“I’m Captain Fukai,” Rei said, introducing himself. “Pilot of SAF Unit 1: Yukikaze.”
“I’ve heard talk that you’re an expert Sylphid driver,” Lieutenant Katsuragi replied. “But you haven’t logged much flight time on the new Maeve, have you?”
“That’s right,” Rei answered, becoming aware of the anger building within him. “There something you want to say?”
“That means your skill as a Maeve driver is an unknown quantity.”
“And?” said Rei.
“It goes without saying that I’m new at being an EWO in a Maeve. If you’re as new at this as I am, then there’s a high probability of an unexpected situation arising.”
“So?” Rei replied.
“So, if anything goes wrong, I don’t want to bear all the responsibility.”
“Are you saying I’m the sort of man who’d put all the blame on you? Did Colonel Rombert tell you to watch out for that?”
“No, Captain,” Lieutenant Katsuragi replied, his face as expressionless as ever. “I’m just stating my wishes. I thought it best to say it from the start.”
“At this point, I don’t even know if you have what it takes to be Yukikaze’s flight officer and what you want means about as much to me as a load of shit, but fine,” Rei said. “If you’re going to say that, then I’ll say this from the start: aboard Yukikaze, I’m the pilot, making me the leader. You follow my orders. If I say everything is your responsibility, then like it or not, everything is your responsibility. Never forget that.”
“I didn’t think people in the SAF ever put on the boss face,” Lieutenant Katsuragi muttered. “I heard you especially didn’t do that—”
“There’s a difference between a boss and a leader,” Major Booker said, interrupting him. “A boss can be an idiot who gets by with just brute force, but that won’t work for a leader. We have leaders in the SAF, not idiots. Lieutenant Katsuragi, once you climb out of Yukikaze, I think you’ll find the environment of the SAF suits you. Is there anything else you wish to say to Captain Fukai?”
“No, Major. Nothing.”
“Your first mission will be as you’ve been told. Good hunting. You’re dismissed.”
“Yes, Major Booker. Excuse me, sir.”
Lieutenant Katsuragi saluted and was about to leave when Rei stopped him.
“Hold it. I have a question.”
“What?” asked the lieutenant.
“Did you bring your mirror with you?”
“Pardon?”
“Your mirror. The thing you look at your face with,” Rei said.
“I don’t understand the point of the question. What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing to understand. I’m asking if you brought your own mirror with you.”
“If you mean the one that comes with my electric shaver, then yes, I did,” Katsuragi said.
“All right, I expect you’ll be a fine flight officer. You may go.”
“Yes, Captain. If you’ll excuse me.”
After Lieutenant Katsuragi left the office, Major Booker burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Captain Fukai, you can leave as well,” the major said. “Why did you stay behind?”
“Because you still haven’t told me the details of my sortie, Major Booker.”
“Haven’t I? Well, it’s a masterpiece. I wanted to see your face when I laid it out for you. I wish you’d brought a mirror too.”
“Just as predicted, he isn’t interested in looking at his own face. I’ll bet the mirror that comes with his shaver distorts his image.”
“Well, there you have it: hard proof that he’s just like the old you. Man, that profacting stuff is amazing,” Major Booker said, still laughing.
“If he stays here for good, he’s going to really start pissing me off. Coming in here with prejudices just isn’t right. He isn’t like me. He didn’t even say hello. And when you think about what he said, it’s just an excuse to avoid his responsibility in advance. I never made excuses like that.”
“Lieutenant Katsuragi didn’t make any excuses. He was just saying what he thought. And he said hello to you by saluting, didn’t he? Well, I suppose you should actually say something as a greeting when you take up a new post. Still, you did tell him to say what he wanted to say. My point is that he doesn’t have much sense of his place in the organization yet. You used to be like that too. Really, that whole exchange was hilarious. There was nothing for you to get angry over. Besides, it’s better if he’s easy to understand, right? We can use him. He’s like you used to be.”
“I’m not useful the way I am now?”
“You’re useful as a leader. The change in you really is amazing. According to Captain Foss, it’s comparable to a complete personality makeover,” the major said. “She says it’s something that a healthy person shouldn’t be able to achieve in their lifetime. It should be impossible, unless you suffered from schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. I agree with her. In your case, being ejected from Yukikaze was like pulling the trigger for you—”
“She said I’m abnormal?”
“Captain Foss won’t admit that your personality has completely changed. She says that if there was ever anything abnormal about you, it was your previous personality. Her opinion is that a part of your personality that was being suppressed by your connection with Yukikaze has been released. It’s like something Wordsworth wrote: ‘The child is the father of the man.’ Your soul hasn’t changed. If not that, then maybe you actually died for a moment and were reborn. Is that something you think might have happened?”
“There’s no way…is what I’d like to say, but I won’t. After I regained consciousness, flying in the new Yukikaze when chasing Lieutenant Yagashira’s plane, there was a moment when I didn’t even know who I was. It was a shock.”
“Hm… Still, Lieutenant Katsuragi rubbing you the wrong way in how he speaks and acts shouldn’t get in the way of you doing your job. I understand why he irritates you. It must feel like you’re getting angry with yourself. I can imagine that it must be unbearable, but Lieutenant Katsuragi isn’t you. It’s like you just said: he’s a totally different person. Perhaps one day he’ll develop the same self-awareness as a leader that you now have. If you can’t handle the irritation, then you should discuss it with Captain Foss. Unfortunately, we need her help on something else before you take off, so you’ll just have to deal with this for now.”
“He’s the one you need to worry about, not me,” Rei said. “I’m sure he’s under orders from Colonel Rombert. Which side will he support more, the Intelligence Forces or the SAF?”
“The SAF, naturally,” Major Booker replied, looking serious again. “He’s now been officially transferred to Special Air Force 5th Squadron. He may have colluded with Rombert to pass on any information that he learns to the Intelligence Forces, but the orders related to sending them the details of that information came from me with General Cooley’s permission, not from Colonel Rombert.”
“It’s possible he’ll contact Colonel Rombert secretly, despite your orders.”
“According to his profact, he won’t. Lieutenant Katsuragi only carries out his orders. According to Captain Foss, what we need to watch out for is how Katsuragi may react if Colonel Rombert makes a direct appeal. Rombert is no longer in any position to issue orders to him, but the man’s a pro at his job. If he wanted to, he could get information he needs out of Katsuragi. But for our part, we have nothing to hide from him at the moment. No matter what anyone says, we’re carrying out this strategic reconnaissance operation. Nobody is going to stand in our way. Even the Intelligence Forces have no reason to oppose it. They and Colonel Rombert aren’t our enemies, but they aren’t our allies either. The profact predicts that Lieutenant Katsuragi will behave in the same manner. He only acts on what interests him.”
“And what is it that interests him now?”
“Yukikaze and you,” Major Booker said. “That and your relationship
with the JAM. Colonel Rombert seems to have sent him over here with those interests in mind. That’s what Captain Foss reports that T-FACPro II predicts, anyway. It seems likely, and I didn’t need a profact run on him to expect that. However, the part of the report I found interesting is this—Katsuragi is interested in you and Yukikaze, but he isn’t clearly aware of that himself. I was wondering what that meant, but when I remembered what you were like, I understood.”
“What do you mean?”
“As far as Lieutenant Katsuragi is concerned, anything outside of himself is imaginary. Only the situations that he has to deal with are real, but reality to him means that you and Yukikaze exist strictly as relationships, not physical objects. It doesn’t matter to him if the external world is real or not, and he isn’t interested, anyway. Those were the results of Edith’s profacting of him.”
“That sounds like an illness.”
“One from which it looks like you’ve completely recovered, Rei. Until you went back home on leave, you weren’t sure if Earth really existed. Well, Captain Foss doesn’t refer to it as an illness. She says it’s not that rare,” Major Booker said. “The thing is, as he is now, Katsuragi won’t be able to operate Yukikaze perfectly, because you can’t operate something that isn’t real to you. So, Rei, you don’t have to worry about Lieutenant Katsuragi stealing Yukikaze away from you.” Major Booker smiled.
“Quit teasing me, Jack.”
“Sorry.”
“Let’s hear the sortie schedule.”
“You take off tomorrow morning at 09:15. Your flight officer will be Lieutenant Katsuragi. You’ll be flying regular tactical recon duty in the skies over JAM base Cookie. Your preflight briefing will be forty-five minutes beforehand. Since Katsuragi’s new here, we’ll be cutting him some slack. Your mission details are in this file. Any questions?”
“Has Lieutenant Katsuragi had any training on a Maeve?”
“Yeah. He’s training on the electronic warfare simulator right now. He’ll probably pick it up pretty quickly, since he used to do the same job in the Japanese Air Force. Well, considering his personality, it was only a matter of time before they threw him out of there. Physically, he should have no problems. Being short is a blessing in his case, since his test results show he can take nine Gs without passing out. You want to read his detailed personal history?”
“No, that’s fine. That has nothing to do with him performing his duties. Just let me see the results of his strength and reflex tests.”
“Gotcha. The hard copies are over there. There you go. I’ll lend them to you.”
“You just have to let me see them for a second.”
“There’s a meeting I have to get to now. General Laitume has been throwing cold water on the SAF’s decision to maintain surveillance on Richwar base. It looks like he’ll be giving me an official response to what I talked about at that lunch meeting.”
“Isn’t this a job for the Strategic Reconnaissance Corps?” Rei said as he skimmed through the papers handed to him. “What the hell is the SAF doing? That’s what he’ll probably ask you. I’ll bet the general’s pretty pissed at us.”
“Maybe. Because of our unique position, I think the SAF should be in attendance at the FAF’s highest level strategy meetings, but we always get ignored. In the end, we’re seen just as an organization that operates under Laitume’s command. The brass don’t appreciate our ability. They will, sooner or later, but I have a feeling that, by then, it’ll be too late.”
“It seems like the JAM appreciate our ability,” Rei said to Major Booker, who was busy thrusting papers into a briefcase on his desk as he prepared to leave for his meeting.
“Major, what do you think about the prediction that Yukikaze made? If the JAM succeed in getting the SAF on its side, then the FAF is doomed. It’s not an absolutely impossible situation. I could imagine we might even be involved with a JAM psy-op without even being aware of it.”
Major Booker stopped what he was doing, looked at Rei, then spoke.
“If that strategy would allow the SAF to survive, then it’s possible we’d adopt it.”
“What, join forces with the JAM to survive? Are you serious, Jack?”
“Those were General Cooley’s words. Naturally, she doesn’t think doing that would be the best strategy for us to follow at this point in time. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard her say something like that. So did you, if I recall correctly. You said something along the lines of this being a fight for survival. That the JAM and Yukikaze are also our rivals in a struggle for existence.”
“Yeah, but I was speaking from my own personal standpoint. That doesn’t apply to the SAF or the FAF. Our objective is to stop the JAM from invading Earth.”
“As things are going now, General Cooley thinks that it’s only a matter of time before the FAF is defeated. We don’t know to what extent the FAF has been infiltrated by the JAM, so anyone who still thinks that we can win as things stand is nuts. That being the case, the general has decided that we’re now facing the choice of either dying along with the FAF or initiating our own private war. You could say that our fate rests on her decision.”
“If General Cooley decides we should try making friends with the JAM,” Rei replied, “then I’m going to start suspecting her of being a JAM herself.”
“If you’re going to say that, then you’d be just as much a suspect as she is, Captain Fukai. Cooley told me she thought you might have made up this whole story about Yukikaze producing that prediction. Colonel Rombert also suspects you of being a JAM. That’s the reason he sent Lieutenant Katsuragi over here.”
“If I were a JAM, Yukikaze would see through me,” Rei said.
“Don’t bet on it… Still, in the end, Yukikaze considers the JAM her enemy. If the SAF ever decided to cooperate with the JAM, then she’d lose her entire reason for being. Dealing with that could turn into a major problem.”
“The JAM are our rivals in a struggle for survival regardless of whether they’re our enemies or our allies in this war, and that goes for Yukikaze as well. She no longer needs to get her reason for existence from an external source. She’ll choose to do what it takes to survive.”
“You talk about Yukikaze as though she were alive.”
“She is alive,” Rei declared, without a shred of doubt in his voice. “Just like I’m alive. That has nothing to do with being human or JAM. Right now, Yukikaze is neither.”
“That’s fine to say as an individual. You’re free to say whatever you want to. But for me, as someone with command responsibilities, it’s a different story. Personally, I don’t doubt you. Similarly, every individual at the top of our organization that isn’t JAM only acts based on what they believe. What we do, we do based on our individual beliefs. But think about it—the SAF has always been like that. To not only bring all of these sorts of individuals together as a group but also manage them is a kind of miracle, as Captain Foss would say. But the rest of the FAF isn’t like that, and therein lies the problem.”
Major Booker began shuffling his papers again, checking the documents for the meeting as he continued. “At any rate, this idea that the JAM want to become our allies isn’t even the prediction made by Yukikaze’s profacting. It’s only one possible interpretation of it we humans have come up with. One way or another, though, we’ll make use of her prediction. It’s vague, but still very informative.”
“I can also imagine that the JAM might be manipulating us to drive a wedge between our forces and the FAF. I can’t help but wonder about that, Major. Do you think that the JAM we fight in the air might not be their main force?”
“And there you have all the SAF’s doubts in a nutshell. What I hope to learn from this strategic recon operation is the location of their main force. Just like the FAF has the humans on Earth backing it, I want to find the JAM’s main forces, their actual selves, that which backs their forces.”
“And what I’m trying to tell you, Jack, is that there are no ‘actual’ JAM. They may
be something invisible, lurking within the information we’ve gathered about them.”
“If you go that far, you’ve just crossed the line from doubt straight into fantasy,” Major Booker said, closing the briefcase. “What we need to get is a realistic image of the JAM, not fantasies about them. Captain Foss is working hard to profact them, and she says that we can’t let ourselves be taken in by the appearance they project. There’s an expression in Japan: ‘One’s true enemy lies elsewhere.’ ”
“The FAF may be coming to that conclusion about us.”
“That would be a very dangerous situation to get into, and we’re analyzing that contingency thoroughly. At present, if we split from the FAF, we have no chance of survival. General Cooley admits that too, so we’ve got the tactical computer working full load on SAF survival simulations. At any rate, I for one don’t want my death to be one of those ridiculous ones you once talked about. The entire SAF is devoting all of its efforts to coming up with a strategy that will allow us to survive.”
“A survival strategy… This really is a fight for survival, isn’t it?” Rei said.
“The JAM are clearly infiltrating the FAF with these human duplicates in order to perfect their own strategy against us. The odds are good that they’re about to make a radical change in their strategy, which until now has been to ignore the existence of humans. The war situation’s getting even more strained, but the brass have no idea just how bad it is. There’s no doubt in my mind that the FAF is teetering on the edge of oblivion,” Major Booker said. He glanced at his watch. “This isn’t something I can bring up at General Laitume’s meeting, but we can’t afford to ignore it now.”
Saying that, Major Booker moved away from his desk.
“Leave with me, Captain Fukai.”
The office door would auto-lock as soon as the major exited. Finishing up with the file folder the major had handed him, Rei acceded to his urgings and left the room.
2
THE NEXT DAY, as scheduled, Yukikaze came out onto the surface for her sortie.
Good Luck, Yukikaze Page 26