Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume18 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 3===

Lieutenant Milinda Brantini was a member of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion.

She was commonly referred to as the Princess.

She was the Pilot Elite who operated the Baby Magnum, a multirole First Generation Object with 7 main cannons and an upside-down Y-shaped propulsion device, so you could say that every one of the battalion’s nearly 1000 soldiers – from the sentries to the commander – had all been deployed to allow her to fight to her fullest. She had short blonde hair and pale blue eyes, she never batted an eye no matter what might happen, and she would move swiftly and aim accurately to protect the battalion and defeat the enemy. She had a beauty so great it could not even be compared to anything as cliché as ice.

“Bwuh…it’s ''so'' hot. Why does the A/C have to be broken???”

But this…this had broken her.

She was in no state to be seen at present.

The sweaty girl sat limply in the cockpit located at the center of her nuke-resistant Object. But she was not exhausted after moving that 200,000ton mass around with MMA-like footwork. It was hot. Just plain hot. Wiping off her brow did little to stem the flow of sweat.

Silver-haired and busty Frolaytia breathed an exasperated sigh on a small window on the cockpit screen.

“That cockpit was designed to endure a nuclear attack, so of course it can’t take in outside air. Your own body heat is trapped in there, so blame yourself☆”

“Ayyy seee.”

“I do feel bad about that, but there was no room in the schedule to fix it. Oh, and the transport plane carrying the new one was just shot down by the elevator’s anti-air lasers. I honestly have no idea when the next one can arrive, so you’ll be better off finishing this job so you can leave that cockpit than continuing to stew in your own sweat. It’s 28 degrees with 40% humidity out here, which is even nicer than Hawaii.”

Their commander was apparently lounging on a beach chair with a cold drink in hand. She was of course positioned somewhere that no snipers or mortars could easily target her, but it was still wrong to be commanding your troops while wearing a bikini, sipping on a colorful soda, and munching on assorted fruits.

[[Image:HO_v18_BW1.jpg|thumb]]

As the legend foretold, the Princess did not bat an eye.

Her expression remained entirely blank as she puffed out her cheeks like a squirrel.

“I can’t take it anymore.”

“Hey, wait!”

She quickly stripped off her blue skintight special suit. She freed her pink-flushed nape and then the entirety of her back. She unzipped the suit, removed the sleeves, and then pulled it down to her hips.

Her sports bra left her flat tummy visible, but she was beyond caring. She shook her head like a puppy wet from the rain and drops of sweat flew from her.

This was enough for Frolaytia to sit up from her beach chair.

“That special suit helps fight the Gs and protect you from impacts.”

“You don’t get to talk when you’re lying around in a bikini.” The heat must have really gotten to her because the Princess did not even try to hide her flushed skin as she replied in a gloomy way. “And I’ll be fine. Nothing is going to happen anytime soon.”

“That kind of carelessness is exactly what-”

“I’ll be fine,” she reiterated. Still with no expression on her face.

It was true that the attack on the Capitalist Corporations space elevator was essentially at a stalemate. The Baby Magnum should have been at an advantage since it could move and the space elevator was immobile, yet she was stuck here and unable to attack. The space elevator effectively had more firepower than the Object.

(But Objects are supposed to be the strongest weapons.)

She pouted her lips like a small child and reached around toward the minifridge installed behind her seat. She felt around for a pouch of ice-cold jelly drink and pulled it out.

“Unyahhh.”

Instead of quenching her thirst with it, she first held it between her flushed cheek and shoulder to let the chilliness soothe her soul.

“Mother Lady has two main attacks,” she said. “The ultra-long-range laser beam that it fires horizontally from the top of the spear-like structure, and the artificial meteor shower attack that it calls down from outside the atmosphere.”

There were also close-range coilguns on the side of the elevator, but those were only anti-tank weapons and Object armor could shrug them off.

“The laser beam has a range of about 700km and the artificial meteor shower uses chunks of depleted uranium and tungsten alloy,” said Frolaytia. “Just one of those hitting the ground creates a crater on par with a small nuclear warhead, but we’re talking about 100 to 1000 of them.”

That might sound like a truly horrifying attack, but they were only hunks of metal with no rockets or tail fins. And Objects were designed to perfectly intercept a MaRV that’s movement was controlled by a program or a MIRV-class nuclear warhead that scattered nuclear weapons across a set area.

With the anti-air laser beam weapons covering the spherical main body’s surface like a sea urchin or chestnut burr, it would not miss a single one. And when something was entering the atmosphere, the slightest crack would increase the air friction to the point that it broke apart and created a massive shockwave. She could actually use the high altitude from which the artificial meteor shower was dropped. After determining its distribution, she could shoot down a bare minimum of the pieces so that the resulting shockwaves would hit the surrounding pieces, causing them to break apart, and resulting in a chain reaction. Even if 100 or 1000 artificial “meteors” filled the African sky, she did not have to target each and every one of them individually.

“Get too relaxed there and they’ll attack,” warned Frolaytia.

“I know.”

The Princess held the drink pouch between her thighs.

With her hands free, she grabbed the grips on either side and kicked the Object to the right.

The dust and moisture in the air were scorched orange as a powerful beam passed by just barely to her side.

She had only moved one Object’s-width to the side, but that meant the 200,000ton mass had moved 50m at more than 500km/h. It had to have whipped up a wind more powerful than when a train passed through a subway tunnel.

It was so easy she did not even bother humming.

“I’m so bored.”

“But you can’t move in any closer.”

Construction equipment had been used to dig into the ground around the space elevator and pour in static-absorbing gel, barbed wire coils thicker than a tunnel had been set up, and other Object-obstruction methods had been implemented. She might be able to power her way through all of them, but if they slowed her at all, she would be pummeled by the thick laser beams and artificial meteor shower.

That meant this was a job for the infantry.

She must have been too hot to care because the Princess kept the pouch of jelly drink in a fairly indecent place as she continued the conversation.

“But with a range of 700, I don’t see how Quenser and the others can get close either.”

Keep in mind that the units here were not in meters.

“It never fires its laser beam into the ground,” said Frolaytia. “That might be because the ground would rapidly absorb the heat and produce an unnatural updraft that could produce clouds not in their meteorological data. Mother Lady’s wires are carbon nanotubes, so they’re strong against impacts but weak to electricity.”

And if they had a weakness like that, it was best to take advantage of it. The Princess fired her high-power laser beams onto the empty ground while making sure not to hit any of her allies or the battalion’s vehicles.

(Sigh, why is the world’s strongest weapon doing a rain dance?)

“Princess, um, shouldn’t you put your top back on soon?”

“It’s not like Quenser and the others can see me.”

“You’re as careless as the people who bring a tablet with a camera into the bathroom with them. Now, I might not care that much, but I’m worried about the old maintenance lady’s blood pressure. Are you trying to get her to lecture you?”

The Princess ignored that kind warning and continued to fire her main cannons.

But this time, not to indirectly create unexpected thunderclouds.

She tried directly targeting the elevator, but her laser beams and railguns curved unnaturally before reaching it.

Heat.

Smoke.

Water.

Sand.

To avoid clouds, the enemy had to have some way of manipulating the atmosphere. She could not hope to hit just by adjusting for a margin of error.

EM and IR weapon lock-ons were well-known, but that was why so many countermeasures existed. And sometimes pushing for quantity could reduce accuracy.

By spreading around iron sand or gel to increase the density of the air, shells that pushed through the air resistance would have their trajectory distorted and laser beams would attenuate.

That was why she could not score a clean hit on the stationary elevator that she could plainly see in front of her.

Long-range attacks were not good enough. If she wanted to force her attacks through that interference, she would have to move in closer.

It towered into the heavens so conspicuously, yet she could not hit it. It felt like trying to attack a divine spear made out of a mirage.

The colossal landmark seemed to entirely rewrite the rules of war.

This was different from all of her previous battles.

(It’s no fun at all.)

The frustration building in her body must have caused her to tense up too much.

“Hyah!”

Her thigh pressure grew too great for the cap of the jelly drink held against her teenage crotch because it popped off and the heavy liquid within splattered across her body. She reached up to touch her cheek and bangs before growing somewhat tearful.

“Ugh, this is the worst.”

“Princess, I know you didn’t mean to do that, but the old lady is definitely lecturing you until morning this time.”