Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 11===

The 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s fleet remained on standby away from the battle. Frolaytia received various reports in the small aircraft carrier’s mission command center. A controller’s panicked voice reached her ears.

“Something is approaching the radar. It’s very fast!! It’s flying just off the ocean surface at around Mach 2. It might be a cruise missile or…no, it’s an aircraft!!”

“On the same battlefield as three Objects!?”

Objects contained a reactor that produced near-limitless energy and they were covered with anti-air lasers, so the complex evasive actions of an ace pilot were meaningless. Lock, fire, destroy. That was the standard of the modern battlefield, but this enemy was easily ignoring it.

Frolaytia’s eyes opened in surprise and the controller continued the report with a bewildered look.

“From its movements, it does not appear to be unmanned. The CIWS…had no effect! Here it comes!!”

“Dammit! All hands, brace yourself!!”

In that instant, the old maintenance woman was waiting on the flight deck in order to maintain or repair the Baby Magnum. From there, she saw a Capitalist Corporations’ air superiority fighter pass less than a meter over the steel surface.

It was a fli-21T.

That was a modified version of the normal fli-20. Its development had been stopped just before mass production and deployment, and it was currently undergoing its final tests in the Northern Restricted Zone.

It was tilted ever-so-slightly, so the top of the craft was visible from the old woman’s side.

The short girl in the cockpit wore an anti-G suit resembling an Elite’s special suit. Blue paint on the right wing drew a girl’s silhouette bearing a giant snow crystal on the back.

As the old woman saw the words “Ice Girl One”, a rugby ball-like mass below the wing was released.

It was an anti-ship aerial bomb.

Normally, its weight and the potential energy of the fighter’s altitude would break through the ship’s armor before it detonated, but when released just above the flight deck, the rugby ball bounced off the armor rather than penetrating it.

The old woman made an immediate decision upon seeing the bomb bounce into the air.

She watched the 200 kilogram explosive that had been perfectly left in the air so that the blast and fragments would efficiently spread over a wide area.

(The enemy has no interest in the fighters stored in the metal belly of the ship. They’re after the Object maintenance unit and its equipment. In other words, us!!)

“Jump into the water if you want to live!!”

She threw aside all her tools, turned around, and did not hesitate to jump from the nine meter height of the flight deck. She heard the tremendous explosion before hitting the water. The small island of steel behind her creaked ominously.

Her body produced a pillar of water as it vanished below the surface, but her head appeared soon thereafter.

She did not know how many of the maintenance soldiers had followed her.

“How...? How did it…get through the network of anti-air lasers?” groaned a young maintenance soldier floating nearby.

The old woman clicked her tongue.

“The air isn’t uniform. There are temperature differences, humidity differences, dust, dirt, and even salt content when over the ocean. The changes in those things will bend light just a bit. Mirages are the simplest example.”

“But…But… You couldn’t measure all that even with sensors.”

“No, but an ace pilot from the Northern Restricted Zone can sniff it out on intuition alone! Who is that pilot? Her senses are equal to or even greater than a pilot Elite's!!”