They covered 1,800 kilometers in forty minutes, then performed an in-air refueling before the border of D-zone. The men stayed silent during this as well. The only communication was from Yukikaze’s data link and fuel systems, which were busily exchanging data with the airborne tanker. Rei felt a steadily growing impatience that seemed almost like jealousy. It was as if she was ignoring him, her pilot. He intentionally shook the plane a little during the refueling. Yukikaze issued a warning, and then locked in the automatic attitude control system.
“Yukikaze...”
“Nice,” said Burgadish. “Stays stable even in turbulence.”
Rei frowned. Yukikaze had classified his actions as external turbulence. He recalled Major Booker’s words. She was disregarding her pilot’s will. She possessed her own will now.
“So you’re not always going to do what I tell you to, is that it? Just what are you now?”
“Did you say something?”
For a split second, he thought Burgadish’s voice was Yukikaze’s and felt as though cold water had been dashed in his face.
“No, it’s nothing. Lieutenant, confirm our course.”
“Roger. We can just stay on auto. Another 750 klicks and then we should drop altitude. Once we penetrate Sugar Desert, everything past that point is unknown territory. All we have is data from a few recon planes that have been out there.”
They separated from the tanker and resumed cruising speed.
As they crossed into D-zone their escorts peeled away from them. Yukikaze quickly dove, flying on the deck as they commenced their ultra-low altitude high-velocity penetration. The landscape flowed by the cockpit canopy in a gray blur.
“Here we go. Recheck the bombing system.”
“Roger.”
There was no sign of the JAM. They were only two thousand kilometers from base, and yet this was unknown territory. We know almost nothing about this planet, thought Rei. We don’t even know if this is the JAM’s home world or not. And we know absolutely nothing about them.
And now Rei knew almost nothing about Yukikaze, the one thing he thought he knew best. The one thing he had trusted implicitly.
Yukikaze continued her supersonic incursion, flying on auto toward the TAISP release point. Rei switched the A/G-AS mode from automatic to CDIP.
“Lieutenant?” called out Burgadish. “What are you doing?”
“This is our last flight. I have control.”
“That’s not like you. Leave this to Yukikaze and relax.”
Rei didn’t respond. Sugar Desert drew near, the glaring light of the twin suns reflecting off the sands.
The first target point was indicated on the HUD. The pull-up cue appeared and Yukikaze climbed sharply, as though leaping into the air. Rei guided the plane while watching the fall line on the HUD. The release cue appeared. Keeping his eyes on the pure white sands of the desert, Rei pressed the button. A slight jolt passed through the airframe as the TAISP was fired. They flew level to the second drop point, reaching it in about ten seconds. Rei fired the second pod. Then the third, the fourth, and the fifth.
“Going good. Let’s drop these things and head home.”
“One more left.”
Yukikaze banked into a wide turn. Taking a return course, they headed for the sixth drop point. And then a warning alert sounded.
“What’s up?”
“We’re getting a warning from TAISP-4. Could be the JAM, but maybe it’s an operations test. Our passive radar isn’t picking up anything.”
“Start a bandit search, now.”
“Whoa!”
Yukikaze shuddered. Three small JAM fighters were attacking from directly beneath them, as though they had launched out from under the sea of sand. They may have actually done so, but there was no way for Rei to confirm. Yukikaze went into a high-G turn to shake them off. Rei looked out of the cockpit. He couldn’t see them.
“Lieutenant, evasive action! Break left!”
Almost unconsciously, Rei flipped the V-max switch and engaged the auto-maneuver system. The JAM were too fast for his eyes to follow. He couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see. Yukikaze, however, could see the enemy clearly. She fired highvelocity short-range missiles, but the enemy evaded them.
“Bandits are small assault fighter types. Heads up, they’ve spiked us.”
Yukikaze dodged the enemy missiles with a series of violent maneuvers. Rei and Burgadish both blacked out for several seconds in GLOC.
“We need to bug out of here, Lieutenant,” Burgadish said, huffing in G-strain. When Rei didn’t answer immediately he yelled, “Lieutenant Fukai!”
“Yukikaze is... Looks like she’s ready to fight to the end.” Even if he tried to turn the auto-maneuver system off, Rei knew that it would not disengage.
“God damn it... Yukikaze!”
Rei flashed back to Captain O’Donnell’s death. Is that how I’m going to end up? he wondered. Suddenly, Yukikaze extended her speed brake and an alarm began to blare. The display readout said that a fire had broken out and that they should perform an emergency ejection.
“Bullshit. There’s no fire.”
“What is going on, Lieutenant? Is the central computer — ”
Burgadish’s words were cut off by the explosion of the canopy being jettisoned. Rei felt the vibration of the rocket motor on his ejection seat, and immediately jerked the face curtain handle down to protect himself. A second later, Yukikaze tossed her crew out into the sky.
She pulled a high-G diving turn and went for the JAM. Free from having to consider the safety of any human occupants, she rapidly brought down two of the enemy aircraft in a single highvelocity attack sequence. The third JAM dove for the planet’s surface, as though inviting Yukikaze to follow. Just as she was about to pursue, she seemed to hesitate, then climbed into a turn and withdrew at full power.
Four enemy fighters blasted out from under the sea of sand like missiles. They dropped their external power boosters and tore after Yukikaze. As though expecting this, Yukikaze twisted into a Split S, bringing her nose around to center the enemies in her sight, and then fired. She pulled up a moment before crashing into the ground and resumed her pursuit of the fleeing third JAM fighter.
Rei saw none of this. Hanging in the sky from his parachute, the only signs of the battle that reached him were the dry cough of Yukikaze’s high-velocity gun and the thunderous echo of her engines. The burning floor of the desert rushed up to meet him. He hit the ground, rolled, and detached the parachute. The white canopy bellied in the wind, looking like an enormous jellyfish. Rei decided there was no need to gather it up and bury it since the JAM didn’t care about humans.
He removed his parachute harness and unzipped the large survival kit hanging from its rear straps. He drew out the FAF issue pistol, stowed it away inside his flight vest, and then took out the emergency rations and water supply pack.
He saw Burgadish’s parachute about 200 meters away, flapping in the wind atop a pure white dune that shimmered in the heat, looking like nothing so much as a great wave frozen in mid-fall. Holding the gun at the ready, his helmet visor still down, he walked out under the powerful sunlight to go find his partner.
As he trudged through the sand, he wondered why Yukikaze had cut him loose. He thought that maybe she couldn’t accept the prospect that the TAISPs she’d spent so much trouble deploying would be destroyed by the JAM without ever having been used. That was why it was necessary for her to face the JAM head-on rather than withdraw from them as she usually did. And if she had to face them, then weak humans would just get in the way of what she needed to do to win.
If the situation had been reversed — if Rei had to sacrifice Yukikaze to defeat the JAM — he would have done the same. Since he’d have to say goodbye to Yukikaze in either case, he wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the emergency ejection handle. She had seemingly sensed his will and then executed it.
Rei suddenly felt a humanlike intimacy with her that he’d never experienced before, as th
ough they were two life-forms that existed in the same dimension. She’s a part of me, he decided. A companion who knew how he thought, whom he could rely on...
But was that really the case? Rei knew Major Booker would say that he was being naïve. In ejecting him, Yukikaze had simply removed an element that would be disadvantageous to her while maneuvering. Having a pilot aboard meant that she couldn’t fly as she pleased. Or — and this was a possibility Rei didn’t want to consider — she may have decided that Rei might throw the self-destruct switch for the central computer and auto-maneuver system and had concluded that she had to do what she did in order to protect herself. That was definitely what Major Booker would say. That it was a struggle. A struggle of wills between Yukikaze and her human pilot. Rei decided that he didn’t care about that.
It was hot. Sweat was pouring down his body under the flight suit. Cresting the dune, he spotted Lieutenant Burgadish below. Just as he was raising his hand to signal him, he heard a metallic noise nearby.
A sandstorm was bearing down on them, moving fast. It was the bow shock wave from a JAM fighter, flying supersonic on the deck. An instant after he recognized the black speck as a JAM, the fighter burst into his field of vision, passing between himself and Burgadish. White sand rose up like a wall as the two men were blown back. Rei was hurled into the air like a doll and then slammed back to the ground, pelted by falling sand. Dropping his survival gun, he fumbled at the shoulder of his flight vest to switch on his emergency rescue beacon.
The howl of an approaching aircraft made him instinctively flatten himself against the sand, and an instant later Yukikaze roared past in pursuit of the JAM fighter. She fired in front of Rei. There was the flash of high-velocity missiles being launched. An avalanche of sand crashed down upon him. He lost consciousness.
HE DREAMED OF a pure white desert. He opened his eyes. The whiteness remained.
He felt something wiping his face. A white towel. He brushed the towel aside. The air was cold.
“Are you awake now?” asked a female voice in a crisp, businesslike tone. A nurse. That was Rei’s first thought upon seeing her white face. Her skin was so pale it almost looked blue. Maybe because of the lighting in here, he thought dazedly.
An air conditioner hummed faintly. The room was small and white. Spartan. A hospital, maybe? But this wasn’t the air force hospital at Faery Base. It seemed more like a clinic. Rei felt like a castaway who’d washed up on a lonely South Seas island. There were no windows, but he could imagine there’d be jungle outside, and maybe an old-fashioned electric fan slowly turning on the room’s ceiling.
His thoughts were drifting, fragmented. This sickroom was like something out of a dream, somehow not entirely real. He lay motionless on the hard bed and shut his eyes again, waiting for his body to recover sensation. He was still wearing his boots and flight suit. He could tell that his pockets still contained his map, flashlight, knife, beacon, portable rations, and service pistol. That meant that it hadn’t been long since he’d been rescued. But nonetheless something seemed strange. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was too tired to think clearly.
He took a deep breath and relished the oxygen filling his lungs. The fog in his head gradually cleared. He opened his mouth, the words emerging from his parched throat in a croak.
“Where... Yukikaze...”
“Yukikaze? Oh, your plane. We’re servicing it, Lieutenant.”
“What about... Lieutenant Burgadish?”
“He was badly wounded, I’m afraid...”
“Where are we? A frontline base? Who are you?”
“My name is Marnie. Just wait here a minute. I’ll go get Major Yazawa for you.”
The nurse walked out, to be replaced a few minutes later by a burly, narrow-eyed man wearing a major’s insignia.
“So you’re awake now, are you, Lieutenant?” the man asked, his voice as flat as Marnie’s had been. Rei tried to raise himself up, but the major stopped him. The uniform he wore was definitely that of the FAF’s Tactical Air Force, but the color and the details seemed off. The overall effect gave Rei the uncomfortable impression that he was seeing a vague, hazy image through frosted glass.
Noticing the way that Rei was staring at him, Major Yazawa chuckled. “Were you hit on the head, Lieutenant?”
“Maybe I was,” Rei replied, his tension not at all dissipated by this attempt at humor. He glanced around and saw that his helmet had been placed on a side table near the bed.
“Where am I?”
“TAB-14.”
“TAB-14? Impossible. It was destroyed by the JAM. I saw it happen.”
“The surface facilities are gone, but as you can see, one of the underground sections survived. You guys back at the main base don’t know what it’s been like for us out here.”
“Hm... Is Yukikaze all right?”
“It ran out of fuel and landed at this base.”
“Refuel her. I’m heading back.”
“You can’t. Not in your condition.”
“Can you make contact with Faery Base?”
“No. We still haven’t gotten comm back up and running. They still think we’ve been completely wiped out.”
“That can’t be right. At the least, you could reach one of the nearby tactical bases, couldn’t you? You must have a helicopter or something to get me there.”
“There’s no need. We can take care of this ourselves. We want to service your plane, Lieutenant, and get you on your way, but it won’t let us touch it. It has very ingenious safeguards. If we tamper with them, it will self-destruct.”
Rei touched the gun in his chest pocket. What was this major playing at? Was he trying to cut loose from Central’s command? Was this a mutiny?
“Keep your hands off Yukikaze. That’s my plane.”
“Lieutenant, I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in right now.”
“I shouldn’t have to say this, Major, but I’m attached to the SAF 5th Squadron. I don’t take orders from you.”
“May I remind you that I am a superior officer?”
“You’re not my direct superior. I take orders from Major Booker. His orders were for me to make it back alive, no matter what. Until he rescinds that order, it’s still in effect. I’m sure you’re aware of military regulations.”
“Of course. However, while you are here you will obey me, Lieutenant.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Because otherwise you won’t make it back. If you intend to follow Major Booker’s orders, you’ll obey mine first. Tell me how to deactivate Yukikaze’s safeguards.”
“I refuse.”
“Then you’ll stay here.”
“Is that a threat?”
“All I’m saying is that you should consider your own wellbeing. If you don’t let us service Yukikaze, I don’t think you’re ever going to recover from your injuries, Lieutenant.”
With that, the major left the room. Rei felt like he was still dreaming. He slowly raised himself up and sat on the edge of the bed. After a few minutes, he stood up. He took an unsteady step forward. His balance was shot. The feeling of unreality clung to him. He staggered, then fell to his knees. Marnie reentered the room and, saying it was too soon for him to be up and about, helped him back into bed.
“You people...” Rei said, lying back down. “What are you trying to do? I have to get back.”
Marnie smiled. “We’re just trying to help you, Lieutenant. You should rest for a bit longer.”
Before he could reply, she stabbed a hypodermic syringe into his arm. Just as he was registering the shock of the needle, she quickly withdrew it and looked down at him, her face expressionless. “Good night,” she said. His eyelids grew heavy.
He sank into a world of white.
YUKIKAZE HAD NOT returned. In the SAF control room, Major Booker stared at the wide tactical display screens in disbelief. It had been over three hours since the symbol marking Yukikaze’s position had vanished from them.
/> “Rei...” he muttered. “What’s going on?”
“It seems he completed his mission,” said General Cooley, standing behind him. “It’s possible that he engaged the JAM and was shot down.”
“Requesting the deployment of a search and rescue team.”
“Denied. We don’t have the resources for it right now. Major, I want you to submit your plan for the combat flight test of the FRX00 prototype that was delivered to our squadron.”
“Yukikaze may have set down on a frontline base. Please authorize me to send the FRX out to look for him.”
General Cooley fixed her cold eyes on Booker for a long moment before speaking. “I’ll leave the selection of the flight test course to you.”
She turned to leave. As the click of her heels receded behind him, her voice floated back. “But I doubt you’ll find him. We’ve received no contact from the other bases.”
After she exited the control room, Booker rubbed at his eyes wearily and returned to monitoring the displays.
“I was going to give you the first plane in the new squadron... Rei, what happened out there?”
He gazed pensively at the screens, as though the act of his looking at them would summon Yukikaze’s RTB sign and bring her home. But she didn’t return.
REI FLOATED BACK up out of the white haze. His body felt impossibly heavy. He knew he was awake now, but he still felt like he was in a dream state, still felt the same vague, insistent unease.
Through his body he sensed a kind of low-frequency hum that he couldn’t actually hear. He couldn’t focus his thoughts. He felt cut off from the real world, a sense of unreality enveloping him like some sort of transparent skin. It was as if his body no longer belonged to him.
Lying in bed, his eyes closed, he listened to someone talking outside the room. It seemed like a voice, but he couldn’t understand what it was saying. It was like the buzzing of bees. Maybe it’s a fairy’s voice, he thought groggily. He didn’t think it was a human’s.
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