Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 14===

Quenser and Heivia’s strategy was not all that thoroughly planned out.

They directly approached the small gate while trying to stand out as little as possible.

“Wait a second. Stop. Yes, you two over there.”

When they arrived at the gate, an amplified voice called out from over 100 meters ahead. A giant light near the gate shined on them and an off-road vehicle equipped with a machine gun approached.

Two soldiers got out of the vehicle as it idled.

They wore the same Capitalist Corporations uniforms as Quenser and Heivia and had the same assault rifle as Heivia.

Quenser covered his face with one hand to block the bright light.

“Hey, stop that. You’re gonna give me a headache.”

“Are you with the unit?” One of the soldiers stared at Quenser and Heivia’s uniforms. “What are you doing here? It isn’t time for the night shift patrols to return. And where are your armbands? You should have one on your right arm.”

“We can’t wear them since we’re on a job that doesn’t allow it,” replied Heivia quietly.

“What?”

The soldier frowned.

Heivia leaned in close to the soldier and whispered, “It’s in both of our interests to end this discussion about the armbands. Surely you’ve heard of the commander’s Shadow Code.”

“Oh, that…”

The soldier looked away from Quenser and Heivia with a bitter expression.

He was looking over at what the two boys were transporting.

It was a handcart.

The soldier used an LED flashlight to peer inside the canopy. Quenser spoke up to him from behind.

“Don’t shine the light on it too much. It’s like tea in that light can destroy the composition without even opening it.”

“Oh, I see. But…dammit.” The soldier groaned and turned off the flashlight. “So the commander is ordering diet drinks again!?”

“He uses the ridiculous name Shadow Code, so no one knows what it is. We have to work our asses off all day while he’s eating and drinking enough that he has to worry about getting too fat. It pisses me off, but that’s just how the world works.”

“Our 4WD vehicle got stuck in the mud. Normally, we would have called for help, but we can’t given what we’re carrying. Thanks to that, we had to stay out this late trudging through the mud. We’re supposed to be part of the day shift, so I want to get to bed already.”

The soldier clicked his tongue.

He must have felt it would be best not to cause a commotion, so he gestured to have the bright light from the gate shut off.

“Understood. Head through. The night shift can get a bit on edge, so try not to stand out once you get inside.”

“Will do.”

“You aren’t the only ones who will be in trouble if that doesn’t reach the commander.”

The soldiers moved the barricade made of a metal framework and barbed wire and then opened the steel gate. Quenser and Heivia pushed the handcart into the maintenance base while everyone watched on.

“(What do we do now?)”

“(If we managed to get into the Object maintenance building like this, we would be better off defecting to the Capitalist Corporations and becoming Hollywood stars. We need to head to the barracks to borrow some armbands. We need to make sure we won’t look suspicious around the maintenance building.)”

“(The armbands are divided up by color, right?)”

“(A beautiful woman’s ass is one thing, but I wouldn’t spend dozens of hours staring at these boring muscular men for no reason. I know what color toothpaste they use.)”

Meanwhile, the two boys headed through a few different sections of the base.

Occasionally, a powerful light from a watchtower would move towards them and they would start sweating, but the circle of light would humorously move away the instant it touched their handcart. It seemed the base truly did have an implicit understanding.

They stopped the cart behind the barracks in a spot the watchtowers could not see, but no voice called out to challenge them. They then slowly opened one of the windows lined up on the barracks wall.

Of course, the window would normally be locked and would have sensors.

“All the information is proving accurate. When the Shadow Code reaches the gate, they secretly unlock one of the windows.”

Just to be sure, they removed one of the diet drink bottles from the cart as a good luck charm and climbed into the barracks.

It was nothing but one of the empty bottles Valkyrie had procured with filthy, germ-filled jungle water in it, but no one was going to double check the contents even if they found it suspicious.

People had a lot of complexes about diet drinks. If the commander thought someone was giving it undue attention, he could very well hold a grudge.

“Y’know, if we actually delivered them to the commander, he might get food poisoning and the base’s chain of command would come crumbling down.”

“They would just stick someone else in charge. Directly targeting the Deep Optical is still our best bet.”

The two boys chose a room in the barracks to enter.

They of course chose their target from the name plate for the room.

All the data they had gathered was enough to know what that person’s duty was and that no one would be inside at that time.

Quenser and Heivia quickly started digging through the belongings inside to find the armbands they needed.

“Each individual person doesn’t have just one armband! Counting spares, they’re given three! We just need to find the right color!!”

“Which color!?”

“Blue or green! Blue is for the guards and green is for the technicians!!”

Given how Quenser and Heivia were dressed the blue for a guard would be more natural. Also, the person who stayed in that room was a guard.

“Maybe we should change out of these soaking wet uniforms into new ones.”

“We’re not officers. You don’t see regular soldiers walking around with an umbrella. More importantly, we need those armbands! Dammit. Are we not just going to find blue or green ones around!?”

Suddenly, Quenser and Heivia heard approaching footsteps.

“(Shit. This is bad, Quenser.)” Heivia lowered his voice to a whisper. “(We can’t find the armbands. It’ll look suspicious to stop by here with a diet drink! We’re cornered!! Anywhere we go is a dead end!!)”

The footsteps continued.

They were clearly headed for the room they were in.

Quenser suddenly spoke up.

“(Heivia, hand me the diet drink bottle.)”

“(What?)”

“(We have nowhere to hide!! We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing, so just hand it over!)”

Heivia tossed the bottle and Quenser caught it in one hand. Quenser then wrapped a new uniform jacket and the one he already had around the bottle.

The door opened without a knock as he was doing so.

A middle aged man wearing an expensive-looking uniform that seemed ill suited to actual combat looked at them suspiciously. He had quite a heavy-set build like the type of soldier that simply drew arrows on maps. To be blunt, he was the type of officer the bottom-rung soldiers would dislike.

“What are you doing here? Is this your room?”

“W-we’re hiding. We have our reasons.”

The middle-aged man clicked his tongue in annoyance when he saw the item Quenser was trying to hide

“If you’ve arrived, then hurry up and deliver them. If they are on the base, we can’t have the delivery seen as incomplete. …Also, even if this is the Shadow Code, make sure to return what you used for packaging.”

Quenser and Heivia passed by the middle-aged man’s side and attempted to quickly leave the room.

He called out to them.

[[Image:HO_v04_07.jpg|thumb]]

“Wait.”

“…Do you need something?”

“Since you have it here, we can open just the one now, right? We’re just eating rations, so we need to look after our health too.”

Quenser almost jumped.

The bottle was filled with filthy jungle water.

“We…”

“We?”

“We aren’t overweight enough for it to be worth opening it.”

“If you say so…”

“W-well, we’ll be going.”

The middle-aged man gave a slightly bitter smile and waved Quenser and Heivia off like he was shooing away a dog.

Heivia breathed a sigh of relief upon exiting the room.

“…We’re safe for now, but what do we do now?”

“Good question.”

“We can’t hang around forever with nothing but the diet drinks. Also, that old man is in the room we thought we could find the armbands in. Without green or blue armbands, we can’t approach the Deep Optical’s maintenance building. If we can’t do that, getting in the base was meaningless.”

It was possible they could find the armbands they needed in other rooms, but they had no information to base it on. Searching over a hundred rooms would take time and it would seem suspicious. More importantly, they would be unable to avoid a fight if they accidentally opened the door of a soldier who was on break.

If that happened, they would never survive.

“If only there was a way to destroy the Deep Optical without touching it.”

“Ahn?”

“Heivia, let’s go back over the information we gathered with the directional microphone over the past 2 days. What maintenance is the Deep Optical undergoing?”

As Quenser spoke, they headed back to the window with the security deactivated in order to leave the barracks.

“If we know that, we might be able to find something we can do.”