Good Luck, Yukikaze

by Chohei Kambayashi

  “Do you have a meeting arranged with Colonel Rombert?” Rei asked.

  “No, but I figure the colonel will approach me somehow. Still, even if he does, I don’t plan to tell him about this. Besides, considering the situation, I doubt he’d believe me even if I did.”

  “That colonel wouldn’t ignore intelligence like this just because he didn’t believe it himself. He’d probably anticipate how well you can utilize your intelligence network and demand objective data.”

  “Hm…”

  Right now, Katsuragi is probably doubting what his five senses are telling him about this whole experience, Rei thought. If they made it back in one piece, he was definitely going to need the data Yukikaze had collected in order to process it.

  “Don’t keep monitoring the instruments,” Rei ordered. “Keep a visual watch on our surroundings. No matter what happens, don’t look at the instruments. I’ll tell you again if I need you to run the EW systems. Trust your own eyes. Now, repeat what I just told you back to me.”

  “Maintain a visual watch on our surroundings, don’t look at the instruments until the pilot tells me otherwise. That is all.”

  “You left out the part about trusting your own eyes.”

  “That was part of your orders?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trust my own eyes. That is all,” Lieutenant Katsuragi said.

  “And can you do that?”

  “I follow my orders.”

  “It’d be hard for me to do,” Rei said. “Flying without looking at my instruments would make me as nervous as hitting full throttle with my eyes shut.”

  “You’re a pilot. That’s not surprising.”

  “It’s not that sort of anxiety.”

  “Are you saying you can’t completely trust Yukikaze—”

  As he spoke, an object moving at high speed was detected on the enemy search radar, triggering an air-raid alarm. Lieutenant Katsuragi’s eyes instinctively fell back to his display panel.

  “Bogey, single, bearing low to port. Rising fast on a general intercept course. From its size, I’m guessing it’s a fighter plane, not a missile.”

  “Lieutenant, carry out your orders!” Rei snapped. “Maintain a visual watch and give me running reports on the actual conditions you see. Do it in a way that anyone would be able to figure out what happened here if we replay it back at base.”

  “Roger. By visual observation…I can’t confirm an enemy silhouette in the cloud bank below us, but it’s probably close.”

  “Target is crossing to starboard, right next to us, Lieutenant. I’m matching speeds. No IFF response. I can’t confirm if it’s a JAM. Type: unknown.”

  “A section of the bogey has appeared through the cloud bank… Looks like the pointed tip of a vertical stabilizer.”

  Like a shark fin breaking the surface of the water, thought Lieutenant Katsuragi. It was very close to them now, barely one hundred meters away. It broke through the clouds as it rose toward them. The surroundings were dim, and in the weak light, its wings looked gray instead of the usual black of a JAM plane.

  “I can see some sort of darkish marking on the gray wings of the plane. It looks like…like…”

  It was a Boomerang mark. With barely a ripple on the surface of the clouds, the unknown plane revealed itself completely.

  “The plane is a Sylphid, a high-speed Super Sylph. I can confirm the markings of the Special Air Force 5th Squadron on it.”

  Even Rei could now see with his naked eyes the plane emerging on the starboard side.

  “It’s Yukikaze,” he said coolly. “A duplicate of Yukikaze’s old airframe, and this isn’t the first time I’ve run into it.”

  Setting the fire control radar to pursuit mode, he locked on to the target plane. It was emitting an IFF signal designating it as friendly, but Rei disregarded that and marked it as hostile.

  “I see crewmen in the cockpit,” Lieutenant Katsuragi reported. “Their faces are covered with visors and masks… The one in the rear seat is moving his hand… He’s pointing to his mask. It looks like he wants to talk to us.”

  This was the first time he’d seen humanoids riding in the gray mystery plane. Wondering if they were duplicates of himself and Lieutenant Burgadish, Rei began manually searching the comm band, but the auto-scanner locked on before he could. A voice came through into his helmet.

  “Lieutenant Fukai, you are fighting a useless battle. Do you hear me? I demand that you abandon your fighting spirit and live as I tell you to. Answer me, Lieutenant Fukai. I repeat…”

  That wasn’t Lieutenant Burgadish’s voice. Its tone was neutral, as though mechanically synthesized. While the subject of its speech was easy to understand, it used words clumsily. Besides that, Rei was a captain now, but it was referring to him by his former rank. That might have been deliberate though, and Rei decided against correcting its mistake. No point in giving the JAM any more information than he had to.

  “Lieutenant Fukai, you are fighting a useless battle. Do you hear me?”

  “This is B-1, I read you loud and clear. Please state your name, rank, and unit attachment.”

  “Response confirmed. I lack the type of classification and identification codes you inquire about. Lieutenant Fukai, please respond if you accept or deny my request.”

  “If you’re going to make a request of someone, it’s only common courtesy to make your social position clear to them,” Rei replied, knowing that wasn’t true at all. “Who are you?”

  After a short, almost embarrassed silence, it responded.

  “By your conceptualization, I am the whole of what you refer to as the JAM.”

  “The whole… You mean you’re the JAM themselves? Should I think of you as a voice representing the JAM?”

  “I would not object to that judgment. Please issue your response.”

  Rei switched off the comm circuit for a moment and called out to Lieutenant Katsuragi.

  “Lieutenant, what do you think of what it said? Do you think I can believe this to be a representative of the JAM?”

  “Hell if I know. I will say that it sounds unnatural, though. Like somebody is ordering it to say that stuff to you.”

  “I agree. Maintain observation of our surroundings.”

  “Roger.”

  He reopened the comm link.

  “I can’t understand the meaning of your request,” Rei replied. “When you say my battle is useless, I don’t know to whose advantage you’re referring, so I can’t answer you.”

  “I somehow doubt that.”

  The suddenly fluent and lively voice he now heard leaping into his ears made Rei shiver. He knew one very similar to it. The man at that mysterious base where Lieutenant Burgadish had met his end. Yazawa. Major Yazawa. The name of the man he’d told Colonel Rombert about over and over again. The JAM human. It had to be him.

  “Lieutenant Fukai, I very much doubt that you don’t understand its meaning,” the new voice said. “We’re saying that the FAF has no chance of winning, so we’re offering you a way to save yourself. Come with us. We’ll lead you to a place where you can live in safety. If you don’t comply, you’ll only end up dying a meaningless death.”

  “I can’t trust your words,” Rei said. “I reject your demand. I won’t negotiate with you.”

  “Ignorant man. We’ve come here to make you understand.”

  “I say again, I will not negotiate with you.” He called back to the rear seat. “Lieutenant Katsuragi, I’m engaging them. We’re attacking the target plane to starboard. Get ready for their counterattack and stand by on EW.”

  “Roger!”

  The stores control panel automatically displayed, letting him see at a glance all of the weaponry loaded on board. Yukikaze was agreeing with his decision to attack. She selected the high-velocity short range missiles, telling him to lead off with those. Rei snapped Yukikaze into a sharp turn. The target plane reacted immediately. In a close-range dogfight between the Maeve and a Super Sylph, the Maeve had an absolut
e advantage.

  He launched the missiles, their range to the target extremely short. Rei counted to himself: three…two…one! and then the target plane vanished. It happened suddenly, without any warning. Having lost their target, the missiles flew straight through where the plane had vanished and then self-destructed.

  “It’s useless, Lieutenant Fukai.”

  The target plane suddenly reappeared on the starboard side.

  “Shit,” spat Lieutenant Katsuragi. “The thing may not even really be there.”

  As if chiding the lieutenant’s impatience, Yukikaze scrolled a message onto the display.

  This was just a test/next firing will not be warning shots…JAM.

  “Such foolishness, even after we offered to save you. Very well. If you insist, I will accept your challenge. Now see who truly rules the skies. This place shall become your grave—” the owner of the voice was saying. Suddenly, with no explanation, the words stopped. There came a shout like “No, don’t!”

  Disaster struck the target plane. Its canopy blew off.

  “The crew have ejected,” Lieutenant Katsuragi reported. “Confirm ejection of both front and rear seats. Are they running away? But why? What happened?”

  The lieutenant followed the two ejected seats with his gaze. They fell behind and to the side of their flight path, tracing a double-helix path through the air as they spiraled away around one another. He saw no sign of the crew’s bodies separating from the seats or of parachutes opening, even as he twisted his neck as far around as he could to keep them in sight. They were enveloped in a reddish phosphorescence, sprouting glowing red tails as they grew smaller and smaller until they finally vanished from sight. It was as if they’d been incinerated in freefall. He instinctively checked the radar display, but saw nothing there. They’d been annihilated.

  “Answer me, JAM,” Rei said. “I want to talk to you, not your human duplicates. Respond! This is Rei Fukai in B-1.”

  The response came.

  “I cannot understand you. Why do you fight?”

  Lieutenant Katsuragi shivered. The owner of this voice, he realized, was the JAM themselves, who wished to make contact with Captain Fukai and Yukikaze. The ejected JAM humans had been nothing more than intermediaries whose role had been to act as translators. The owner of the voice had probably discarded them when it judged that they were hindering negotiations. Like they’d been some sort of disposable weapon.

  The target plane continued to fly alongside Yukikaze, as though nothing had happened. The JAM voice might have been coming from the plane, but most likely it was acting as a relay transmitter to convey the JAM’s will. No doubt it wasn’t the actual voice of a JAM, but the results of their efforts to convey their thoughts in human speech through the manipulation of radio waves.

  What we know as JAM do exist, but they’re some sort of invisible beings, and what we fight are their shadows. What Rei had thought, Lieutenant Katsuragi could now understand as a palpable sensation. A sensation of fear. It hadn’t just been a theory.

  “I cannot understand the intelligence known as Yukikaze. I cannot understand the intelligences which comprise what is known as the Special Air Force. Why, Lieutenant Fukai? Why do you fight?”

  “So that I can live and not die at your hands. Why can’t you understand that? Are you saying other humans, the groups aside from Yukikaze and the SAF, aren’t like that?”

  “I believe that the machine intelligences of the SAF, including Yukikaze and you contained within her, are like me: intelligences that do not possess personlike consciousness. What I cannot understand is why you do not separate from the group known as the FAF and continue to fight to thwart my plans. Yukikaze refuses to ratify my nonaggression pact. You are the only one who can convince her to withdraw her rejection. Lieutenant Fukai, I desire to awaken you. Come back to me.”

  “Wait, what… What do you mean, I don’t possess personlike consciousness? Ratify a nonaggression pact? Come back to you?”

  “The current people as well as the artificial intelligences that manipulate them are beings that can be made to deviate from their essential natures by our plans. You people, however, are not like that. You are essential beings, and your enemy is not me. It is not my intention to let you be consumed. It is my desire that you choose to come over to me.”

  “In short…” said Lieutenant Katsuragi, cutting in. Rei didn’t stop him. He was going to need time if he was going to figure out what the JAM were saying. “You’re saying that since we’re like the JAM, you want us to join you, switch sides, and help you to fight the FAF?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Akira Katsuragi, Yukikaze’s flight officer and electronic warfare operator. I serve at FAF Faery base in the Tactical Combat Air Corps, Special Air Force 5th Squadron. My rank is second lieutenant and I am a human. If you want to know why I fight you, it’s pretty much because it’s my job to. My job, do you understand? My duty. I do this because there’s no other suitable path I can take through life.”

  “You can live without fighting me.”

  “I can interpret your thoughts to mean that you want the SAF to be your allies, can’t I? Does that mean you’re offering me a job?”

  In this situation, what he’d just asked was so base it was almost funny. But they waited for the JAM’s answer, even as Rei wondered what the lieutenant’s real motives were.

  “You people and I are similar, but we are not comrades. But I wish to explain that I see the possibility of forming a common front against the FAF. I judge that will provide a path through life for you, Lieutenant Katsuragi. I seek your answer. If you have any intention of withdrawing from the FAF and joining me, then declare it to me, Lieutenant Fukai.”

  Its strained, unnatural circumlocutions made it difficult to follow, but what Rei could basically make out was that the JAM were demanding to know, if he intended to continue fighting, would he join the JAM’s side. His destiny was riding on how he answered this question.

  What would the JAM do if he told them no? Would it eliminate him to rid itself of an opponent beyond comprehension? No, it would likely keep working to understand him till the bitter end. The JAM probably wouldn’t let him escape from this space. Maybe lead him, and Yukikaze, to be confined in a safe place, like Major Yazawa had said. Somewhere unimaginable that was neither Earth nor Faery, where the JAM could take its time in figuring them out, with special attention paid to Yukikaze. What if the JAM brainwashed him to get him on their side? If they succeeded at that, he imagined they could bring the entire SAF there to brainwash as well and then use them against the FAF. In other words, turn them all into JAM…

  Well then, what if he said yes? What if he joined the JAM? Yukikaze wouldn’t accept that quietly, surely. He had no doubt in his mind that she’d pitch both himself and Lieutenant Katsuragi out of the plane, to end up the same as Major Yazawa and whoever else had been with him.

  “Your answer, Lieutenant Fukai.”

  Rei sensed that the JAM was in no hurry.

  It had plenty of time. It had been observing the FAF for thirty years, so why would it rush? Rei was still under observation in this space, as well. The JAM didn’t seem intent on killing him, but as long as he didn’t answer it, he’d have no way to take any proactive steps toward saving himself. Unless he did something, he would end up starving to death, and Yukikaze would exhaust her fuel and fall silent.

  What do I want to do, Rei asked himself. Not what should I do, but do I want to do? Is that the answer?

  “I wish to know more details about what sort of beings you are,” Rei said. “I don’t understand anything about you, but you seem to grasp at least a bit about me. I can’t ratify a nonaggression pact with you as long as this unequal state of affairs persists. First of all, I don’t think you completely understand or know how to use human speech. Just what are you people? Living things? Beings that consist only of intelligence, will, and data? Do you have physical forms? If so, then where are they?”

 
“I cannot explain in a way that would be comprehensible in your terms. I am that I am.”

  Lieutenant Katsuragi felt a smile spasm across his face. The tension was so unbearable now that he could feel his train of thought starting to derail. “I am that I am.” Well, fantastic. They are just like Captain Fukai and Yukikaze, then. As he was thinking how the resemblance was astonishing, the feeling of tension returned. He concentrated every nerve on Rei’s answer.

  “If you don’t have words that can explain more than that, then any further communication via words is meaningless,” Rei declared. Taking a deep breath and preparing himself for the worst, he gave his answer.

  “I refuse your request.”

  “Understood,” the JAM replied, without any emotion.

  “Strategic reconnaissance, complete,” Rei declared. “Returning to base.”

  VII

  RETHINKING FIGHTING SPIRIT

  1

  SAF’S CENTRAL HEADQUARTERS command center was working night and day, as all of their planes were being sent in to support the massive attack operation against Cookie base.

  The enormous screen taking up most of the wall at the front was filled with a variety of information, divided as needed to display the responses on the screens of HQ’s tactical computer terminals. Mission progress. Maps of the combat airspace. The condition of the fighters preparing to sortie. The maintenance status of the planes on standby. Analysis of gains made in battle extrapolated from the data from returning planes. Analysis of the general progress of the battle. On and on and on.

  Of immediate concern to the SAF was the progress of the attack on Cookie, not from a local perspective, but from an overall view of the battle’s progress. Determining JAM tactics was the highest priority of all.

  Once the first day had passed, Major Booker decided there was no need to throw all of the SAF’s forces into the task of conducting tactical recon for the FAF’s attack on the base. By that time, he knew that the JAM didn’t seem to be defending the base to the last man. The enemy’s strategy was definitely changing, and they wouldn’t know what that change was if they just stuck close to Cookie.