Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3 (section)

===Part 3===

As planned, the makeshift rockets were fired into the Oceanian sky.

Heivia fired his shoulder-fired missile into the command truck with the large-scale radar antenna attached and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s unilateral counterattack began.

Once the threat of anti-air weapons was removed, the large transport helicopters were able to return.

They had large caliber machineguns bolted directly to the floor near the door.

As the sound of those firing exploded overhead, Quenser covered his mouth with one hand.

“Why do people like to root for the underdog? Where did my hatred for them go?”

“I think you’re actually looking down on them with a sense of superiority. But don’t worry. You’re enjoying your life well enough.”

Quenser and Heivia laid face down on the slope of the sand dune while the sounds of destruction continued.

The handmade armored trucks had been relatively well modified, but they were filled with holes, their gasoline tanks and weaponry ignited, and they violently exploded. The intense destruction of the machineguns rained down evenly on the group of infantry who had tried to corner Quenser and the others. There were no screams. Instead, a dark red sauce was splattered across the giant frying pan of the desert.

Quenser entered a philosophic mood.

“What is peace?”

Heivia picked his nose with his little finger.

“It’s when we’re still alive.”

After about ten minutes, the sounds of gunfire completely stopped.

A few of the transport helicopters remained at the ready in the air while a few others slowly descended to collect the injured.

One soldier who stepped out of a helicopter shouted over the noise of the rotors.

“Thanks for your work!! We have permission to bring back all of your injured. Leave them with us and they can recover in a bed that reeks of disinfectant!!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it! But take a look behind you before you say that. The helicopters aren’t at all ready to leave. We can’t leave until the investigation is done!!”

Quenser and Heivia watched as the investigation team and their guards started for the pump facility that connected to the giant underground structure.

The ceiling of the underground structure had collapsed during the previous battle, so it was open to the surface. However, no one would rappel down a ten meter cliff when a perfectly safe staircase was available.

Quenser used his uniform’s sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow and looked up at the roasting sun that felt like the end of the world.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to sit around here. We would dry up before they finished.”

“There’s a pipeline over there. It’s rusted and falling apart, but we can rest behind it. The humidity should be lower and it’ll block the sun.”

The pipeline was a tube with a diameter of over two meters, so it produced enough of a shadow to sit in. The two boys walked over and found most of the other soldiers already leaning up against the rusted metal pipe like a line of ants.

“This is awful.”

“Are you sure it’s cooler here? I feel like gathering together would concentrate the heat.”

Quenser pulled out the water bottle attached to his uniform and took a gulp. It had been warmed by the sun and his body temperature, so he spat it back out.

“Yuck! It feels like I’m drinking my own sweat!!”

“Use your head, student. You need to cool the water bottle with the icing spray used for machineguns. Medic!!”

Heivia’s joking shout let Quenser know the danger had truly passed.

“So what was that? This pump facility is in ruins and all the usable equipment was removed. Missiles cost 10,000 euros each. Why would they defend this place with their lives?”

“Look over here, Quenser.”

Heivia peered inside a broken portion of the pipeline. The pipe was over two meters wide, so it looked more like a metal tunnel.

In fact, it was one.

“There’s sand gathered at the bottom and there’s a thick line down the middle. It looks like a tire track. From the width, I’d say a motorcycle.”

“A tire track?”

With a confused look, Quenser peered inside the broken pipe.

And then it hit him.

“This abandoned pipeline network stretches across the entire desert. No water or oil is being sent through it, so it’s a safe empty space. You don’t mean…”

“When the military government ruled Oceania, secret funds, weapons, and drugs travelled across the country like ghosts were transporting them. They slipped right past the military checkpoints and satellite surveillance. It was said they did it by bribing or threatening the local soldiers, but this might be it.”

“A secret tunnel? So as easily as heading underground through a manhole, they could freely move across Oceania without being checked?”

It was not the pump facility or the giant underground structure that mattered.

Someone was trying to hide the large-scale smuggling network that used the pipelines.

“People armed with the latest military equipment were fighting to protect a smuggling network? That smells fishy to me. Is it an intelligence agency raising funds by selling drugs or something?”

“But who exactly were they?” Heivia looked annoyed as he glanced over at the corpses which had been almost completely destroyed. “Their equipment looks like a collection of Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance stuff. And it’s the downgraded versions sold for foreign currency rather than the official military equipment. They announce they’re lowering the quality, but still keep the price high. I doubt a local gang or mafia would want to use them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Were they soldiers or were they people hired to help out? Well, either way they would mix in a few pros to take command.”

Suddenly, an infantryman guarding the exterior of the pump facility spoke to Quenser and Heivia.

“If you’re discussing conspiracy theories, you might want to check this out.”

“What?”

Heivia sounded puzzled as the man tossed him a small rectangular handheld device.

However, this was not the type issued to Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. It also had dark red stains in places.

The soldier shrugged.

“I was scavenging. Those thugs out front were splattered everywhere, so I gathered whatever I thought I could sell.”

“Seriously? You really set foot in that poisonous swamp?”

“And in exchange, I found some interesting data. It looks less like official data and more like someone at the bottom gathered some data to figure out what he was involved in.”

“…”

Quenser turned on the device and it was not even locked with a password.

Some of the data files were filled with numbers about ten digits long. He could not read hexadecimal off the top of his head, so he could not tell anything from just that.

“Wait a second,” said Heivia as he peered in from the side. “The first four digits are all the same. I thought these looked familiar. They’re bank account numbers, aren’t they? I think these belong to a major Information Alliance one.”

“Why does a Legitimacy Kingdom noble know that?”

“Don’t be stupid. In this age of wars, you never know what levies will be imposed. Do you really think a greedy noble is going to keep all his money in a single account? We have tons of ways of spreading out our assets. My family has a group of specialist accountants working for us.”

Quenser tilted his head as he scrolled through the iron-smelling device.

There appeared to be over one hundred bank account numbers.

“So what is this list of bank accounts?”

“Probably a deposit list. In other words, these connect to the names of the people cooperating with the people running things from the shadows. Look, the numbers at the end of the account numbers are the same too. That probably refers to a branch in a tropical island tax haven. They’re probably using secret accounts to launder their money.”

“The people running things from the shadows? We still don’t know if this is really a conspiracy.”

“If we dig up the names and identities of this week’s MVPs here, we might find a connection. They disguised their trucks as the Blue Cross and loaded them with machineguns and missiles to hide the secret passageway through the pipeline. They’re definitely up to no good.”

The mischievous infantryman shrugged in utter exhaustion.

“These are secret accounts in the Information Alliance. They aren’t going to give us the information if we ask.”

“Quenser.”

“Do I look that smart to you? Do you think you can just throw any problem my way?”

Quenser looked irritated, but he begrudgingly agreed after the soldiers around him tossed some icing spray his way.

He sprayed it across his water bottle and spoke.

“Knowing the account numbers is a start. How about we leak the entire list onto the internet while making it look like they were hacked? With secret tax haven accounts, trust matters most. If information has been taken straight from the servers, the clients and managers will both panic.”

“Yes, but will that accomplish anything other than causing a commotion?”

“We can quickly open a fake website claiming to check whether your account number was stolen. If we add in some spyware to snatch the IP of anyone entering their number, we should be able to determine who entered what number. And the shadier the person, the sooner they’ll respond.”

In that instant, everyone resting in the shade of the pipeline stared silently at Quenser.

He squirmed under the pressure of the strange silence.

“Um, what is this? Is this any way to react after I give you what you want?”

“This settles it. Nothing good would come of letting him leave the military.”

They contacted the maintenance base zone’s intelligence division via radio, but they said it would take several days to create a proper fake website.

Heivia stuck out his tongue.

“Damn those desk workers. Do clocks move at a different speed over there? Are they using a vacation clock or something?”

“Either way, I’m jealous.”

“They aren’t on board with this. It’s a pain, but you heard them. Everyone, give any idea we can use to steal the credit from the intelligence department since they refuse to play along.”

Long story short, they ended up with the following ideas: “Different computer viruses are compressed and saved on a certain foreign server”, “I know a collection of templates for scam sites”, and “As long as you have the basic template for the site, you can use a cloud service to edit the details and create a false site in only a few minutes.”

“Why do all of you know about this kind of thing?”

“As a future engineer, I think you should gladly welcome useful nerds. Otherwise, your organization will end up as a dinosaur fossil.”

As they had announced, the bored helpers completed the false website in only a few minutes. Rather than building it from the ground up, they chose a template from a database containing thousands of templates for scam sites and added the necessary decorations. They did the same for the spyware.

“Where should we spread the address? Just on any major message board?”

“For the Legitimacy Kingdom, there’s Blue Blood which only nobles with bloodlines continuing back for 300 years can enter. For the Information Alliance, there’s Rank Literacy which can only be used by people who run sites with over half a million hits a day. There are sites for elitist people from the other two world powers as well.”

“Those are all closed SNSs. We can probably manage with Blue Blood, but you aren’t using my ID.”

“I don’t need to. Everyone uses different identities online. A refined noble will let off some steam by shouting insults on anonymous message boards like it’s a masquerade party. If we spread the information there, the tainted information will make its way into the closed SNSs. They’ll ruin their own attempts to seal it off.”

“It sounds like the insecticide used for roaches. It’s made to look like delicious food so they’ll take it back to their nest where it kills all of them.”

A male soldier had been curled up and fiddling with a handheld device, but he now made an OK sign with his hand.

The others peered curiously at the small screen.

“This virus site is a lot like creating a robot from an empty box and tape, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s already gotten a few pieces of personal information.”

First, they had leaked the list online and let the emergency information spread. Once the clients grew uneasy, they were lured to the false site where they entered their account number. It was unclear when exactly the different waves of attack began.

“We have a few names and identities to go with numbers on our list. About ten so far. Let’s try to find a link between them.”

“Wait.” Heivia pointed at one of the names. “This is an international satellite TV executive. He claims to bring laughter and the truth to the blank regions and dictatorships where information is being controlled. Oceania’s mass media has begun to recover, but it’s still unstable. Satellite TV still has a lot of credibility and influence here.”

He pointed at another name.

“This is a blog king. He’s known as Oceania’s leading source of sarcasm.”

He pointed at another.

“This is an entertainer famous for volunteer work.”

And another.

“An executive for an international canned drink maker. They have ads during all sorts of shows.”

As each name was described, Quenser saw a common theme.

“Are they using the media to influence people’s impressions?”

“Their impressions of what?”

“No matter how much they’re being paid, I doubt they would say something that strays too far from their ideologies and beliefs. The money is nothing but the trigger giving them the final push. In that case, what do these people believe in?”

Heivia grimaced when he heard that.

He had been the one describing the names, so he had a general understanding of the people.

“This might be a major headache for us.”

“Why?”

“They want true independence for Oceania by having the ‘thugs’ leave. They’re a bunch of people who refuse to do any real work while pretending to be pacifists. They think they’re the most important no matter what.”

“Even the corporate executives?”

“Sitting arrogantly in a leather chair isn’t normally referred to as ‘work’.”

A mysterious group in Oceania was spreading intentionally biased information to create a tendency toward hating the coalition military.

The current problem was the pipeline they were using to secretly transport something across the desert. They had even started a firefight with the Legitimacy Kingdom in order to hide it.

This was more than a newspaper editorial.

This mysterious group was prepared to use legitimate violence.

“This pipeline is being used as a secret transportation network and massive amounts of money are being given to influential people to manipulate the opinions of the Oceanian people. What are they trying to do here?”

“Hey,” spoke up the soldiers who had helped them earlier. “I checked a few more of their handheld devices and there’s a net storage site they access frequently. They may keep their larger data there.”

“Does it have a password?”

“Just like online banks, it uses a one-time password. …But this was outsourced and the company in charge of security has slipped past the firewall a few times. We might be able to use the maintenance master key.”

“Would they really use the same key for several weeks or months?”

“No, but if we find a pattern to the changes in the periodically updated alphanumeric key, it might be possible to determine what the current key is. It will take some time, though.”

“Try working on it,” said Quenser as his radio emitted an electronic tone.

Froleytia was calling them.

“I have a question for all of you. You aren’t performing unauthorized electronic warfare against an Information Alliance tax haven bank, are you? The intelligence department has detected a fascinating flow of data.”

(Shit!!)

Everyone there straightened their spines.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were at war, but wars had rules known as treaties. And as Heivia had said, secret tax haven accounts were unofficially used by nobles and royals so they could secretly divide their assets up between false names and dummy corporations. Even if this was an enemy nation, some higher ups might not want them messing with it. Someone might be placing pressure on Froleytia.

But when no amount of apology would fix the situation, Quenser did not want to continue speaking for long.

He responded casually while looking around for help.

Heivia pointed toward the pump facility with his thumb.

“(That thick concrete might cut off the signal!!)”

“Okay, okay. Eh? What!? No, no. That isn’t what we’re doing!!”

While Quenser stalled for time, he and Heivia ran toward the remains of the pump facility.

They circled around the lake of dark red sauce and continued toward the building which contained stairs leading underground.

The armored trucks disguised as the Blue Cross were still burning and smoking. They would no longer function, but the two idiots circled well away from them because the bombs or missiles could suddenly burst.

The inside of the building was a large space.

It had originally been a facility to draw up unused water from underground and send it to grain-producing land, but all of the equipment had been removed when it was abandoned. It was now a movie theater-sized space made of reinforced concrete. It was essentially empty. Broken metal stairways and passageways could be found here and there and they appeared to be built around large machinery that was no longer present.

But that did not matter.

“(Heivia! The signal’s still going strong!! Froleytia’s completely pissed!! We can’t escape like this!!)”

“(Let’s head down the spiral staircase and underground!!)”

The two idiots descended the spiral staircase and ran out into a narrow tunnel. Static finally began to fill the radio signal.

This was the moment they had been waiting for.

“Ksshhh. Wait, what is… Explain yourse-…kssssshhhhh!!”

“Eh? What? I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you at all!! Over!!”

With that, he ended the transmission and switched off the radio altogether.

Heivia leaned up against the concrete wall.

“If we hang around here, the investigation team will see us and force odd jobs on us. Let’s go pretend to be working.”

They were doing nothing more than extending their suffering, but they took an extremely positive stance and viewed it as a chance to arrange the excuses they needed to weasel out of it.

They passed through a straight corridor and arrived at the underground structure.

However…

“Wow. There really isn’t a ceiling. It feels like the world’s biggest convertible.”

The ground above had completely collapsed during the previous battle, so the blue sky was perfectly visible even in the “underground” structure. They were over ten meters down, so they were not about to climb up or down rather than using the stairs.

A lot of sand had poured in, so it looked a lot more cluttered than the pump facility.

The piles of wooden boxes may have added to that impression.

“It looks like they’ve finished investigating here. Otherwise, we never would have been allowed in.”

“What are these boxes? Surely they aren’t empty.”

After receiving permission from a man on the investigation team who was taking photographs, Quenser and Heivia removed the nails from one wooden box and opened it.

“There’s some kind of powder packed in plastic.”

“But it doesn’t look like something with a high street price.”

The bags had some kind of label, so Quenser used his handheld device to snap a photo.

They opened a few more boxes and found reels of fiber optic cable as well as nuts and bolts packaged by size.

“Did someone’s father make a secret base for his home improvement projects?”

“Wait. I think I know what that powder was,” muttered Quenser.

Suddenly, the two idiots heard the noise of something falling over.

And when they turned toward the noise…