YUKIKAZE (3 page)

“The engines are gone. It’s no use!”

“Don’t panic. There’s no way Yukikaze’s going to crash.”

“Lieutenant!”

“The turbines are spinning. I can airstart the engines.”

“It’s too risky to waste time trying for a restart!”

Yukikaze was now roughly level, and the EWO wasn’t going to let this chance slip away. He made sure the command lever was set to eject only the rear seat and then quickly yanked it. The canopy blew off the plane, followed by the rear ejection seat. The shock of it sent Yukikaze back into a tailspin.

Rei checked his altitude. The cold stabbed at him, the wind howling in his ears. He still had enough altitude to try for an airstart. The engine burner pressure was low. He tried the auto-restart switch, but there was no response. The low-voltage generator wasn’t giving him enough electrical power. There wasn’t enough time to activate the jet fuel starter, and he feared that using the secondary power unit would kill his computer systems completely.

The right engine was now burning. Fuel transfer to it was automatically cut off. Rei checked the turbine revs indicator, then pushed Yukikaze into a dive. She eagerly nosed down, as though intending to fly straight into the ground.

The increased airflow spun the turbine blades faster, and the generator circuits came back to life. Rei hit the airstart button. The engine ignition system activated and the ignition exciter spark plug flared. The airstart lamp was now lit. Yukikaze plummeted. The left engine came back to life. The turbine intake temperature rose. The revolutions increased. Cutting off the ignition operation, Rei gripped the side stick. Yukikaze climbed quickly, still spinning. He focused all his attention on the side stick, executing a sudden roll to the opposite side to arrest the spin.

The flight control’s failed
, he thought. He worked the stick cautiously. They were no longer rolling, but now Yukikaze was beginning to fall backwards. He nudged the plane into a gentle roll to try and level it. Suddenly, Yukikaze began rising quickly, bucking like a wild horse. Rei was feeling tired now. There was no time to check the gauges to determine exactly what was out of order. Without the canopy’s protection the cockpit was freezing, and the wind pressure kept him from seeing clearly. His arm was numb. Yukikaze began to buck harder.

A signal indicated a fault in the flight computer system. Of the five high-speed parallel processing computers that analyzed his flight data, three were now completely off-line. Of the two remaining, one wasn’t working properly, and it was unclear which of them had the fault. Because the calculations they came up with didn’t agree, the central computer had cut off the entire flight computer system. It entered the signal for control of the wings via the direct control assembly.

Rei saw this at the top of his display, and the cause of Yukikaze’s wild flight suddenly became clear to him. He loosened his grip on the stick and switched on the autopilot. Yukikaze’s violent shuddering immediately ceased.

Rei himself had been the cause of Yukikaze’s strange behavior. The injury he had sustained had left him with almost no sensation in his right arm. Yukikaze had been just faithfully following the input from the side stick even though Rei was exerting much more force on it than he should have been. The stick was pressure sensitive: every control surface on it responded to the way the pilot changed the grip of his right hand. The stick itself was immobile—there was no need for motion since it was pressure sensitive—and so under the correct conditions it could execute a pilot’s will with lightning speed. Now, the lack of sensation and the pain of his injured arm had caused Rei to accidentally send it the wrong instructions.

He adjusted the altitude on the autopilot, inputting a groundrelative setting of 300 meters. Yukikaze began to descend, her radar altimeter monitoring the distance. By the time the pressure altimeter read 1,260 meters above sea level, the fighter was flying roughly level. They were over an area of low mountains, and as Yukikaze flew she followed the soft vertical undulations of the landscape. Rei set the radar to real beam ground mapping mode and activated the forward surveillance system.

“Let’s go home, Yukikaze.”

The data for their return course had been lost. With his EWO gone, Rei had to work out his plane’s position himself with the help of the central computer. The navigation computer linked up with high-altitude support satellites, and the central computer used the data to calculate their current position. He flipped the auto-maneuver switch to ON and the tactical computer initiated guidance, with Faery Base as the objective.

Yukikaze was now locked in enemy auto-search, a mode where in the event of enemy contact she would automatically attack any opponents, fly to a position above the objective, and then bomb it. Fortunately, since she wasn’t carrying any bombs at the moment, there was no danger of inadvertently bombing the base.

Rei could have flown back to base via autopilot alone, but if they met any other enemies on the way he wouldn’t have the strength to fight them. Sticky, clotted blood had already dried his right eye shut, and the wind pressure was keeping him from opening his left eye all the way. His helmet visor was too damaged from the impact to deploy. So he input the target data into his tactical computer—he could do that using just his left fingertip—and sat back in his seat.

Tactical operations were easier than inputting coordinates into an autopilot. Rei was a warrior, not a navigator. He set the head-up display to its brightest level. Normally, it would be set to its lowest level for nighttime combat, to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but right now he needed it that bright just to be able to see it. The steering cue marker above the HUD showed a straight line toward Faery Base.

Subsonic speed. Flying on one engine. Bleeding heavily. It took him barely thirty minutes to reach the skies over the base, but he was half unconscious by that point. He heard Yukikaze signal to him that they were over the target as though from a great distance.

“B-3, report. Say your status.”

“Mayday… Can you read me? I’m in bombing mode… Is this Faery Base?”

“Affirmative. How long are you planning to circle over us?”

“I’m bringing her down now. Emergency landing. I’m wounded. Can’t see clearly.”

“Can you still land?”

“I’m bringing Yukikaze down in one piece, even if it kills me. I’m coming down. Give me ALS guidance.”

Auto-maneuver switch, OFF. Auto-landing system, activated. Auto-throttle control and direct lift control, activated. Yukikaze went into final approach. Gear down and locked.

The suns had set, and Rei knew that Faery Base had to be brightly lit, but he couldn’t see it. He tasted blood.
Like a Bloody Mary
, he thought. A little salty. He felt drunk, his mind fading in and out.

Touchdown. Auto-brake. Speed brakes extended to full.
Better landing than I can do,
Rei thought, just before he lost consciousness completely, breathing in the night scents of Faery.

A SKY FAIRY, a sylph, was flying. It soared on glittering, translucent wings, scattering golden particles of light as it went, flaxen hair fluttering behind it. White skin, almond-shaped silver eyes, red lips engraved with an odd smile. Gently curving breasts without nipples, taut thighs, long, slender legs.

A sylph, a fairy of the wind. It flew freely through the skies, rising upon gentle breezes, churning up fierce gales.

The sylph bent both knees at right angles, its lower legs quickly tapering off to knifelike vertical points. It reached its arms back and grasped its wings, which angled back and turned opaque. Its head elongated and darkened to gray.

Large thrust engines ignited. A Sylphid. Twin vertical stabilizers. Clipped delta wings. Underneath the canopy sill was its name. Small, written in kanji characters. Yukikaze.

It flew at supersonic speed, its shock wave mowing down the forests of Faery.

It was Yukikaze. Rei was watching Yukikaze fly. He was in the cockpit. But then, who was he now watching this? Yukikaze turned and approached him. Rei looked at the cockpit. There was nobody in it.

Yukikaze flew away faster than the speed of sound and vanished into the empty sky.

Yukikaze. Yukikaze, where are you going? Are you deserting me?

“YUKIKAZE…”

“Are you awake?”

Rei opened his eyes. He was covered in sweat. The pain of reality. A bandage was wound around his head. From his right eye, he saw only blackness.

“My eye… My right eye!”

“Calm down.”

The Faery Base military doctor held down Rei’s shoulders as he tried to get up.

“It’s not that bad a wound, but it’s a miracle you didn’t lose your sight in that eye. Some fragments of your helmet visor were embedded in your right temple. If it’d been a little worse, you probably never would have flown again. You’re a lucky man.”

“What about Yukikaze? How damaged is she?”

“Your beloved plane? Well, I don’t treat fighters, so I wouldn’t know about that. Just get some rest, and then you can get out of bed and go check yourself. The vice-commander of the SAF is calling for you, by the way. She wants you to report to her.”

“General Cooley? That old bitch. If I was dead, she’d probably have me dug up out of my grave to report to her.”

“They’re thinking of court-martialing you.”

“For what?”

“Do you need a sedative?”

“Of course not. You can’t fly when you’re fucked up.”

The doctor gave him a look full of doubt, and then shrugged.

“Well, you were sent to Faery because you’re guilty of something. But I’m not going to pass judgment on you. Just keep quiet and do what you’re told, and in two or three years your tour of duty will be up. If you want to get back to Earth faster, don’t go causing trouble.”

“Look. First of all, to me Earth’s just a big ball of water filled with a lot of bitter memories. Second, what do you mean if I want to get back sooner I should keep quiet? You saying I should just shut up and let the JAM kill me? Screw that. You either kill or get killed out there.”

Now the doctor’s expression shifted to one of active disdain.

“Is that how you lived back on Earth?”

“My past is none of your goddamned business.”

“I figure a normal person would want to get away from the battlefield as soon as possible. But there seem to be more and more of your kind lately. The soldiers of the Special Air Force really are ‘special,’ aren’t they? Have you ever read
The Invader
, by Lynn Jackson? She predicted an increase in the number of people like you. That there’d be a problem once there weren’t enough wars waged on Earth. She also talks about how the nations all disagreed on how to control the Passageway. So the countries that weren’t military superpowers on Earth passed the Space Heavenly Body Treaty to try and prevent the superpowers from monopolizing control of it.”

“‘The Space Heavenly Body Treaty’? Is there even such a thing?”

“It was around long before we ever discovered Faery. ‘The general principles limiting national activities regarding the exploration and exploitation of the Moon and any other heavenly bodies comprising space.’ In the end, the United Nations established the Earth Defense Force as an independent entity, which led to the establishment of the Faery Air Force. Members don’t advocate any one-sided ideologies and it has none. It just requires you to be human. The FAF is now a truly supranational group. Its reputation is good, but the truth is that the quality of its members has been gradually dropping as nations use it as a dumping ground to get rid of their criminals and malcontents. The FAF is like humanity’s garbage dump. A prison annex. I figured it out before that you weren’t just a normal criminal. I can tell just by looking at you. That there must be some other reason why you’re such a coldhearted, inhuman killer. You’re like a machine.”

Rei had begun to tune out during the doctor’s lecture, distracted by the throbbing pain in his head, but a surge of irritation brought him back.

“You’re the same, aren’t you? You were sent to Faery too.”

“I chose to come here for research. I’m not like you. I didn’t choose to join the FAF because I’d committed a crime and didn’t want to go to prison. Let me ask you: you were trained to be a fighter pilot using conditioned response through a direct neural interface, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could have seen what your personality data was like before they did it. I’d like to know if your current personality was caused by the training destroying your previous one or not.”

Anger was now burning in the pit of Rei’s stomach.

“And what would you do if you knew? Claim that I’m inhuman? Humanity has nothing to do with fighting the JAM, because
they’re
not human.”

“That’s true. But I wasn’t saying it was a question of one’s humanity.”

“Didn’t you go through the training, too?”

“No. I don’t fly a fighter.”

“But you’re a lot like me, aren’t you? You only value what you’re interested in and couldn’t care less about anything else. This isn’t some aftereffect of my training. I haven’t changed at all. I hate anything that can’t do the job, whether it’s a human or a machine. And I’ve had enough of you. Let me see my data from the medical computer. My chart. I’ll let the computer decide if I can leave or not. I’m done with you. Get out. You’re pissing me off.”

Rei got up off the bed and undid the bandage around his head. He touched the wound. Just as the doctor had said, it didn’t seem very deep. He tried to open his right eye, then squeezed it shut when the bright light hit it. The wound opened up and began oozing blood. The doctor left the room without a word. Rei did not rewind the bandage and instead just pressed the wadded-up mass to the wound.

A nurse arrived and made a fuss over his undone bandage. As she was getting ready to rewind it, Rei brushed her off and demanded that she just put an adhesive over the wound. She did what he told her to do.

PEOPLE WERE ALWAYS asking him, “What were you thinking?” or “Why did you do that?” And that was what the uniformed military court-martial judge asked him too.