Good Luck, Yukikaze

by Chohei Kambayashi

  “Okay, Yukikaze. You can take off once I’m out of here.”

  Weapons master arm switch set to ON. The onboard arms display came on. All weapons were free to use. Yanking the headset cord from its onboard jack, the major climbed down from Yukikaze’s cockpit. Once on the ground, he plugged it back in to a jack on her body and informed the tactical computer back in HQ that all of Yukikaze’s preflight checks had been completed.

  Faery base’s runway control computer issued the order for Yukikaze to take off. He could tell this from the sudden increase of noise from the engines. He pulled the headset’s pin from the jack, a small panel door closing over it. The canopy automatically lowered and locked.

  Major Booker quickly moved away from Yukikaze, running back to where Rei sat. When he turned back, panting, Yukikaze had already moved out onto the taxiway.

  “Look, Rei,” the major said. “You should be riding in there. Yukikaze’s taking off without you. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  The noise of the engine was distant. Yukikaze looked small on the end of the runway. Then, just as soon as you’d noticed that the engine roar had increased, she was tearing savagely down the runway.

  She trembled like a wild animal showing its antipathy for being grounded. Then, as if thrusting her rage at the earth beneath her, suddenly she was in the air. Quickly retracting her landing gear, Yukikaze initiated a combat climb.

  Major Booker had seen all of this. It was summer at Faery base, with thick clouds hanging overhead. Yukikaze vanished into the cloudbank, leaving only the roar of her mighty engines echoing into the sky.

  “Major? Major Booker?”

  One of the nurses was calling him. When he turned, Rei’s eyes were open, but his gaze was not in the direction of Yukikaze.

  He knows, Major Booker thought fiercely. Rei knows. Once the sound of Yukikaze’s engines had faded, Rei closed his eyes again. But this was a good sign. The major was sure of it.

  “We’re going down. To the command center,” he said. “Come on, Rei. Let’s see how Yukikaze fights.”

  Major Booker indicated to the nurses to follow, and together with Rei he descended back underground, headed for the SAF command center where Yukikaze’s flight status was being monitored.

  4

  AT TAB-15, THE the FAF’s tactical air base closest to the front, multiple fighter squadrons were scrambling into the air.

  The main attack force consisted of the twelve planes of TAB-15’s 505th Tactical Fighter Squadron, flying Sylphid fighters. They were equipped with a minimum air-to-air weaponry loadout consisting of the plane’s gun and four short-range missiles so that they could carry four large air-to-ground missiles as well. Charged with covering the 505th strike team was the 515th assault group, consisting of seventeen Fand IIs.

  Confirming his course, 505th team leader First Lieutenant Gavin Mayle headed straight for the JAM base. The team broke into four groups of three planes each. Normally, they’d fly in one formation, but lately they’d lost three planes, one after another. Their best pilot had been Lieutenant Yagashira. Lieutenant Mayle recognized his skill, but at the same time he felt a bit relieved when Yagashira was transferred out of the unit. The realization of this came to him in a flash as he checked the planes flying to his left and right and thought how Yagashira wasn’t in either of them.

  Lieutenant Yagashira was the type of man who tried to fight the JAM single-handed. He was a troublemaker. He was just perfect for the SAF. They’d been the ones who yanked him out of his unit. Well, Lieutenant Mayle thought, I owe the SAF thanks. The guy didn’t understand how to fight as part of a team, or maybe it was just that he didn’t want to understand. You could put it in a favorable light by saying that, in a touch-and-go battle, Lieutenant Yagashira was the kind of guy who did everything he could to fly his plane to protect himself. The problem was that there was a part of Yagashira that liked those touch-and-go battles. There were times that his antics endangered not only the formation but the entire strike group. Nobody in the group wanted to fly with him, no matter how good a Sylph driver the guy was.

  Normally, a pilot like that would be reassuring to fly with. When your plane gets into trouble, you’d expect him to come swooping in to cover you. And it was true that Lieutenant Yagashira would do that when the occasion arose. On the other hand, thought Lieutenant Mayle, it was also true that Yagashira was the cause of that trouble on many of those occasions. As far as Lieutenant Yagashira was concerned, he was attacking to destroy the JAM, and it was fine when he sent them crashing to the ground with one blow. The trouble was when the JAM who escaped that blow served up their counterattack, because it was Yagashira’s fellow pilots who would usually end up having to swallow it.

  Certainly, Lieutenant Yagashira’s piloting skill was unmatched by anyone else there, but the most important thing for the team was ensuring that they did not lose. Attacking an enemy that could beat you was just foolish.

  Nobody wanted to fly with him, and the reason for that was pretty simple: everybody hated him.

  Including me, Lieutenant Mayle thought. Yagashira didn’t inspire confidence in other people. He was missing a fundamental part of what allows basic human interaction. Mayle wanted to know what sort of environment he’d grown up in, since Yagashira wasn’t even aware that he lacked basic human kindness.

  “I’m so glad he told us how he felt about dogs,” Mayle murmured to himself sarcastically.

  One day, the guys had been talking about how much they liked dogs. Lieutenant Yagashira had unexpectedly joined in and, upon hearing that the subject was dogs, had said, “I hate dogs. Let’s talk about cats,” and then started rambling on about them. Nobody was particularly interested, but the lieutenant didn’t notice. It was like he’d forgotten that he was talking to people. If he’d been talking to a computer, it would have been fine, since computers could change subjects without any trouble. In fact, it’d be best if he exclusively interacted with computers. Aboard his plane, the man could work wonders. Once he’d climbed down out of it, he could do everyone a favor by not talking to anyone and especially by not mimicking them. That was really irritating. The man just couldn’t communicate with humans. Hell, you could go so far as to say he wasn’t human, period. Despite that, he wasn’t aware of it and thought of himself as being as human as the rest of them. That was why he was so hard to deal with.

  The guy must know that nobody likes him, Lieutenant Mayle thought. But he probably didn’t know why he was so disliked, and he’d probably go to his grave still wondering. The SAF might be able to make use of Yagashira, though. He’d heard that their pilots didn’t mix together much. They were an inhuman group. Truly not human. There, Lieutenant Yagashira probably wouldn’t be liked or disliked. He lived his life dressed in the skin of a human, but the guys in the SAF had stripped themselves of it. If Lieutenant Yagashira realized that, he might understand why people hated him. If he cared, that is.

  But no matter where he goes, Lieutenant Mayle thought, that guy will never change. The guys in the SAF wouldn’t want to be friends with him. It would be okay if he’d then just keep quiet and withdraw from his comrades, but since Lieutenant Yagashira thought of himself as human, he wouldn’t do that. When he tried to make friends they’d grow irritated with him. Visibly. And when the SAF pilots got irritated, the lieutenant would probably hate them for it.

  Before they got irritated though, the SAF pilots would likely just tell him, “We don’t want to have anything to do with you,” but the lieutenant probably still wouldn’t get it. He’d try to “act human.” A truly human response would be to respect a request of “Leave me alone,” but Yagashira wouldn’t get it. The SAF will eventually figure out his true nature, Mayle thought. Maybe they’d grabbed him from his unit because they knew. Maybe they were confident that he could be used as a perfect combat machine. A man who would be an asset in the war against the JAM.

  Lately, the number of people like Yagashira was increasing, thought Lieutenant Mayle. Well, he’s somebody e
lse’s problem now. The guy probably couldn’t care less about his old unit, and here I am still thinking about him, and no way does that make any sense. I hope the JAM kill that guy soon, the lieutenant thought.

  Nobody said it out loud, but everybody thought that. The time that Yagashira’s plane had been shot down, Mayle’s plane had been the one in the covering position. Yagashira’s plane had two JAM fighters on its tail, and he was in a high-G turn trying to shake them loose. I can handle one JAM fighter, he’d probably thought. Mayle had understood at once that Yagashira wanted him to take care of the one on the starboard side, so he’d put his plane on a course to allow Mayle to easily attack it. Lieutenant Mayle had understood that. It was a precise decision, made with lightning speed. Ingenious. Like a trap sprung with mechanical precision on the two JAM fighters. In hindsight, Mayle agreed with the plan, but at the time, he didn’t.

  Lieutenant Mayle’s covering fire had been an instant too late. Yagashira’s plane is going to get it, he’d thought in a rush. Come on, kill him! It was stupid to think that that momentary, automatic thought had been enough to make him hesitate. He didn’t think he had it in him. Still, he thought, if that hadn’t been Yagashira’s plane, I doubt I’d have hesitated. In the end, he hadn’t defended Lieutenant Yagashira’s plane. It wasn’t like he could have helped it. It might have been a reaction from his body, not his mind.

  Your body doesn’t think; it just reacts. And since it doesn’t think, Lieutenant Mayle still didn’t know why he’d hesitated. It was unnerving to know that things like this could happen in the FAF. That a human would wish a fellow human dead. He didn’t talk about it. If he had, he’d have been convicted of willful dereliction of duty and executed. And if that happened, this battlefield would turn into one where human fought human. It would destroy the 505th strike group. That was why, even if pressed, he’d never, ever say that he wished death on Lieutenant Yagashira. Not even as a joke.

  Lieutenant Yagashira and his flight officer in the rear had ejected from the crippled plane and hadn’t been rescued till two whole days later. This was because the fierce battle had raged on, preventing a good fix on their mayday beacon, but they’d been found unharmed. Yagashira had seemed different after the rescue, more distant. It was probably the shock of an ace like him getting shot down. He didn’t remember a thing from the time he bailed out till the search and rescue plane had found him.

  After that, having lost his beloved plane, he took it upon himself to conduct the maintenance inspections on the other pilots’ planes. Lieutenant Mayle had found it a bit surprising that, even as Yagashira practically shoved the other pilots out of the way to do this, he never asked to fly in one. Maybe he’d developed a fear of flying. Even as the other pilots offered their planes for him to use, they were glad that he didn’t want to fly any more sorties with them. However, the FAF wasn’t about to let an excellent pilot spend his time goofing off, and the thought of having to fly with Yagashira again had filled Mayle and the others with dread. And then, just as they were all praying for him to disappear, word had come from the SAF asking if they had any expert pilots.

  What a lucky break that had been. The whole squadron had congratulated Lieutenant Yagashira on his new posting, saying he was definitely moving up in the world and how jealous they were of him. The sentiments of the celebration had been genuine. They might not have been getting promotions, but at long last, they were getting rid of this annoying presence in their midst.

  The party would have been even merrier had it been his funeral, the lieutenant thought. He would be going to Faery base, the FAF’s main base. The elite. The only thing that threw cold water on the whole thing was the question of why that guy? Mayle might never see his face again, but with Yagashira in the SAF, he’d be in his plane looking down on his old squadmates. The way all those guys at Faery base looked down on them. Mayle didn’t like it.

  A warning chimed, rousing the lieutenant from his reverie. They’d just entered JAM-controlled airspace. The JAM weren’t actively tracking them yet, but sooner or later, they’d be spotted.

  He radioed the other planes to prepare for combat.

  “Let’s drop off our presents for the JAM and bug out of here before they send out their interceptors.”

  Lieutenant Mayle took his plane higher to make it easier to spot their target. This made it easier for the JAM to spot him as well, but that was also part of his duty. We’re decoys, he thought. Their role was to act as a setup for the first wave’s ground attack. The second wave would be the main force: the sixteen planes of the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron, which would be launching from Faery base to link up with TAB-15. Lieutenant Mayle’s group were on a completely different course, targeting a JAM base to buy time and delay the aliens.

  They’re the elite and our job is to support them, Mayle thought. There was no way to tell which group would be in danger, but common sense told him that his guys would be. They were intentionally attracting the JAM’s attention, after all.

  A warning chimed again, in a different tone this time. JAM tracking waves had been detected. Mayle’s plane went into a zoom climb, streaking high into the air. Spread out below him were the forests of Faery, vivid with the colors of summertime. Purple hues dominated, with blues and greens glinting metallically in the light of the twin suns. Then the forest was behind him and ahead lay a desert of pure white sand.

  The JAM base was somewhere in there. He couldn’t see it with his naked eye, but the attack target data had been loaded into his plane’s central computer. The FAF had judged it to be one of the enemy’s large permanent bases. The JAM normally treated their bases as disposable, with their fighters moving in from places still unknown and constantly launching from their front-line bases. For this target, however, their planes had taken up a posture that indicated that they wanted to defend their base instead of just abandoning it. The assumption was that the JAM had fighter production capacity there. There was no way they could ignore such an inviting target. They’d made six raids on it already, but thus far TAB-15 had lacked the air power to score a decisive blow. This time, however, they’d have added help from Faery base. Mayle’s mission was just a sideshow, meaning they didn’t have to hang in there till the bitter end.

  Lieutenant Mayle climbed to nearly the plane’s operational altitude limit, the Fand II squadron a little bit ahead and below him. They were arrayed to meet any enemy planes, but Lieutenant Mayle wanted to perform an inverted breakaway before that became necessary.

  He waited for the target to enter the firing range of his air-to-ground missiles. The IR (infrared) receiver detected an abnormality. JAM interceptors were launching from the base. The IR receiver couldn’t get an exact fix on their location, but an exact fix wasn’t necessary right now. He could see a countless number of enemy planes headed right for them.

  He hoped they would launch all of their fighters. He hoped that they’d concentrate on targeting the missiles they were about to fire. In those precious few moments, the guys from the 9th TFS would strike the main section of their base. That was the point of this operation, after all.

  Target and steering indicators flashed onto his head-up display. The distance to firing range indicator was nearly zero.

  Lieutenant Mayle ordered the other planes in the attack group to switch to auto-attack mode. All they needed to do was fly their planes following the steering indicators on the display.

  All of the air-to-ground missiles his plane carried fired automatically. A pull-up cue flashed onto his HUD. Lieutenant Mayle executed an inverted breakaway at full thrust. The other planes followed.

  All that remained to do was fly back to base in a straight line. The missiles they’d fired had scored hits, but there was no need to assess how much damage they’d caused. That would be the job of the guys from Faery base. The Fand II squadron split into three groups: one to cover Lieutenant Mayle’s squadron with the other two going to back up the 9th TFS.

  As Lieutenant Mayle’s group withdrew from the
battle zone at maximum speed, the Fand IIs behind them engaged the pursuing JAM interceptors. As they did, the planes from the 9th TFS were probably using the chance to attack, but Lieutenant Mayle didn’t have time to think about that. His plane’s engines were malfunctioning. Something had gone wrong with the engine controllers. His speed began dropping rapidly.

  “What the hell’s going on?!” screamed the flight officer in the rear. A violent oscillation shook the plane. “They’re gonna shoot us down! JAM fighters, closing fast!” Mayle didn’t need his flight officer to tell him that. What was causing this? Had someone screwed up on the plane’s maintenance?

  Lieutenant Mayle couldn’t hear the engine failure alarm sounding. None of the caution lamps were lit. He couldn’t tell what was going on or where the malfunction was occurring. The throttle was set to max, but his speed was still dropping. The fuel flow gauge read normal, but the combustion efficiency in the engines was definitely deteriorating. And what was causing this furious vibration through the airframe? It was like they were being buffeted by turbulence.

  JAM fighters that had evaded the Fand IIs were approaching. Lieutenant Mayle wasn’t alone; all of the planes in his group were experiencing similar failures. None could get up to full speed. None could break away. In that case, they were going to have to fight.

  “Engaging,” called out Lieutenant Mayle. Ordering his flight officer to make visual contact with the enemy planes, Mayle looked out of his cockpit as well. He sighted a lone aircraft, flying even higher than his own plane. It wasn’t a JAM. It was an FAF plane.

  Special Air Force, Unit B-3: Yukikaze. She flew unmanned. Even Lieutenant Mayle had been informed of that. Well, unmanned or not, he expected no help from her. The SAF didn’t join in the battles.