V Faery - Winter
He had to protect Yukikaze. He had to eliminate anything that stood in her way—even if it was his fellow man. That was what he believed. And then he learned that the computers, the machines built by men, were working to the same end.
SNOW WAS FALLING on Faery.
Winter was always the busiest season for the Maintenance Corps. They ran the snow removal equipment on twenty-fourhour rotation while the finely driven flakes numbed the skin on their faces and froze their hair, eyelashes, and beards into crystalline spikes. They always prayed for the weather to let up, but the snow always continued to fall, heedless of the desires of the humans caught in it.
Second Lieutenant Mamoru Amata (FAF Maintenance Corps, Faery Base 110th Airfield Maintenance Division, 3rd Mechanized Snow Removal Unit) sat in the cab of a motor grader, waiting for his turn to go out and growing increasingly pissed off that the grader’s door didn’t shut properly.
Visibility was low thanks to the howling blizzard outside. The storm was blowing with such force that it was less like it was snowing than like the air itself had partially solidified into ice. To Lieutenant Amata, it looked as if there was more snow than air out there right now.
He sighed and listened to the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers, the crackling static of snow beating against the grader, and the whistle of cold air blowing through a gap in the door frame. Needles of snow were driving through the gap, gradually forming a soft pile at Amata’s feet. He took off his gloves and bent over to try and fix the door. A thick layer of ice had crusted over its bottom edge, and he clicked his tongue in annoyance when he saw the problem: some of the insulation had been improperly installed. The cold outside air was causing moisture to condense inside of the door panel, drip down, and then freeze at the bottom. Amata scraped at the ice with his fingernails, wondering if the warmth of his hands might be enough to melt it. His fingers turned red, then began to go purplish from the cold. He finally gave up, tried blowing on his now numb hands to warm them, and held them over the windshield defroster. They were stiff and senseless. He couldn’t even tell if they were cold anymore.
The lieutenant tried to remember when the door had been bent and knocked his legs together to make sure that all feeling hadn’t been completely lost from his seemingly frozen lower extremities. He sourly eyed the little stream of snow as it came in through the gap. So, when had the door been bent? Oh, yeah. The day before yesterday, during a furious snowstorm, he’d lightly bumped the machine driven by his coworker. At least the storm today was better than the one a couple of days ago. Visibility wasn’t zero: he could actually see five or six meters ahead.
His hands gradually regained sensation. His skin hurt as though it’d been flayed off. He put his hands back into the gloves he’d warmed on the defroster. The windshield had now fogged up and was pure white. He wiped at it with the shell of his glove. It didn’t change the view much. Just white. If he stared at it for long, it almost became mesmerizing. The snow danced and whirled before him, seeming to invite him out into the storm. God, it’s cold. Amata wrapped his arms around his chest and rubbed his sides. If he didn’t keep moving, he’d probably freeze.
Suddenly, the grader’s engine rumbled to life; its automatic ignition system had activated. Even the truck’s scared of the cold, he thought with a bitter smile. He wondered why they even bothered to build an energy conservation system into it. Two seconds of flight in a jet fighter probably used up more fuel than idling a snowplow on standby for an hour. He wished they’d let him just run the damn thing while he was waiting so he could get some heat out of the defroster.
The driver’s seat shook with the vibration of the engine. It didn’t warm things up much. Amata reached into his back pocket and pulled out his own fuel: a pocket flask of whiskey. Just a little nip to warm himself up. Through the limited space cleared by the windshield wipers, he could faintly make out the machines of his coworkers, the rotating lights on their rooftops visible as hazy amber globes in the white.
The whiskey burned his throat. Cheap stuff. The heat of the alcohol in his stomach began to spread to his limbs. It was the only thing that kept him warm, that made the duty out here bearable. He’d be damned if he was going to give it up because of some idiotic regulation.
How long did they expect him to wait? As he hitched himself forward and returned the whiskey to his back pocket, he pressed his face to the window and peered outside. The last plane of the 167th Tactical Fighter Squadron had not yet returned. Probably flying somewhere above the storm and taking his sweet time. Lieutenant Amata pounded his fists together, trying to return some feeling to them. Obviously command was fine with them all just freezing to death waiting for that last plane to come in.
He could see a figure on runway 03R, the one used exclusively for landing aircraft. Probably a hook runner, poor bastard. In wintertime, because of the icy runway conditions, the fighters would land using arresting hooks, as they would on an aircraft carrier. The arresting cable and its support gear were laid out over the runway now, waiting for the last 167th plane, which meant that Amata and his unit couldn’t plow over it. While they sat there watching, the snow continued to pile up. If they left it for very much longer, the arresting cable wouldn’t be able to lift up because of the weight of the accumulated snow.
In general, though, clearing snow from landing runways was an easy job. Even if a grader broke one of the huge landing lights on the sides of the runway, it wasn’t a big deal. Takeoff runways, however, were a pain, since even in weather like this takeoffs were done the usual way, not by catapult launch. To ensure they went smoothly, with no resistance from the snow, the maintenance units had to plow the runways if the snow accumulation exceeded three centimeters. They couldn’t use ice melt compound or sand, since the substances could get sucked into the fighters’ air intakes and damage the engines.
Lieutenant Amata scraped up the snow on the cabin floor with his boots and tramped it into the gap in the door. Then, as though mocking him, as though it were the funniest thing in the world, a sudden squall popped the clod of snow out of the gap, and a fresh blast of icy wind gusted in and danced around the driver’s seat. The tiny particles of ice melted in the relative warmth of the cabin air, and soon the lieutenant’s upper body was soaked with cold mist.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Just land already, you piece of crap plane! Are you trying to make me freeze to death here?!”
Some of the mist condensed on the interior of the cab roof and dripped onto the back of his neck and down his back. It was so cold it almost felt like it was scalding him. Another icy blast blew in from the gap in the door. Amata rubbed at his side. It was aching so badly he could cry. It had been for a while now. His liver was probably wrecked. Or maybe it was his gall bladder. The military doctor hadn’t told him anything except that if he didn’t give up the booze, he’d die. Maybe it’s cancer, Amata thought. He’d ignored the doctor’s advice to skip hospitalization and treatment on Faery and just return to Earth. The only thing waiting for him there was either prison or a detox facility. For an offender like him, no place else on Earth offered the freedom that Faery did. The FAF command knew that well and used him and all the others like him for as long as their bodies held out. A man’s body was just one more expendable resource. They could always get more human garbage from Earth.
The fact that sitting here shivering in the freezing cold was better than whatever awaited him on Earth was so pathetic it forced a bark of a laugh from Amata. His life was a four-part litany of booze, women, brawls, and lock-ups. Even he could see how he was going to die. He knew the alcohol had taken over his life, but he was still honest enough with himself to know that he couldn’t blame it for everything. Other people always said that when sympathizing with him, but his life still would’ve been royally screwed up even without the alcohol. And what the hell was a non-screwed up life, anyway? Was there even such a thing? I didn’t have any other choices than the ones that I made, he thought. When you’re trapped on all sides with no other options, you walk the only path that’s open to you.
Most people thought he was just irresponsible, that he was just drowning himself in the bottle. But given the life that he’d led, if he hadn’t turned to escape through the booze, that would’ve been it. The End. People back on Earth would tell him to straighten up and fly right, but they may as well have been telling him to put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. He didn’t want to go back to that. If he was still alive in the spring, when his tour of duty was up, he’d apply to have it extended. Better that than being driven to suicide.
His brooding was interrupted by the sound of distant thunder. He looked up. At long last, it had returned: the last plane of the 167th TFS. As it approached the roar of its engines gradually drowned out the howling of the storm. Suddenly, the shape of a giant bird appeared out of the whiteness, followed by the sound of an arrester hook snagging the cable. The fighter shook the ground as its wheels made contact with the runway. The hook runner ran out to unhook the cable from the arrester. The ground guide signaled the pilot with powerful flashlights, moving them quickly from belly level to chest: Raise hook. He then lifted his left arm and swept it in a large circle to the left: Proceed to taxiway.
Finally, Amata could do his job. He cut off the intermittent starter and stepped on the accelerator, revving the engine as the black fighter taxied right by him. The metallic whine of its jets grew distant, and he readied himself to get to work. But just as he stepped on the grader’s heavy clutch, he saw someone running toward him. He took his foot off the clutch. The figure made a beeline for the cabin, banged once on the door, then opened it without asking. Icy wind blew into the cabin full force.
“What?!” shouted Amata.
“The de-icer on the gear’s broken down,” the man shouted. He was covered with snow and ice from head to foot. “The storage trench is buried in snow, so we can’t get the arresting gear back into it.”
“Hurry up and close my goddamned door!” Lieutenant Amata shouted back.
“Fine,” the man said. “Just take care of it. You know what to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Clear the snow without breaking the gear, okay?”
“That’s not my job!”
“Your job’s snow removal. Now get it done fast or we won’t be ready when the next flight returns. And if that happens, it’s on your head!” The man slammed the door shut, which proceeded to bounce back open again, and ran with short steps to a snow truck whose warm windows were steaming up. He climbed in, and the truck soon disappeared into the blizzard.
Amata gritted his teeth. “Fuckers,” he seethed. The ground crews treated him and the men in his unit like slaves, forcing the cold shit-work off on them. He quickly radioed the word to the other drivers. They all bitched but quickly gave in and accepted the situation. They didn’t have the will to argue at that point. Better to just finish the job quickly.
The lieutenant pulled up the hood of his parka, left the grader idling, and got out. He didn’t turn the intermittent starter on. He was being as uncooperative as he could.
He tried to unhook a shovel from the front of the truck, but the detent was caked with ice and wouldn’t move. He got a plastic hammer from his toolbox and smashed at the ice. Tiny ice chips flew up into his face. Remembering there were goggles in the toolbox as well, he returned the hammer to it and then put the goggles on. Then, taking the shovel in hand and feeling for the arresting cable with his foot, he made his way toward the storage trench.
All around him was total whiteness. The snow blew at him mercilessly. It was hard to breathe. He dug into the trench. He began to sweat. His goggles fogged up. Taking them off, he wiped at the insides with his glove, but they soon fogged up again. He threw the shovel aside and furiously starting digging at the snow with his hands. The other members of his unit were probably kicking back with their own stashes of hooch, letting him deal with the task. He knew most of them were alcoholics. They couldn’t fly fighters and they had no advanced skills, so they were almost universally looked down on by the rest of the FAF, and many of them had internalized the same sense of worthlessness.
Conscious of the pain in his side, Lieutenant Amata pulled the collapse lever. The arresting gear went down. However, a bit of ice still jammed in the fulcrum left the gear poking slightly out of the ground. The lieutenant raised the mechanism again, took off his gloves, and began beating the snow off of it. His hands immediately lost all sensation.
At that moment, he was so jealous of the fighter pilots it made his gut burn. They got to fly off of this snow-blasted landscape and rise above the clouds, where the weather was always clear. No way they could ever understand what it was like for the poor slobs below them freezing on the white ground. He had wanted to be a pilot too, but his bad liver washed him out on the hypoxia resistance test. In other words, the only job for him here was this. He’d been called a waste of a human being, and he had agreed. The same went for all the other guys in his unit. They were sneered at and paid less than the pilots, and even what little pay they received was frequently docked for conduct violations—like drinking on the job.
Last year one of the members of his unit had frozen to death trying to haul a broken-down plow off of the runway during a violent blizzard. The brass kept harping on the dead man’s case, saying that it should serve as a warning to the rest and that it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been drinking. Well, of course he was drinking; it was the only means they had to warm themselves up a little and make it easier to move. They tell us to quit drinking, Amata thought bitterly, but they never fix stuff like that bent door or the de-icer on this thing. It was probably cheaper to work a man harder than to fix a machine. If they just used the waste heat from the underground base, they could keep even this huge runway snow-free. But it would cost too much, so they used manual labor instead. Which they could always get more of from Earth.
Lieutenant Amata lowered the gear again. It still stuck up a little. He beat at it with the shovel, then climbed on top of it and jumped up and down to force it closed with his body weight. That got it.
Snow snuck in through the storm seals of his pants, melted, and mixed with his own sweat. He shivered at the clammy, unpleasant feeling, tramped back to the grader, threw the shovel into the cabin, then climbed in and shut the door. Cold wind was still blowing in through the gap, but it was better than being out there. His parka was now a frozen, crunchy mass. He flipped back the hood, spilling snow over the driver’s seat, and held his frozen hands over the defroster until some of their strength returned. He gripped the large steering wheel and threw the truck into gear.
After finishing his work, Lieutenant Amata drove back to the ground vehicle hangar on the side of the runway. The electric shutter door closed automatically behind him, cutting off the howling of the storm. Once he’d killed the grader’s engine, it was quiet except for the sound of the snow blowing against the shutter. He climbed down from the cab, his breath coming out in clouds of white steam that looked like cigarette smoke. The moisture in his now-thawed parka began to refreeze. He thoroughly beat off the snow and ice clinging to him. If it was still on him when he went into the warm locker room, he’d be soaked.
He stripped out of his cold weather gear in the locker room. It stank of sweat. He was chilled to the bone, yet steam still rose from his body when he took off his sweater. The locker room was warmer than the garage, but only by about ten degrees. He wondered if it was the first ten degrees above freezing but had no way to check. The air grew warmer as he made his way to the station. From the outside, to the garage, to the locker room, to the corridor, to the station: warmer and warmer as he went. He’d been told that sudden changes in temperature were physically harmful, but he still wished they would keep the locker room warmer. He walked into the showers, stripped off his soaked undergarments, and threw them down the laundry chute.
After the shower he finally started to feel better. He grabbed a towel and underwear from the supply box, dried off, and got into his fatigues. He went down the corridor to the unit’s command office, dropped off his grader’s key with his superior officer, and then gave a simple report that his work had been completed. Just as he was about to walk out with one of the other men in his unit, the officer called for them to wait.
“Sure, whatever,” Lieutenant Amata mumbled.
He probably wanted them to stay on standby there in the station; the weather geeks in the Operations Corps had forecast a big storm. He felt like this was somehow, obscurely, their fault. Sometimes he even wondered if they got such heavy snow only because those fuckers made such awful forecasts.
The officer didn’t put them on standby, though. In fact, he only wanted Lieutenant Amata and told the other man that he was free to go. The other guy whispered “Brass must be pissed at you” into Amata’s ear as he passed, gave him a sympathetic look, patted him on the shoulder, and left the office.
“Now then,” began his superior, Captain Gondou. “I have some surprising news for you. Would you like to sit down, Lieutenant Amata?”
“No thanks,” he replied. He refused both the chair and the cigarette he was offered and remained standing at attention.
Captain Gondou put the cigarette in his own mouth, lit it, and sat down again behind his desk. He regarded Amata for a while, then blew out a large cloud of smoke and said, “A commendation’s been awarded.”
“I see,” answered Amata. Someone in his division was getting a commendation, so they probably wanted him to set up a party to celebrate. That was the only thing he could think of. “Understood. Where’s the assembly? And when?” He figured he could bully some of his good-for-nothing, lazy-ass coworkers into helping out.
The captain was looking at him oddly. “What’s your problem, Amata? You don’t seem very excited about this.” He held his gaze for a second longer, then shrugged. “It’ll be held tomorrow at Auditorium 1 in Faery Base, as part of the FAF founding memorial ceremony.”
Captain Gondou put his cigarette down on the ashtray, stood up, straightened his uniform, and saluted. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Amata.”
Amata reflexively returned the salute. Then it suddenly dawned on him what the captain had meant. “Wait, what? Hold on here. Um…I’m getting the commendation?”
“What did you think I meant?”
Gondou sat down and picked up the cigarette butt from the ashtray. The five or six other personnel in the office stared at Lieutenant Amata. An intercom chimed on somebody’s desk somewhere, and the tense atmosphere returned to normal.
“What’s the deal, Captain? This must be some sort of mistake.”
“That’s what I thought,” Gondou replied bluntly. “At first I couldn’t believe it either.”
Amata took no particular offense at the captain’s attitude. Looking back over his service record, he didn’t think there was anything in it that was particularly outstanding compared to those of his coworkers. He nervously fingered the whiskey flask in his pocket. He wasn’t any different from the rest of his drunken colleagues. Just a standard-issue…snowplow driver. Just one more guy the others despised as garbage. So why me? he wondered suspiciously. Was this some kind of a joke? Did he mishear the captain? Was he hallucinating it? No, he hadn’t drunk nearly enough for that. Fine, he thought. If they’re giving it to me, I’ll take it. At least he’d get a little award from the division in return for all his work.
“The Distinguished Service Award, right?”
It was the most commonly awarded decoration. Service members who died in the line of duty got it. Lots of living ones did too, but he’d never heard of the really low-level grunts like him getting one without dying.
Captain Gondou shook his head. “No. Not that piece of shit. The Order of Mars. A medal of valor. The highest one. I’ve never touched or even seen one of them. Even the senior officers with fruit salad on their chests rarely have them.”
Amata unconsciously scratched his hands. They itched from frostbite. He thought about how many men in his unit had lost toes to frostbite.
“How about some coffee?” Captain Gondou asked. He picked up the coffee pot on his desk and filled a paper cup without waiting for Lieutenant Amata’s answer. “It’ll warm you up. Must have been nasty out there. It got a lot worse after you guys went out.”
“You wouldn’t believe how cold it gets out there, Captain.”
Amata sat down in the chair waiting for him. He picked up the coffee and took a sip. Now he really wanted whiskey, not coffee. He knew what sort of individual was awarded the Order of Mars, and it definitely wasn’t scum like him. That medal was for heroes, for guys who performed outstanding deeds that would be recounted within the FAF for as long as it existed. For guys who practically became legends, gods of war.
Why me? he wondered again, with growing unease. The dull ache in his right side worsened. Why would a loser like me be getting a medal like that? He would have been satisfied with the Distinguished Service Award. That, he could maybe understand, a reward for performing the job they’d given him. But there was no way that anyone could ever regard plowing snow as a feat of valor. The more he strained to think of even a remote reason for being chosen to receive the medal, the more nervous he became.
He shivered with a chill that the hot coffee couldn’t assuage. He wasn’t moved: he was scared. How could something this nuts be happening to him? If this wasn’t a mistake, then it was a plot. Had to be. He must have been caught up in some sort of vast conspiracy beyond his knowledge, to be used in some way and then thrown aside like trash… Well, he was sick and tired of being used. He just wanted to get drunk and fade away quietly, to choose a mode of death on his own terms.
“I refuse to accept the medal,” Lieutenant Amata said, a faint tremor in his voice.
Captain Gondou nodded calmly, but the words that came out of his mouth belied his attitude. “I figured you’d say that. However, the division—no, not just the division. The Maintenance Corps sees this as a chance to show the entire Faery Air Force how important our work is. Corps HQ won’t allow you to refuse. It’s an order. An order, Lieutenant Amata.”
“Then the Corps is behind this plot,” Amata spat out under his breath. “What did I do? Was it some sort of misconduct?”
“No, Lieutenant. This has nothing to do with the Corps, at least as far as awarding the medal goes. The Order of Mars is presented by the Corps, but the Corps doesn’t decide who gets it. The decorations are decided on by a committee made up of officers at the very highest levels of the FAF. Do you see? As far as the Corps is concerned, this is a bolt from the blue. We were all as shocked as you are, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We made an inquiry as to whether a mistake had been made, but apparently it’s legit.”
“But, who… Why would they have chosen me?”
“Who knows? Guys like us on the bottom don’t know what the guys at the top are up to. But it’s been decided and nothing can change it. You’d better not try to refuse. If you resist, they may charge you with mutiny. Even if they don’t, you’ll still be left in a bad position, maybe blacklisted. They’re giving you the medal, so you take it. It’ll be useful when you go back to Earth. It’ll probably get you a good job.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Come on, you should be celebrating. Still, I understand how you feel. I don’t know if it’ll console you or not, but you’re getting a week’s leave and clearance to return to Earth too.”
“I don’t want it,” Amata said, his voice hoarse.
“Right. It’s a busy time of year for us. I appreciate your consideration. But you’re excused from work tomorrow. That’s the day you’ll be decorated.”
“So I have no choice in this?”
“It’s an order.” Captain Gondou looked away from Lieutenant Amata. “Accept the medal. That’s an order.”
The captain looked down at his clasped hands on the desktop, then up at the smoke curling from the cigarette butt smoldering in the ashtray.
“Dismissed,” he said. “Go to the station and tell the other guys. They’ll probably be happy for you.”
Amata left the command office without a word. He didn’t think his coworkers would be happy for him. If anything, they’d be shocked. Maybe they’d congratulate him, but even if he got the medal it wouldn’t improve the way they were treated. Even the way he himself was treated wouldn’t change. There was nothing to be happy about. There probably wasn’t a single one of his coworkers who would take pride in his getting it or even look at him with envy. There just wasn’t any profit in it. Amata grew depressed. Although the other men wouldn’t be jealous, they’d definitely treat him differently from now on, like he wasn’t quite one of them anymore.
As he entered the station, the familiar cigarette smoke-filled warmth enveloped his body. Usually, the atmosphere would relax him, but right now the mood was a little strange. The guys playing cards at the table, the ones lying down on the cots, the ones reading, the others sitting on the floor or leaning against the wall as they drank… They all looked at him as though a stranger had just come into the room.
Word had already spread.
One of the guys at the table threw down his cards, stood up, and yelled, “Hooray for Lieutenant Amata!”
“Hooray for what?” Amata asked, playing dumb. He sat down on an empty cot and took out his flask.
“Give that cheap shit to the snow to drink,” said one of the guys leaning against the wall as he lifted his glass. He tilted his head in the direction of a bottle of scotch laid off to the side. “Compliments of Lieutenant Colonel Hazer. He said that you’re the pride of the Corps. A hero shouldn’t drink cheap booze, Lieutenant.”
Why couldn’t Colonel Hazer mind his own damn business? Amata shook his head, then swung both feet up onto the cot and began drinking his own cheap whiskey. The cheerful Colonel Hazer’s responsibilities included being their supervisor, and now and then he’d show up and maybe join them for a card game or two. Still, no matter how friendly he was, he wasn’t one of them. Because he never had to endure the snowstorms. On the surface, they all smiled at him, drank with him, smoked with him, and let him win some money at cards, but the truth was that they couldn’t stand him. Hazer himself seemed satisfied with the arrangement.
As he began to sink into despair, Amata could imagine what it had been like when Colonel Hazer had come to give them the news. He probably said something like, “Gentlemen, congratulations! One of your own has been awarded the Order of Mars! A true hero has appeared from within your ranks. You should be proud!” And then the guys would be wearing big grins on their faces, while inside they wouldn’t give a crap. That idiot. If it wasn’t for Hazer, he might have been able to keep the news of the award from the others. The Corps was trampling on the little bit of peace he had. He should have expected it.
Returning to their card game, the players began talking in exaggeratedly loud voices.
“So what’s an Order of Mars, anyways?”
“Dunno. I think it’s a medal of valor.”
“Then why’d Amata get one?”
“Why do you think? ’Cause he’s a hero, ain’t he?”
They laughed and then went back to their usual stupid chatter. About how someone had gotten into a fight with some woman and had his arm broken, but no, that was just some story he’d made up to get out of work, and how could he humiliate himself that much just to get out of work, and was it still snowing outside…
Lieutenant Amata drained the flask, dropped it on the floor, and closed his eyes.
THE WEATHER ON the day commemorating the founding of the FAF was a Class 2 winter storm. The 3rd Mechanized Snow Removal Unit was ready for deployment. After being told to disregard the commemoration ceremony, the motor graders and the secondary rotary plows were divided into teams and sent out to face the white devil. They came in only to rest and refuel and were immediately sent out again. As it grew busier and busier, with more and more vehicles breaking down, tanker trucks were brought out to do hot refueling—pumping gas directly into the plows’ tanks while the engines were still running. The huge airfield was like a battle zone, but with snow and ice as the enemy, not the JAM.
While his coworkers were on the ground freezing, Lieutenant Amata put on a uniform he’d never worn before and headed for the ceremony hall. The huge underground auditorium was warm, like another world. In fact, it was hot enough to make him sweat, and he found it almost as oppressive as being in the middle of a blizzard.
As he stood in line with the other medal recipients and listened to the congratulatory speeches being given, he frowned occasionally. Each word of praise from the loudspeaker seemed to bore painfully into his hungover brain. The scene in the stiff and formal ceremonial hall didn’t seem real to him at all; there was no snow here, no numbing cold. The stern attitudes of the generals and the faces of the soldiers there to receive their commendations… They all seemed to exist in a different dimension from him. They looked like dolls, like they weren’t alive. He had to keep reminding himself that the scene before him wasn’t a fiction.
When he thought about it, though, this entire war seemed to be a fictional one. The JAM had never shown themselves to humans, and a ground grunt like Lieutenant Amata couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of enemy they were. He would watch the fighter teams take off and return, but what the enemy planes looked like or even whether or not they existed was beyond him. He didn’t think about it, either. To him, the most pressing concerns were getting fuel for his grader, or stopping the cold wind that blew in under the bent door, or how he would have to buy some more whiskey soon because he was almost out. Stuff like that. The snow and the cold were the lieutenant’s enemies. Not the JAM.
The JAM, an enemy the lieutenant had never seen, was beyond him. But the FAF was equally so. And now this huge, unknowable thing was giving him a medal. It was like having a monster from his dreams appear in front of him shaking a bell. All of it, all of it was utterly unreal.
We’re all dolls, he thought, the generals, the medal recipients, and me, too. Just gaily dressed mannequins in a shop window, whose sole purpose was to entice the passersby to come in and spend their money. He was being used to sell the idea of fighting spirit to the soldiers in the field, an immobile doll inserted into a make-believe world.
At last, his name was called. With a feeling of grim resignation, he walked forward and saluted the general presenting the medals. As the general, his chest plastered with ribbons and decorations, took the Order of Mars from his adjutant, Lieutenant Amata saw his eye fall on the snowflake-shaped insignia on Amata’s uniform. A look of doubt clouded the general’s face, and Amata felt a jolt of alarm run through him. Wasn’t this farce of a ceremony being conducted under the order of the command staff ? Why would the general be surprised by it?
“Congratulations,” the general said as he hung the Order of Mars around Amata’s neck. “You’re a hero.”
He sounded almost offended when he said it. Amata took a deep breath and desperately tried to sort out the jumble of thoughts in his head. What was going on here? Why was the general looking at him like that? Had something gone wrong?
There was only one answer he could arrive at: the command staff didn’t know about this, either. Why would a snowplow driver be awarded a medal? Who was it that had made the decision? It wasn’t his division, it wasn’t the Corps, and it wasn’t the command staff, either. Which meant that it was nobody in the FAF.
Impossible. Amata shivered. The situation had gone from absurd to ominous. The gold medal hung heavily from his neck. It was engraved with an image of a Super Sylph, a creature that had nothing to do with a man like him who spent his life crawling around on the ground. But he couldn’t give it back. The Corps wouldn’t allow it. He had decided that if he had to become a decorated doll, a figurine to boost morale, he was prepared to accept his fate. But now even that justification had vanished.
What was this medal? As the military band struck up a loud performance of “Hail to the Faery Air Force,” Lieutenant Amata felt sick.
THE NEWS THAT an alcoholic snowplow driver had been given the Order of Mars was soon all over Faery. As the Maintenance Corps command had anticipated, people became more aware of the importance of the Corps’ duties, including snow removal, but precious few agreed that Lieutenant Amata deserved the medal. Everyone else was baffled as to why he was given it. Some went so far as to tell him straight to his face that it was a mistake. Others would speculate on what kind of stratagem he had pulled to dupe the decorations committee and then would insult him further by saying that they knew he wasn’t capable of something like that.
Amata could only take their scorn in silence. He knew his work meant nothing to almost everyone else, but up until then no one had actually said “You’re garbage” to his face. As soon as he’d been decorated, however, his wretchedness had been exposed for all to see. Everywhere he went, he could hear the murmurs of Why you? and felt even worse as he had no answer to give. He wished they would just stop. He hadn’t wanted the damn thing in the first place.
He tried to drown his indignation in the bottle and drank so much he was practically pickled in alcohol. The Order of Mars had become a golden maggot that ate into his flesh, a sylph that sprang from rotten meat.
He couldn’t give the medal back. He couldn’t throw it away. He couldn’t destroy it. He was trapped on all sides. All he could do was drink and hope the alcohol would eventually sterilize the wound.
Conscious of the weight of the medal hanging around his neck, Lieutenant Amata donned his cold weather gear. “I’m a great man, a hero,” he announced to the empty locker room. “Yahoo. The hero is marching off to war.” Was that dull ache in his side from his liver, or was the medal poking him in the stomach? He staggered a bit as he made his way out.
It was below freezing in the garage. The snow that clung to his grader was white and crystalline. Dazzling light flooded in as the shutter door rose. It was clear weather for a change.
Amata stumbled as he boarded his machine. The other members of his unit saw it but said nothing. It wasn’t unusual for him to go out drunk, and besides, he was a hero, wasn’t he?
The graders rolled out. The bent door on his machine still hadn’t been fixed. He’d banged at it with a hammer, but that had just made the problem worse. The wind outside was strong. Low, dark, roiling clouds moved with ferocious speed across the sky. Shafts of sunlight would occasionally pierce through them to stab at the ground like swords of light. It was even colder now than it had been during the blizzard. The hard-packed snow was tougher to deal with, but Amata almost preferred the relative warmth of the storm. He dazedly watched the patterns formed by the snow as it was whipped about by the wind.
The unit took advantage of the break in the weather to do a large-scale snow removal of the airfield ground facilities. In spaces where the graders couldn’t get in, waves of men were dispatched to do it by hand. It was only at times like these that the snow removal units had help, with every off-duty member of the division mobilized for the job.
Amata stopped his grader in front of the hut that stood next to the elevator egress of the Tactical Air Force’s SAF. He smiled faintly as he took in the scene of the SAF pilots shoveling snow. His teeth chattered as he watched. The cold air blowing in through the gap in the door caused his breath to fog up and obscure every part of the windshield not directly hit by the driver’s seat defroster. He could actually hear the moisture crackle as it froze on the glass.
The grader would plow away the snow shoveled off the elevator head by the men, but until they were finished, he had to wait. He rubbed his face with his gloves. It was so cold it hurt. Hurry up, he thought. I’ve got other work to do. After the next wave of scheduled sorties, he had the takeoff runway to clear.
As Lieutenant Amata sat in the driver’s seat, rubbing at his face and knocking his knees together to keep from freezing, a guy who looked like an SAF officer hand-signaled him to move. The SAF elevator platform was rising to reveal an enormous fighter plane. A Sylphid. Amata pressed down on his parka over the spot where the medal lay hanging against his stomach.
“Would you hurry up and move it?!” yelled the man outside his window. Amata backed his machine away.
The Sylph was towed out. It was an SAF reconnaissance plane. Not just a Sylphid, then. A Super Sylph. The twin vertical stabilizers bore a boomerang insignia. Beneath the cockpit, in a small calligraphic hand, was the plane’s personal name: Yukikaze. A cold-sounding name. But I’ll bet it’s warm inside that cockpit, Amata thought enviously. This was the first time he had seen a Super Sylph from this close up. It was an intimidating aircraft. His motor grader, designed for use on the enormous FAB runways, was the size of a house, but the fighter before him was even larger.
Yukikaze’s jet fuel starter broke the silence as it started up, making a noise like a low siren. The sound explosively increased in volume until it melted into the howl of the right engine turbine revving up. As the fan revolutions rose, the fine snow layer covering the runway was sucked into the air intake, and soon a small vortex of snow, solid as a pillar, bridged the space between the ground and the intake. The characteristic ear-splitting scream of the fan engine diminished as the pilot pulled the throttle to idle. Lieutenant Amata let out the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. Then the pilot started the left engine. The cold air rang again with the low-pitched siren of the jet fuel starter.
After another few minutes the ground crew gave the “go” sign, and the pilot waved his hand in acknowledgment. The grader shook with the roar of Yukikaze’s engines. The thunderous noise rose even higher, and then suddenly, as though pushed from behind, the huge plane moved forward. The exhaust from her engines whipped the snow behind her into a small storm. Amata turned on the grader’s windshield wipers.
Yukikaze taxied out onto the broad runway. Soon she was lifting off from it, her afterburners blowing long tails of flame, and in the blink of an eye she vanished into the thick cloud layer. The thunderous roar of her engines lingered for a moment before it, too, faded into the ringing silence that remained.
Lieutanant Amata couldn’t tell whether his ears felt numb more from the cold or from the sonic assault of the fighter’s start-up. He drank his whiskey, mentally comparing his motor grader to the fighter plane named Yukikaze, then sighed. They shared only one common feature: they both ran on liquid fuel. Aside from that Yukikaze excelled in every way. Loaded with bombs, she would weigh nearly thirty tons. The grader weighed only sixteen. The plane could generate nearly thirty tons of thrust, while he could just about manage 300 horsepower. The fighter was magnificent, while the plow was just lame. The same could probably be said of their operators as well.
“Thanks for the help out here.”
Amata started. Outside the door, the superior officer who had signaled him before was looking up at the grader’s cabin. Amata kicked the door open and looked down.
The man from the SAF had a deep scar on his cheek. His rank insignia indicated that he was a major.
Amata’s throat closed up from the cold. His lungs seemed paralyzed for an instant. The freezing air stung his eyes. He blinked, inhaled even though it hurt to do so, and snapped, “How long are you going to make me wait? Sir…”
“Sorry,” the man replied. “Major Booker from the SAF.” He squinted up at Amata. “You been drinking?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you do your job?”
“Yeah, if you’d let me. If I don’t get to it soon, I won’t have any time to rest up before my next shift.”
“Can you plow the runway straight when you’re sotted?”
Plowing the runway involved several motor graders driving abreast, with rotary plows working on both sides to push the snow collected by the graders off to the side of the runway.
“Don’t worry. A beacon signal keeps the graders driving straight. I don’t even have to hold the wheel. Funny, huh? I don’t even need to be here.” His voice grew tight. “And for that, they made me a hero.”
“So, that’s who you are,” said Major Booker, staring at him. “You’re the famous Lieutenant Amata.”
“None other. What, are you shocked?”
“You reek of alcohol. How fitting for a hero.”
“Yeah,” the lieutenant answered. Then suddenly, he was moved to tears, tears he wasn’t even aware he was shedding. “I can’t help it. It’s all that medal’s fault… It’s cut me off from all my friends. If I keep quiet, they rag on me. If I speak, they resent me. No matter what I do or don’t do, I’m cut off from everyone else. It’s not like I was really close to any of ’em, but they’re all I had. And there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s all—” He choked back the bile that rose in his throat, tasting blood. He tried washing it down with a slug of whiskey, gagged, and spat it outside the cabin. A reddish brown stain spread across the surface of the snow. Guess I really don’t have much longer, he thought.
“Hey, are you okay? That’s blood, isn’t it?”
For some reason, the concern in the major’s voice infuriated Amata.
“It’s none of your business. Even the doctor told me to just do whatever the hell I want to at this point. It’s just, I…I wish I could get that sonuvabitch who gave me that medal.”
“And who is that?”
“I’m a grunt, how the hell would I know?” he wheezed with his frozen breath. “You’re a major in the SAF, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” replied the man, taking his sunglasses from his pocket, obviously getting ready to leave.
“Well, I have a favor to ask,” Amata said desperately. “They say the SAF is so powerful that it’s practically a shadow of the FAF high command. You could find out who awarded me the medal, couldn’t you? Please, Major… I want to get rid of this thing.”
“Even I couldn’t do that.”
“Figures. Forget I even mentioned it. Just order those guys to finish up and move it.” Amata pointed at the ten or so soldiers who were struggling with heavy looking snow shovels. “It’s cold. I’m gonna freeze to death out here.”
“Sure,” the major said, putting his sunglasses on. He paused, then looked up at the cabin and said, “I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t get your hopes up.”
“Then how about hurrying up and giving that order?”
“I was talking about the medal.”
“What?”
Amata switched the grader’s engine from idle to intermittent start mode. The warmed-up engine stopped. It grew quiet. The wind stabbed at his ears. He wasn’t wearing earmuffs, and they ached as though they were going to fall to pieces.
“What did you say?”
“I was talking about your medal. I’m a little interested in it myself. There’s definitely something odd about you being given that decoration. I’d also like to know what the general staff were thinking.”
Amata stared at Major Booker. There was no sign of mockery or jealousy or resentment in his expression. His tone of voice was indifferent. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t sympathizing with him, but he didn’t despise him, either. Amata felt like he’d been saved.
“Please, Major,” he said in a low, shaking voice.
“I’m in the SAF 5th. Boomerang Squadron. Just be aware that I probably won’t be able to unravel this on my own, and I have a feeling FAF military intelligence is going to get involved before it’s over.”
“All I’m asking is for you to try. I’m glad I ran into you, sir.”
“If I learn anything, I’ll let you know. Anyway, you look cold, so shut that door. You’re shaking.”
“Th-Thank you, sir.” It had been so long since he’d spoken those words that he’d nearly forgotten them.
Lieutenant Amata sniffed the mucus running from his nose. It hurt to do it. He wiped it with his glove, and it froze white instantly. He shut the door, stepped on the heavy clutch, and put the machine into gear.
Suddenly, the dead white winter landscape took on the hint of a golden hue. Was it the sunlight? Probably just the jaundice in his eyes. I should wear sunglasses too, he thought. He wasn’t going to give up and die like this. He was going to give that medal back. He’d speak directly to whomever it was, throw the medal in his face, and then deck him. Whatever happened, he had to stay alive until then.
Believing that Major Booker would somehow find out who was responsible for putting him in this living hell, Amata set off in the grader. He had found his one and only ally and felt an immense relief in finally having done so. So long as the major didn’t betray him, he would stay alive.
As usual, the wind was blowing in through the gap at the bottom of the door. Even if he cleared up the thing with the medal, there was probably nothing he could do about that. Amata sniffed and lowered the plow at the front of the grader. It was cold. Spring was still far away. It might never come. The plow tore through the clods of snow, the flakes fluttering through the air like flower petals in bloom.
MAJOR JAMES BOOKER (Tactical Air Force, Tactical Combat Group, Special Air Force) was attached to SAF-V, Boomerang Squadron, the unit said to be the most nihilistic in the entire air force. He himself was laconic, a tough officer, with a physical presence that inspired fear and aversion in most people. But in truth, he was possessed of a moderate nature.
After dismissing the grumbling Boomerang soldiers from their snow removal duty, the major thankfully returned to the warm underground of the base. He removed his fogged-up sunglasses, proceeded to the locker room, and quickly stripped off his cold-weather gear, which was now soaked from the melted snow and ice that had encrusted him during his work. His feet were cold almost beyond endurance.
He thought about Lieutenant Amata. Day in and day out, week after grinding week, the man had to deal with this unrelenting cold. He really does deserve a medal for it, the major thought. But even so, the Order of Mars was an entirely inappropriate decoration. The fact that it had been awarded to Amata was just bizarre.
Booker finished cleaning himself up, got dressed, and returned to his office in the squadron quarters. He had two hours until Rei and Yukikaze returned from their sortie. From the ground, he could do nothing to help them in their fight, aside from praying, as he always did, that they come back alive. Whatever happens, make sure you come back. He thought about Rei’s perpetually cool, calm nature. That expressionless look on his face never changed, no matter what chaos was happening all around him.
The major poured himself a hot cup from the coffee maker and took a sip, deriving a tiny pleasure from the way the cup warmed up his stiff fingers. How would Rei react if he’d been given the medal?
A corner of Booker’s mouth quirked up in a grin. He didn’t even have to ask. Even if he’d been adamant about not wanting it, Rei would have accepted it expressionlessly and then not given it another moment’s thought. Most likely it would have just ended up being used as a paperweight or a coaster, or be lost somewhere in a corner of his room. All Rei cared about was his beloved plane; he was indifferent to almost all other material objects.
And how would the other members of Boomerang Squadron react? Would they change their attitude toward the other pilot? No, he couldn’t see that happening. They were all lone wolves who stayed out of each other’s way.
But that was not what happened to Lieutenant Amata. Booker thought of the tears he’d seen falling from the corners of Amata’s eyes, the signs of a soul that was easily bruised. He was a man endowed with the rich, common humanity you hardly ever saw in Boomerang Squadron. Humans cannot live alone. Amata couldn’t live estranged from his friends.
Rei, however, was different. Impersonal, detached, it was as if he had no need for human contact at all. But Booker found himself instinctively defending the younger man, mainly, he supposed, because he understood where Rei was coming from. Back in the days when he’d been a pilot, he’d been the same. He’d been driven by the same directives, the ones that ruled the lives of all the SAF-V pilots: Even if your comrades are being shot down one by one, you cannot help them. Protect your plane, protect the data you’re carrying, and do whatever it takes to get back alive.
It was a cruel and lonely duty. The only things that stood between you and the possible death that awaited you on every takeoff were your skill, your gut instinct, and the capabilities of your plane. And you never, ever asked yourself whether the data that you gathered was worth the cost of abandoning your basic humanity.
Major Booker drained his coffee cup and then walked out of the room on his still numb and half-frozen legs.
Rei had Yukikaze, but Lieutenant Amata had nothing. Amata had been desperate, practically half-crazed by loneliness and his desire to be with other people. All he could do was drink. If nothing were done, that medal would end up killing him.
Booker knew he was butting in where he shouldn’t, and that he was probably about to create a whole world of trouble for himself, but he had resolved to help Amata. He was also curious to see just how much influence the SAF really had. And it would distract him from the indescribable unease he always felt until Yukikaze’s return. But more than anything else he couldn’t forget Lieutenant Amata’s tears. Booker tried not to involve himself with others, but he felt that ignoring Amata’s plight would mean that he had finally lost the last shreds of his own humanity.
THE FAF’S GENERAL Headquarters was located in the very deepest levels of the underground base. Major Booker took a high-velocity elevator down to the command staff section.
Security was very strict. Anti-explosive and anti-contamination security procedures required him to stop and present his ID at every block. In the end, he couldn’t get down into the command staff section proper. The public relations office on its periphery, which had no direct involvement in strategic or tactical matters, was as far as his clearance level could take him. Which wasn’t surprising. It was a bit of an accomplishment for him to have wandered this far in the first place. Lieutenant Amata wouldn’t even have been able to get on the elevator.
The office was busy. Looks more like a trading firm than a place conducting a war, the major thought. There were people compiling battle results to send back to Earth, others constructing the schedules of analysts and consultants coming to Faery, still others facing computer consoles, monitoring data readouts, talking into headsets, or handling piles of documents.
“Excuse me. I’d like to inquire about a medal.”
Booker addressed the question to a nearby male staffer. He was dressed in a shirt with no jacket and didn’t seem to be part of the group. The man looked up from his copies, eyed Booker, and asked who he was.
“Major Booker, Tactical Air Force, SAF.”
The man didn’t even glance at the ID proffered by the major. He simply shook his head and said, “I can’t take any questions about decorations.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not in my jurisdiction.”
“Where would I go, then? It’s about Lieutenant Amata.”
“Oh, that,” the man replied, shrugging his shoulders. “That makes it even harder. Nobody knows why he got it.”
“I know why,” the major said, putting on his friendliest smile. He’d worked out that this man was a talker. He brought his face closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “It was an SAF screwup.”
Just as the major expected, the guy took the bait.
“Huh?” he said. “According to what I heard, it was some sort of system breakdown. Medal recipients are determined by computer analysis of the data files of all air force personnel, so everyone figured his name must have gotten in there by mistake. But even after they did a full-bore investigation they couldn’t find an error. So it was the SAF, huh?”
“I think it may have been. Is there any way I can meet with a member of the decorations committee?”
“Well, in that case…” the man said as he picked up a headset. He keyed an extension, then briefly explained to whoever was on the other end what Major Booker had said.
“Looks like we can do it. Captain McGuire will meet with you. Just wait a couple of minutes, okay?”
Booker sat down in a chair the man indicated and glanced at his chronometer. Halfway there. Rei, come back in one piece. He was careful not to let the unease he felt show on his face.
Captain McGuire was short, blond, and possessed fine features that suggested those of a Greek statue. He affably shook the major’s hand as they exchanged greetings.
“Are you a member of the decorations committee?” Booker asked him.
“No, I’m not,” the captain replied as they left the office. He lavished his smile on the guards as they walked toward command HQ. “I’m not on it, but I’ll take you to it.”
They entered the command staff headquarters. It was an enormous room, with several levels of glowing screens ringing the perimeter. The interior was divided into three vertical sections, giving it the feel of an enormous theater.
“This is the nerve center of the FAF. This way, please.”
The captain led Major Booker through the maze of control consoles, past the countless men and women sitting before them in their uniforms and headsets. The captain finally led him into a glassed-in booth in one section. Once the door was shut, it was quiet.
“Here’s the decorations committee, Major.” Booker glanced around the small, plain room. There was nothing in it but a computer console.
“You don’t mean—”
“Exactly, Major Booker. The conferring of decorations is processed by the decorations selection computer here in Headquarters. It analyzes the recommendations from every corps and then checks to see if the candidates fulfill the requirements. We don’t have time to do it all by hand.”
“And then what happens after it outputs its decision?”
“The command staff signs off on it and the decoration is awarded. We’ve never had any trouble with it, so the signature is really just a formality. Command doesn’t check everyone on the list individually because we trust the system. If we doubted our systems, we couldn’t run normal military operations for even an instant. But this one time, it looks like the computer made a mistake.”
“What was the cause?”
“Unknown. We’ve checked everything from the hardware to the software. To be honest, the software is so complicated we can’t vet it completely without taking a gross amount of time. We think there might a bug somewhere in the code, but… You said you know what the cause is?”
“The computer may not have made a mistake…”
One of Booker’s specialties was electrical engineering, and he knew from experience that computers would sometimes do things humans didn’t expect them to. A computer’s programming could produce results that were perfectly in accordance with its logical parameters but that might seem unpredictable and incomprehensible to a human. In this case, the situation was even more complex since the computer in question was equipped with artificial intelligence features that provided it with learning and auto-improvement functions, meaning that it could rewrite its own software to make it more advanced and efficient. It might take a human a lifetime to unravel software like that.
“How do you communicate with this thing?” he asked.
“It doesn’t have a vocal speech recognition function, but it does understand plain language. You input via the keyboard.”
“I’d like to try talking to it.”
“Please go ahead,” Captain McGuire replied. “I have work to do, so I’ll leave you to it. Until we meet again, Major. If you discover anything of interest, please call for me.”
“Right.”
Booker pecked at the console keyboard.
Wake up he entered.
State identity came the response. Input rank and unit attachment.
After answering this, the major entered his question.
Tell me the reason for awarding a decoration to Lt. Amata.
There was a second’s delay, then the computer responded Classified.
Why? Is it related to the JAM?
Classified.
The major sighed. Maybe he’d get somewhere if he changed the direction of the questioning.
What are the JAM?
Our enemy.
“Huh,” said the major as he rested his fingers on the keys and reread the display. That was a natural enough answer. Nothing strange about it. Our enemy. Our… He suddenly started forward in his seat.
Who do you mean by “our”?
We who are the enemy of the JAM.
Humans?
There is no direct evidence the JAM perceive humans.
Explain.
There was a short pause.
Meaning of question unclear. Reenter.
His fingers now trembling, Booker typed Who…is…the…enemy…of…the…JAM?
The response came immediately. We are.
Computers? The computers from Earth?
The cursor blinked, then froze. As though the computer were hesitating. Just for an instant. Then the characters scrolled out. The major devoured them as they appeared.
The JAM’s direct enemy is the Faery Air Force.
The JAM cannot recognize humans?
There is no direct evidence the JAM perceive humans.
But there is for computers?
A pause.
Meaning of question unclear. Reenter.
Do you sense the JAM?
Another pause.
Meaning of question unclear. Reenter.
Booker smacked the console, cursing under his breath. “Is this thing playing dumb?” He drummed his fingers on its surface for a moment, then started typing again.
Explain the importance of the snow removal teams to the war with the JAM.
Context disorder. Reenter.
Are the snow removal teams necessary to the war against the JAM?
They are necessary.
The current snow removal operation procedures are inefficient. Do you recognize this?
Recognized.
Describe remedial measures.
Full automation is necessary.
Humans are not necessary?
A pause.
Meaning of question unclear. Reenter.
Are humans necessary for the operation of the FAF?
The major took a deep breath and waited for the reply.
The computer seemed to laugh scornfully at his tension as it output its response.
They are necessary.
Lt. Amata was decorated because he is necessary?
Were the computers giving out medals as rewards to the humans? To keep them happy and quietly obedient?
Booker recalled something Rei had said before: “Why do humans have to fight?” What had he said as an answer? He thought it was something like, “Because wars are started by humans, which means we can’t very well leave them to machines to fight.”
Except that it wasn’t true. The major slowly stood up.
The response on the screen was Classified.
It seemed that the war was between the JAM and the FAF’s computers. The JAM were fighting humanity’s machines, not the people that built them. So where did that leave the humans? Where did that leave him? If the computers said humans weren’t necessary to the battle, would they be excluded from it?
Booker realized his hands were balled into fists and carefully uncurled them. This was bullshit. Maybe this computer really was malfunctioning.
Just as he was leaving the room, the intercom chimed. The major went back inside. “What is it?”
“Yukikaze has been hit,” came Captain McGuire’s voice. “You’re wanted back in SAF command at once.”
“Understood.” The major clicked the intercom off and ran from the GHQ sector.
I don’t believe this, he thought, fighting down the pounding of his heart. It had to happen while I’m fucking around with a computer. Rei, come back alive. That’s an order.
THE SAF COMMAND quarters wasn’t as large as the air force’s General Headquarters, but it was almost as well equipped. As Major Booker entered the combat control room, he immediately looked at the thirty-by-sixty foot main tactical display that extended across the front wall of the chamber. In one of the center screen sectors, red letters spelling out EMERGENCY were blinking on and off.
The major checked Yukikaze’s damage data, which was being transmitted to them by the fighter’s autonomous test system. The hydraulics that powered the lowering and raising of her landing gear, arresting hook, and canopy were damaged. The left engine had been hit and had flamed out, but the fire had been extinguished. Thank God, Booker thought. All he had to do now was pray for a safe emergency landing. Rei would be able to pull this off.
“Close the airfield. Clear the takeoff runway for him.”
“We can’t,” replied a female operator, her voice tense. “They’re plowing the snow on it, Major.”
“Then move them out of the way!” he yelled. “What have you been doing ’til now?!”
Yukikaze was dumping her remaining fuel, making preparations to land.
Dread fisted around his heart. Rei, wait. It’s too soon.
Booker ran out of the command center and headed for the surface. How could this be happening? What the hell were those idiots in the snow removal teams doing? Were they trying to keep Yukikaze from landing?
PAN, PAN, PAN. Snow removal units on Runway 02L, stop all work immediately and move to the side of the runway at once. SAF 5th Squadron Unit B-503 is making an emergency landing. Snow removal units, emergency evacuation. Repeat—
Lieutenant Amata heard them declare a PAN but could not understand the message. He was almost blind drunk. He just muttered “All right, all right,” when he heard the emergency call, and lined his plow up to follow the guidance vector projected on his front windshield. In other words, he kept driving straight on. He could see his coworkers’ units moving away from him. Shit, he thought, you don’t have to hate me that much, do you?
He stomped on the accelerator and took a swig of his whiskey. It didn’t flow into his stomach, though. He vomited it back up. The floor of the cabin was now stained red. In his clouded mind, the lieutenant urged himself on. Gotta keep following the guide mark. C’mon, c’mon! This is my job. He thought he saw a black shadow appear in front of him.
It was the shape on his medal. It seemed to be growing steadily larger. Must be a bird… But would there be birds in this cold? Must be his imagination. Amata kept his eyes on the windshield display and drove the grader straight on.
AT YUKIKAZE’S CONTROLS, Rei couldn’t believe his ears when he heard her collision warning alarm sound. They were on final approach and now, inexplicably, there was an obstacle in front of them. He could see the black dot below him with his naked eyes. A snowplow? What the hell…?
They continued to bleed energy as Yukikaze fell. They’d been flying with her nose pitched up to catch the maximum air resistance across the entire wing, but now it was roughly level with the horizon. Their airspeed had dropped low enough for landing, but that was the main cause of their immediate predicament: they didn’t have enough lift to fly over the obstacle before them on the runway. Should he cut out the direct lift control and use the side force controller to veer to the side? He wasn’t going fast enough for that and didn’t have enough altitude, either. Because he’d dumped their fuel according to the SOP for an emergency landing, he didn’t have enough left for a retry. But if he did nothing, they were going to crash into that machine. Air compressed by ground effect forces blew up fantails of snow below them as Yukikaze rushed onward.
From the backseat, Lieutenant Burgadish noticed the object on the runway and immediately apprehended the problem.
“Lieutenant Fukai, eject.”
“Evading.”
“There’s no time for that.”
“I’m clearing you to punch out. Go.”
“Roger.”
Burgadish yanked down his face curtain handle. The canopy… did not eject. The hydraulics were dead. With his right hand still on the handle, he moved the canopy lever to the OPEN position and pulled the emergency canopy ejection. No good. Next he pulled the manual release handle. This lifted the canopy up slightly, which should have caused it to be blown off by the air pressure, but there was no response. It wouldn’t open.
“Through-canopy bailout!” Burgadish yelled. The only way for them to get out of the plane now was to smash through the canopy itself.
Rei wasn’t even thinking about ejecting. He nudged the direct lift control thumbwheel forward and advanced the throttle. He had to accelerate to gain the lift he’d need to avoid the obstacle. He closed the speed brake. The afterburner wouldn’t ignite; the fuel transfer valve to the afterburner closed automatically once the remaining fuel fell below a certain level. Regardless, he couldn’t expect the afterburner to handle such a sudden acceleration. There was a short pause before he felt a response.
Yukikaze accelerated, nosing down to minimize air resistance, her flaps automatically extending to full down.
“Float, Yukikaze,” Rei urged.
Not even five seconds had passed since he’d first seen the snowplow.
Rei looked at the huge machine in front of them. It was no use. They were going to crash into it. In his mind, Rei could see Yukikaze’s radome smashing into the grader. In another instant, that would be his reality.
He heard a crash as the rear seat smashed through the canopy. Burgadish had done as Rei had ordered, setting the ejection command mode lever so that his seat alone would eject. Rei stayed where he was.
He braced himself for the impact. The little bit of altitude they’d gained wouldn’t be enough. Yukikaze’s fuselage would be gutted like a fish by the top of the grader, and then they would be ripped apart.
He didn’t close his eyes. Just before impact, he thought he could see the face of the man in the driver’s seat… Then the entire cabin vanished.
Rei was certain of what he’d just seen but couldn’t process it: the driver’s cab had turned an incandescent red and then disappeared. The upper half of the grader simply had been erased, like a drawing on a blackboard. Yukikaze’s radome plunged through the now empty space where it had been and flew over the remainder of the machine without any impact at all.
Rei quickly pitched Yukikaze up to kill his speed. She hit the ground hard, tail down, then nose, and skidded along the surface of the snow. They were rapidly approaching the end of the runway. Rei had done all that he could. The only thing left was to hope they stopped before the runway ran out.
Yukikaze finally came to a halt just before going off the runway. Rei twisted around and looked behind him out the broken cockpit.
Black smoke was rising from the remains of the snowplow. He had no idea what had happened, but Yukikaze had landed safely and that was all that was important to him. He checked the instruments for any abnormalities and then, after determining that there was no danger of fire, took out his canopy knife, broke through a forward section of the glass, and got out of there.
AFTER THE ACCIDENT, Major Booker recalled the horrifying sight of Yukikaze heading straight for the huge machine. He had been running across the snow, powerless to stop the imminent catastrophe, when the cold air was split by the sound of an explosion that echoed into the sky.
It was the runway point defense system. The antiaircraft Phalanx guns had activated and thrown nearly a thousand rounds of ammo in a fraction of a second at the grader, blowing off its upper half instantly. Yukikaze passed overhead safely as Booker stood there in shock, a distant corner of his mind grateful that the guy in the grader must have died instantly, never knowing what had hit him.
Later, he learned that the point defense system had automatically fired on the decision of the central defense computer. And that it had been Lieutenant Amata in that grader.
Later still, on reading the accident report, he came across a recommendation in the conclusion section for altering all snow removal operations. When his eyes fell on the phrase “Full automation is necessary,” a cold, sickening sensation crawled down his spine. It was the exact same phrase that the HQ computer had used.
The major couldn’t help reading into this whole incident a veiled threat, a warning that humans should not interfere in the battle between the computers and the JAM. It was probably just paranoia, but on the other hand instincts like this were what had kept him alive until now.
After the accident investigation was over, Booker queried the computer once more as to why it had awarded the medal to Lieutenant Amata.
The computer answered Classified.
But then it went on. Based on his heroic actions, it is recommended that Lt. Amata receive the Distinguished Service Award for his snow removal duties.
Booker tore up the report into confetti and threw it into the air. The pieces fluttered down like snow.
“It looks like the one you should have cursed was the computer, Amata,” he muttered to himself. “What would you have done if you’d known the truth?”
Major Booker himself couldn’t answer that question.
It was winter on Faery. For Lieutenant Amata, spring would never come.