory Garden’s secret transportation route is apparently being used for a different item: an Object reactor.”

That sent a stir through the room.

Those reactors had created the current age. With nukes eradicated, Objects were the new trigger for humanity’s destruction.

“Let’s not waste our valuable time asking questions like ‘why’ or ‘how’. This is all based on the list of transported goods on the document Quenser found. The details and the accuracy of the document are for the intelligence division to worry about.”

“Gulp. Then it would be best to act on the assumption it’s real?”

“Someone punch him right in his serious face. And that’s an order. Quenser, do not forget that I too am burdened by this extra work you brought us.”

His inaccurate shout of “But I was only trying to do the right thing!” vanished into a flurry of blows. He had only been searching through the enemy dashboard in the hopes of finding some loose change.

Frolaytia took a puff of her long, narrow kiseru to help deal with the stress.

“Speaking of local trouble, the Transylvania District is nearby, isn’t it? That is an Information Alliance safe country, but the extreme wealth disparities have led to a lot of crime. The peace-loving wealthy want to throw out the burden of the poor, so the southern tourist area known for its vampire legends is planning to declare its independence. In fact, a local referendum passed with a majority voting ‘yes’. I don’t know how many of them were serious about independence and how many were just trying to make a point, but now that the vote has passed, the local celebrities supporting it have no choice but to go through with it.”

“Hm? But isn’t that looking like trouble? I heard the overall Transylvania District refused to accept the south’s independence so they’ve sent a giant Object to the proposed new border. They were saying something about declaring war and taking back the south less than a second after the south declares independence.”

“We’re only talking about a conflict between safe countries. An actual war won’t break out that easily. The Transylvania District is really just threatening the southern tourist area like they have knife to their throat. …But what if the supposedly powerless south managed to secretly acquire an Object of their own?”

“…”

An unpleasant silence hung over the room.

No one wanted to answer that question.

“Then we would have an unprecedented conflict in which two safe countries use Objects against each other. If the flames of war spread from there, it could drag entirely unrelated regions into war. Do not forget that includes the Legitimacy Kingdom safe country that borders the Transylvania District. The electronic simulation division is busy calculating out the estimated number of deaths including noncombatants, but we can be certain the war would be one of the worst in history. It would eliminate the taboo set in place by the Northern Restricted Zone when the reactor buried below a city of 5 million blew up during an intense artillery campaign.”

“But, um, squeal, we’re talking about an Object, right? Squeal.”

When Quenser was finally released with his face beaten and swollen, he asked a question with some pig language mixed in.

“Ugh, cough. I-I mean, those are 50m colossuses. It takes years to construct one. Building one in secret is easier said than done. Is it even possible?”

“The south’s independence is supported by the wealthy who have more money than they know what to do with, so they could afford the 5 billion dollar budget. And on the technology front, there were some rumors floating around for a while that the main stumbling block was the inability to build a JPlevelMHD reactor on their own.”

“In other words, they could have secretly built the rest…”

“The wealthy are all alike. Whether it’s a masterpiece painting, rock candy, an idol, or a slave, they try to fulfill every last one of their desires with money. And it seems someone is trying to purchase an extra-large gem to fill their empty jewelry box that was previously a bluff.”

Frolaytia sighed in exasperation.

Was the human race trying to wipe itself out? At this point, it was hard to tell if they were just dumb or if this was a clever form of atonement.

“The southern tourist area plans to announce their independence at midnight two days from now. In what I can only imagine is part of their vampire culture, they are apparently holding a lavish party with a fireworks show at a hotel deep in the mountains. That will be when the Transylvanian Object waiting at the new border will make its move. No, maybe I should say it will be forced to act then. Governments and militaries are all about appearances, so they won’t be able to stop when someone makes a fool of them. We know the time limit. We have less than 48 hours. We can’t afford to lose even a second, so there’s no time for naps. Do you get what I’m saying, you poor civil servants? I’m exhausted already, so won’t someone hit Quenser again to reward him for his hard work!?”