YUKIKAZE (30 page)

When the JAM threw high mobility fighters at their defensive lines, the FAF deployed new light fighters with high thrust-toweight ratios. When the JAM developed advanced electronic countermeasures, the FAF created more advanced electronic counter-countermeasures. The JAM responded to that with even more advanced ECCCM, which the FAF then managed to crack using high-powered radar. The power output of this radar was unimaginable, a frightening correction to the common assumption that radar waves didn’t really affect humans. Even at two to three kilometers away, an unprotected person would be in danger. At close range exposure would be like being thrown into a gigantic microwave oven.

Missiles were countered with high-velocity missiles, which were countered by hyper-velocity missiles, which were in turn countered with laser guns, and the lasers guns with baryon guns. As the FAF worked to neutralize the JAM’s weapons, in order to keep their own from being neutralized as well, they had to develop ones that not only met that same level of technological achievement but surpassed it. Obsolescence was simply a matter of time, and the periods they had before their weapons became obsolete were getting steadily shorter.

As Major Booker compared the data from each side he noticed something strange. Although it required a significant amount of time to develop and perfect such advanced technology, the FAF and the JAM seemed to be doing so at roughly the same rate. Depending on the situation, one side may have achieved overwhelming dominance for a few weeks using a new device, but countermeasures would soon appear and the war would grind back to a stalemate again. The main issue was that neither side could give concrete form to new tactical theories in only a few weeks. No matter how far in advance the JAM or the FAF could plan something that would utterly crush their opponent, by the time it was ready for use, it would already be obsolete.

Sometimes it seemed to Booker that the war was nothing more than a practical test of weapons development, with the planet Faery as the test lab. Or maybe the JAM were just matching their countermeasures to the FAF’s level of technology. If that was the case, they were being toyed with. Toyed with by aliens whose true nature was unknown.

There weren’t many people at the FAF’s Technology Development Center these days. A supercomputer sat in a refrigerated room, keeping its head cool as it endlessly analyzed JAM tactics. The analysis data it generated was sent to a development computer equipped with an artificial intelligence that would then propose potential countermeasures. Among these proposals were things a human wouldn’t have thought of, as well as some that were completely novel but also largely incomprehensible and impossible to execute given the current level of technology. An example was a proposal for a transdimensional bomb. The computer had been deadly serious, predicting the JAM would eventually develop one and advising the FAF to implement countermeasures accordingly.

The development computer would pass on its ideas to a lower-level practical implementation computer that would devise plans for the new weapon to be manufactured at the development center. With computer aid, of course. This entire development process wasn’t so much computer-aided as it was computer-driven. New fighter planes were designed based on new tactical theories. Materials were chosen, and new ones created if necessary. Load strengths were calculated, wing shapes determined, and the onboard armament systems were developed all simultaneously. The new fighters had to be utilized according to the new tactical theories they were based on, and so the pilots couldn’t simply fly them according to their own judgment. It wasn’t necessary for the pilots to think at all.

The days of a pilot taking into consideration a plane’s unique qualities and using his creativity and imagination to fly in the way best suited to take advantage of them were long past. The system created the tactics as well as the planes. No matter which pilot flew it, the plane would deliver the same performance. The best pilots for these new fighters were the ones who could quickly adapt to the machines without any questions, without wondering why they were fighting or how best to destroy their opponents. All they needed were the physical strength for the task and faith in the machine. There was no need for thought; the computers would think for them. At the very least, the computers could understand and execute tactics faster and with greater precision than any human could.

Despite the vigorous efforts of the FAF computers, the JAM countered them one by one with seeming ease. As though they were testing the abilities of humanity’s machines, not of humans themselves, just as Major Booker suspected.

However, there was one exception to this dynamic. Even the JAM were at a loss when it came to the Sylphid, the treasure of the Earth Defense Organization’s Faery Air Force. While models with the same name and basic
configuration had been released, their parts and designs tweaked to make them more easily producible, the original Sylphid’s maneuverability and reliability still went unmatched.

The Sylphid, originally developed for hit-and-away attacks, boasted a huge thrust-to-weight ratio. Its avionics system was now even more advanced than when it had first been developed, and its wing shape had been subtly modified to give it extreme maneuverability. The original Sylphid was an FAF mainline fighter, but only three air groups—a total of forty-nine planes— were produced.

Of those, thirteen strategic reconnaissance variants were delivered to the SAF. These planes had one section of stabilizing wings removed to make them even faster and more capable than the mainline fighters at evading low-level antiaircraft munitions. These thirteen, the most powerful of the Sylphid variants, were unofficially referred to as “Super Sylphs.”

Although the JAM had managed to hit them on different occasions, they had yet to shoot one down. How these planes, now ancient in terms of production time, still managed to remain the strongest in the war was a riddle that vexed both the computers and the humans at the TDC. They’d developed—and continued to develop—several new fighters that according to their specs should have been superior to the Super Sylphs. But none of them were.

But then,
Major Booker thought,
they’ve probably never seriously tried to determine what the key factor is in the Super Sylph’s survival rate.
The Sylphs of SAF-V, the Boomerang Squadron, had a return-to-base rate of 100 percent. And Booker knew the reason why: it was their exceptional pilots. It was common sense that the SAF would select only the most elite pilots to fly the air force’s best planes. But he knew that the computers probably didn’t want to admit that, since it would gut the entire premise that these fighters would deliver maximum performance no matter who was flying them, or even if they flew unmanned.

Right there, Major Booker felt he had the answer. He noted down his thoughts and began to draw up a report.

The Sylphs of the SAF were superior because of something both the JAM and the FAF computers considered an aberration: they were paired with humans in a system that generated the highest levels of combat proficiency. They flew in a way that the development computer hadn’t foreseen at the design stage, and that the JAM could not predict and therefore regarded as a threat. The SAF Sylphids existed for the purpose of reconnaissance. For observation. They monitored not only what was going on around them, but also their own tactics, combat, and flight performance. The pilots were constantly charged with the single directive of making it back to base; to do so, they constantly had to evolve their tactics in response to the JAM attacks. These thirteen Sylphs carried in their data files the records of the desperate actions taken by their pilots to survive hard-fought battles. Their AIs had learned from actual combat what they could not have learned from simulations. To the machines, it was aberrant data, but the fact remained that it was data that had enabled the fighters to survive.

A pilot with excellent combat intuition was essential to the function of a superior fighter—up to a point. Once the “learning” phase for the AI was over, the human would become a hindrance. In fact, the Super Sylphs of SAF-V had already reached the point where they could carry out their missions completely unmanned. Now the pilots were not just unnecessary: they were actually inhibiting the abilities of the planes. One day, if it became possible to replicate human intuition via data analysis, and if the computers did not consider it an aberration, then humans would no longer be necessary even for that initial knowledge acquisition phase.

They hadn’t reached that point yet though. Humans were still necessary to fight the JAM. The development center computers had not recognized that crucial factor yet. However, the JAM very well might have. And that was what lay at the core of Major Booker’s growing unease. Now the only things in the FAF that could reliably oppose the JAM were just thirteen fighters. The thirteen Super Sylphs of Boomerang Squadron.

Booker carefully worded his report to convey these thoughts to his commanding officer, General Cooley. It emphasized three proposals: that SAF-V’s Super Sylphs be completely automated, that the new fighter planes being worked on by the development center computers be equipped with AI systems of the type used by the SAF, and that their training be given over to Boomerang Squadron.

General Cooley reviewed his report, ordered him to provide her with more details, and then took it upon herself to present the major’s proposals to her superiors. While the high command of the Tactical Air Force recognized the merits of Major Booker’s proposals, the Systems Corps, and especially the computers, vehemently objected. They agreed with the proposal for automating the planes but disputed the assertion that the key to the Boomerang Squadron’s performance was the human pilots.

To support their position they referred to the results of a single flight test conducted by the TAF’s combat tactics development task force. That flight test had also been the major’s idea, with the aim of gauging the effectiveness of transferring Yukikaze’s AI system into a different plane, one that wasn’t a Super Sylph. The results were not satisfactory.

Booker believed that the test failed because the other plane’s central computer was insufficiently powerful and its flight capabilities were inferior to a Sylphid’s. Its reaction speed, response characteristics, and the strength and reliability of its control surfaces were too different. The test confirmed what Booker had suspected, which was that the learning function of Yukikaze’s AI was closely linked to the plane’s physical structure; in order to transfer it to another plane, they would need a brand-new, highcapacity computer that was completely “clean,” with no tactical software loaded into it, as well as a plane with an architecture that was completely compatible with Yukikaze’s flight, navigation, and fire control systems. In other words, they would need a copy of Yukikaze.

The major doubted they could create many of these copy planes, and more importantly, he doubted whether they should. One of Boomerang Squadron’s strengths lay in the distinct individualism of its pilots. If the entire Tactical Air Force flew the same planes as Boomerang Squadron and used the same tactics, it would form a pattern that the JAM would soon detect.

The Technology Development Center computers objected to this point as well, insisting that they could create and implement such a wide array of combat tactics that the JAM would not be able to discern any common elements. Major Booker did not yield to them. The plane that the TDC was currently working on was an upgraded variant of the Sylphid that was completely automated; he insisted that the design be modified to allow a human to pilot it. Both the TDC computers and its human staff regarded the major’s demand as completely unreasonable. Putting in life-support systems would make the plane heavier and cut down on space for the electronics, and adding a G-limiter would reduce its maneuverability. Booker tried to persuade them by conceding that the plane did not need to be flown manned all the time. Once it had been adequately trained by an SAF pilot it then could be completely automated.

In the end, the Tactical Air Force decided to implement Major Booker’s proposal on a provisional basis, with the new fighter prototype being produced in both manned and unmanned variants. Only thirteen planes—the same number as in Boomerang Squadron—were planned for combat deployment.

Booker worked to establish the foundation of a repurposed SAF, one in which the pilots’ primary role would be to train the new Sylphid. The unmanned prototype still had no name and was instead referred to by its development number, FRX00, which indicated that is was the 100th new fighter plane developed by the FAF, counting both major types and variants.

New technology was making the existing SAF planes more reliable during unmanned flight, and gradually more and more pilots got used to the sight of seeing their planes sortie without them. The Tactical Air Force had already recognized that the amount of data that needed to be collected was exceeding the capacity of the existent SAF. And so it was decided that the current mission of the SAF would be brought to an end and that it would be given a new mission, one based around the automated flight of its aircraft. After a trial period, when it was determined that full automation did not hinder the execution of its reconnaissance duty, the SAF became the first completely unmanned squadron in the Faery Air Force.

The last manned flight would be Yukikaze’s. The mission was an ultra low-level penetration to deploy intelligence-gathering sensor pods in D-zone.

“THIS WILL BE Yukikaze’s last flight.”

When Major Booker announced this to Rei and Burgadish in the SAF briefing room, the two Boomerang soldiers betrayed no discernable reaction, their expressions as blank as always.

Their mission operation was simple. They were to take off carrying tactical automated information sensor pods, cross over the forests of Faery, and deploy the pods in the white sand desert that stretched like a sea of sugar across D-zone. However, there was an element of risk involved: the FAF did not have mastery of the airspace in D-zone. Yukikaze would have to drop the TAISPs quickly and try to get out of there before the JAM detected their incursion.