Good Luck, Yukikaze

by Chohei Kambayashi

  But why? Why won’t you accept my offer? Why won’t you trust me?

  The JAM’s demonic temptation had been a test of his resolve. If he’d accepted the offer and tried to evade the missile, the JAM probably would have vanished in that instant. Either the missile would have hit them, or possibly Yukikaze and her crew would have been captured, as Lieutenant Katsuragi had said. Even if the JAM captured them alive, there would be no more negotiations with the humans as equals.

  In the end, he hadn’t moved the flight stick, and the reason was simple. What had been vital to him wasn’t life or death, but rather choosing between Yukikaze and the JAM. His distrust of the JAM didn’t exist because they were the enemy. In that instant, all the JAM had become to him was an annoyance.

  That had angered them. The JAM couldn’t understand his attitude toward them, and they’d resented that he was going to be killed by Yukikaze before they could kill Rei themselves. Then they fell into a state of confusion.

  There was no doubt that the JAM had an interest in exactly how Rei would get home after he had broken off the negotiations and ordered Yukikaze back to base. Despite Yukikaze’s actions, even as she told them, “This is not a warning shot,” they probably hadn’t believed her and certainly didn’t think that the humans aboard her approved of her conduct. Lieutenant Katsuragi was likely correct in saying that the JAM had waited till the very last instant to confirm the nature of the relationship Rei shared with his fighter plane.

  In the end, the JAM couldn’t understand me, he thought. Most likely, the JAM had decided that they needed to observe him without interference for a little while longer. Maybe they hadn’t been able to immediately decide how to react to the attitude he’d displayed toward them. Either way, they’d allowed the crew to escape the mysterious battle zone. Or more accurately, the JAM hadn’t been able to stop them. Yukikaze had made sure of that.

  How had the JAM felt when she’d said, “Let’s return home”?

  Maybe, Rei thought, they’d sensed that Yukikaze was a definite threat. A terrible, implacable enemy. Yukikaze had won this battle. Of that, there could be no doubt.

  5

  WITH CARMILLA FLYING escort, Yukikaze made it safely back to Faery base. Aside from being thirteen minutes behind her planned return time, her actions were roughly on schedule. What had actually happened was entirely different, although the only ones who knew the details were Yukikaze and her two crewmen.

  While taxiing over to the SAF’s squadron area, the SAF fire brigade sprayed them down, though they used pure water instead of fire retardant foam. After the washdown, Rei throttled up Yukikaze’s right engine to vent it. The left engine was completely dead; he thought it would never start again. It would need to be replaced. If the damage had been just a little more severe, the right engine might have been completely destroyed. We’re lucky to have made it back, Rei thought.

  Rather than heading down to the SAF’s underground squadron area, Yukikaze’s crew deplaned on the surface and entered an isolation container prepared for them. Inside, they washed themselves down from head to toe with the showers inside, just as had been done to Yukikaze.

  In a full decontamination routine, the crew would have been kept in an isolation room for at least three weeks, but the SAF didn’t take that step. They didn’t want anyone in the SAF to know the importance of the information Yukikaze had returned with, and General Cooley had decided that there was little risk of the SAF being contaminated with an unknown organism. The isolation container was brought to the SAF medical facilities rather than to their quarantine center.

  Major Booker was also of the opinion that had the JAM wanted to release a weaponized virus, they would have already done so via the JAM duplicates. That was why he’d raised no objections to the general’s decision. If they went by the FAF manual, Captain Fukai and Lieutenant Katsuragi would have had to be subjected to a full-scale quarantine, and there was no way that the JAM hadn’t considered that contingency. No, the problem here isn’t finding an invisible bioweapon, but rather determining if the two men who just returned are the genuine articles, the major thought.

  Rei and Lieutenant Katsuragi were told to change into the white sweatsuits in the container and then were ushered into simple plastic isolation tents that surrounded a couple of beds in a room in the SAF med center. Since they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the JAM had accidentally exposed them to a contamination source, the pair were ordered to these quarters until medical tests had cleared them of any danger. The two men knew that was another way of saying they were being held, kept in confinement and under observation.

  Each bed had its own tent stretched over it, and it might have been a nice, private environment in which to rest, but they weren’t told that they could take it easy. Their orders were given to them by a doctor named Balume of the SAF medical staff. The written orders on clipboards he passed to them in their tents were from General Cooley, and they said that the two men were to write up reports of what had happened on their mission as soon as possible.

  “Slave driver. And she wants it handwritten with pen and paper?” Lieutenant Katsuragi grumbled in his tent, but Rei just ignored him and began to write. Orders or not, he wanted to write down his experiences while they were fresh in his mind. Yukikaze probably hadn’t recorded the JAM’s temptation, or their anger and confusion.

  Watching Rei begin writing, Lieutenant Katsuragi eyed his clipboard and sighed. What was he supposed to write when everything had been recorded by Yukikaze?

  “Captain Fukai,” he called out.

  “What?”

  “What are you writing?”

  “What happened out there.”

  “Yukikaze recorded that.”

  “They expect a report on the experience from a human perspective, seen through our own eyes,” Rei said.

  “They gave me a guide to writing up reports, but I didn’t really read it.”

  “The format doesn’t really matter right now. Just write it however you feel. It could be anything. For instance, Yukikaze’s actions. What did you think about that?”

  “I thought they were dangerous,” Lieutenant Katsuragi said.

  “Just like that. They want your personal evaluation of Yukikaze, what happened aboard her, and what the JAM did. Write down your impressions as clearly and simply as you can. You can write what you’re thinking about right now. You had a lot to say when we were flying back, didn’t you?”

  “I can’t be accurate now unless I watch Yukikaze’s recording of—”

  “Even unreliable descriptions are vital data,” Rei said. “You might change your mind later, and that’s fine. This isn’t about which data set is the correct one. Both are reality. Unless you write it down, if you change your mind later on, you won’t be able to assess how it changed or whether it was for better or for worse. This is for your benefit, not anyone else’s.”

  “Hmm…”

  Lieutenant Katsuragi remembered what Colonel Rombert had told him.

  Report your experiences accurately. But you don’t have to evaluate what you’re writing about. That’s my job.

  So the SAF was demanding that he do the opposite of what the Intelligence Forces colonel had told him to do. This was the first time he had been in such a situation, and Lieutenant Katsuragi was confused.

  Rei looked up at the lieutenant and saw his newbie partner glaring at the blank white page as if his task now was more difficult than any of his duties aboard the plane. But he must have sensed Rei’s gaze, even through the thick plastic walls, and turned toward him.

  “Captain Fukai,” said the lieutenant again.

  “What?” replied Rei.

  “Have you written your reports for your own benefit up till now?”

  “What’s got into you all of a sudden? You must have written them for Colonel Rombert.”

  “Not reports on my subjective impressions. Those wouldn’t pass muster with the colonel.”

  “He doesn’t see any point to subjective
impressions?”

  “I don’t know how to write it down. There’s some stuff I don’t want them to know,” he said. “Like how pissed off I was when you just let Yukikaze handle the flying and wouldn’t take evasive action.”

  “You must have felt angry with me, wondering how what I was doing would save us. Don’t try to hide it.”

  “Major Booker will just see that as me making excuses for myself. He’ll be the first one to read these, right?”

  “Lieutenant, if you keep thinking about that, you’ll never write anything. The SAF doesn’t care about that stuff. We made it back alive. Survival is our most vital duty. The SAF wants what we’ve learned in order to survive, that’s all.”

  “You mean nobody’s going to give me any grief no matter what I write?”

  “Are you afraid Major Booker’s going to punch you? Or that you’ll be reprimanded? Getting punched for no reason and then stifling the complaint is part of being in the military. I’d think knowing why you were being hit is better, not that I have any experience with that.”

  “Hmm…”

  “You’re getting hung up on trivial stuff because you think you’re being made to write it. We’re now in a position to suggest what they should do. This is a privilege, not a duty,” Rei explained. “We’ve met the JAM, so we can tell our superiors what we think they should do to keep from getting killed by the enemy, or what we want them to do. That’s vital information for forming strategies to counter the JAM. If you want to meet the JAM again, ask for the opportunity. If you think fighting them is useless, write that. Nobody can criticize you for what you write in that report. Not General Cooley or Major Booker or anybody. What we feel, what’s in our hearts here and now, that’s reality. The SAF can’t ignore reality or criticize us for it.”

  “The SAF could suspect us of being JAM,” Lieutenant Katsuragi replied. “The truth is, they already do.”

  “If they doubt us, we can suspect that this is all a virtual space created by the JAM and doubt them right back.”

  “You’re saying it isn’t necessary to deal with that risk?”

  “I think we should be prepared for the possibility,” Rei said. “Believe in yourself, Lieutenant. That’s all we can do right now. That’s what you can do for yourself. I started writing my report by being honest and keeping that in mind.”

  Thinking about how Major Booker hadn’t shown his face since they’d returned, Rei returned to his writing. After a normal mission, Major Booker would come down for Rei’s report, but not this time. It was possible that Booker’s conspicuous absence was a sign that Rei was in a virtual world, but even as he considered the possibility Rei wondered what the point of such a deception would be. If this was a virtual world so perfect that not even Yukikaze could see through it, then it wouldn’t be that different from the real world.

  If, in the future, the JAM were to tell me that this really was… Well, even if he found that out, that wouldn’t mean the destruction of his self. Even if he was told that he was actually a JAM duplicate and that his original self was dead, it wouldn’t change a thing. Oh, it would open up all sorts of questions about the nature of his identity, there was no doubt of that. But that didn’t necessarily mean the annihilation of his existence. It would be like having his parents tell him that he wasn’t really their child. The situation would open the possibility of losing his sense of place in the world, but it wasn’t a direct threat to his actual life.

  He’d go on eating and sleeping and experiencing the trivialities of existence until he eventually grew old and died. So long as I keep meeting the challenges of this thing called life, it would be no different, Rei thought. The most important thing, even before the question of how best to live, was being clear in knowing what he wanted to do. He had come back alive; that was the most important thing.

  Rei was totally exhausted, but he hadn’t gotten a moment of sleep before Major Booker showed up to say he was amazed they’d made it back. As Booker read over the report he’d written, Rei felt he needed to give his head a rest as he kept thinking about the JAM, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t forget about them and sleep.

  “I’m amazed I made it back too.”

  I must look like death warmed over, Rei thought, but he could easily say the same thing about Major Booker as his commander stepped into the plastic tent.

  “Should you come in here, Major?”

  “Does it matter? I feel like I’ve caught JAM fever, along with everyone else around here.”

  “Everyone being who, exactly?”

  “Starting with General Cooley, everyone in HQ. Everyone pretty much got sick when they downloaded the combat intel from Yukikaze and played it back.”

  “You’re saying it made them physically ill?” Rei said.

  “In a manner of speaking. I mean we’re exhausted from analyzing it. The only one who seems to be enjoying it…” Major Booker looked behind him as he spoke. “…is Captain Foss.”

  Outside the tent, Edith Foss shrugged her shoulders.

  “Edith,” the major said. “Could you just come inside this depressing tent with me already?”

  “I think it’d be wise to wait a bit longer. And keep your voice down before you wake up Lieutenant Katsuragi. Let him get some rest.”

  “Well, he is an important guy now, I guess. Rei—”

  “Could you get me a cold beer, Jack? And leave the debriefing for later?”

  “Edith, can you write Rei a prescription for beer, please?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Dr. Balume, the chief flight surgeon here, keeps a stash in the medicine refrigerator. You don’t need to write a prescription for it. It’s pretty much an open secret around here.”

  “Is that bought with public funds? That’s illegal, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the higher ups’ fault for not recognizing the medicinal uses of beer,” Booker said.

  “Basically you’re telling me to swipe one from the fridge, Major.”

  “Yeah. Balume shouldn’t complain if we take just one.”

  Shaking her head, Captain Foss left the room.

  “What kept you, Jack? I got back on base a while ago.”

  “Four hours, twenty-four-point-five minutes, to be exact.”

  “It was weird having General Cooley answer instead of you when I called into HQ before.”

  “I’d left the command center when you did.”

  “Why?”

  “The tactical computer was backing up Yukikaze,” Major Booker said. “I wasn’t needed.”

  Major Booker explained what had happened, about how the SAF’s computers had predicted this situation. And about how he’d not realized it.

  “I’ve been busy since you got back. Yukikaze wasn’t willing to give up the information she got this time without a fight.”

  “Probably because I wasn’t aboard her.”

  “It seems that way. Yukikaze is sapient now. That’s the only explanation for it I can see.”

  “So how’d you do it?” Rei asked. “You ended up getting the data into the tactical computer, right?”

  “Yukikaze made a deal with us. She wanted access to all of our intelligence. General Cooley agreed, so we gave her access to all data in every computer in the FAF via the SAF tactical computer. She’s probably still searching it all right now. The tactical computer is going nuts trying to keep the other computers from finding out what’s going on. Basically, we’re conducting cyberwar on the rest of the FAF.”

  “What’s Yukikaze searching for?”

  “Information about humans. Psychobehavioral data about every human being in the FAF. Oh, she didn’t tell us that, but that’s how it looks to us. Yukikaze has the T-FACPro II software loaded into her. She’s probably using it to predict human behavior. I think she’s trying to find the JAM duplicates here in the FAF.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” Rei said.

  “You don’t? Then what’s she doing?”

  Captain Foss had returned with th
ree cans of beer. Rei took one, and Major Booker said he didn’t want one. At this, with a deadly serious look on her face, she asked him, “Are you trying to avoid being an accomplice in this little heist?”

  “Fine, sure. Twist my arm, why don’t you?”

  As he said it, the major grabbed a couple of stools and set them next to the bed, then sat down and opened his beer. Captain Foss followed suit.

  “Okay, back to Yukikaze,” said Major Booker. “What’s she looking for?”

  Rei downed half his beer, took a breath, then spoke.

  “Could you read the beginning of my report? Right before the missile Yukikaze fired was about to hit us, it didn’t. But when it happened, the JAM’s consciousness somehow intruded into my own.”

  “What?”

  “Was this part recorded by Yukikaze?”

  Major Booker took the report Rei handed to him, read it, then replied that, no, it hadn’t.

  “We replayed all of Yukikaze’s recorded data, but…there’s no record of this JAM voice anywhere in it. Maybe you just hallucinated it.”

  “I figured another person would say that. Either way, the JAM couldn’t understand me,” Rei said. “Yukikaze understood that they couldn’t kill me while they still didn’t understand me. But she doesn’t know what it is about me that the JAM can’t understand. So she’s searching for it.”

  “I think we could find that out if we just asked one of the JAM duplicates, don’t you?” Booker said.

  “Yukikaze doesn’t care how many JAM duplicates have infiltrated the FAF or who they are. What she wants to know is what it is about me and the people and computers in the SAF that the JAM can’t comprehend. The duplicates wouldn’t know that, and since asking them won’t answer the question, she’s searching for it herself. The JAM seem to understand the behavior patterns of the FAF—aside from the SAF. If that’s true, then she thinks that discerning the difference between the other humans and computers and us will let her figure out what it is that the JAM don’t understand. That’s what Yukikaze has decided. I’m sure of it.”

  “Pretty confident of that, aren’t you, Rei?”