Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 5===

Bright light returned to the Faith Organization maintenance base zone.

It had taken about 7 minutes to switch to backup power.

“Saint Urd, this way!”

The sexy Pilot Elite ran across the base while surrounded by several bodyguards. The area was covered by a thick fog-like smokescreen and she could only see a few meters ahead. If she did not focus on the ground, she would have tripped over the soldiers groaning on the ground. She felt like she had been thrown into a bad dream.

“What happened to Verdandi!?”

“She was left with the medical team because she felt dizzy and nauseous! She may have been hit by the gas weapon!!”

Urd immediately concluded that was not possible.

If this smokescreen was a gas weapon, its effects would not be so varied. Urd and the others would have collapsed with everyone else, but she and her bodyguards were doing just fine. And when she looked at that group for any traits in common and considered the symptoms of those affected, she could guess what was happening.

Yes.

Everyone here was a non-drinker.

(Is this gas or something else being used to accelerate everyone’s intoxication from the whisky?)

If so, it was a baffling and highly uncertain method of attack.

She could think of a few different technologies that could induce intoxication, but they would only be a viable plan if the enemy knew the Faith Organization soldiers were drinking plenty of alcohol. If the Legitimacy Kingdom had approached all excited about their new weapon only to find everyone sober, they would have been easily defeated.

How had they seen through this “habit”?

The obvious answer caused Urd to clench her teeth.

“Skuld…!!”

“Saint Urd, please hurry to the maintenance bay! We can turn this around with the Norn’s sensors!!”

The soldiers were treating the Object like Cinderella’s fairy godmother, but Urd had no right to scold them when she made use of the clean war fairy tale.

“How far along is the Norn’s maintenance?”

“That Second Generation is famous for not needing maintenance. As long as it’s supplied with the appropriate number of Dvergr, the programming will automatically repair it.”

That was another fairy tale. The Object was not actually that flexible, but Urd did not bother commenting. A lot of money and effort had gone into solidifying that image for wartime propaganda. A needless argument could destroy all that.

Fortunately, the smoke had not gotten inside the maintenance bay’s giant tent.

The maintenance soldiers who had defended it with their lives saluted Urd.

She used the elevator to reach the top of the Object and spoke to the bodyguards who had stayed with her this far.

“Since Verdandi couldn’t join us, I will enter the Norn alone.”

“Understood. We will instruct the medical team to inform you of Saint Verdandi’s condition.”

Urd passed through the spiraling tunnel to reach her personal cockpit. She quickly sat down, belted herself in place, stuck a thick cable into her navel, and closed the tunnel’s barriers.

(Now, then. How much can I actually do?)

If she used the Norn’s sensors, she could determine everyone’s location even through the thick smokescreen, but that would not tell her who was Legitimacy Kingdom and who was Faith Organization.

She would check everyone’s location for the time being. She could rule out everyone collapsed from intoxication and mark only those still standing. If she had them all report in via radio, she could count everyone who failed to respond as an enemy.

(Well, that’s probably about it.)

She could not fire indiscriminately in the middle of her own maintenance base. The situation was working against her, but knowing where the enemy was would still help.

Her allies were collapsed from drunkenness, not from a strange gas.

If she informed them of that to prevent any further panic, the Faith Organization could bounce back. She did not know how many enemies had infiltrated the base, but she doubted it was a full battalion of 1000.

With that in mind, she piloted the Norn out of its giant tent and began searching for the enemy.

And then it happened.

The Norn’s reactor suddenly stopped.



Hiding within the smokescreen right in front of the giant tent, Skuld held a radio to her mouth.

She had rushed out just in the nick of time before the power came back on.

“This is the sabotage team. The Norn’s reactor has been shut down.”

Her team’s objective had been to approach the Norn, a Second Generation Object made from countless Dvergr work robots, and sabotage it.

Yes.

They had mixed in the Dvergr that the Legitimacy Kingdom had retrieved and made sure it was built into the Object.

It was only the size of a brick, but that had altered fate.

“The virus infection was a success. Looks like your electronic simulation division is as skilled as they claimed. It takes time to restart the reactor after it’s been stopped, so we can ignore the Norn for the time being.”

For all those robots to coordinate, they had to be exchanging some kind of data.

A virus had been placed inside the one the Legitimacy Kingdom had picked up and Skuld had snuck in during the blackout to mix it into the Object where it would send out its illicit data.

“This is the rescue team! Understood. Once you’ve finished your job, meet up with the escape route team. It’d feel pretty stupid getting caught now, wouldn’t it? Don’t worry about us!!”

“Heivia, could you explain the situation there? Do you need any help?”

“Goddamn that skinny boy!! He couldn’t wait around and broke out on his own!! He used the world’s lamest trick to vanish from his cell and we have no idea where he is!!”