I Shock Wave

I

SHOCK WAVE

HE LINGERED IN his sleep, not alive and yet not dead. Occasionally, his eyelids would open, his eyes moving wildly.

To the people around him, it seemed as though he were following the flight of some invisible fairy, his eyes now windows open to illuminate the darkness within his head, as if desperately hoping to light the way out from the blackness that had swallowed him up. He personally wasn’t conscious of this movement. Indeed, he had no feeling of anything in his entire body. When his eyes moved, the image in his mind was of the moment he was ejected from his beloved plane and left behind. His beloved plane, Yukikaze. As she flew out of sight, leaving him with nothing but empty sky, he felt his existence contracting to a point before finally winking out. Only then did his eyes cease their wild motion, and his consciousness fell back, once again, into the gap between life and death.

He was concerned with neither life nor death, simply letting time drift past, and even time itself no longer held any meaning for him.

Until, at last, a voice called for him to awaken.

1

MAJOR JAMES BOOKER, the man responsible for sortie management and mission control for the Special Air Force 5th Squadron (FAF, Faery base, Tactical Combat Air Corps), had a lot of problems on his mind, all of which were giving him a splitting headache.

First of all, his neck still gave him a twinge from time to time. Then there was the fact that he still didn’t have a complete understanding of the incident that had hurt his neck in the first place. Finally, there was the matter of Lieutenant Rei Fukai, pilot of Yukikaze (SAF Unit 3) and how he remained unconscious in a vegetative state. Ever since the incident, the major had a vague sense that the JAM had subtly altered their strategy in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Sylphids, the same model of plane that had been enhanced to create Yukikaze, deployed at front-line bases, had suddenly been taking much higher rates of damage than previously.

The major recalled that Dr. Balume, the SAF flight surgeon, had suggested a nerve block if the pain persisted. When he’d refused, telling the doctor that a nerve block performed by a drunk like Balume would likely kill him, the doctor then suggested that he might try some counseling, saying that ridding himself of his anxiety might also relieve the pain.

“And what do you have to be anxious about, anyway?” the doctor had said. “You made it back still breathing, didn’t you? Okay, the FRX00 nearly killed you, but you don’t have to fly in it again.” It was about at that point the major decided that he would have to take care of his anxiety himself, because this doctor certainly wasn’t going to be of any help in that department.

Major Booker knew that the reason he was feeling so anxious had to do with question number two on his list. In other words, the fact that he still didn’t have a complete grasp of exactly what had happened to the FRX00. Yukikaze lay burning, shot down by the JAM, never to fly again. Somehow, she’d abandoned her old body and transferred herself into the approaching FRX00. Having obtained a new body for herself, Yukikaze had recognized the approaching JAM fighters and initiated combat maneuvers against them. That was when the pilot and he, the acting flight officer in the rear, had blacked out. The man at the controls was Captain George Samia, pilot of SAF Unit 13. Yukikaze’s maneuvers in the FRX00 snapped his neck, killing him instantly.

And those must have been some outrageous maneuvers, the major thought, rubbing the nape of his own neck. The FRX00 had exceeded its predicted air combat maneuverability. He could practically hear the computers of the Systems Corps snickering at him.

“The FRX00 is a modified FRX99,” they’d say. “The FRX99 was never designed to be piloted by humans. Did you seriously think you could do it?”

Major Booker had been riding in the rear seat to observe the real-world performance of the plane that had been manufactured at his insistence, but there was no way he could have predicted that something like this would happen. In truth, the real reason he’d been there was because he’d been worried when Yukikaze hadn’t returned to base from her sortie. He used the FRX00’s combat flight test as an excuse to go out and run a personal search for her. It was clear that they’d provided support for Yukikaze, but being aboard the plane had prevented him from seeing exactly what had happened. Even now, he wasn’t sure.

Captain Samia had probably leaned closer to the display to confirm that an external data stream was transferring into his plane from somewhere. However, that had been a fatal mistake on his part. The major regretted not warning him, but comforted himself by realizing that there had been no time for it. There was no way he could have known that the data stream was actually Yukikaze’s mind itself being transferred from her crippled body as she lay burning. Aside from that, as a former pilot, Booker had braced himself to prepare for combat maneuvers the moment he realized something was wrong. That was what had saved his neck. All he’d suffered were a few dislocated vertebrae.

Maybe his ability to sense danger and intuit that he was about to pull some unimaginable Gs was due to a sort of sixth sense he’d cultivated as a pilot. He thought about this for a moment, then decided against it. It had been a long, long time since he’d flown as a combat pilot. Was what he felt at that moment, more than the fear of combat itself, a sense of how dangerous the FRX00 really was? Had he sensed that it was a mistake for humans to fly in such a plane and felt fear at being in one?

The FRX00 had been modified for manned flight from the FRX99, which had been designed to be unmanned. The addition of flight crew safeguards in manufacturing the manned version had drastically increased the weight of the plane, but even so it was still far more maneuverable than any other manned fighter. It still possessed the same potential as the FRX99, after all.

In designing manned planes, engineers had to take into account the human body’s frailty in the face of G forces. For that reason, they couldn’t avoid decreasing its air combat capabilities. Human beings are land animals, after all, and their ability to grasp three-dimensional space is limited. They can fly inverted through a cloudbank and never even realize it. However, when designing an unmanned aircraft, all of these weak points can be eliminated. When you don’t have to worry about a human occupant, you can create a plane that can carry out maneuvers to its full technical potential. Sending the plane into a controlled flat spin would be child’s play. When you had such perfect control, what would once have been a useless maneuver in actual combat could prove advantageous, giving your assault forces a high degree of flexibility in battle.

The FRX99 had been created to be such a plane, with vertical canard wings and two-dimensional vectored thrust engine nozzles. With direct side force control, it had the ability to rotate like a boomerang. The airframe even had direct lift force control as well, and could nimbly move up or down while maintaining level flight. To maintain the efficiency of the air intake system during such violent maneuvers, the intake ports extended above and below the main wing. At first glance, this made the twin-engine plane appear to have four.

Major Booker would never forget Lieutenant Rei Fukai’s impression of the prototype when it was delivered to the SAF.

“It looks powerful, but clumsy,” Rei had said.

As his neck ached, the major recalled Rei’s words over and over. The FRX99 had been designed with the idea that humans weren’t necessary and that they should stay the hell away from it. Perhaps Rei had sensed that. It was a combat machine built without any regard for human beings. Its very design showed that it wasn’t meant for humans to fly. Rei had probably sensed that with a single glance.

Even so, the manned FRX00 version could be said to be the most powerful plane in the FAF’s current arsenal. Rather than saying it possessed a lethal level of maneuverability, you could just as easily say that it demonstrated just how powerful the plane really was. After all, no fighter plane could honestly be considered safe. The important point was whether or not a human pilot could control it.

Yukikaze had been the one controlling the plane. There was no doubt about that. The problem was that she’d completely disregarded the FRX00’s human crew and had not hesitated to maneuver in a way that injured, or even killed, them.

Checking the data file of the FRX00’s central computer after they’d returned to base and realizing that it showed no concern for the humans aboard, the major had become afraid.

What the hell was going on? There was no way the plane’s central systems didn’t know that there were people aboard. If that were true, then the central computer itself had ignored the crew and simply deleted any data it received about the occupants of its cockpit.

Why?

In that moment, the FRX00 wasn’t just a prototype anymore. It had literally become Yukikaze. She’d already ejected Rei from the burning remains of her old body. So perhaps, as far as Yukikaze was concerned, there weren’t any humans aboard her. Or rather, she assumed there weren’t any. That probably would have led her to treat any data about the crew aboard the FRX00 as an error. It was a plausible explanation, but they couldn’t determine that for certain from Yukikaze’s memory data. And since she couldn’t understand ambiguous human language, it wasn’t as though they could just ask her, “What the hell was going through your mind before?” The data hinted at the answer, but if it didn’t contain what the humans wanted to know, the best they could do was to guess at what Yukikaze’s intentions had been.

Once she’d transferred herself to the FRX00, Yukikaze had wanted to eliminate the surrounding enemy JAM as quickly as possible. That much was certain. In the investigation conducted after they’d returned to base, it was learned that the FRX00 had cut out all of its maneuvering limiters. Or to be more accurate, it had never engaged them in the first place. He could imagine that the crew safeguards had been working just fine, but that from Yukikaze’s point of view, they were just malfunctions. In order for Yukikaze to release all of the limiters, she would have had to send false data to all the sensor systems that there were no crewmen aboard and then deactivate the safeguards. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t false data. Since Rei had been ejected, the data from the safeguards telling her that there were humans aboard must have been in error, and Yukikaze had simply corrected it. The problem with this explanation was that, normally, it should have been impossible. So the only explanation possible was that Yukikaze had made a mistake. And that was what Major Booker just couldn’t understand.

Considering that Yukikaze had never experienced transfer of herself into a new airframe, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suppose that the transfer could cause her to make some sort of mistake. If it wasn’t a mistake, there were much simpler ways she could have cut out the limiters, assuming that cutting them had been her true intention. Yukikaze could have just activated the FRX00’s ejection seats. In both the old Yukikaze and the FRX00, the central computer was capable of activating the seat escape system if it determined that the crew were unconscious and unable to activate it themselves. The crew safeguards that controlled all of the maneuver limiters, G-suit controller, and the active headrests that protected the crews’ necks were designed to deactivate if the plane were unmanned. If she’d simply ejected their seats, she could have performed the most lethal air combat maneuvers possible without any problem.

But Yukikaze hadn’t done that. So, had it been a mistake caused by her transferring herself, or was it that Yukikaze had decided she didn’t have to waste time ejecting any human other than Rei? There was no way to tell what her true feelings were. Hell, it was even possible that Yukikaze’s actions had nothing to do with what had happened, and that there was a fault in the FRX00’s safeguard system.

The true reason remained a mystery.

Because these questions remained unanswered, they’d been forced to suspend their plan to mass produce the FRX00 and establish a new SAF. When Dr. Balume suggested that the pain in his neck wasn’t fading because of that, Major Booker grew depressed. Did that mean he’d be stuck with it unless he found an answer? Shit, he thought, if Rei’d just wake up, that’d take care of my anxiety. If Lieutenant Rei Fukai, Yukikaze’s partner, told him, “Yukikaze just decided she should kill any crew on board that wasn’t me,” he might not like to hear it, but he had a feeling he could probably understand it. Even so, it didn’t look like Rei would be regaining full consciousness any time soon.

The Systems Corps had said that if the SAF couldn’t explain the cause of the FRX00’s (Yukikaze’s) dangerous maneuvers, then they would investigate it themselves. When Major Booker objected, they’d demanded that he hand it over to them.

Major Booker had fought back against the demand, saying that he wouldn’t give the data to the Systems Corps under any circumstances. The reason being that the FRX00 was now Yukikaze herself, a battle-tested SAF fighter plane. No other corps would be permitted to read the contents of her central data file. Besides that, if anyone apart from the SAF attempted to check out Yukikaze’s central computer, she would self-destruct. The Systems Corps had dropped the tough-guy routine when he’d pointed this out to them. They knew very well how dangerous an SAF fighter’s central computer could be, mainly because they were the ones who’d designed it.

He’d had to point out the FRX00’s telecommunication log from when she’d returned to base in order to prove that it was now Yukikaze.

At the time, she’d called herself that, identifying herself as Yukikaze.

DE YUKIKAZE ETA2146.AR

“This is Yukikaze. Estimated time of arrival at base 21:46 hours. That is all.”

She hadn’t transmitted Unit B-3, her mission sortie code number, but had identified herself as “Yukikaze.” For the first and only time.

Perhaps Yukikaze was cognizant of the fact that she was no longer in the same body and therefore technically no longer Unit B-3. In that case, the only way she could identify herself was as Yukikaze. That was probably it, Major Booker thought. Or, he had gone on, she might have identified herself solely as Yukikaze as a way to try and find Rei, the one who had given her that name. He’d told Systems Corps that she might have been pretty shaken by the whole experience as well.

Systems Corps pointed out that, if this were true, it would be dangerous to have a combat machine acting in such a human way. Fighter planes didn’t need individual personalities, they’d said. Major Booker decided that Systems Corps was using the situation to claim that the SAF (and by extension, Booker himself) agreed with their theory that the FAF no longer needed manned fighters so that they could steal Yukikaze away from him. That was when he lost his temper, shouting that he’d let an active-duty fighter get taken apart by friendly hands over his dead body. The argument got pretty heated, but in the end, Systems Corps gave up. They got in a parting shot though, pointing out that if Yukikaze had actually transferred herself into the FRX00, she’d used a wireless transmission that could have been intercepted by the JAM, which might have been the cause for the rising damage rates seen in the Sylphids nearly identical to the old Yukikaze. So long as they would not hand her over to them, it would be up to the SAF to investigate this, not to shirk their responsibilities, and so on and so forth.

They can go on saying it as much as they like, but if Systems Corps truly believe that manned fighters are no longer needed, they’re just wrong, thought Major Booker. As far as the SAF’s mission was concerned, you couldn’t separate the men from the machines.

Major Booker reiterated his thought that, no matter how much more reliable the unmanned planes became, the SAF would still have a need for manned planes. Even using their current Super Sylphs as unmanned planes was no good. He was sure that a human pilot could catch data during combat that a machine would simply ignore. Yukikaze’s behavior in real combat during that incident had proved that to him.

It was mentioned in her combat record that, during her mission, Yukikaze’s crew had ejected twice. The first time when they made contact with the JAM, and then later during that mysterious time gap when the JAM shot her down.

If the ejection seat had been fired twice, it meant that Rei, her pilot, had used it once to bail out, and then he’d been flying Yukikaze again, after it had happened. That would have been impossible unless a new ejection seat unit had been mounted into the plane. That meant that somebody had installed a second ejection seat. There was no record that TAB-15, the closest front-line base, had received a request for a spare seat from Yukikaze, so that left only one conclusion: the JAM had installed it. Yukikaze had taken actions during that time gap that they still couldn’t explain. The major was sure that Lieutenant Rei Fukai knew the data that wasn’t in Yukikaze’s data file. It was the sort of data you could only get from a manned sortie. He could imagine that the JAM had engaged in their first direct interaction with a human.

All the answers were probably inside of Rei’s head.

“Please wake up,” Major Booker urgently prayed. If Rei would just wake up, all the stress that was making his neck hurt would fade away. He could have the confidence to introduce the mass-produced FRX00s into service. They might have been dangerous planes for humans to fly, but that threat paled next to that of the JAM.

As for the FRX00, it was in the SAF’s hangar, in its place, lined up next to the Super Sylphs flown by the other squadron members. The only manned version of the FRX99 in the entire Faery Air Force. FRX00. Personal name: Yukikaze. Yukikaze’s new body.

Yukikaze had transferred to the FRX00 and returned to base, but her pilot Lieutenant Rei Fukai had yet to return. Major Booker had eventually been freed of his neck brace, but Rei hadn’t regained consciousness. His physical body might be there, but Rei just wasn’t home.

Major Booker had a pile of problems to deal with. Rei. Yukikaze. The strategy and tactics to use against the JAM. As it turned out, he was about to have even more troubles dumped onto his plate.

2

MAJOR BOOKER SHUT the fighter maintenance file with a sigh and poured himself a cup of cocoa. “I’m busy as hell, but you just won’t wake up, will you Rei,” he muttered. Sitting down on his desk rather than in the chair, he picked up his mug. “Want some?” he asked Lieutenant Rei Fukai.

Rei sat in a wheelchair next to the major’s desk. His eyes remained closed. He didn’t move a muscle.

Every day of late, the major would wheel Rei to his office for about an hour. In the hospital, Rei is just a patient, but here in the SAF’s area he is a soldier and he’s treated like one, thought the major. The chances were very good that even a slight stimulus might be enough to bring him out of his coma.

“Not thirsty, I guess.” The major let out a little sigh and then drank his cocoa. “Self-service. Clean your own cup. What I wouldn’t give for a sharp, hot secretary. Don’t you think I need one?” The major looked at Rei. “ ’Not my problem.’ That’d be your answer, right? Isn’t that what you’d say, Rei? If you could talk. I can guess what you’d say.

“A soldier who can’t fly. Pretty pathetic. Well, you and me both. Here I am, doing a monologue. Although, technically it’s not a monologue when you’re here ’cause I speak for you too.”

No response from Rei. Still, there was that one time when he thought Rei had reacted to hearing Yukikaze’s name. The major took that to be a good sign. Rei’s eyes had stayed closed, but his cheek had twitched.

Twice, Rei had opened his eyes. What are you reacting to? the major wondered. Maybe you’re fighting the JAM in your head, but maybe you’re reacting to something in the outside world. I’d like to know which.

Major Booker had no medical expertise, but he knew Rei better than any of the medical staff. He genuinely believed that Rei wanted to have these conversations with him. He’d gone so far as to set it up so that the telemetry from the brain wave monitor attached to Rei’s head could be received from anywhere in the SAF’s area. The idea was to feed it all in real time into the tactical computer in the SAF’s headquarters as he interacted with Rei. If there’s a correlation between changes in my friend’s brain waves and whatever I’m talking about, the major thought, then I’m having a conversation, not a monologue.

“It’s a touching effort, Rei. I’m sure even you must appreciate that. The SAF’s tactical computer is monitoring you. You really are a big shot around here, aren’t you?”

At this point, analysis didn’t indicate that Rei was reacting to the outside world. It would have been nice if they could figure out a way to translate his thoughts directly into speech. That wasn’t possible now, the major told Rei, but it eventually would be.

“What, you think that’s bullshit? No, eventually we’ll be able to achieve direct human–machine communication by thought alone. You’ll be able to pilot a plane just by thinking about it. You still wouldn’t be able to take those high-speed maneuvers, though. But if you sensed you were in danger and wanted to eject from your plane, you’d be able to activate the ejection sequencer even if you couldn’t move your arms or legs. Rei, you aren’t dead. You just can’t access the outside world, right? Somewhere, there’s still a connection open to you. I’m not giving up on you, because there’s a lot of stuff I want to ask you about.”

Rei didn’t answer. He merely sat, his head slumped against the wheelchair’s headrest. The brain wave monitor he had on his head made him appear to be wearing a hat, but he was dressed in a flight suit. He looked almost bored with the major’s monologue. Booker then changed his mind, deciding instead that it looked like Rei wanted to continue the conversation, so he pressed on.

“So, I told you before, didn’t I? About the newbie we got? For Unit 13. We finally found a successor for Captain Samia. Name’s Second Lieutenant Yagashira. The characters for his name are the ones for ‘bow’ and ‘head,’ by the way. He was asking about you. Wanted to know just what kind of group member you were. You keep goofing off around here and pretty soon everyone’s going to know about you. A pilot’s career is short, after all. Even if the JAM don’t get you, you’ll eventually lose the strength you need to fly. I learned that in the FRX00. What do you think?”

I can still fly, he imagined Rei would answer.

“Yeah, you can still fly,” the major responded. “When you wake up, we’ll have you back in the air in no time.”

The major had seen that, if left alone, Rei’s body would have become as immobile as a plant, and Booker didn’t want that to happen. First of all, it would have been awful to see that happen to a friend, but as the personnel supervisor of the SAF, he didn’t want to lose a good pilot either.

There weren’t many people who could handle SAF duties. It wasn’t just a matter of training or experience but also the need for pilots with the right personality, men who could carry out their missions with a callous intensity.

The new guy who’d been assigned to 5th Squadron, Second Lieutenant Yagashira, seemed a little weak in that respect. That is to say, the major thought coldly, he’s a little too human. Lieutenant Yagashira had asked who Rei was and such, unlike the other pilots in the SAF, who were indifferent toward him. Lieutenant Yagashira might have been a first-rate pilot, but he might also have been unsuited for duty in the SAF. Rei wasn’t like that. He seemed to have been born to serve. If he awakened, he’d want to be sent back into combat as soon as possible.

To prevent Rei’s body from atrophying, it was forcibly manipulated for quite a long time every day. At the rehabilitation center, he’d be loaded into a machine similar to a powered suit to exercise while his muscles were given electrical stimulus. Seeing what looked like a corpse being made to dance made the major want to shut his eyes the one time he went to observe the procedure. However, he gritted his teeth and toughed it out, because he’d been the one who had asked that it be done in the first place.

“You should be grateful for all the trouble we’re taking over you, Rei. Still, even if I wasn’t around, they’d probably be doing it for you anyway. You’re a very important man, after all. What really happened to you? Did you meet the JAM? The actual, physical JAM? What were they like? Please, answer me. You’re my best friend and I’m tired of talking to you like this. There’s nothing wrong with your head. Those quacks in medical told me so, and just this once, I’m willing to believe them. Rei, say something to me—”

A knock at the door interrupted him. “Come in,” answered Major Booker, who proceeded to gulp down the last of his cocoa. He never would have guessed who was about to step through the door.

“General Cooley…” It was Brigadier General Lydia Cooley, boss of the SAF. Major Booker stood up from his perch on the desk and saluted, then offered her the chair behind his desk. His office lacked a decent sofa for visitors to use.

The general pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, then looked at Rei.

“Is Rei in the way, ma’am?” the major asked. “I was about to call the nurse for him, so…”

“No, it’s fine,” the general answered. “Leave Fukai where he is.”

“Did you come to see him about something?”

“Yeah, you could say that. The Intelligence Forces were asking me how long you intend to keep Fukai like this.”

“Hm,” the major replied. “They’re at it again, are they?” This is one superior who always brings tough problems for us, huh, Rei, he thought. “I’m not handing Rei over to them, General. He’s a vital member of the SAF.”

“As a pilot.”

“A pilot who will fly again.”

“When?”

“We’re working on that.”

Her demeanor softened. “I know, Major,” she replied and then sat down in his chair. “You’ve been putting a great deal of work into this. I don’t want to lose a good pilot either.”

So why don’t you handle the FAF Intelligence Forces’ demands that we hand over Rei to them on your end, General? Major Booker wanted to say, but just barely managed to hold his tongue.

“So what’s the problem then?” he said instead. “If we hand Rei over to Intelligence, he’ll end up a human vegetable. They won’t exercise him, just concentrate on treatments to extract the knowledge in his brain, if you can call that sort of stuff ‘treatment.’ ”

“I think your method is the correct one,” she replied. “However, Intelligence doesn’t agree. It’s very irritating. How long has the lieutenant been like this?”

The major paused. “About three months,” he answered. “Today is day ninety-two, General.”

“Fukai’s term is nearly up, then.”

“What do you mean? Oh, of course. You mean his term of service. But Rei was going to reenlist.”

“Unless he makes that intention known himself, he’ll be discharged and become a regular civilian again. If that happened, then there’d be nothing the SAF could do to stop Intelligence.”

“Can they do that?”

“There are big shots in the FAF who are on board with the idea. They’ll make it happen, Major. If there’s something those people want to do, they’ll do it. And we don’t have any big shots of our own among them who can stop it from happening. I certainly don’t have that power. I am essentially the commander of the SAF, but officially the SAF falls under the direct command of the commander of Faery base’s Tactical Combat Air Corps. At the moment, that’s Lieutenant General Laitume. I’m just the deputy commander.”

“Even though we have our own autonomous headquarters.”

“Despite my rank, I have the responsibilities of a lieutenant general, and the work you do certainly wouldn’t normally be a major’s responsibility. That’s not saying they look down on the SAF. As the war’s tactical situation has changed, our duties have grown in importance, but the internal organization of the FAF just hasn’t kept pace. Still, there’s no use complaining about it. That fact is that, in one month, we’re going to have to give up Fukai.”

The general kept her eyes locked in a sidelong glance on Rei as she said this. “Therefore—” she continued.

“Therefore, you’re ordering me to get Rei to sign his reenlistment papers, is that it?” the major replied, cutting her off.

“Yes,” she answered. “Is that possible?”

“A month, huh… I can’t say for sure, but if Intelligence takes him as he is now, Rei’s probably going to end up an invalid.”

“So long as my SAF has the power of a corps-level organization, that won’t matter.”

As if we, with our thirteen tactical recon fighters, were on the same level as a corps that controls hundreds of planes, the major thought. Still, that was what they said. The data that the SAF gathered affected the entire Faery Air Force, and that was especially true of the data in Rei’s head—if he had seen the JAM’s true form. That could affect the fate of the FAF, if not the whole of Earth. General Cooley was determined to hand over that information herself, to present it as having come from the SAF. In short, she wanted a feather in her professional cap. And it was with an irritated tone that he told her this.

“That may be,” the general answered, nodding coolly. “Still, Lieutenant Fukai is a member of the SAF, and if he wasn’t in our unit, there would have been a lot of valuable information we never would have gotten. By that argument, I already have a feather in my cap, Major. And he may have information that’s just as important. I don’t want all your hard work to be in vain. You’re using the tactical computer in SAF headquarters for Fukai’s treatment. I was the one who authorized that. If I let Intelligence take him at this point, I’ll have no authority left.”

“I understand perfectly, General.”

“How is the lieutenant doing?”

“Physically, he’s fine. That’s because TAB-15 was so close to where he ejected. Those front-line surgeons are rough, but their work is top notch. I swear, they could probably cure a dead man, which is pretty close to what Rei was when they got to him.”

“I understand that he didn’t sustain any severe brain damage.”

“Probably because those front-line docs gave him the right initial treatment. The surgeons we have here at Faery base are good with the theory, but they don’t have the real-world experience. Our chief flight surgeon Dr. Balume is pretty good, as long as you get to him in the first five minutes before the booze messes him up.”

“I expect you’ll do fine with him,” the general said. “Fukai was shot with a pistol, wasn’t he? Was he shot by his flight officer, Lieutenant Burgadish? And where did he disappear to? If Fukai doesn’t recover, we’ll never know that either. I want to know what happened out there. Within the month. Our SAF can do anything, can’t it? That is all. Any questions?”

“None, General.”

“Very well, then,” she replied, nodding. She didn’t seem to want to leave the office.

“How about some coffee?” the major offered. “You look tired.”

“So do you, Major,” she replied. “I’ll pass on the coffee, thanks. How’s the battle analysis going? We’re definitely seeing the action intensify around TAB-15. Do you think all the Sylphid losses are due to the old Yukikaze being shot down?”

“We’re about to have a tactical mission briefing. You can hear it then—”

“I want to hear your personal opinion, Major.”

“Off the record?”

“Yes.”

Strategy sessions, tactical development sessions, mission planning sessions, mission conduct briefings, and on and on and on. There were lots of meetings to attend, the faces varying with each group. At the strategy sessions where the requirements of the next generation of planes were discussed, people from Systems Corps would be in attendance. The tactical development sessions featured lots of soldiers, as you’d expect. And aside from all of those, there were the preflight briefings held before each sortie, with General Cooley invariably in attendance. At those meetings and in her office, the major had asked her for her personal opinions before. However, this was the first time she’d ever come into his own office to ask for his opinion on anything.

“This is just between you and me, Major.”

“What are you after, General?”

“I just want to hear your opinion.”

“Hm…”

The general was worried. The normally confidant, unflappable head of the SAF who usually had the bearing of a queen was losing her nerve.

This is a crisis for the entire SAF, the major thought. The Yukikaze incident had set off a shock wave that shook the entire Faery Air Force, but the SAF had absorbed the brunt of the blow. Yukikaze had become the first plane in the SAF to be destroyed by the JAM. She’d transferred herself from that plane to the FRX00, and among that data was information related to the Sylphid and the Super Sylph, not to mention data on their performance envelope. If the JAM had gotten ahold of that too, it definitely would have put the Sylph at a disadvantage against the JAM. Just as Systems Corps had said. But it was impossible that Yukikaze would have let that information leak out to the JAM.

“It has nothing to do with the Yukikaze incident,” the major declared. “Yukikaze would never have allowed the JAM to get that data.”

“But there is a possibility.”

“There’s also the possibility that the JAM gained data on the Sylph’s weaknesses from a plane other than Yukikaze. I’d say the odds of that are much higher.”

“I’d like to think that, Major.”

“Believe it and it’ll be true. This isn’t like you. If you stay this indecisive, you’ll blow your chance for a promotion, General.”

She didn’t answer; instead she simply sighed faintly.

“General, the method Yukikaze used to transfer her data has never been seen before, even by us. It was just as novel a feat to the JAM. There’s no way the JAM could have known what it was. Yukikaze used the U/VHF communication system on the FRX00 to send out false data. The real, vital information was transferred into the FRX00 via the attack control radar.”

Yukikaze had switched her fire control radar into single plane pursuit mode to boost its directionality, then targeted the FRX00. She’d then broken her data up like a jigsaw puzzle and transferred it to the FRX00 by modulating the radar wave. The FRX00, being an electronic reconnaissance plane designed for the SAF, simply hadn’t sensed it as an attack lock-on and began recording and analyzing the data in real time. Yukikaze had made use of this.

“The FRX00’s main functions include an emergency decryption system. Even if the JAM somehow got hold of the decryption hardware, they couldn’t analyze it with the hardware alone. Only when the decoder was activated by the central computer could the code be deciphered. To decrypt the data that Yukikaze was transmitting, you’d need something that used the same function structure. In real time. That was the FRX00.”

“There were three JAM in the area, though.”

“It’s possible that they possessed the same function structure as Yukikaze. That’s why, as soon as she’d gotten her new body, Yukikaze had to destroy them immediately, even if it meant risking killing Captain Samia and me. She struck and destroyed them before they had a chance to report anything to their friends. The new Yukikaze confirms that.”

“Indeed.”

“There’s another cause for all the Sylphs we’ve been losing on the front lines. The FAF has been mass-producing the Sylphid in conjunction with its next generation fighter. As you must know, a number of reasonable design changes were introduced in order to make the Sylph easier to produce. You could call it a new design. Another word for a more reasonable design is ‘simplified.’ They cut corners compared to the original model Sylphids. It’s possible that doing so introduced a defect into the design.”

“The losses aren’t limited to the new model Sylphs that have been introduced into battle, as you well know.”

“Hm…Well, if the fault isn’t in the planes, then it’s probably in our using less and less experienced pilots. Besides that…” the major said casually, “even if they did get the data from Yukikaze, it’s old data now, like the Sylph itself is old. It wasn’t the FRX00. The SAF needs to introduce it into service. Let’s restart our plans for mass production.”

“Not the unmanned version?”

“Humans are necessary. It’s best to have a lot of means to gather information.”

Major Booker said this while looking at Rei, who still sat silently in his wheelchair. What was making him and the general so fainthearted was Rei’s being stuck in this state, he thought.

“Speaking of new pilots, what do you think of the new man I transferred into our unit?” the general asked.

“Lieutenant Yagashira? He’s only been out on one sortie so far, so I can’t say anything about him.”

“He has plenty of combat experience. His record is exemplary.”

“He was an ace pilot at TAB-15. But he got shot down and sent here.”

“He was excellent. That’s why I grabbed him.”

“Oh? You fancy him that way?”

The general glanced up at the major where he stood. “Beg your pardon, ma’am. The thing is, the SAF needs pilots like Rei.”

“Ones who don’t care about anything but themselves? Who act like machines? Look at Fukai now. He’s a broken machine.”

“Yeah,” Major Booker replied. “I can’t argue with that. Human doctors can’t cure him. If we can’t get his own self-repair system activated, he’s doomed. Still, Rei made it back. So did Yukikaze. Whether you like it or not.”

“That’s beside the point. And perhaps Yagashira is a bit too human for this work. If you decide that he’s of no use to us, be sure to tell me, Major.”

“Yes, General.”

“It’s time for the meeting,” said General Cooley, looking at her wristwatch as she rose from the chair. “I’m glad I got this chance to talk with you.”

“So am I, General.”

As she was about to leave, the major said something that halted her.

“Let’s put Yukikaze back into active service. The FRX00.”

“Who will be the pilot?”

“Unmanned, I mean.”

“Doesn’t that contradict everything you’ve been saying, Major?”

“Yukikaze isn’t like any other unmanned plane. Not like an FRX99 that’s been unmanned since it was born. That’s Yukikaze, General. There’s a part of Rei in that plane.”

At the moment, Yukikaze was being used by other members of the squadron on training flights designed to familiarize them with the FRX00. She hadn’t been sent out into actual combat because there was no way to predict what she’d do out there. However, as they used her for training flights and he grew more familiar with her behavior, Major Booker’s expectations had grown. No matter how distinguished a name she’d made for herself, if she didn’t fly, she’d end up being taken away by Systems Corps.

“The truth is that she wants Rei to fly her. I think Yukikaze is just itching to fight the JAM. She probably can’t stand the thought that she’s responsible for Sylphs being shot down like she was.”

“You’re anthropomorphizing a plane, Major.”

“Oh, Yukikaze is definitely not human, and it’s dangerous to think of her as such. But the truth is that she was raised by Rei. I think…she cares about Rei. Let’s send out Yukikaze for combat recon around the TAB-15 front. I think she’ll be able to find out something there. I have a plan ready to go.”

“Roger, Major,” said General Cooley. “We can’t lose to the JAM, so we have to try anything that we can. The SAF mustn’t lose this fight. Well then, Major. I’ll see you at the meeting.”

The general exited the room without another word. Back to her old self, he thought. He then called for the nurse on his intercom.

“Time for gym class, Rei. You stay asleep like this and you can kiss Yukikaze goodbye.”

Rei had just one month. He’d have to do something in that time. He had to.

When the nurse arrived, the major reminded her to change Rei’s clothes for his exercise session and then to shower him off after it was done. He always did this. And after promising him that she’d take care of it, the nurse took the wheelchair and left the room.

Rei needed something to stimulate him back to life. I wish he had a girlfriend, the major thought as he gathered his papers for the meeting. The closest thing Rei had to a lover was Yukikaze, and the time had come for the major to seriously consider putting Rei aboard her as a sort of shock treatment. He’d told Rei that he could fly anytime, but he probably wasn’t strong enough. The doctors had told the major that they couldn’t guarantee that Rei would survive. However, it might be worth the risk. It was a decision not to be made lightly.

But before that, Major Booker grabbed the plan for using Yukikaze unmanned in combat and exited the office.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would fly. General Cooley’s approval was in the bag. Rei, he thought, Yukikaze’s going back into action, and I’m going to let you see it.

3

YUKIKAZE WAS LEAVING for her sortie right on schedule. She was stored with her vertical stabilizers folded down against her horizontal ones. Riding the elevator up from the underground hangar to the surface, she activated her engines and raised her tail stabilizers to their vertical position. As they rose into place, it seemed as if life were being breathed into the plane’s body. Inside of Yukikaze’s cockpit, Major Booker looked behind him to make a visual check of the stabilizers’ condition.

Unlike the other planes of SAF 5th Squadron, there was no wind fairy mascot design painted on the side. This wasn’t a Super Sylph, after all, so the image of a mythical sylphid would have been inappropriate. This model of tactical electronic reconnaissance fighter plane had no official nickname yet. Even so, it was still the best fighter in the FAF. For now it was known simply as the FRX00. Only its personal name has been decided, and that was chosen by the plane herself, the major thought.

Yukikaze. Just like the old Yukikaze, the name had been hand-painted beneath the cockpit in small Japanese characters by Major Booker as Rei looked on.

The outer side of the tail bore the Boomerang squadron logo in dark gray. Below it were small letters spelling out SAFV, indicating the plane was attached to Special Air Force 5th Squadron.

Her squadron number was 05013, and her serial number painted along the length of the airframe was 96065. Aside from those, she bore no other markings.

From the cockpit, Major Booker spied Rei, flanked by a couple of attending nurses, near the entrance of an SAF ground area personnel elevator. He then stepped on the toe brake and pushed the throttle forward.

The twin high-output engines, high efficiency series 5000 improved Super Phoenix Mk.-XIs, roared with power. The shrill shriek from the air intakes and the explosive roar of the exhaust filled the air. He could see from the cockpit that Rei showed no interest whatsoever in the loud noises. No, wait. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but the major thought he could see Rei tilting his ears toward it. He wanted to think that, anyway. Still, if he kept his mind on Rei, Yukikaze was never going to fly. He had a careful preflight check to complete, so he slid the throttle back to IDLE.

There was no need to check the ejection seat and canopy systems, since Yukikaze was going to be flying the mission unmanned, but the major gave them a quick check all the same. Just like a pilot taking her out on a training mission.

Even when she didn’t fly, she was inspected every day like all the other planes. He’d set up a duty rotation that ensured that every pilot did it, but today, Major Booker was personally performing Yukikaze’s daily inspection.

He reached out to the computer address panel to run the self-test program. He flipped the master test selector to run the onboard checks. The auto-throttle, Automatic Landing System (ALS), and Air Data Computer (ADC) started their self-tests.

Unlike the Super Sylph, the FRX00 had only three ADCs instead of five. To be more precise, it had only two. Two of them acted as auxiliary systems, whereas the main air data computer was now integrated with the plane’s central computer. In a Super Sylph, the central computer and central air data computer were decoupled, connected only indirectly, but the FRX00 was built so that the central computer controlled the airframe directly. This design had been carried over from the original unmanned designs of the FRX99.

Without an ADC controlling each control surface, a plane designed for negative static stability couldn’t maintain equilibrium for even an instant. That held true for unmanned planes, so they carried auxiliary ADCs as well. The unmanned version had only one. If the central computer was completely destroyed, that’d be it for the plane, but the auxiliary system was designed for the possibility of a fault occurring for which the ADC could compensate. However, the FRX00 was a manned plane capable of being flown by the pilot even if the central computer failed, and so it had been built with two independent ADCs. They had all sorts of self-monitoring functions, so even if the central computer systems were dead, the plane could still fly.

But in the end, it was the central computer that actually flew the FRX00. The ADC was simply a backup subsystem for the MADC in the central computer.

Major Booker manually fed mock signals into the ADC and throttle control, looking for any abnormalities.

All clear.

As the self-tests carried out by Yukikaze’s central computer—which could be called Yukikaze herself—agreed with Major Booker’s tests, checklist items on the display panel vanished one by one. MADC, ADC1, ADC2, ALS, AFCS, and so on.

The readout for the AICS, or Air Intake Control System, stayed lit. The only way to check that was to manually run the test program.

The AICS optimized the amount of air taken into the engines for maximum efficiency. When flying supersonic, the engine air intakes generated a variety of shock waves. In order to stabilize them, the intake ports contained movable ramps. As the plane transitioned from low speed to subsonic, transonic, and supersonic speeds, these ramps deployed in the intake ports to control the rate of air flow and the resulting shock waves. Their position was determined by the aircraft’s rate of speed. In simple terms, it was programmed to make a constant change in proportion to air speed, not perform complex control actions due to altitude like the MADC. For that reason, the central computer didn’t control them directly, relieving it of the burden.

Even in the event of AICS failure, flight was still possible. Since its program was a simple function of speed, it was very reliable. If any failures were going to occur, it’d be in the hydraulic actuators that moved the ramps. Since it was a simple mechanical system, it didn’t have an advanced monitoring system hooked up to the central computer. Parts like that require a more careful preflight check, the major thought as he confirmed the AICS program results.

All aircraft checks were now complete. All that was left was to set the master arm switch for the weapon stores. Those consisted of a gun, eight medium-range missiles, and eight short-range missiles. The air-to-air missiles’ safeties had already been released by the ground crew. Major Booker called up Yukikaze’s central computer to confirm her mission once more.

He set the communications system to auto, then called SAF headquarters using a headset mic. STC, the tactical computer in HQ, linked up to Yukikaze’s central computer. Major Booker reissued the orders into the mic to confirm the mission. STC translated his request for Yukikaze.

Mission number, takeoff time, return essentials, IDs for units participating in the operation, recon essentials, navigation support, armament restrictions, weather, and mission airspace… On and on and on. Yukikaze hadn’t looked particularly happy when he programmed the data into her before, which was a strange thought as she had no way to make any expressions. Still, from the way she displayed the confirmations, it felt to Major Booker like she was telling him to hurry up and let her take off. Items scrolled down one after another, too fast for him to read.

“Okay, Yukikaze. You can take off once I’m out of here.”

Weapons master arm switch set to ON. The onboard arms display came on. All weapons were free to use. Yanking the headset cord from its onboard jack, the major climbed down from Yukikaze’s cockpit. Once on the ground, he plugged it back in to a jack on her body and informed the tactical computer back in HQ that all of Yukikaze’s preflight checks had been completed.

Faery base’s runway control computer issued the order for Yukikaze to take off. He could tell this from the sudden increase of noise from the engines. He pulled the headset’s pin from the jack, a small panel door closing over it. The canopy automatically lowered and locked.

Major Booker quickly moved away from Yukikaze, running back to where Rei sat. When he turned back, panting, Yukikaze had already moved out onto the taxiway.

“Look, Rei,” the major said. “You should be riding in there. Yukikaze’s taking off without you. Doesn’t that bother you?”

The noise of the engine was distant. Yukikaze looked small on the end of the runway. Then, just as soon as you’d noticed that the engine roar had increased, she was tearing savagely down the runway.

She trembled like a wild animal showing its antipathy for being grounded. Then, as if thrusting her rage at the earth beneath her, suddenly she was in the air. Quickly retracting her landing gear, Yukikaze initiated a combat climb.

Major Booker had seen all of this. It was summer at Faery base, with thick clouds hanging overhead. Yukikaze vanished into the cloudbank, leaving only the roar of her mighty engines echoing into the sky.

“Major? Major Booker?”

One of the nurses was calling him. When he turned, Rei’s eyes were open, but his gaze was not in the direction of Yukikaze.

He knows, Major Booker thought fiercely. Rei knows. Once the sound of Yukikaze’s engines had faded, Rei closed his eyes again. But this was a good sign. The major was sure of it.

“We’re going down. To the command center,” he said. “Come on, Rei. Let’s see how Yukikaze fights.”

Major Booker indicated to the nurses to follow, and together with Rei he descended back underground, headed for the SAF command center where Yukikaze’s flight status was being monitored.

4

AT TAB-15, THE the FAF’s tactical air base closest to the front, multiple fighter squadrons were scrambling into the air.

The main attack force consisted of the twelve planes of TAB-15’s 505th Tactical Fighter Squadron, flying Sylphid fighters. They were equipped with a minimum air-to-air weaponry loadout consisting of the plane’s gun and four short-range missiles so that they could carry four large air-to-ground missiles as well. Charged with covering the 505th strike team was the 515th assault group, consisting of seventeen Fand IIs.

Confirming his course, 505th team leader First Lieutenant Gavin Mayle headed straight for the JAM base. The team broke into four groups of three planes each. Normally, they’d fly in one formation, but lately they’d lost three planes, one after another. Their best pilot had been Lieutenant Yagashira. Lieutenant Mayle recognized his skill, but at the same time he felt a bit relieved when Yagashira was transferred out of the unit. The realization of this came to him in a flash as he checked the planes flying to his left and right and thought how Yagashira wasn’t in either of them.

Lieutenant Yagashira was the type of man who tried to fight the JAM single-handed. He was a troublemaker. He was just perfect for the SAF. They’d been the ones who yanked him out of his unit. Well, Lieutenant Mayle thought, I owe the SAF thanks. The guy didn’t understand how to fight as part of a team, or maybe it was just that he didn’t want to understand. You could put it in a favorable light by saying that, in a touch-and-go battle, Lieutenant Yagashira was the kind of guy who did everything he could to fly his plane to protect himself. The problem was that there was a part of Yagashira that liked those touch-and-go battles. There were times that his antics endangered not only the formation but the entire strike group. Nobody in the group wanted to fly with him, no matter how good a Sylph driver the guy was.

Normally, a pilot like that would be reassuring to fly with. When your plane gets into trouble, you’d expect him to come swooping in to cover you. And it was true that Lieutenant Yagashira would do that when the occasion arose. On the other hand, thought Lieutenant Mayle, it was also true that Yagashira was the cause of that trouble on many of those occasions. As far as Lieutenant Yagashira was concerned, he was attacking to destroy the JAM, and it was fine when he sent them crashing to the ground with one blow. The trouble was when the JAM who escaped that blow served up their counterattack, because it was Yagashira’s fellow pilots who would usually end up having to swallow it.

Certainly, Lieutenant Yagashira’s piloting skill was unmatched by anyone else there, but the most important thing for the team was ensuring that they did not lose. Attacking an enemy that could beat you was just foolish.

Nobody wanted to fly with him, and the reason for that was pretty simple: everybody hated him.

Including me, Lieutenant Mayle thought. Yagashira didn’t inspire confidence in other people. He was missing a fundamental part of what allows basic human interaction. Mayle wanted to know what sort of environment he’d grown up in, since Yagashira wasn’t even aware that he lacked basic human kindness.

“I’m so glad he told us how he felt about dogs,” Mayle murmured to himself sarcastically.

One day, the guys had been talking about how much they liked dogs. Lieutenant Yagashira had unexpectedly joined in and, upon hearing that the subject was dogs, had said, “I hate dogs. Let’s talk about cats,” and then started rambling on about them. Nobody was particularly interested, but the lieutenant didn’t notice. It was like he’d forgotten that he was talking to people. If he’d been talking to a computer, it would have been fine, since computers could change subjects without any trouble. In fact, it’d be best if he exclusively interacted with computers. Aboard his plane, the man could work wonders. Once he’d climbed down out of it, he could do everyone a favor by not talking to anyone and especially by not mimicking them. That was really irritating. The man just couldn’t communicate with humans. Hell, you could go so far as to say he wasn’t human, period. Despite that, he wasn’t aware of it and thought of himself as being as human as the rest of them. That was why he was so hard to deal with.

The guy must know that nobody likes him, Lieutenant Mayle thought. But he probably didn’t know why he was so disliked, and he’d probably go to his grave still wondering. The SAF might be able to make use of Yagashira, though. He’d heard that their pilots didn’t mix together much. They were an inhuman group. Truly not human. There, Lieutenant Yagashira probably wouldn’t be liked or disliked. He lived his life dressed in the skin of a human, but the guys in the SAF had stripped themselves of it. If Lieutenant Yagashira realized that, he might understand why people hated him. If he cared, that is.

But no matter where he goes, Lieutenant Mayle thought, that guy will never change. The guys in the SAF wouldn’t want to be friends with him. It would be okay if he’d then just keep quiet and withdraw from his comrades, but since Lieutenant Yagashira thought of himself as human, he wouldn’t do that. When he tried to make friends they’d grow irritated with him. Visibly. And when the SAF pilots got irritated, the lieutenant would probably hate them for it.

Before they got irritated though, the SAF pilots would likely just tell him, “We don’t want to have anything to do with you,” but the lieutenant probably still wouldn’t get it. He’d try to “act human.” A truly human response would be to respect a request of “Leave me alone,” but Yagashira wouldn’t get it. The SAF will eventually figure out his true nature, Mayle thought. Maybe they’d grabbed him from his unit because they knew. Maybe they were confident that he could be used as a perfect combat machine. A man who would be an asset in the war against the JAM.

Lately, the number of people like Yagashira was increasing, thought Lieutenant Mayle. Well, he’s somebody else’s problem now. The guy probably couldn’t care less about his old unit, and here I am still thinking about him, and no way does that make any sense. I hope the JAM kill that guy soon, the lieutenant thought.

Nobody said it out loud, but everybody thought that. The time that Yagashira’s plane had been shot down, Mayle’s plane had been the one in the covering position. Yagashira’s plane had two JAM fighters on its tail, and he was in a high-G turn trying to shake them loose. I can handle one JAM fighter, he’d probably thought. Mayle had understood at once that Yagashira wanted him to take care of the one on the starboard side, so he’d put his plane on a course to allow Mayle to easily attack it. Lieutenant Mayle had understood that. It was a precise decision, made with lightning speed. Ingenious. Like a trap sprung with mechanical precision on the two JAM fighters. In hindsight, Mayle agreed with the plan, but at the time, he didn’t.

Lieutenant Mayle’s covering fire had been an instant too late. Yagashira’s plane is going to get it, he’d thought in a rush. Come on, kill him! It was stupid to think that that momentary, automatic thought had been enough to make him hesitate. He didn’t think he had it in him. Still, he thought, if that hadn’t been Yagashira’s plane, I doubt I’d have hesitated. In the end, he hadn’t defended Lieutenant Yagashira’s plane. It wasn’t like he could have helped it. It might have been a reaction from his body, not his mind.

Your body doesn’t think; it just reacts. And since it doesn’t think, Lieutenant Mayle still didn’t know why he’d hesitated. It was unnerving to know that things like this could happen in the FAF. That a human would wish a fellow human dead. He didn’t talk about it. If he had, he’d have been convicted of willful dereliction of duty and executed. And if that happened, this battlefield would turn into one where human fought human. It would destroy the 505th strike group. That was why, even if pressed, he’d never, ever say that he wished death on Lieutenant Yagashira. Not even as a joke.

Lieutenant Yagashira and his flight officer in the rear had ejected from the crippled plane and hadn’t been rescued till two whole days later. This was because the fierce battle had raged on, preventing a good fix on their mayday beacon, but they’d been found unharmed. Yagashira had seemed different after the rescue, more distant. It was probably the shock of an ace like him getting shot down. He didn’t remember a thing from the time he bailed out till the search and rescue plane had found him.

After that, having lost his beloved plane, he took it upon himself to conduct the maintenance inspections on the other pilots’ planes. Lieutenant Mayle had found it a bit surprising that, even as Yagashira practically shoved the other pilots out of the way to do this, he never asked to fly in one. Maybe he’d developed a fear of flying. Even as the other pilots offered their planes for him to use, they were glad that he didn’t want to fly any more sorties with them. However, the FAF wasn’t about to let an excellent pilot spend his time goofing off, and the thought of having to fly with Yagashira again had filled Mayle and the others with dread. And then, just as they were all praying for him to disappear, word had come from the SAF asking if they had any expert pilots.

What a lucky break that had been. The whole squadron had congratulated Lieutenant Yagashira on his new posting, saying he was definitely moving up in the world and how jealous they were of him. The sentiments of the celebration had been genuine. They might not have been getting promotions, but at long last, they were getting rid of this annoying presence in their midst.

The party would have been even merrier had it been his funeral, the lieutenant thought. He would be going to Faery base, the FAF’s main base. The elite. The only thing that threw cold water on the whole thing was the question of why that guy? Mayle might never see his face again, but with Yagashira in the SAF, he’d be in his plane looking down on his old squadmates. The way all those guys at Faery base looked down on them. Mayle didn’t like it.

A warning chimed, rousing the lieutenant from his reverie. They’d just entered JAM-controlled airspace. The JAM weren’t actively tracking them yet, but sooner or later, they’d be spotted.

He radioed the other planes to prepare for combat.

“Let’s drop off our presents for the JAM and bug out of here before they send out their interceptors.”

Lieutenant Mayle took his plane higher to make it easier to spot their target. This made it easier for the JAM to spot him as well, but that was also part of his duty. We’re decoys, he thought. Their role was to act as a setup for the first wave’s ground attack. The second wave would be the main force: the sixteen planes of the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron, which would be launching from Faery base to link up with TAB-15. Lieutenant Mayle’s group were on a completely different course, targeting a JAM base to buy time and delay the aliens.

They’re the elite and our job is to support them, Mayle thought. There was no way to tell which group would be in danger, but common sense told him that his guys would be. They were intentionally attracting the JAM’s attention, after all.

A warning chimed again, in a different tone this time. JAM tracking waves had been detected. Mayle’s plane went into a zoom climb, streaking high into the air. Spread out below him were the forests of Faery, vivid with the colors of summertime. Purple hues dominated, with blues and greens glinting metallically in the light of the twin suns. Then the forest was behind him and ahead lay a desert of pure white sand.

The JAM base was somewhere in there. He couldn’t see it with his naked eye, but the attack target data had been loaded into his plane’s central computer. The FAF had judged it to be one of the enemy’s large permanent bases. The JAM normally treated their bases as disposable, with their fighters moving in from places still unknown and constantly launching from their front-line bases. For this target, however, their planes had taken up a posture that indicated that they wanted to defend their base instead of just abandoning it. The assumption was that the JAM had fighter production capacity there. There was no way they could ignore such an inviting target. They’d made six raids on it already, but thus far TAB-15 had lacked the air power to score a decisive blow. This time, however, they’d have added help from Faery base. Mayle’s mission was just a sideshow, meaning they didn’t have to hang in there till the bitter end.

Lieutenant Mayle climbed to nearly the plane’s operational altitude limit, the Fand II squadron a little bit ahead and below him. They were arrayed to meet any enemy planes, but Lieutenant Mayle wanted to perform an inverted breakaway before that became necessary.

He waited for the target to enter the firing range of his air-to-ground missiles. The IR (infrared) receiver detected an abnormality. JAM interceptors were launching from the base. The IR receiver couldn’t get an exact fix on their location, but an exact fix wasn’t necessary right now. He could see a countless number of enemy planes headed right for them.

He hoped they would launch all of their fighters. He hoped that they’d concentrate on targeting the missiles they were about to fire. In those precious few moments, the guys from the 9th TFS would strike the main section of their base. That was the point of this operation, after all.

Target and steering indicators flashed onto his head-up display. The distance to firing range indicator was nearly zero.

Lieutenant Mayle ordered the other planes in the attack group to switch to auto-attack mode. All they needed to do was fly their planes following the steering indicators on the display.

All of the air-to-ground missiles his plane carried fired automatically. A pull-up cue flashed onto his HUD. Lieutenant Mayle executed an inverted breakaway at full thrust. The other planes followed.

All that remained to do was fly back to base in a straight line. The missiles they’d fired had scored hits, but there was no need to assess how much damage they’d caused. That would be the job of the guys from Faery base. The Fand II squadron split into three groups: one to cover Lieutenant Mayle’s squadron with the other two going to back up the 9th TFS.

As Lieutenant Mayle’s group withdrew from the battle zone at maximum speed, the Fand IIs behind them engaged the pursuing JAM interceptors. As they did, the planes from the 9th TFS were probably using the chance to attack, but Lieutenant Mayle didn’t have time to think about that. His plane’s engines were malfunctioning. Something had gone wrong with the engine controllers. His speed began dropping rapidly.

“What the hell’s going on?!” screamed the flight officer in the rear. A violent oscillation shook the plane. “They’re gonna shoot us down! JAM fighters, closing fast!” Mayle didn’t need his flight officer to tell him that. What was causing this? Had someone screwed up on the plane’s maintenance?

Lieutenant Mayle couldn’t hear the engine failure alarm sounding. None of the caution lamps were lit. He couldn’t tell what was going on or where the malfunction was occurring. The throttle was set to max, but his speed was still dropping. The fuel flow gauge read normal, but the combustion efficiency in the engines was definitely deteriorating. And what was causing this furious vibration through the airframe? It was like they were being buffeted by turbulence.

JAM fighters that had evaded the Fand IIs were approaching. Lieutenant Mayle wasn’t alone; all of the planes in his group were experiencing similar failures. None could get up to full speed. None could break away. In that case, they were going to have to fight.

“Engaging,” called out Lieutenant Mayle. Ordering his flight officer to make visual contact with the enemy planes, Mayle looked out of his cockpit as well. He sighted a lone aircraft, flying even higher than his own plane. It wasn’t a JAM. It was an FAF plane.

Special Air Force, Unit B-3: Yukikaze. She flew unmanned. Even Lieutenant Mayle had been informed of that. Well, unmanned or not, he expected no help from her. The SAF didn’t join in the battles.

The JAM behind them held the dominant position, seeming to mock Mayle’s now-lagging plane. He banked sharply, trying to shake them off. “No, other way! Other way!” his flight officer shouted. “Starboard!”

Lieutenant Mayle realized he’d misjudged his evasion direction. They were going to die. He steeled himself for the inevitable but didn’t let go of his flight stick. There was no time to eject. Suddenly, there was a flash before his eyes. A shock wave rocked the plane. And then, somehow, they were still flying.

“Wha…what just happened?” Lieutenant Mayle asked his flight officer as he stabilized the plane and got them back on course.

“I don’t believe it, Lieutenant,” the man responded. “The JAM were shot down. Some help arrived.”

“Those Fand IIs really earn their keep,” the Lieutenant replied.

“No, sir. It was B-3. The SAF plane.”

Mayle paused, dumbfounded.

“What?” was all he managed as a response.

Yukikaze. The unmanned plane had shot the JAM down and was now flying beneath Mayle’s fighter. TAB-15 drew into sight.

“Isn’t that thing just supposed to observe the battle?” he started to ask when Yukikaze began to dive toward TAB-15. That was when Lieutenant Mayle saw something he simply couldn’t believe.

“What the hell is it doing?!” he shouted.

Yukikaze was opening fire at the ground.

Down below lay TAB-15, its ground personnel running from the base. To Lieutenant Mayle’s eyes, Yukikaze was picking off the humans below. But he couldn’t believe it. The plane had just saved him from the JAM, and now it was doing this?

“Stop it!” Lieutenant Mayle screamed. “That thing’s gone nuts!”

5

DEEP BELOW FAERY base, under the protection of SAF headquarters, the command center had gone silent.

The center’s huge main display screen had suddenly lit up with icons showing the positions of the returning fighters of the 505th. B-3, Yukikaze, was now transmitting strange data during the mission.

While SAF planes did track the positions of every plane in their assigned reconnaissance area during a mission, they normally wouldn’t transmit that data in real time, and were they to do so, it would only be to track enemy planes; for example, if the JAM did something unexpected that clearly put the FAF at a disadvantage. Normally, the only readout that would appear on the main screen would be the signs marking each phase of the mission as it progressed.

If all went well, it would end with a display from the operation command plane reporting Mission complete, returning to base.

All data, such as enemy and allied plane movements, electronic warfare intel, data on enemy and allied gains, and the like would be stored in the data file of the operation command plane and carried back to base. Watching the battle from on high without joining in was the SAF’s duty, and without the data they gathered, no one would even know how many JAM fighters had been shot down. This was because the pilots locked in combat didn’t even have enough time to verify if one of their companions had been shot down or not.

So usually all Major Booker had to do during a mission was look at the main screen display as it displayed the phrase GATHERING DATA and tick off each point on the attack schedule, while praying that no major abnormalities were reported and that the operation command plane made it back to base in one piece. As much as he’d like to know how the battle was progressing in real time, all he could do was wait. If he didn’t, the JAM could very well steal the information the SAF were gathering.

If they were seeing concrete data on the movements of an operation command plane, then something had gone wrong. A problem had cropped up in the plane, for example, or the JAM were directly targeting it. But neither of those were happening now. What they were seeing now had never happened before, ever. Yukikaze was transmitting data showing the exact position, speed, and acceleration of the 505th TFS as it was returning to base. As though it were absolutely vital data. Furthermore, it was identifying the planes of the 505th as FRIEND/FOE UNKNOWN.

Unknown planes were colored yellow on the main screen. Bogeys that couldn’t be identified as friend or foe had to be treated as enemies, since they were most likely threats. However, the planes Yukikaze was treating as such were very clearly those of the 505th. The five JAM fighters pursuing them to the rear were colored red, marking them as hostiles, with Yukikaze identifying them as short-range high-speed interceptors, possibly of an improved type.

The SAF battle-monitoring personnel couldn’t decide what was going on. The JAM themselves flying into the room wouldn’t have caused a bigger shock than what was happening now, and as everyone there sat in stupefied silence, the three planes bringing up the rear of the 505th were shot down simultaneously. Several Sylphids, which should have been light and nimble after completing their ground attack, had picked up pursuers they couldn’t shake off and been blown apart.

Sylphids were designed for hit-and-away combat, built for speed. There was no way that they could have been caught by JAM interceptors.

On a raised platform at the far end of the center, looking out over the backs of the personnel working there, sat General Cooley at the main command desk with Major Booker at an identical desk next to her. Rei sat next to him in his wheelchair, but the incomprehensible situation had the major’s eyes glued to the main screen and his breath caught in his throat.

“Why aren’t they accelerating?” he asked. “A Sylph should be able to shake off those JAM easily. Why are they just poking along like that?”

“Confirm the position of the 515th TFS,” General Cooley said, her voice calm. “Have them cover the 505th. Display courses for Yukikaze and the 515th. Show Yukikaze’s position as well.”

Major Booker relayed General Cooley’s commands via his headset mic to the tactical computer in headquarters. The text ORDERS EXECUTED was displayed. Yukikaze broke away from her preplanned reconnaissance air space and began closing on the 505th at high speed.

“What’s Yukikaze doing?” General Cooley asked.

As she was saying this, three more of the 505th’s fighters were shot down. While the Fand IIs of the 515th TFS managed to shoot down one JAM, the other four enemies pursuing the 505th shook them off.

“Yukikaze’s trying to find the cause of what’s destroying our Sylphs,” replied Major Booker. “I think she anticipated this.”

Having targeted the 505th TFS, the JAM fighters avoided engaging the Fand IIs in the 515th, dodging them at high speed. The truth was that their tactics suggested that they didn’t care if one or two of their fighters were lost. All that seemed to matter to the JAM was shaking the Fand IIs loose so that they could target the Sylphids ahead and eliminate them. Looking at the 515th, they were keeping a bit of distance from the 505th TFS in order to intercept the JAM fighters. If the JAM were, by some chance, able to break through, the 505th were expected to adopt the tactic of shaking them off. Nobody expected the JAM to chase them so far, since approaching TAB-15 would take the fight inside the base’s air defense perimeter.

However, the JAM had caught up with the 505th before they’d gotten close to the defense line—there was something wrong. And not just one or two planes, but all of the planes of the 505th had slowed down rather than accelerated, as though waiting to be shot down. It was being charitable to call the situation abnormal.

Yukikaze relayed the situation to headquarters via real-time data link.

The four pursuing JAM fighters had easily closed in on the 505th and began picking them off, attacking with air-to-air missiles and cannon fire. Unable to escape, by the time the 505th engaged the JAM, there were only three planes left: the formation led by Lieutenant Mayle’s plane. The other two planes had no chance in the dogfight that followed. Both were destroyed.

Yukikaze had dived from high altitude at supersonic speed, taking out a JAM fighter with a medium-range missile. She took out two more with short-range missiles as she passed them, then slammed into a steep banking turn to pursue the remaining JAM fighter as it attempted to flee. She blasted it from the sky with her cannon.

Not even three minutes had passed since the 515th detected the approaching JAM fighters. In that short time, the 505th Tactical Fighter Squadron had been wiped out. Only Lieutenant Mayle’s plane survived.

Yukikaze reported her battle with the JAM. Even though all JAM in the vicinity had been wiped out and the threat extinguished, she continued to display that she was actively engaging them and did not secure from attack mode. She continued to display Lieutenant Mayle’s plane as “unknown.”

Yukikaze, seemingly about to turn her anger on the Sylphid for having been so easily destroyed by the JAM, wheeled around to pursue Mayle’s plane. Then, as though suddenly headed back to base, she assumed a course for TAB-15, closing fast and flying low. Upon reaching it, she opened fire with her cannon in ground attack mode.

On screen, the indicator continued to show that she was engaging the enemy.

“Abort the attack,” General Cooley said. “Order Yukikaze to return to base. Cancel its mission.”

She certainly sounds calm, Major Booker thought, then answered her in a tone as equally businesslike. “We can’t issue an abort order. She won’t accept it.”

If the JAM ever decrypted an abort attack order, they could render Yukikaze powerless. To avoid this danger, she’d been designed from the start not to accept such orders. They were going to have to leave the decision to Yukikaze to the very end. If Yukikaze had decided that humans were her enemy, nobody would be able to stop her. The major had considered the possibility, but as he confronted the reality of the situation, a shiver ran through his body.

“Yukikaze, what are you doing?” Major Booker asked. “What is your target? Tell us your target. Do you read, Yukikaze?”

The tactical computer translated Major Booker’s spoken commands and relayed them to Yukikaze. It then translated Yukikaze’s response back to him. Yukikaze climbed into a turn, flying slowly above TAB-15. She remained in ground search mode.

Yukikaze’s response was displayed on the main screen.

Precise detection impossible.

The icon indicating TAB-15’s position on screen changed from blue to yellow. A red circle was drawn in the center. Red, indicating an enemy.

“What’s going on here?” asked General Cooley.

The red mark that indicated the enemy was blinking on and off. It meant that the target was there, but the position was unknown, visual contact lost.

“Bring it home, Major. There’s a chance that Yukikaze may be attacked by TAB-15.”

“Yes, General.”

The general was right. Yukikaze’s communication hinted at a potential disaster the seriousness of which was impossible to convey. It might have simply been due to an abnormality in her decision-making functions, but if they didn’t get her back to base safely, they’d never understand why she had done what she’d done. Common sense would say that Yukikaze had turned against the FAF and TAB-15. As you might expect, the idea that anything that attacked you was the enemy ran very strong on the front-line bases. FAF fighters would most likely try to intercept her.

Major Booker was reaching for the control panel to issue an emergency recall order when he heard the voice.

“It’s the JAM.”

The voice was faint. The major suddenly froze, wondering for a moment if a ghost had called out to him, then whirled in the direction from which the voice had come. There, in the wheelchair, was Lieutenant Rei Fukai. Rei, with his brain wave sensor and transmitter affixed to his head.

“The JAM…are there…”

“Major, hurry!” exclaimed General Cooley. The major held up his hand for her to be quiet. Then General Cooley noticed the strange change in Rei’s condition.

“Look closely,” Rei murmured. “The JAM are there. I see them.”

Rei’s voice was barely a whisper, but he had definitely spoken. The tone of his voice told them that he understood everything. It was the first time in three months they had heard a word come from his mouth.

“Rei…” the major said. “Do you hear Yukikaze’s voice? Inside your head?”

It was impossible, and yet the voice Rei was speaking with seemed to be Yukikaze’s.

The control center erupted into pandemonium.

The major’s eyes leapt to the main screen. The red circle had stopped blinking and gone to a steady red. The screen subdivided and brought up a transmission of Yukikaze’s field of view. They could see an image of TAB-15, Yukikaze’s fire control system overlaying a targeting reticle on it. A text readout appeared.

Precise detection impossible. Cannot identify friend or foe. Probability of new type of JAM: high.

The shock of Yukikaze’s claim hit the major even harder than the fact that Rei had regained consciousness.

“What? Where?” he shouted. The JAM’s true form was a mystery, but it was possible that the JAM were some sort of artificial life-form. Had Yukikaze detected an unknown machine creature somewhere in TAB-15?

“Attacking all moving things,” Rei whispered.

The major turned. Rei’s eyes were open. He might have been looking at the main screen since Yukikaze’s transmission.

Rei raised his right hand, which until now hadn’t moved under his own power. The position it took… as if he were holding a flight controller. His index finger moved, and the major instinctively recognized it. He was using the weapon selector. Then Rei pressed his thumb down.

Yukikaze responded to his movements. Ready gun. Gun attack mode. Resume ground attack.

The major couldn’t believe what he was seeing. All he could think was that Rei’s will was somehow tied to Yukikaze. Either by brain waves or electrical current, she was sensing his actions and carrying them out. It was true that Rei was wearing monitoring sensors designed to detect his own brain activity, but there wasn’t any sort of system that could translate his thoughts into commands.

No, the major corrected himself. There was the tactical computer. What the humans may not have been able to do, the SAF’s computers may have achieved.

“Stop him,” General Cooley said sharply.

Yukikaze was targeting TAB-15’s ground personnel. The major suddenly grabbed the transmitter affixed to Rei’s head and physically pulled the energy pack from it.

Inside the center, Yukikaze sounded an alarm. A readout informed the center staff that the target had been lost. In the major’s place, General Cooley ordered Yukikaze to resume normal reconnaissance duty.

“Rei, what did you see? Can you hear me?” The major shook Rei’s body as he spoke. Rei didn’t answer. Yukikaze was climbing again. Slowly, though. Almost as if she didn’t understand what she’d been doing until then.

The major had seen the strength in Rei’s right hand as it moved. He had been piloting Yukikaze right up to the very end. The major touched Rei’s hand. It felt firm as steel. A warning sounded from the control panel. A message from the tactical computer.

Malfunction in Lieutenant Fukai’s communications system. Restore normal function and redesignate target.

Communications system?

Major Booker read the text again, and then he knew for sure. Under his very nose, a communications system was being constructed, linking Rei with the tactical computer and Yukikaze.

Just as he had so fervently wished for Rei to awaken, so too had the SAF’s machine intelligences sought the information Rei carried in his head. It wasn’t an emotional wish. Perhaps a more direct desire. “Wake up,” the machines and Yukikaze were saying to Rei. And Rei had responded to them where he hadn’t for the doctors or even his friend.

But was he really awake now? Major Booker wondered. It was just another nightmare where he fought the JAM inside of his own head, wasn’t it? In short, it was possible that the tactical computer had merely coaxed him into a state of semi-consciousness.

“What was the target? What were you going to attack?” the major asked Rei. But Rei didn’t answer, just sat stiffly looking at the main screen. No use, the major thought. Rei hadn’t been fully awakened.

An unknown JAM, the SAF headquarters’ tactical computer replied. Conjecture that threat to TAB-15 exists from unknown JAM. Form, abilities, and function: unknown.

“And you think that Rei—that Lieutenant Fukai knows the details of this threat?”

Lieutenant Fukai’s order to B-3 to attack indicates high probability that he senses unknown JAM threat. B-3 determined abnormality in 505th TFS to be the work of the JAM and opened an emergency transmission line. Lieutenant Fukai sensed this and judged the cause to be JAM presence at TAB-15. However, I cannot directly perceive this enemy by myself. Lieutenant Fukai’s instructions are necessary. I detect an abnormality in the communications system connecting Lieutenant Fukai to me. Inform me of the cause.

Yukikaze’s advanced reconnaissance technology—electronic sensors that could detect information no human could and optical sensors which could resolve details beyond the ability of the human eye—hadn’t been able to find the answer. And so she’d opened a real-time link to Rei in order to tell him that. Even if Rei knew what this unknown JAM was, there’d be no way he could directly sense it at TAB-15. While this battle had elicited a response from Rei, it hadn’t brought him back to normal consciousness. It was a kind of half-sleep, like sleepwalking. All he could think was to attack indiscriminately.

Even knowing this, Major Booker figured that it might be better to reconnect Rei to the tactical computer and plug the transmitter’s energy pack back in. The fault in the communications system the tactical computer had asked about was caused by his disconnecting the pack. If he put it back, perhaps they’d know what it was that Rei was aiming at.

But the major also remembered Rei’s words: shoot everything that moves. He paused. That might as well constitute an order for Yukikaze to kill every human at TAB-15.

“Lieutenant Fukai has blacked out. He cannot indicate the target. Inform Yukikaze.”

Roger. B-3 will continue to investigate abnormal deceleration of 505th TFS.

There’d been a slight pause before the tactical computer had printed Roger out on the screen. To be fair, while the tactical computer might have been slightly obsessive about calling Rei back to consciousness, its desire was no more intense than that of Major Booker. He wanted to have a deliberate talk with the tactical computer, to ask it just how much it, a representative of the SAF’s machine intelligences, had learned about what had arisen between Rei and Yukikaze.

It seemed that Yukikaze’s attack on TAB-15 had been Rei’s idea, but the inability to identify the 505th TFS as friend or foe had been Yukikaze’s own problem. Seeing that, Rei had reacted, taking over her operations. If his actions didn’t have a rational motivation, then all Booker could say was that Rei had lost his mind. That was what a human would think. But neither the tactical computer, nor Yukikaze, thought that Rei was insane.

Major Booker realized that a discrepancy had developed between the humans and their combat machine intelligences. During the short conversation he’d had with the tactical computer, the situation had changed bewilderingly, leaving the major with no time to worry about Rei. The tactical computer was in a similar position.

TAB-15 radioed, demanding an explanation for why Yukikaze had strafed them twice. As the ranking officer, General Cooley had to answer. She paused a few moments, pressing her lips together, then told the major to report it as an accidental weapons discharge. The major, concentrating on his conversation with the tactical computer, didn’t hear her at first. The general got his attention, and just as he was realizing what was happening, TAB-15 replied.

This is TAB-15. Roger, scrolled out onto the screen.

However, an actual human voice that sounded like one of TAB-15’s comm officers radioed in, asking what they were talking about and demanding to know who had sent the transmission and what exactly they meant when they broadcast that the JAM were present at TAB-15. The tactical computer at SAF headquarters had digitally transmitted the message to TAB-15’s central tactical computer, and it was the computer that had sent the acknowledgement. The humans of TAB-15 hadn’t done so.

“We’ve got casualties in our ground crew,” the comm officer shouted. “SAF, are you trying to kill us?”

Before Major Booker could explain that it was accidental fire, the tactical computer sent a command to cut voice transmissions, but no one paid any attention to the readout showing this. This was because Lieutenant Mayle’s plane, the lone survivor of the 505th, had judged Yukikaze to be an enemy and was engaging her.

Detecting attack targeting waves from Alpha-1, Yukikaze reported, identifying Mayle’s plane by its code number.

Roger, the tactical computer responded. Investigate Alpha-1’s mobility performance. Initiate mock combat.

This is B-3. Roger.

General Cooley clasped her hands together as she glared angrily at the main screen. She seemed to be saying something under her breath, but the major couldn’t make it out. It might have been “God,” but it could easily have been “fuck” or “shit” or any number of expletives. And they weren’t directed at Lieutenant Mayle’s plane. Major Booker thought she was swearing at Yukikaze and the tactical computer as they chatted back and forth without acknowledging her.

Even so, she didn’t command them to stand down. The voice comm line was cut and the radio on Lieutenant Mayle’s plane was being jammed by Yukikaze. Even if the general had issued an order, there was no way for her words to reach anyone.

“Keep an eye on the 515th’s movements,” General Cooley quickly said. “Get Yukikaze back to base before they show up.”

“This won’t be long, General,” Major Booker replied. “Alpha-1’s practically at bingo fuel.”

Either way, Yukikaze and Alpha-1’s dogfight wasn’t going to last long. Victory or defeat would come in the next thirty to sixty seconds. They might be equally matched in a dogfight, but the plane with the most fuel remaining to get home would win. A plane with no fuel was going down, whether it was shot down or not. The two things a pilot was always fighting were enemy planes and how fast his plane burned through its fuel.

Yukikaze had jettisoned her huge auxiliary fuel tanks before engaging the JAM. She just barely had enough to return to base, but the major decided that she had more than enough to reach the emergency in-air refueling point they’d prepared.

If nothing went wrong, there’d be no need for an in-air refueling. That was one of the things Yukikaze had gained from her new airframe that made her superior to the Sylphid and Super Sylph. Her greater cruising range might be said to be more important than her weapons and maneuverability. Fuel to an airplane was as vital as oxygen to a deep-sea diver. If it ran out, the plane was dead. The constant need for the pilot to be aware of his remaining fuel was a major cause of stress.

“This is quite a show.”

Once again hearing a strange voice, Major Booker turned. There stood a lone SAF pilot, arms folded as he watched the screen. A Boomerang soldier. The newest member of the SAF and pilot of Unit 13: Second Lieutenant Yagashira.

The soldiers of the SAF needed no special permission to enter the command center, but none of them ever did unless ordered. Major Booker couldn’t recall any flight personnel ever entering the center of their own volition. To the major, Yagashira was an incongruous presence in the room.

Maybe he wanted to get a feel for the atmosphere of the SAF, being a new arrival and all. Certainly seemed like the sort of guy General Cooley would like, the major thought as he turned to ignore the pilot and focus his attention back on Yukikaze.

“Lieutenant Mayle won’t win, will he?”

From behind him, Lieutenant Yagashira had spoken again.

“His fuel’s critical. Typical how Lieutenant Mayle is engaging anyway. Good guy, but his combat reactions are slow.” Yagashira sounded like he was gossiping as he spoke. “There’s no way he can beat the latest and greatest unmanned fighter. Now, if it were me—”

“Shut up,” said Major Booker.

Lieutenant Yagashira hadn’t said anything out of line, but his chatter was irritating Booker, like fingernails on a chalkboard. He didn’t have time to wonder why. Yukikaze had just initiated combat maneuvers against Lieutenant Mayle’s fighter.

“Why isn’t the SAF stopping Yukikaze?” Yagashira went on. “Are you trying to goad Lieutenant Mayle into fighting? Is that why you had Yukikaze attack TAB-15? Mayle’s not the sort of guy who’d take that quietly. I know what he’s like—”

At that point, Major Booker faced Lieutenant Yagashira and ordered him to get the hell out of there. Yagashira seemed shocked. “Either go to your quarters or to the stockade. Your choice!” the major told him.

The FAF didn’t have an official stockade, but Yagashira seemed to get the point, although he looked bewildered as to why he’d been spoken to like that. Red-faced, he saluted silently and left the command center.

6

ONE INCIDENT YOU could write off as seeing it wrong, but Lieutenant Mayle had twice seen Yukikaze, at close visual range, open fire at the ground.

“It’s killed someone,” he yelled. As he tore toward TAB-15 with the throttle maxed, he heard a voice from the base on an open-air channel say that Second Lieutenant Lancome had apparently been killed.

He couldn’t confirm with anyone from the base. Lots of information poured in during the battle. It wasn’t unusual for someone not to hear someone else clearly, leaving you to rely on your own judgment. Of course, two-way real-time communication was possible using advanced circuits, with the transmitter’s code automatically sent to show up on a plane’s main display to identify the sender. However, in battle, there was no time to verify the facts. To the contrary, in battle, your ability to think deteriorates. The guy who stops to think winds up dead. You had to fly your plane with the same sort of instincts that jerk your hand back when it touches a hot stove.

So, with the high G forces and sheer terror making his mental faculties undependable, a fighter pilot has to not only evade threats but also counterattack. That was just part of the job description, which was why Lieutenant Mayle pursued Yukikaze and locked weapons on her without a second thought. He told his flight officer behind him that they were engaging.

“That’s an SAF plane. It’s one of ours!” he shouted back.

“Fuck it. That thing killed Jonathan. You heard, didn’t you?”

Second Lieutenant Jonathan Lancome was one of Lieutenant Mayle’s subordinates. He was a pilot. He was one of them. The JAM had shot him down once, but he’d made it back. And now he’d been killed by friendly fire?

As a general rule, the plane you flew was assigned specifically to you. In an emergency you might fly someone else’s plane or a reserve fighter, but the 505th had lost its reserve planes. Consequently, a great many flight personnel weren’t operating with the squadron. Until a new plane was assigned to them, they were mixed into ad hoc teams to fly sorties, some were given leave, others moved into other squadrons, and some were even given non-pilot duties. Lieutenant Yagashira had been promoted, but that hadn’t been the case for Lieutenant Lancome. The FAF hadn’t approved leave for anyone, so he’d been put on maintenance duty. Lancome had said once that he no longer had the confidence to be a pilot. For Lieutenant Mayle’s part, he wanted to keep Lieutenant Lancome as flight personnel and just relax the normally rigid system of plane assignment, but he’d lost the desire to push for this new policy when Lancome had admitted his fears. It wasn’t easy to shake the fear instilled by having the JAM shoot your plane out from under you.

Poor Jonathan, Mayle thought. He died on the ground, killed by a friendly plane.

Without hesitation, Lieutenant Mayle maneuvered to shoot Yukikaze down. Gripping the flight stick in his right hand and the throttle in his left, he banked steeply at her. As Yukikaze flew away from TAB-15, she responded to Mayle’s combat maneuvers. She turned, as though inviting him to follow.

“It wants to fight,” the flight officer said. “What do you think?”

Lieutenant Mayle kept his mouth shut and ignited the afterburners. But then the plane began to vibrate again, a combustion status abnormality warning sounding. Yukikaze banked sharply and Lieutenant Mayle lost sight of her.

As he banked hard to follow, a shivering shock wave struck them. Unbelievably, Yukikaze had turned around and flown past them, almost close enough to touch. As the shock wave and the air currents it stirred up assaulted the left wing, it suddenly lost lift, sending Lieutenant Mayle’s plane into a quick left roll. At the same time, it apparently ripped the main wing’s forward flaps right off. The flight officer craned his neck around and confirmed that a fragment of them had damaged their vertical stabilizers.

Despite this, the plane’s flight computers instantly began working every control surface, dutifully stabilizing the plane as Lieutenant Mayle desired.

“The problem’s in the engine,” Lieutenant Mayle shouted, but even as he said it, the engine alarm warning lamp remained dark. The plane dove then climbed, its speed falling to barely two hundred kilometers per hour. Mayle dove into a turn at full throttle, trying to shake Yukikaze loose.

He ignited the afterburner again, trying to accelerate at full power. He managed to rev it to maximum for about three seconds, but that was followed by a loud bang from the engine on the right that shook the plane. It looked like the turbine blades in the engine had been damaged. At the same time, the compressor in his left engine stalled and flamed out.

Wrestling the plane out of the resulting tailspin took everything Mayle had, leaving him no time to attempt an engine restart. He managed to stabilize it scant moments before augering into the ground, using the speed of the dive to climb higher.

The right engine looked like it wasn’t on fire, at least, but it was completely useless now. He tried and failed to restart the left. Now robbed of any thrust at all, the plane’s climb weakened, then transitioned into a slow descent. The engine noise had ceased, and it was quiet now. Lieutenant Mayle looked to his right and saw Yukikaze flying next to them, so close that he could reach his right hand out and almost touch her. From her position, he got the feeling that she was flying to keep a constant watch over them. It managed to beat me without firing a single shot, Lieutenant Mayle thought numbly. It was possible in a dogfight to stall your opponent’s engines out, assuming you had absolute confidence in your plane’s maneuverability. That thing had just demonstrated the technique on him.

Mayle silently made a fist with his right hand and held it up, signaling his flight officer that they were about to eject. The light of Faery’s twin suns glittered off of Yukikaze’s canopy, her cockpit unmanned. It’s like the plane itself is laughing at us, thought Lieutenant Mayle.

He didn’t want to think about anything anymore. When they reached the right altitude, they ejected.

As he floated down beneath his parachute, Mayle watched Faery’s forests swallow up his plane and Yukikaze. She had lowered her engine output and flown alongside Mayle’s plane. Just as it looked like she was grazing the forest canopy, Yukikaze’s exhaust ports flared brightly. In a second, she was turning away at full power, afterburners lit, and a moment later she was out of sight. Then the roar of her engines reached him, followed a moment later by the explosion of his plane as it self-destructed.

Forget avenging Jonathan’s death, it’s a miracle I’m still alive, Lieutenant Mayle thought with a shiver. That thing, that Yukikaze… It’s a monster. Let it fight the JAM. The JAM aren’t human, so let one inhuman freak fight another. Why did he even have to be here in the first place?

As Lieutenant Mayle fell, looking at the canopy of his flight officer’s parachute a bit below him, he thought about how he never wanted to fly a fighter again. Now he understood how Lieutenant Lancome had felt. The enemy they’d come to fight, the enemy of the FAF, weren’t human. These unknown aliens they called the JAM. These unknowable opponents.

That was the first time Lieutenant Mayle experiened his true feelings in his flesh. The enemy was incomprehensible to humans. Terms like win or lose were completely meaningless as far as the JAM were concerned, so there was no way that humanity could ever win this war, was there? And in a flash, he understood just as well that all you could do was accept that your being alive didn’t matter at all in this world.

It wasn’t even the JAM who taught me that, but an unmanned plane called Yukikaze that had been created by humans, thought Lieutenant Mayle, a strange chill in his heart. As he thought about how the plane that had left him feeling so utterly helpless was of a kind with the JAM, the shock of landing on the surface of Faery’s thick forest was more intense than he’d expected. The sensation of striking the spongelike alien vegetation—it shone with a metallic brilliance like some beautiful illusion—felt pleasant to him.

7

WITHOUT ANY WARNING at all, Rei Fukai found himself aboard a plane.

His right hand grasping a flight stick and his left on the throttle lever. He looked around for the control button. He lifted his left hand and touched it to his head. He could feel a helmet through a flight glove. There was a mask on his mouth.

Outside were the skies of Faery. Rei looked around the interior of the cockpit. He’d never seen it before. This wasn’t the layout of a Super Sylph’s cockpit, but it wasn’t unfamiliar to him either. The control and display layout was essentially the same.

This was Yukikaze. He was aboard Yukikaze.

Rei’s left hand shot back to the throttle, needing to confirm through thought what he was doing by instinct. In his helmet, a warning alarm like a scream from Yukikaze was resounding: Wake up! it seemed to shriek at him. Wake up! Wake up! It seemed real to him.

Yukikaze needed Rei. A situation had arisen that was beyond her normal functions, and she was screaming for him to switch the combat maneuvering system to manual.

The words MANUAL CONTROL flashed urgently on the main display panel. It was the first time he’d ever seen that warning. It was as though Yukikaze were saying “Save me,” or perhaps even “I need you.” It was a bitter call; she was telling Rei that if he didn’t wake up completely, she couldn’t handle the situation and the JAM were going to shoot her down.

This wasn’t a hallucination or a dream. She was going to be destroyed. Rei could feel that the threat was real. The JAM were coming. They were after him. Rei quickly toggled the automaneuver switch off, telling Yukikaze that he would handle this. The display reading MANUAL CONTROL stopped blinking and stayed steadily lit.

Rei was awake, but what was he doing here? What had happened to Yukikaze? Dreams and reality were hard to separate in the past from which he had come, where he’d had no sense of time passing. It was as if he’d awakened with somebody else’s memories. He had to find some way to separate out the dreams and the fantasies in these memories that were not his own, to link the past to the reality he found himself in at this moment. He had to take these fragments of memory and reassemble them like a jigsaw puzzle.

But he wouldn’t need time or effort to assemble the puzzle. He was sure that, if he just got hold of the thread of his consciousness, which had awakened in this ocean called reality, his self would instantly crystallize into existence. Into the ambiguous dream space through which he’d drifted, fading, coming to the brink of extinction, had plunged Yukikaze’s shout to awaken. That alarm was the nucleus around which his self would reform.

“It’s the same as Lieutenant Mayle’s plane,” said the flight officer sitting behind him. It was like that other time, and Rei knew that these half-awake memories of the past were reality. And so, his thoughts now affirming that his complete self was properly crystallizing, he heard the voice from the rear.

“Hey, Jack,” Rei called out to the flight officer sitting behind him. “Calm down. Even with the engine output restricted, with a little skill, we can’t lose. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

“Rei…it is you, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is! I’m no JAM. Quit talking like you’re half-asleep!”

“You’re one to talk,” Booker shot back, “seeing how you’re finally awake! Christ almighty…”

“Shut your mouth! I don’t want you puking back there!” Rei yelled.

“Don’t try any extreme maneuvers. Your body won’t take it in your condition. Just get after Unit 13. Do what it takes. Yukikaze’s been contaminated by the JAM.”

There were three JAM in pursuit. When he dodged the two missiles they fired with some high-speed maneuvers, Rei could feel exactly what Major Booker had meant. He didn’t have the strength for a dogfight. Rei could feel that the FRX00 was a terrific dogfighter, and he hadn’t even used it at 100 percent of its capabilities yet. If he unleashed all of its potential, it might kill him. Rei realized that Yukikaze hadn’t summoned him to guide her through a dogfight. What was necessary right now was to shake off the JAM at maximum speed and get after SAF Unit 13 flying ahead of him.

But he couldn’t get the engines up to full thrust. Just like Lieutenant Mayle’s plane. The cause was the AICS. Yeah, just like the tactical computer back at SAF control had said. No doubt about it.

“THE AICS?” REI recalled Major Booker asking from his personal terminal booth in the SAF command center that he used to talk to the tactical computer.

Correct.

Rei had looked with vacant eyes at the response printed out by the tactical computer on the display. General Cooley was in the booth too. Nobody else was in the huge control center outside of the booth. The lights had been set low.

To these three humans alone in the SAF, the tactical computer in SAF headquarters had presented the information Yukikaze had gathered about the abnormalities in the planes of the 505th Tactical Fighter Squadron: General Cooley, Major Booker, and the still vaguely conscious and wheelchair-bound Lieutenant Fukai.

The tactical computer had strongly urged Major Booker that Rei be there with them. Rei had regained the ability to talk for the first time in ninety-three days, but he still wasn’t able to access his own memories. Major Booker had wanted to immediately send Rei to the central FAF medical facility, but the tactical computer had rightly pointed out that there was a possibility that the information in Rei’s memories was crucial and should be accessed immediately. Since it proposed that it would be best to stimulate him and retrieve those memories in secret from other corps in the FAF and others in the SAF, the major had reconsidered.

The proposal made by the combat intelligence within the tactical computer was half suggestion and half direct order. It had a strong interest in whatever information Rei and Yukikaze had gathered. If the CI had any emotions, Major Booker sensed that its concern was tinged with fear, dread, and tension, and so he’d agreed with its proposal. The computer proceeded to question Rei.

The incident ninety-three days earlier. Who shot you in the stomach? What happened?

Rei answered mechanically. It felt like he wasn’t accessing his memories by his own will, but rather was giving words in response to an external stimuli by accessing the part of his memory devoted to answering questions. While Rei himself knew that he was talking, he seemed to do so in somebody else’s voice, showing no interest in what he was talking about or in his surroundings.

He had been shot by another Rei Fukai, he said. A human copy created by the JAM. Some sort of antihuman weapon the JAM created from the mirror images of the molecules that make up humans, he went on. He didn’t know how long he had been at their base, but when they saw that he couldn’t digest food made from the same optical isomer material, they had ended up feeding him meat from the body of his dead flight officer, Lieutenant Burgadish.

Major Booker and General Cooley remained silent, listening to the mechanical exchange between Rei and the CI. They couldn’t interrupt. The questions the CI asked were precise, unswayed by emotion, fear, or unease.

Had the major opened his mouth, he figured he would have said, “Impossible!” or “I don’t believe it!” or some such meaningless nonsense, and so he remained silent and let the sentiments swirl in his heart. Rei has no such whirlpool in his heart, the major thought. As he listened to Rei’s disinterested speech, he found himself fighting a growing urge to shake him or punch him in the mouth.

After the tactical computer had extracted the information from Rei, it was silent for a while. Then it displayed, I predict that the cause of the thrust fault in the 505th TFS is in the AICS on the monitor. Major Booker objected to the sudden shift in topic, insisting that Rei was not yet fully conscious and that he needed further stimulation. However, the tactical computer ignored the major, playing back the information gathered by Yukikaze on the main display of the command center. Its explanation was clear.

During her combat maneuvers with Mayle’s plane, Yukikaze had gotten a clear optical scan of its air intake port. The ramps in the intake port controlled by the AICS were essentially movable planks that directed the flow of air into the engines. The major could see that they were not in their normal position. It was the shock waves up in the intake port that had limited the maneuverability of Mayle’s plane. The violently disrupted airflow had drastically reduced the engine’s combustion efficiency. The unfavorable conditions from the resulting superheating added to that had destroyed the engines.

The plane never would have reached the edge of the performance envelope except during combat. The Sylphid’s engines had blades that could maintain an even airflow even during extreme turbulence. However, in air combat, a pilot will push the engine output and rev them past their design limits—Mayle’s plane being a typical example of this. Flying at maximum speed to escape the JAM, the AICS units in the planes of the 505th had operated abnormally. With the air intake flow so disrupted, afterburner flames and black smoke streaming from the rear, it was only inevitable for the engines to either stall or for their output to fall. The pilot, probably half-panicked, would likely slam the throttle as far forward as possible. If the engines were stalled out, he’d have to restart them. If he had time, he might figure out that the problem was in the AICS, in which case it was possible for him to cut out auto mode and set the ramp position manually. If there was a breakdown in the simple AICS system, you could do that. However, Lieutenant Mayle hadn’t realized that the AICS was the problem, and it was likely that none of the other pilots had either. If they had, well, they were already under attack by the JAM. Engaging the JAM in a high-altitude dogfight would have been suicide, as they would have to make a hectic transition from low speed to high in order to win, so all they could have done was set the ramps for ultra-high speed and then escape at maximum thrust.

Since none of them had done that, it meant there likely hadn’t been an alarm to warn them of a fault in the AICS. The major could only think that they either had realized there was a fault and hadn’t switched over or else doing so hadn’t yielded any response. That meant this wasn’t a simple mechanical failure, and so the CI had determined that the AICS units had been contaminated by the JAM.

The CI didn’t believe that the central computer on Mayle’s plane was malfunctioning. The central computer controlled the engines and control surfaces in an integrated system, but the AICS was independent. All it did was react to the plane’s speed. So, even though it was an independent system, that normally presented no problem. The JAM had apparently exploited this blind spot.

But how? The AICS’s circuits had secure electromagnetic shielding, so it seemed unlikely that electromagnetic wave exposure in-flight had caused the malfunction. That left only one answer: the AICS units aboard the 505th’s planes were malfunctioning from the moment they took off.

I believe the AICS units were modified by the enemy. The only thing that could touch the planes without arousing suspicion would be a human. A human working against the FAF or possibly a JAM in human guise. The probability of it being a JAM is high. If so, my guess is that the JAM have assumed human form.

Even if they searched for the lost planes, the AICSes were vital units that would have been destroyed by the planes’ self-destruct systems. If they’d made it back to base, it might have been possible to return the AICS units to normal operation. The CI went on to say that a humanoid JAM replacing or tampering with AICS units without anyone noticing wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

I do not have a countermeasure for this problem, it continued.

A humanoid JAM weapon. Major Booker shivered. If what Rei claimed to have experienced was true, then JAM infiltration seemed possible. If there was a type not made of optical isomers that merely looked human, but a perfect copy that could eat and live like a real one, then there’d be no way to tell the difference between a JAM and a human.

“You’re saying this isn’t simply a problem with the AICS,” Major Booker said. “How do we find out for certain?”

The probability is high that humans who have gone missing on the front lines have made contact with the JAM. Probability high that the rescued humans are the new type of JAM.

There were two humans like that in the SAF: Rei and Lieutenant Yagashira.

“You mean Yagashira is… That can’t be!” said General Cooley, almost with a groan.

His mind still fogged in a sense of unreality, Rei thought that he’d never heard of Lieutenant Yagashira before.

AS REI CHECKED the AICS aboard Yukikaze after being told of the abnormality in the planes of the 505th that she had observed, he soon realized that the planes were being controlled by the JAM and rethought the situation. Yukikaze also determined the 505th TFS were no longer friendlies. Rei figured that the only way the JAM could have turned the 505th would be for them to have infiltrated TAB-15. The JAM.

He felt as if that had been a dream. A nightmare. He had been flying Yukikaze, but then suddenly communication had been cut and Yukikaze had gone away. Yukikaze, leaving him, as he had dreamed again and again. All of it was a dream.

But this wasn’t a dream now. The AICS was malfunctioning, but no fault light was lit. Switching over to manual yielded no response. The situation was desperate. If he didn’t do something and fast, they were going to be destroyed by the JAM.

Keeping the throttle right on the limit where the abnormal vibrations began, Rei activated the onboard test system. The recorded data on the plane’s preflight check seemed wrapped in a watery, unrealistic veil, but he could see that the AICS hadn’t showed any abnormalities. The test signals had yielded the correct responses.

So how about now?

The main display showed IN MISSION as though Yukikaze were shouting, Don’t run tests in the middle of combat, I’m flying here! She might have even been scared. The test program wouldn’t initiate with her interference. Even if Rei told Yukikaze to stop it and stay out of this, he knew his words probably wouldn’t reach her.

Rei immediately lowered the landing gear. The plane’s speed suddenly dropped. He manually activated the test mode. Yukikaze quickly understood from the change what Rei was trying to do and canceled the alarm.

“Break, port!” yelled the major.

Banking sharply to the left, he let the JAM slip past. His sudden drop in speed had been fortunate. The JAM had undoubtedly not expected Yukikaze’s maneuver.

Selecting the test signals for supersonic maximum speed, he initiated a test run on the AICS. He jammed the throttle to maximum. Gear, up.

The three JAM had swung around and were coming at him. Rei slipped the plane to the right, dodging the JAM’s cannon fire. He couldn’t keep moving left and right; it would be dangerous, since the plane’s acceleration would zero out in the instant he switched directions. With the enemy using cannons, they could anticipate those moments. What he needed to do now was to evade the JAM attack. He prayed for acceleration.

Yukikaze reached normal maximum acceleration in three seconds. The thrust was tremendous. In an instant, the JAM were far behind him.

Rei desperately gripped the control stick, sending Yukikaze into a climb. If he could reach high altitude, her speed would be greatly increased. There’d be no way that three JAM designed for dogfighting could ever catch him then.

He had no doubts that the JAM recognized Yukikaze as an SAF fighter and believed that the three of them could beat her. There was the proof that the AICS had been contaminated by the JAM. If he hadn’t known beforehand that the malfunction was being caused by the AICS, those three fighters would have shot him down long before he’d gotten the idea of trying to input those test signals.

“You got it back to normal,” the major said. “How’d you do it?”

“Emergency measures. I’m operating it with the test signals. Why wasn’t a new AICS swapped in before takeoff? We knew what the cause was. We should have known this would happen.”

“We didn’t want Yagashira to know that we’d figured out the problem in the AICS. This is top secret,” the major said.

Yukikaze flew in the skies above the pure white desert. This was JAM-controlled airspace. Only the JAM flew here without concern.

Just before Yukikaze took off, Yagashira’s plane had flown out to this desert to drop a reconnaissance pod. The exact same mission the old Yukikaze had had.

Major Booker confirmed that Yagashira’s plane was flying ahead of them in formation with a single JAM plane. “Yagashira’s plane is flying with a JAM.”

“I know,” answered Rei.

“I’m sure he’s a JAM,” the major said. “There’s no excuse for this otherwise.”

“I feel like…like I’ve spoken to him before,” Rei said.

The major answered that he had. He and Lieutenant Yagashira had met in the hospital. “I want to be your friend,” he’d said. Rei remembered that the man standing next to his bed had been very young. “Everyone looks at me like I’m some sort of weirdo,” he’d gone on. “Lieutenant Fukai, I want to talk to you about all kinds of things. The soldiers of Boomerang squadron have such skill. I want to be as good as you guys.”

“Rei thinks that he’s been abandoned by Yukikaze,” Major Booker had said. “If we don’t settle that, he’ll never fly again.” Yagashira went on. “It looks like you had a rough time out there. Actually, I was also shot down by the JAM. I don’t have any memory of what happened till I was rescued.”

Rei remembered Lieutenant Yagashira saying that in the hospital. That wasn’t a dream. In that case, it must have meant that he didn’t know that he’d been created by the JAM. He didn’t know that the original Yagashira was dead, his memories transferred into an exact duplicate.

“Yeah,” Rei said. “Lieutenant Yagashira came to the hospital. Said he wanted to be my friend. How long has it been since then?”

“Nine days,” the major replied. “If you don’t complete this mission successfully, I’m thinking of sending you back to Earth. I don’t want you connected to FAF weaponry and computers anymore. It was like you weren’t human.”

The thing was, Lieutenant Yagashira had seemed extremely human. Rei kept Yagashira’s Unit 13 in sight, still not entirely convinced that the man was a JAM weapon. Then Yagashira and the JAM fighter turned toward Yukikaze, assuming an intercept formation.

“He’s engaging,” Rei said.

“He’s panicking,” the major replied. “We didn’t tell him about Yukikaze’s current mission activities. None of the other FAF branches know either. If Yukikaze hadn’t come, he probably would have flown to a JAM base with his information and then flown back to the FAF. He’s a JAM tactical intelligence-gathering weapon. A JAM, not a human. Now that his cover’s been blown, he can’t let us get back to base alive. He’s desperate now. Either we kill him, or he kills us.”

“A JAM…weapon? Him?”

“Rei, don’t space out on me again. You’ve already met a JAM like him. You and that copy they made of you. Have you forgotten what you told us? This whole mission was designed to confirm that.”

Yeah, right. He had a feeling he’d heard something about that before takeoff. When the official announcement had come to send Unit 13 out unmanned to run the same mission the old Yukikaze had, Lieutenant Yagashira had suggested that he fly it. Major Booker had half-expected this, but overcame the dread striking him so squarely to approve the mission. He wouldn’t need a flight officer, Yagashira had said. He could do this alone.

“He might have been planning to desert,” the major said. “Like a JAM version of us recovering our recon pods. He probably thought he wasn’t in any danger.”

“Yeah,” Rei replied.

He’d said he admired Rei and Yukikaze so much that he wanted to fly the same mission. Rei remembered that. He’d seemed a little arrogant, but that was human too, wasn’t it? Much more so than the Boomerang pilots usually were, Rei thought.

“Rei, they’re going to get us!”

The other planes were still in range.

Unit 13 was armed with short-range missiles and a gun. With Yukikaze’s AICS still not running normally, she’d be at a disadvantage in a dogfight. If he was going to attack, now was the time. Rei selected his medium-range missiles for launch. He hesitated for an instant before firing them, but he had almost no margin left for any hesitation. Kill or be killed. He launched four shots simultaneously: two of the new variable-speed medium-range missiles and two hyper-velocity medium-range missiles.

He didn’t know how Lieutenant Yagashira saw all this, whether he saw himself as a JAM or, to the end, thought of himself as human. But right now, there was no doubt that his actions were those of a JAM.

The human part of him was already dead, Rei thought as he watched the display count down to the missiles’ reaching their target. But he was troubled by why he was still even worrying about that.

It was because he looked human. He wouldn’t have hesitated to fire at a JAM fighter plane, would he? Even though the JAM might even be planes themselves, he’d have no problem shooting them, right? The JAM might have counted on Rei’s reluctance to fire at something that looked human, but no matter what the weapon looked like, if he was facing a JAM there was no reason to hesitate. It was clear that Lieutenant Yagashira was a JAM. There was no doubt that was true, even without Major Booker telling him that. So then, why did he feel this way?

He wished they could have talked more. Rei realized that this emotion welling up within him had been the source of his hesitation. He had a feeling that he and this man could have understood each other.

“Everyone hates me,” Yagashira had said. “Even I can see that. They don’t care how other people feel. My old commander, Lieutenant Mayle, once told me that I was like a machine. They treated me like a machine, never talking to me. But in so doing, they became the real machines.”

In piloting his plane, he too felt himself growing closer to this machine he called Yukikaze. Perhaps that was why he could understand the feelings of a man who had been created by the JAM. The reasons didn’t matter; Rei had simply wanted to talk to Yagashira some more. If he was a weapon, if he was conscious of himself as a weapon, then he must know how a weapon feels. Did he understand Yukikaze’s feelings as well?

The JAM might have been able to understand the details of Yukikaze’s combat intelligence better than he could. Even so, the JAM were attacking. It was out of desperation, Rei thought. What is their objective? he wondered.

He saw the missiles hit with his naked eye. The JAM fighter exploded, followed by Yagashira’s plane.

He hadn’t seen the pilot bail out. The man who could have understood him was dead.

Was this sadness? Was this regret? It was complicated to deal with feelings bursting forth that he’d thought he’d lost a long time ago. He was the first person who had ever made him feel this way, and he’d been a JAM, Rei thought.

Banking Yukikaze sharply, Rei released control back to her and looked up at the sky. It was blue, and aside from the twin suns, it looked like the skies of Earth.

I want to go home, Rei thought. But where?

When he’d first come to the FAF, Rei had been aware of his desire to return to Earth.

“I feel like I’m finally awake,” he said, closing his eyes, thinking that if this was a dream too, it wouldn’t be so bad.