Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 6===

Frolaytia Capistrano and the other officers were gathered in a conference room within the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s maintenance base zone.

They had a reason for inviting the electronic simulation division and the intelligence division to the meeting.

“Let us review the situation.” The busty silver-haired commander waggled her long, narrow kiseru. “Our enemy is the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 21st Mobile Maintenance Battalion and their Crystal Scrying. The higher ups must be aware of this clash with our own, but I doubt they will order a ceasefire.”

“U-um,” said the confused female officer who stood by Frolaytia’s side like a secretary. She may have thought it was best to make a suggestion to the higher ups even if it was hopeless, but…

“Those in the home country know the 37th and 21st are clashing, but they are not sure which side is disobeying orders here. That means they are unsure which side to aim at and demand to stop. All this snow will have long since thawed if we wait for them to send in the Black Uniforms or a third-party inquiry committee to thoroughly investigate everything to their satisfaction. If we want to survive, we need to act here and now.”

Frolaytia of course had no intention of simply relying on the Baby Magnum and the soldiers on the scene. She was the one who had used such extreme methods to lure out this enemy.

In addition to the military fight, she had to crush them with what influence she had.

She slowly blew out some sweet smoke as she continued.

“The 21st’s commander is Bullrank Happy-Youth, right? As you can see, he’s a pale and scrawny guy. Based on his musculature, he must be the type of soldier who never leaves his desk.”

A photo of the individual in question was projected onto a wall of the conference room.

This was a pro and a con of fighting another Legitimacy Kingdom unit. There was no real reason to be refused access to data on an ally…but the 21st could search for information on the 37th and Frolaytia in the same way.

They would have to add on countless pieces of information branching off from that one photo.

The busty silver-haired woman glanced over at the electronic simulation division.

“What personal information do we have on him? It could be anything: his bank account, a relationship with someone other than his wife, or even an unusual hobby.”

If Bullrank negotiated with the higher ups and had them overlook his misdeeds in order to delay a ceasefire order, they would have to silence him using some personal compromising information instead.

But all the unwarlike geeks shook their heads.

“That isn’t going to work.”

“Are you saying he’s lived such a perfect life that you can’t find anything on him?”

“No, it’s the opposite. Through social media, we can find a few things he probably does not want getting out like receiving a parking ticket in a hotel district you wouldn’t expect him to be in or like there being a false bottom in the trunk of the car he secretly ordered for the maintenance factory, but it’s all too normal. All of his flaws are kept at the perfect level where it looks like normal proclivities and normal suspicions that he can explain away to his wife as a normal misunderstanding. In fact, it’s so perfect I can only assume this was constructed after the fact.”

If you knew how rumors and data spread through the modern digital society, you could use it to your advantage. Whether in an analog or digital format, you could “set things up” to make yourself look a certain way to the people around you. However, that was a technique used by Councilors trying to avoid scandals. It was not the kind of information security used in the military, even by an officer.

“This goes deeper than I thought. He would make a mistake eventually on his own, so he must have an ally in the government offices.”

“What about civilian investigators?”

The paparazzi would chase around more than just those in the entertainment business. Once someone reached a high enough rank in the military, they would often have cameramen following them around.

An intelligence officer in black responded with a shrug.

“Over the past three years, three freelance reporters sniffing around Bullrank Happy-Youth’s business ended up dying in seemingly natural ways. That smells incredibly fishy, but they must have dealt with things in such a way that you could dig into it for a century without finding anything definitive.”

“…”

That meant there was a secret there worth killing over.

They might find something there if they spent 6 months to a year investigating it, but they did not have that kind of time. If they could not announce checkmate and end this battle somehow or another, their unit would be wiped out.

“This protection only applies to Bullrank Happy-Youth. I don’t know what he did to get the higher ups on his side, but breaking through that barrier would be difficult on such short notice.”

“Then what do we do?”

“But what about whoever is helping him protect his information like this? He has to have more than just one or two helpers in the government offices and nothing says all of them are doing the best job they can. You said his fabricated records are on social media too, right? Then send the social media companies a message saying their server has suffered a cyber attack. The people behind the fabrication won’t want their handiwork discovered, so they’ll want to act quickly to avoid an in-house investigation by the social media companies.”