Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5 (section)

===Part 3===

The damaged Baby Magnum slowly returned to the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance base zone.

However, they could not even replace its armor at the moment.

The Princess did not even leave the Object.

No one knew what feelings were spiraling through her chest.

It was a maintenance base in name only. It was closer to being a pile of rubble burying what equipment was still usable.

The soldiers were focused on a map of the Faith Organization base they had drawn up with Skuld’s help. In the twilight, several flashlights illuminated the map as they came up with several routes of entry. It was not that they could not agree; they were coming up with several options for a number of different situations.

Frolaytia spoke up to motivate them.

“I want to attack while the Faith Organization is still celebrating. That means tonight. We can’t hope for perfect preparation at the moment. I know that doesn’t make you happy, but the transport fleet needed to withdraw won’t arrive for a while yet. We’re cornered anyway, so we have to do what we can.”

Heivia and the others had searched through the rubble that had been the base zone to find a few vehicles that would at least still run.

After memorizing the plan, the soldiers headed toward those trucks.

Skuld was supposed to join them as a guide, but she was all alone a short distance away. She sat directly on the ground. She seemed to have trouble joining in when there were no other Faith Organization soldiers with her. Plus, she had to feel indebted to them after Quenser got captured to save her life.

As Frolaytia considered all that, a surviving member of the intelligence division spoke to her.

In fact, they more or less whispered.

“Excuse me, major. I would like to keep this private because it has yet to be confirmed.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Frolaytia expected this to be trouble. This was information that the intelligence division had decided might throw the unit into chaos if it got out. It had to be important and dark, so she had to prepare herself for that.

“We received quit a few casualties from that swarm of bugs. But…”

“Yes?”

“It’s strange. A few of them died from a snapped neck. Bug bites wouldn’t do that.”

“What…does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. I initially thought they had fallen from the stairs in their haste to escape all the bugs, but it seems that wasn’t what happened. And if the swarm hadn’t ended like it did, even the bones would have been eaten away and no trace would have remained.”

“…Are you saying another human might have been using the confusion to kill people?”

“But that brings us to some fundamental questions: Who? And why?”

Frolaytia fell silent.

The intelligence division worked to understand the discord and friction within the unit, but it was hard to say they had a perfect grasp of every last bit of it. It was possible someone might have developed a desire to kill unrelated to war. A military unit was also a place where people lived together. There was no guarantee that no crimes would occur.

A short distance away, Skuld slowly stood up in her Faith Organization uniform. She used her small hands to brush the dust off of her butt.

“And one other thing,” continued the intelligence division member. “It’s about the delayed transmission of your White Flag.”

“Yeah, I regret that more than anything. Even if the control tower had collapsed, we had an emergency communications network using a different system. That said, it was only a makeshift system from what equipment we could scrounge up. The slightest burden was enough to knock it out. And that really delayed us…and got more people killed.”

“What would you say if I told you there were traces inside the equipment of dried sand being poured inside to intentionally create a short?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Everyone could see the look of displeasure on Frolaytia’s face.

The Faith Organization had been celebrating their victory, so they would not have bothered with that kind of sabotage. Plus, the timing did not work. Frolaytia had taken action immediately after the Baby Magnum’s defeat, which had been well before the Trinity Style arrived at the base. The White Flag had already been knocked out at that point.

In that case, it had to have been someone inside the Legitimacy Kingdom base.

But who would have benefited from that kind of suicidal action? More than 100 soldiers had been needlessly slaughtered due to that, but it had been entirely at random. If they went through the exact same thing again, an entirely different group of soldiers would be killed on a whim. In other words, that had forced the entire unit into a game of Russian Roulette with terrible odds.

(Wait.)

As Frolaytia considered it, she was taken in by a wicked thought.

It was a negative inspiration, much like unwarranted suspicion.

(Without the White Flag, everyone in the base would be killed. But is that really true? It was definitely dangerous for us in the Legitimacy Kingdom, but what about the Faith Organization POWs who were set to be rescued?)

To prepare for their mission, Heivia called over from a military truck.

Skuld responded by walking over.

She moved naturally.

Entirely naturally.

She walked right past Frolaytia Capistrano.

(During the bug swarm, we left the detention barracks just before they collapsed and we all made it safely to the storage building. Who was it that arrived last? Yes, who was at the tail end and was thus walking entirely unsupervised through the swarm?)

Something unpleasant pricked at a corner of her mind.

The busty silver-haired commander’s eyes followed the twintail girl heading to the truck.

(And during the Trinity Style battle afterwards, we were still working to put the maintenance base back together. Since the detention barracks were unusable, we split the soldiers’ barracks in two and used half for the POWs. That means the security was laxer than normal and we might not have known every little thing the Faith Organization was doing. It’s entirely possible one of them sabotaged our makeshift communications equipment.)

“Hey!! We’ll be moving along according to schedule, Frolaytia. You dig up a coffee maker from the rubble of the officer barracks. C’mon, let’s get going, Skuld. We only get one chance to make up for our loss!!”

Those words redirected Frolaytia’s thoughts outward.

In the blood red of twilight, Skuld had already climbed aboard the truck.

With her onboard, the trucks began leaving the maintenance base zone one at a time.

Perhaps she should have stopped them.

Perhaps she should have asked Skuld about all this.

But…

(I have no proof…)

It was true that it was possible Skuld could have done it.

But Frolaytia could not imagine what the girl would gain by doing so. For one thing, the arrival of all the bell crickets and the Baby Magnum’s defeat at the hands of the Trinity Style had been mere coincidence. Skuld could not have planned for them.

And if any little thing had been different, Skuld would have died. She was from the Faith Organization and not the Legitimacy Kingdom, so there was no guarantee they would always take her side. And even if she had been planning to betray them, she would have done so only after ensuring her own safety. Doing something here would have been no different than throwing away her own life. She could not have planned for these unexpected events and she had no reason to do this even if she had somehow planned for it. Looking at it that way, Frolaytia felt it was best to assume she was reading too much into this.

And even if they had a map, it would be difficult to sneak into the Faith Organization maintenance base without Skuld who could walk around the place with her eyes closed. Delaying things here might give the Faith Organization a chance to sober up from their victory and then they would lose their one and only chance to rescue Quenser.

So Frolaytia weighed her options on the scales.

She knew something was bothering her, but she drove it to a corner of her mind.

Success and failure were the only two options here.

And yet if one little thing went wrong, the entire unit would be in danger.