“If you are making any accusations against this court, we are more than ready to address them.”
“We have no objections,” General Cooley said smoothly, rising to get Rei under control. “The lieutenant is currently in an emotionally unstable state.”
“Lieutenant Fukai, if you would please sign here of your own will and volition, we can end these proceedings.”
Although he wasn’t satisfied, Rei decided he’d rather not deal with any more of this annoying bullshit and signed the document they handed him.
“Court is adjourned,” the judge declared.
The general told him to come to her office, wherein she proceeded to chew him out for his behavior.
“I told you to say as little as possible, and you go and say that to them?!” She paused in mid-rant. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“I did tell you that, didn’t I?”
“But, General, why didn’t they make an onsite inspection?
It’s not that far away. If they found a piece, just one piece of that plane, it’d prove that I was innocent — ”
“Shut up at once,” the general said in a tone of voice that was low but oddly charged with emotion. “It doesn’t concern you, Lieutenant Fukai. As of today, you are a first lieutenant. You may go now and resume your current duties. Any questions?”
“None,” he replied, and saluted.
WITH ONE DAY to go until the big show, they had completed thirty-six dolls. The birth of ghost soldiers, all in uniform. The robots had been brought from the factory to the maintenance floor for a test run. Major Booker attached a wireless mike to his breast to transmit his commands.
The Boomerang Squadron stood, or slouched, inside the glassed-in briefing room. Most of them regarded this strange corps without any expression, although some wore faint smiles. Rei walked along the standing ranks of the dolls, pushing the main power switch on the nape of their necks, and couldn’t help shuddering at the coldness of their skin as he did so.
“Salute!” the major ordered. The dolls obeyed.
This was met with applause, laughter, and catcalls.
“Controlling these guys is kinda hard... Column, right! Forward, march! Boomerang Squadron, how about showing some gratitude for our replacements?”
The dolls were taken up on the huge elevator to the surface, where they were bathed in sunlight for the first time.
Rei came along as well. The dolls marched out toward the side of the receiving hangar at the base of the runway. And then one fell. Its arms and legs continued their marching motion even after it had fallen. The dolls coming up behind it began to fall as well.
“No, no, no! Shit! All units, halt!”
Upon the major’s order, the chaos instantly ceased. Booker sighed and then sat down on a toolbox.
“Looks like we’ll have to cancel the march.”
Rei, who had watched all this without a word, let out a sigh as painful as the major’s.
“This world really is incomprehensible.”
“Did you say something?”
Rei shrugged his shoulders as he leaned against a power supply truck.
“I’m talking about the hearing. I just don’t get the general’s attitude. And I don’t get why she’s on my ass all the time.”
“It may not have been a Sylph or a JAM. I saw the pictures taken by your gun camera too, and although it looked like a Sylph, I can’t say for sure if it was one or not.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rei, still brooding.
“It’s possible it could have been a trespasser from Earth. A unit that entered the Passageway in violation of international law.”
“Why would they do that? What could they possibly be after in this place?”
“Look at this green land, this sweet air. If an Earth nation sent a spy plane, they couldn’t exactly complain about it being shot down. If it became public knowledge they’d have to face international censure. On the other hand, Faery isn’t a sovereign state, so if we make noise about shooting down a plane from Earth it would cause big trouble for us as well. We don’t know what the truth is. It probably was the JAM. You should just forget about it.”
“I don’t understand at all.”
“Don’t worry about it. Gimme a hand here. We need to get these dummies back up again.”
“Sure. The thing is, this scar on my forehead from shooting down that unknown hasn’t gone away. And my partner is dead.”
“How about this scar on my cheek? And everyone has to die sometime.”
THE FAF METEOROLOGICAL Corps had forecast that the weather would worsen soon but should hold out for the ceremony. The guest of honor came through the Passageway and arrived at Faery Base. The sudden change of environment was probably hard on his old body, but the commandant was known for his love of pomp and circumstance and wasn’t about to let it get the better of him.
Since Rei and Major Booker were in charge of preparations for the ceremony, they excused themselves from attendance and headed for the grassy field by the receiving hangar on the surface. Rei brought a portable broadcast monitor with him while Booker carried his hobby boomerang. The grass was soft and the air was warm. If you excused the lack of a blue sky, it was as perfect holiday weather as you could ask for. After dozing off for a bit, Rei was awakened by the major.
“What?”
“It’s about to start. Turn on the monitor.”
“What...? Oh!” Rei sat up.
The ceremony was apparently being held in the plaza near the control tower, far away from the field they were sitting in. The runway was huge. As they turned on the monitor, a recording of a military band playing the FAF march blared from it.
“Looks like a long opening act has just finished. Okay then, now the review is starting.”
The commandant of the Japanese air force walked out to the ghost troops, accompanied by a single Faery Air Force commissioned officer. He was a bantam of a man, walking with his chest puffed out, but did possess a certain dignity.
“Okay, if this works, it all will have been worth it.”
“Jack, that officer...”
“Who else would do it? It’s the least she could do. It’s her responsibility, after all.”
They heard voices now.
“You’re doing a fine job,” said the commandant to one of the dolls.
“Yes, Your Excellency. It’s an honor, sir,” replied the soldier.
“So, where are you from?”
“Yes, Your Excellency. It’s an honor, sir.”
White text was crawling along the bottom of the screen now.
This is a message from Faery Air Force TV service, with an explanation from Boomerang Squadron. These dolls can only say “Yes, Your Excellency. It’s an honor, sir.” This is a message from the Faery Air Force TV service...
“Who the hell did that?!” yelled Major Booker, leaning forward. But he soon relaxed. “Oh, well. Not my problem.”
They cut to a close-up of the commandant’s grave face.
“Truly remarkable!” he said. “Not a quiver from them!”
This prompted a laugh from the major.
“Present arms!” General Cooley called out.
The robot soldiers raised their rifles and presented them. At which point there was a motion in the rear. The view switched to a wide shot. Both arms, still tightly holding a rifle, had fallen off of a doll.
It looks like one of them was imperfectly adjusted. Fortunately, it wasn’t in the front row. This is the FAF TV service...
“Damn right it’s lucky,” said Rei.
Major Booker snorted a laugh.
“What’s that, General?” asked the visitor.
“Sir? Oh, that’s one of our Sylphids, which we’re quite proud of,” said General Cooley nonchalantly as she led the commandant away from the dolls. There was the sound of aircraft overhead. Rei looked up at the sky to see five drones flying by in a 5-Card formation.
Please enjoy this high-quality flight by ou
r target training drones. They feature a turbo-prop power source with variable-pitch propellers. Naturally, they are all radio-controlled. This is the FAF TV service...
With a completely straight face, General Cooley began to describe the various abilities of the real Sylphid to their guest.
“Hm, mm, mm!” he said. “I’d like a few of those planes for my air force, too!”
The formation executed a perfect 5-Card loop.
Major Booker burst out laughing.
“Why... Why aren’t you laughing, Rei? Look, even the general’s smiling!”
“It’s not funny.”
“You need more calcium in your diet.”
“Would you just stop?!”
Rei suddenly snatched the boomerang from the major’s hands and stood up. Booker reflexively scrambled into a crouch, his knife out at the ready. But after a split second he shook his head, looking embarrassed. He lowered the knife and straightened up, stretching out his back.
The boomerang shook in Rei’s hand. He was enraged.
“A boomerang is a weapon! It doesn’t need to come back!”
He threw it at the monitor. It bounced off without breaking the screen. He sat down hard, arms clasping his knees as his whole body trembled.
“Rei...”
“I feel like I’m as blind as that commandant. I mean, what the hell are the JAM? We hit them and hit them and they still keep coming... Why don’t they just finish us off ? What are we even doing here? Why are we...”
“You’ll have plenty of time to think about that,” Major Booker said as he picked up the boomerang and lovingly brushed it off. “As long as you stay alive.”
“I’ve been on leave too long,” said Rei. “Way too long...”
REI RETURNED TO regular duty early the next morning. He entered the squadron briefing room wearing his flight suit. Prior to getting the details of the mission operation, he skimmed the general outline. Mission number, conditions for returning to base, Yukikaze’s duties, comm frequency and channel, call sign, nav support, weather and visibility, onboard armaments...
Once the meeting was over, it was time to complete the preflight preparations on Yukikaze. Wearing his G-suit and accompanied by his new EWO, he inspected Yukikaze’s fuselage. They boarded and checked the ejection seats and the interior systems, then went down the rest of the seemingly endless checklist.
After ascending the elevator to the surface they carried out the final check of authority. Canopy, down. Engine master switch, ON. Engine start. The engine revs climbed. Throttle open. Ignition. More checks to do as they idled. Adjustments made. Outside, it was raining.
“Good luck.” Major Booker disconnected the comm jack from the plane’s fuselage.
Parking break, off. Rei taxied out onto the runway. As he released the brake, the oleo strut extended. In an instant, the engines hit MAX afterburner and Yukikaze shot forward like a bullet. Nozzles, full open. Takeoff. Up above was clear, as always. The Bloody Road was bleached of color by the dawn light as Yukikaze rendezvoused with 1st Squadron.
When the AWACS plane informed them of the enemy fighter position, 1st Squadron lit their afterburners and streaked off after their quarry. Yukikaze flew in a large circle at the edge of the combat airspace.
“Enemy units,” the EWO warned. “Bearing ten o’clock. Low altitude, high speed and closing.”
Rei set the radar to downlook mode and searched for them. There were eight blips on the display. A formation of eight planes. The computer scrolled out the enemy target data: speed, altitude, acceleration, approach vector, threat level —
“They don’t have any long-range missiles,” said Rei.
“Should we attack?”
“Prepare for air-to-air combat.”
The EWO looked for signs of any electronic countermeasures or any counter-ECM activity while Rei checked the stores control panel. RDY GUN, RDY AAMIII-4, RDY AAMV-4, RDY AAMVII-6. All antiaircraft ordnance was loaded.
“Enemy units are starting to climb,” came the word from the backseat.
An H-shaped mark appeared on the HUD. “Type-1s in firing range. Bandits number eight, range two-five-zero, head-on and closing.”
The pulse Doppler radar acquired the fast-moving JAM. Rei looked outside. The planes weren’t in visual range yet. He pushed the missile release button on the side stick, signaling the fire control computer that it was free to attack. The FCC made its judgment and released all six long-range missiles at once. A vibration shuddered through the airframe, and then thin vapor trails stretched out toward the enemy Rei could not see. A fairy can see them though, he thought suddenly.
The numbers on the HUD were rapidly running down. Missiles would arrive in... three... two... one... zero.
“Direct hits: four. Unclear: two. Three enemy units closing at high speed. They’re breaking into two groups and preparing to attack.”
Sensing the radar waves of enemy missile guidance, the warning receiver trilled an alert. Yukikaze jettisoned its external fuel tanks.
II
NEVER QUESTION
THE VALUE OF A KNIGHT
He didn’t believe Earth was something worth risking his life to protect. When others, especially those who felt passionate about its defense, would discover this, they would usually accuse him of possessing exactly the kind of negative attitude that would lead to the planet’s destruction. To which he would simply reply, “So what?”
EARTH HAD BEEN fighting the JAM for thirty long years. Rei Fukai couldn’t imagine a reality without them. The war had already begun by the time he was born, and he had been raised in a world where the existence of the Earth Defense Force was a mundane fact of life. So much so, in fact, that back then he never seriously thought about the war itself, nor wondered about its origins or its significance. Since the battle was being fought not on Earth, but on the planet Faery, the staging ground for the JAM’s attempted invasion, and since the JAM’s military might was not far superior to that of humanity’s, it hadn’t affected his day-to-day life in any significant manner. And so he’d had no reason to consider it.
Now, Rei was a soldier. He had passed through the enormous, white, spindle-shaped cloud at the South Pole that enveloped the hyperspace corridor connecting Earth to Faery and had arrived at the front lines of battle. But despite this, despite having experienced the war with the JAM firsthand, and despite having access to reams of uncensored information about it, the news reports he’d see piped back from Earth somehow still didn’t seem real to him.
The JAM existed; therefore, they were at war with the JAM. He had never once asked himself about the necessity of the fight. The enemy didn’t allow the luxury of such questions.
Upon returning from a mission and going off duty, Rei would usually go by himself to a bar in the red-light district and drink. He spoke to nobody and nobody spoke to him. He would silently tilt his glass of beer and think about the next mission and about Yukikaze. No one had ever asked him why he fought. He fought because the enemy was there. Even if the question went unasked, that was the answer. But one day Rei met a man who said that that wasn’t the answer. A man who said, “What we need to fight the JAM isn’t humans. It’s machines.”
“HUMANS AREN’T NECESSARY,” said the man next to him. Rei had been standing alone at the bar, drinking a dark beer. The place was packed with off-duty officers.
“Right?” the man continued, looking for agreement. “You’re a fighter pilot, aren’t you? You’ve got that look to you.”
“Tactical Air Group, Faery Base Tactical Airwing, Special Air Force 5th Squadron.”
“A Super Sylph driver, huh? A member of the famed Boomerang Squadron. Those are some top-of-the-line planes you boys have there.”
The man introduced himself as Colonel Karl Guneau from the Systems Corps’ Technology Development Center. He held out his hand, then withdrew it after a few moments when Rei made no move to take it.
“I see Boomerang pilots are as sociable as the rumors say,” Colonel Guneau l
aughed. “I guess you win, Lieutenant...?”
“Rei Fukai.”
“Lieutenant Fukai, what I’m referring to is the Flip Knight, a new air-superiority dogfight RPV — a remotely piloted vehicle — that my team has developed. As advanced as it is, even the SAF’s Super Sylph can never achieve its full potential as long as it’s carrying a human pilot who’s as fragile as an egg. A Sylph could never beat a Knight.”
“Meaning your Knights would kill our queens?”
“Well, I was just thinking how I’d like to take it up for an operations flight test... It could be quite something.” The colonel held a glass in his left hand and gestured with the cigar in his right as he cheerfully went on. “Maybe you’d be interested?”
“The Systems Corps has its own flight test center. If that’s not enough for you, you can try and get the Tactical Air Group’s training wing to cooperate. The 5th is a combat fighter squadron. It would make no sense for us to be involved.”
“It makes perfect sense,” said the colonel with a smile. “The knight has thrown down his glove. It’s a challenge to duel.”
Rei drained his beer mug and then, ignoring the colonel, left the bar. Guneau’s loud laughter followed him out into the busy street.
The residential and pleasure districts of Faery Base sprawled across the bottom of the vast underground space that contained them. They constituted a small city unto themselves, one that offered everything its inhabitants might want, from bars to banks to houses of worship of every denomination. A city where one could turn a corner and find oneself in what appeared to be an entirely foreign culture.
Rei did not avail himself of anything the city had to offer, and instead climbed into a small common-use electric vehicle and returned to his quarters in the TCG 1666th barracks #303. The tumult of the city did not reach him here. A duel, he thought. Ridiculous.
WHEN REI AWOKE the next morning, he’d forgotten all about the colonel. He wasn’t scheduled for any sorties and the thought of a solid day of nothing but deskwork had put him in a bad mood.
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