Yukikaze y-1

by Chohei Kambayashi

  “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, in
cluding 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?