YUKIKAZE (17 page)

“Man, the SAF really does run itself like an independent air force. Everything you guys have is top-shelf. I’m sure your skills are worthy of your plane, Lieutenant. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m good as long as I’ve got Yukikaze.”

Rei expressionlessly held out his hand, and the other man clasped it, accepting the handshake.

“Huh,” said Booker. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Boomerang pilot shake someone’s hand. Tom, you’re the only one aside from Yukikaze that Rei’s ever extended a hand to. The only things he trusts are high-tech combat machines.”

“Really?” said Tomahawk with a smile. “Then maybe he sees me as a machine.” He laughed lightly, but Rei thought that his smile was strangely sad.

THE NEXT MORNING, Boomerang Squadron Unit 3, Yukikaze, took off into a clear sky.

As they entered a steep climb, the ACLS beacon ran through its self-test. Rei confirmed that the carrier simulator on the ground was giving him an okay. He rechecked the engine gauges and confirmed that all caution lights were clear. Speed was Mach 0.9.

He slid the throttle forward. The airspeed indicator reeled through the numbers, and not even ninety seconds later their speed was Mach 2.3. He leveled off their climb at an altitude of 13,000 meters, cruising at supersonic speed.

“It’ll be winter soon,” said Tomahawk from the backseat. “The autumn colors in the forest are already turning, but the weather’s still a little hot. Around where I’m from back on Earth, they call that ‘Indian summer.’ It’s like the spirits are sending some last warm light to the world as a gift to us.”

“Down there the war seems far away. It’d be the perfect sightseeing spot, if it weren’t for the JAM,” said Rei.

“Faery doesn’t belong to us or to the JAM.”

Rei rechecked their position on his HUD. They were about to cross the Absolute Defense Line. He activated the passive airspace radar.

“I don’t think the Earth itself belongs to us, Tom. The only thing people really own are their own hearts.”

“So there are some people who believe that God didn’t give us the animals and plants and all of nature on Earth to do with as we please. That’s a very Asian way of seeing things.”

“I don’t really consider myself Asian. Maybe it’s the Faery way of seeing things. You live here long enough and you start thinking that way. Earth doesn’t belong to humans. That’s a fact. Or, at the very least, it doesn’t belong to me.”

“I agree,” Tom said, sounding satisfied. “Me, I didn’t come here thinking that I wanted to defend the Earth, but even so I can’t deny that humans control it.”

“‘Control’ doesn’t necessarily equal ‘own.’”

“I feel like I’m about to get a lecture on the evils of the capitalist system.”

“I’d always heard that Native Americans value generosity.”

“I’m not really conscious of myself in that way, the same as how you don’t really think of yourself as Asian. But different races do see things differently. My grandfather had a saying: ‘When everyone eats together, the man who cares only about filling his own belly isn’t your friend.’ What he meant was, the only things that belong to you are what you can eat, what you can’t eat belongs to everyone, and what you haven’t hunted yet belongs to no one.”

“Then by that reasoning, Earth doesn’t belong to humans. It’s too big for anyone to swallow.”

The air collision avoidance alarm sounded. Ahead were four Tactical Air Force fighters, flying at the same altitude and heading. Yukikaze’s escorts. As the Super Sylph approached, the fighters peeled off to the left and right to open a path. Yukikaze flew ahead in a straight line and overtook them in an instant.

“Our TAF backup ends here. From this point on, we’re on our own.”

Rei toggled the master arm switch to ARM.

“You know, I think your grandfather had a point.”

Maybe if everyone around me were more like that, I’d be a different person,
thought Rei. Everyone else just seemed like they were trying to thrust their hands into the bellies of others.

“My father and grandfather spent their entire lives on the reservation. But that life wasn’t for me. I came here because there weren’t any avionics jobs in the air force reserves, either.”

“I heard you helped make a lot of Yukikaze’s electronics systems. She’s a good plane. I respect that.”

“I worked in the sections that developed the basic theory for her high-speed fire control system and the early-warning radar system. But it’d be kind of pushing things to say that I made them. That’s not something anyone can do on their own. So what brought you to Faery, Lieutenant?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Using the word ‘respect’ doesn’t seem like something a Boomerang pilot would do. I was warned that you all were mean, icy-hearted bastards.”

“I am. I don’t think about protecting anything but Yukikaze. Not the Earth or my homeland.” The image of his former girlfriend’s face suddenly floated up in his mind. No, not even her. If he was being honest with himself, he never really knew her at all. All he could remember clearly was the sight of her back as she walked away.

“Speaking of your homeland, Lieutenant, I went there once. I wasn’t allowed in, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was because of my heart. It’s mechanical. I guess you could call me a cyborg,” Tomahawk said jokingly.

“A cyborg, huh? But why should that have mattered? An artificial heart’s no different from having a prosthetic arm or corneal implants. Why wouldn’t they let you in?”

“The problem was the energy source. It’s powered by a piece of plutonium 238. The output’s only twenty watts, but even though it’s a low-power mechanism it’s still a nuclear one.”

“And that’s why they denied you entry? That’s ridiculous. Japan has nukes.”

“They’re afraid of uncontrolled nuclear material. It’s not just Japan. People like me have a lot of trouble living on Earth. They don’t use nuclear-powered hearts that much nowadays. The heat they generate makes it hard to control fluctuations in body temperature, and treatment is difficult because it’s nuclear.”

“Is there a danger you could become a human bomb?”

“There’s no way it could ever explode. There’s so little nuclear material that it’s fundamentally impossible for it to cause a detonation. But if the containment capsule breaks, it could contaminate my surroundings with radioactivity. And if that happens, naturally I’d be finished as well. It’s a good heart, though. Without it, I would have died a long time ago. Still… Every so often, I wonder if I’m not actually a machine. When I’m denied entry to a country, it’s like they’re telling me I’m not human.”

“Don’t think that way. You’re alive. That’s enough. Or are you telling me that you’re actually a corpse? Because as far as I know, corpses can’t talk. By the way, you’re in the FAF, right? I just realized I never asked what your rank is.”

“I’m a captain,” answered Tomahawk. “For what it’s worth.”

“I didn’t mean any offense, Captain, sir.”

Rei took his right hand off the side stick and saluted.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Lieutenant.”

“We’re fine. I trust Yukikaze.”

“I trust your skill. I know the Super Sylph demands advanced piloting skills.”

“We’re nearly there. I’m switching on the armament control system. Prepare for combat.”

“Roger.”

Five minutes passed with neither of them speaking. Suddenly, an emergency transmission came in:
PAN, PAN, PAN. DE
FTNS. CODE U, U, U. AR.

“It’s from the tactical nav support satellite. ‘Your plane is drawing dangerously close. Change course.’ It’s weird to see that when we’re not closing in on an enemy. Respond to the IFF code.”

“Roger.”

After Yukikaze’s identity was confirmed, Banshee-IV’s exact position was sent to them in real time. A short time later, the carrier appeared on Yukikaze’s active radar as well. They began their descent.

“Call Banshee for landing clearance.”

The IFF was operating. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Banshee confirmed Yukikaze’s side number and granted them landing clearance. Arresting hook, down.

“What’s the deal? There’s nothing weird at all here. Maybe those Banshee pilots were having a mass hallucination.”

They passed the marshal point. Range forty kilometers. Relative altitude from Banshee 1,500 meters. The carrier’s automatic precision guidance system was operating.

Autopilot, off. ACLS, set. Auto-throttle, set. Fuel level, weight, tank distribution, and center of gravity, check.

They passed through the 30-kilometer gate. Speed 200 knots.

Landing gear and flaps, down. Anti-skid brake controller, off. Speed brake, extended.

They passed through the 10-kilometer gate. Relative altitude 300 meters. Banshee-IV came into view.

“Jesus, that thing’s huge. It’s so big, it’s kind of unsettling.”

“It says to use Fly 3 for landing.”

Banshee’s flight decks were designated as Fly 1, 2, and 3. Fly 3 was used exclusively for landings.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Don’t you think they’re being way too accommodating?”

They received the cue to begin their descent. They fell at a rate of 18 meters per minute and soon crossed the glide slope. The carrier’s landing guidance system meatball was now in sight.

“001, Sylph, meatball,” Rei called in.

The target designator on his HUD had now captured Banshee. As they approached, the carrier loomed larger and larger. The TD indicated part of Banshee’s starboard side, then suddenly jumped to the left: the target was so large that the system couldn’t capture the entire thing at once.

“Executing manual approach.”

“Why?” asked Tom. “You can use the ACLS.”

“Didn’t you say you trusted my skill?”

Rei cut off the approach power compensator. The auto-throttle caution light lit. Auto-throttle, off. Throttle mode to BOOST. He deactivated the ACLS and direct lift control systems.

Throttle to MAX. Lineup and elevation check. He was on approach now, taking care not to stray off of the glide slope. They passed over the landing threshold of Banshee-IV’s flight deck. Yukikaze executed a break turn and veered off to the port side of the carrier to get into the one-eighty position for landing. A head-up call came from Banshee.

“Nice of them to guide me in like this.”

“Let’s just land this thing, Lieutenant.”

“It’s the JAM. It’s gotta be. They want to take Yukikaze. They want to capture a Super Sylph.”

“That’s just speculation. We need proof. Isn’t that why we came here?”

“It is. But we’re not gonna land on Fly 3. I’m bringing us down on the aircraft stowage elevator.”

“Can you do that?”

“Yeah. I don’t want Yukikaze being restrained by Banshee.”

They entered final approach, moving away from the center indicated by the meatball. Yukikaze drew near the main elevator at the edge of the deck. Working the pitch control, Rei slowed his plane to match Banshee’s airspeed, managing to keep her roughly level despite the poor conditions caused by the wild air currents.

They fell slowly to the deck. Touchdown. For a second it seemed like they were going to bolter, and Rei broke out in a cold sweat. He worked the engine output control and flaps so that the counter airflow forced Yukikaze down. Success. They were on the elevator. Rei fired the wire anchors fixed to the fuselage, and the heads punched into the deck. The spotting dolly standing by approached and moved onto the elevator deck, its emergency light flashing red. The elevator began to descend.

Engines, off. Rei unhooked his harness and drew his service pistol from his vest. He checked the indicator pin to make sure that a round was chambered, then bent forward and pulled out the survival gun stowed under his seat.

The elevator came to a stop. A sliding bulkhead sealed off the egress above them. Rei popped the canopy open, then jumped down from Yukikaze, machine gun in hand, and opened fire on the dolly. The robot, which had been readying to tow Yukikaze into the hangar, exploded in a shower of sparks and fell silent. A burning smell hung in the air.

“Okay, you can come down now, Tom. We’ve got a job to do.”

It was dark inside the cavernous hangar. Only the emergency lights were on. Normally, the space would have been filled with carrier-based aircraft packed closely together with their wings folded up, but now it was deserted and seemed oddly huge. In the midst of the expanse there was only Yukikaze, her wings spread atop the elevator floor, looking like an animal pricking up its ears as it strained to listen for a predator.

“Why’d you shoot the spotting dolly?” asked Tomahawk as he climbed down from Yukikaze, a small all-purpose system analyzer in his hand. “Aren’t you being a little overcautious?”

“We should consider this place a JAM base. So watch your step. We don’t know what might come at us. This may be our chance to gather some intel, but it’d be worthless if we don’t make it back alive.”

“You’re thinking we could be the first humans to come into contact with an actual JAM?”

“We have no idea what form the JAM really possess. We assume they’ve been hiding from us and that they’ve never appeared in front of a human. That’s Lynn Jackson’s opinion, but I have a feeling that may be wrong. I wonder if it’s not that they won’t appear to humans, but that humans aren’t able to sense them.”

“Like spirits, you mean?”

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s also the possibility that we look at them without actually seeing them. We see JAM fighters, and we have no doubts that there are JAM inside of them or, even if there aren’t, that they were made by JAM ‘people.’ We don’t consider the possibility that the fighters may be the JAM themselves because that’s just too strange to us. The JAM also seem to be perplexed by the existence of these ‘humans’ they observe. Maybe they’re wondering, ‘What are those organic things attached to the fighters? What are they doing, wandering around on their own? Well, they seem harmless enough, so just ignore them.’ You can practically hear them saying it.”

“No way.”

Rei shrugged. “Let’s get going. We’ll leave Yukikaze’s ECM armament running. As soon as the secondary power supply runs out, we’re out of here, okay?”