“So,” Lander asked, “what sort of plane do I get to ride in?”
“A Sylphid,” said Colonel Roland.
“Huh,” Lander responded with a faint smile. “That’s a pretty girly sounding name.” He adjusted his sunglasses and brushed back his hair, which he had dyed black from its natural blond. Blond hair, Lander believed, looked too effeminate.
“ANDY LANDER? NEVER heard of him”
Rei paused while eating his lunch and looked at Major Booker, who was seated across from him. Rei had lost at cards the night before and as a penalty had to buy lunch, but the major’s tray was a modest affair, with just a ham sandwich and a Coke.
“Has he ever even flown before? Why do I have to have this joker in my backseat?”
“Are you going to make me spell it out for you?” said Booker, miserably gnawing on his sandwich. “Orders. As in General Cooley’s. And more importantly, it’s the central computer’s orders too. It went through the personnel files and came up with a list of possible candidates for this duty. Oddly enough, they were all in Boomerang Squadron. Well, I suppose it was an obvious result given the kind of man Lander is.”
The major laid a printout of a current affairs magazine article down in front of Rei. Rei picked it up and skimmed it; it was a diatribe about the United States not using American-made goods anymore. He checked the date on the bottom of the page. The article had been written just six months ago. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the dateline had been decades before that.
“He’s like a relic from the last century. An ideological throwback.”
“Well, he’s not alone. Considering how tense the current international situation is, the fact that a transnational organization like the FAF even exists is practically a miracle. It’s too dangerous to let him wander around here for very long because he can use the material he gathers to stir up all sorts of prejudices back on Earth. So where do you quarantine an ultra-nationalist prick on a fact-finding mission? Say, oh, a squadron isolated from the rest of the normal combat units. Get it now?”
“Shit. I’m getting tired of being the ‘special’ in ‘Special Air Force’…”
Rei was already short-tempered because for nearly a week he had been undergoing a battery of psychological analysis tests conducted by a Dr. Halévy of the Air Force Combat Psychology Research Center. Halévy was supposed to be the leading man in the field of combat psychology, but to Rei it was a pretty pointless distinction. When Rei commented how ironic it was that the doctor spent his days talking about air combat theory while remaining perfectly safe underground, Halévy folded his hands and looked grave. “Lieutenant Fukai,” he intoned, “I’m fighting, too.” I’d like to see you fight off a missile with theory, Rei thought sourly. On the battlefield, theory and abstract analysis were useless. Why couldn’t anyone not on the front line understand that?
He shook his head and went back to eating his lunch of fried rice and meat loaf.
“Go to General Cooley. Your preflight briefing is at 1440.” The major got up from his chair.
“Yes, sir. This isn’t because I lost at poker, is it?”
Booker gave him a look. “And no matter what Lander asks you, you keep quiet. This is just a simple sightseeing flight.”
Rei shrugged. Then something occurred to him. “Hey, Jack?
Are those sunglasses Ray-Bans?”
Booker picked up his tray. “Nope. Nikons.” Then, a smile playing across his lips, he left the cafeteria.
AFTER A SHORT briefing, Rei boarded Yukikaze. He continued performing the preflight checks on the elevator up from the underground hangar and felt himself calming a little. Having to give a biased journalist from Earth his own personal little flight tour stuck in his craw, but he knew he’d feel better once they were in the air.
After he emerged onto the planet’s surface, a car approached from the side of the shade port and pulled alongside Yukikaze. General Cooley and a man got out. Andy Lander. Lander jovially waved at him. Rei answered with a slight nod. What did this guy come here to investigate? he wondered. Just going by Lander’s looks, Rei guessed he was after material to argue that Earth had to be protected with American-made weapons or something.
Lander was built like a wrestler; the flight suit he wore was ill-fitting and did not favor him at all. Major Booker deftly inspected Lander’s suit, then helped him aboard Yukikaze, fastening his shoulder harness and connecting his anti-G hoses.
Engine start. First the right, then the left.
“Take it away, Captain,” said Lander.
“We’ve got ideal weather for a sightseeing flight,” replied Rei.
Emergency generator test. Data link power display control power, on. Head-up display, activated. Flight control check via the indicators. Display, flight computer, check.
Once the check of authority was complete, they taxied onto the runway. The wind was strong, so Rei set the canopy control to BOOST. It lowered hydraulically and locked.
He called the tower for clearance to take off. Clearance granted. Throttle to military power. They began to climb. Rotation. Landing gear up. Flaps up. Hydraulic system set to flight mode, cutting the hydraulic supply from the landing gear and non-flight steering system. Reconfirm flight instruments. All systems normal.
Informing Lander that they would be climbing quickly, he moved the throttle to MAX. The afterburners kicked in and the thrust increased dramatically. Armed with just four shortrange missiles and a gun, unencumbered by additional tanks or equipment, the agile Sylph could climb nearly vertically. Still, he shouldn’t overdo it. Lander groaned. With a sigh, Rei brought them back to level flight. He performed a loose turn onto their flight path, a square of about 250 kilometers per side that would bring them back to their starting point.
“I heard that Faery’s sun is a binary star,” Lander said as he operated a camcorder, “but I can only see one. Just the main star. Wait, I see it. The companion star is that shadow, right?”
“You’ve got good eyes.”
“The camera’s digital viewfinder is picking it up. Can you fly steady like this for a bit without any maneuvering, please?”
Rei didn’t mind that Lander said this with the tone of a hunter ordering his guide. He couldn’t bring himself to be irritated by someone who he didn’t care if he lived or died.
It was quiet for a while.
Then, perhaps bored with shooting his video, Lander began asking all sorts of questions. Where was Rei from? Had he been on Faery long? What did he plan to do when he returned to his native country?
Rei gave suitable, innocuous answers, but when Lander asked him, “Why do you fly?” he was stumped.
“To kill the JAM,” he said finally, after buying some time with the excuse that he had to confirm their heading.
“That’s just the result of your actions, not the cause,” Lander replied. And with that, he’d crudely and unknowingly cut to the heart of the doubt that had been tormenting Rei. Rei tried to ignore him, but Lander continued, unheeding. “You must have a more concrete reason for fighting than that. For Earth, for your country, for your lover, for money, to get back alive, and so on. What are you thinking of when you’re in combat?”
At least that question was simple to answer.
“Nothing,” Rei said. “I don’t think about anything. I’m blank. Here, I’ll give you a taste of what it’s like.”
He gripped the side stick, cutting off the autopilot, and did some subtle footwork. Yukikaze snapped into a turn, executing a series of continuous barrel rolls. Returning to level flight, he performed a four-point roll in the other direction. They rose up vertical to the horizon, then were completely inverted, then vertical again, and finally back to normal. A steep climb that led into a loop. He performed several small, high-G loops, drawing Q-shapes in the sky. He pulled them into one final steep turn, and then they were back on course.
“How’d that feel, sir?” Rei asked.
There was a pause before Lander answered. “A man always h
as to be ready for surprise attacks. I was careless. Even though I half-anticipated it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lander kept his mouth shut, and Rei was relieved to have been freed from his annoying questions. Now he and Yukikaze could become one in the silence. Maybe that’s the reason I fly, he thought.
The clear sky was dazzling and lonely. A three-ship formation, most likely flying a CAP, overflew Yukikaze high above. From this distance the planes almost seemed translucent, like they were made of glass.
As he stared at the beautiful sight, a warning tone brought him back. The passive airspace radar was getting a reaction. He output the data onto the multidisplay and frowned, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The radar was showing an enormous wall about a hundred kilometers ahead of them. It was like a tsunami. Rei lifted his head and looked out of the cockpit, but all he could see was the quiet scene of Faery’s primeval forest and the sky.
He couldn’t confirm the existence of the wall with the standard radar system either. It reflected no electromagnetic radiation. What the hell was this?
The passive airspace radar was a detection system that had been developed to counter the various methods JAM fighters used to mask themselves while attacking. Because it utilized a type of cryogenically cooled visual sensor with an ultra-high receptivity, it had been nicknamed “Frozen Eye.” No matter how an enemy craft might hide itself electromagnetically or optically, as long as it displaced air it could be detected. The system gave the SAF pilots an ability to find and kill the enemy that was so accurate it seemed almost instinctive. And now that same system was telling Rei that something monstrous was before him.
Was it a JAM force? It seemed way too big to be that. It was almost like a massive disturbance of the airspace. The bright horizontal line on the display was drawing closer fast.
The AVOID cue appeared on his HUD. If he did nothing, Yukikaze would automatically maneuver to evade the obstacle when they got too close to it. But Rei didn’t wait for that. He pulled the plane back into a high-G Immelman loop, reversing their direction.
The line on the display bowed inward, seeming to wrap around Yukikaze. Rei didn’t know what was going on, but he understood that they’d fallen into some sort of trap. The line on the display was now closing into a circle. Aiming for the rapidly disappearing gap, Yukikaze accelerated.
She didn’t make it. The circle closed and its diameter began to quickly contract. It fell inward upon Yukikaze, as though intent on swallowing her.
“Brace for impact!” Rei yelled automatically, although the scene outside the cockpit still betrayed nothing out of the ordinary.
The impact, when it came, was like flying into a wall of iron. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t see. A gray haze was obscuring his vision. Must have messed up my eyes, he thought, disoriented from the shock.
He reflexively checked his instruments. Both engines had stalled. The turbine intake temperature read 560°C, only a little below normal. The auto-restart system should have activated after ten seconds, but it didn’t. Rei pushed the airstart button. No response. Had he accidentally pulled the throttle back during the impact? No, he hadn’t. Then had the engines themselves been damaged? He checked the tachometer. It was dropping precipitously. If it fell to 8 percent RPM, the engines wouldn’t be able to supply power or hydraulic pressure. He had to raise his airspeed and force the turbines to spin faster.
Confirm rate of descent and airspeed. confirm sufficient altitude. Canopy defogger switch, ON. He thought maybe the canopy had become clouded, but as they fell, the haze cleared a bit. The sky had been cloudless just moments before. What the hell is going on here? Rei wondered.
A strange panorama spread out before his eyes. The world looked colorless, like a black-and-white photo. The terrain swirled below them as though it were the surface of Jupiter. He could see parts that looked like trees, and others that looked like deserts or the ocean. Where the hell are we?
Lander was stirring in the backseat. “What… We were just flying, weren’t we, Lieutenant?” He had apparently lost consciousness. “My ears… They hurt.”
“It’s Flier’s Ear.”
“What?”
“Otitic barotrauma. Inner ear damage caused by a sudden change in air pressure.”
“You did that on purpose! Why—” Lander suddenly paused. “Hey, am I wrong, or are the engines stopped?”
“I can’t restart them.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have time to figure that out.”
Rei began searching for terrain that would allow for an emergency landing. He switched the radar to ground mode, real beam ground mapping, but the only thing that came on the display was a strangely fixed image. It looked like the transmitter was off-line.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something that looked manmade. He banked into a slow turn to get a better look. It was a long and narrow construction without any crosscuts. A runway. It had to be. Even if it wasn’t, he was going to use it as one, because otherwise he would have to abandon Yukikaze, and he didn’t want to even think about that.
All he could get over the comm system was static. He set the radar altimeter but didn’t think he could trust it. If these weren’t the skies of Faery, he couldn’t be sure of his barometric altimeter, either.
“Mister Lander, do you think you can measure our altitude with that video camera’s range finder?”
“Huh?”
“Quickly.”
“No good, it’s broken. Wait a minute, I’ve got some digital binoculars with me. Let me try it with those.”
Rei inverted Yukikaze.
“Measure in a straight line below us.”
Their rate of descent was increasing. That was the only data he could determine for sure. Rei didn’t know what the linear proportion was between his barometric altimeter and his actual change in altitude, but he could combine them with Lander’s reading for a rough estimate and then reset his altimeter.
He was over the flat expanse that looked like a runway. He executed a wide turn, correcting his attitude, and once again put them on the virtual approach line.
“We’re landing.”
Gear down. Air brakes opened slightly to regulate their speed. Forty-degree bank angle as they turned and descended. While describing a semicircle, Yukikaze’s altitude dropped by a sixth, then a quarter, then to half of what it was. Their altitude was now 700 meters. He had a good line of sight now.
Final approach. Flaps down. Pitch regulated. Glide slope, three degrees. Rate of descent, twenty-six meters per minute. A little high. Yukikaze’s nose floated up due to the ground effect, which felt a little weaker than normal. Touchdown.
The ground rushing by them at 185 kph was a grayish light brown. Rei stomped on the toe brake, nervous that they might hit a rock and cripple themselves. They were approaching the edge of the runway.
When they finally came to a stop Rei was surprised to see that there was still plenty of runway left. He must have underestimated its size from the air. He was relieved that their landing had still been successful, despite his misjudgment.
They were surrounded by what seemed to be a forest the color of seaweed. So who had cut this runway out of it? He couldn’t see any hangar facilities. Maybe it was for super heavyweight planes to land and take off from. If so, the enormous size of the runway implied that these phantom planes would be similarly huge. Since there was only one runway, did that mean there was little wind here, or that the wind direction didn’t vary? Maybe they used both the length and width of the wide surface? Or maybe this wasn’t a runway at all…
“This is a major scoop!” Lander exclaimed. “Who’d believe there was someplace like this on Faery?”
“I don’t think this is Faery.”
“Very funny. You don’t have to hide it. It’s possible you didn’t even know about it. I’ll bet it’s a top-secret area.”
Arguing with Lander wasn’t going to improve their s
ituation, so Rei dropped it and began testing the electronics.
The master caution light was lit, but aside from that, the other system failure warning indicators remained off. The built-in test system itself was also malfunctioning. Most of the highlevel electrical systems were off-line. The multiply protected flight control system was barely operational. Luckily, it had still worked well enough to allow him to land the plane; if it had failed too, he wouldn’t have been able to maintain controlled flight for even an instant.
He switched the jet fuel starter to ON and pulled the starter handle. It worked.
The connection to the starboard engine’s hydraulic accumulator was intact, and the turbines slowly began to spin. Once the engine got past 8 percent RPM, fuel would flow into it and the autoignition would spark… Negative ignition. Rei killed the JFS.
The fuel wasn’t flowing. There were no abnormalities detected in the fuel boost pump, and even if the emergency boost pump had been destroyed, it would still be possible to do fuel transfer via gravity. But if the electronic engine controller was keeping the fuel shut-off valve closed, then—
“Why don’t we get out and look around?” said Lander.
Rei sighed and checked the altimeter and external thermometer. Even taking Lander’s measurement error into account, the atmospheric pressure altitude variance showed that it wasn’t all that different from Faery’s. The temperature was 13°C.
Steeling himself, Rei moved the canopy control to OPEN. Lander loosened his harness on his own and climbed out of the cockpit onto the boarding step on the right side of the plane.
“Lieutenant, can you extend the ladder?”
Rei shook his head. The boarding ladder could be extended from the plane only by operating the control handle in the ladder door.
Lander bent down, took hold of the handgrip, and swung himself down to the ground.
Rei stayed aboard Yukikaze, searching in vain for the cause of the problem. He had twenty minutes of electricity left from the auxiliary power unit. He couldn’t make contact with the base, either. The twenty minutes were soon up.
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