YUKIKAZE (24 page)
Booker tore up the report into confetti and threw it into the air. The pieces fluttered down like snow.
“It looks like the one you should have cursed was the computer, Amata,” he muttered to himself. “What would you have done if you’d known the truth?”
Major Booker himself couldn’t answer that question.
It was winter on Faery. For Lieutenant Amata, spring would never come.
Yukikaze’s power was beyond what even he had expected. Finally free of her crew, she killed all their safeguards and revealed capacities exceeding her design limits. He tried to tame this new Yukikaze, but she refused his orders, judging them errors, and danced freely in the skies of Faery…
A LARGE FORMATION of enemy aircraft was approaching.
The initial alert came in from the tactical fighters patrolling the perimeter of frontline base TAB-14. An airborne early warning and control system plane confirmed the information.
Twenty-four interceptors scrambled from TAB-14. They were Fands, single-seat assault fighters of the 1402nd Tactical Combat Group, 402nd Tactical Fighter Squadron.
The 402nd TFS fell into a stacked line-abreast formation and prepared to confront the attacking JAM fighters.
The 402nd flight leader glanced up at the contrails streaking the sky high above them. He swallowed a surge of irritation laced with jealousy; the tactical combat and surveillance fighter leaving those trails was powerful enough to meet the JAM on equal terms and, thanks to the overwhelming thrust provided by its Phoenix engines, could even outrun them. Although it appeared whenever there was a battle, it never joined in combat, never helped its fellow FAF planes in their lethal struggle, and always just returned to base safely when it was all over.
All that SAF bastard does is run away,
the 402nd leader thought.
It’s like he comes just to watch us die.
“Ox leader, JAM closing. Number of units, increasing. One-point-four G, head-on.”
“Roger.”
Guided by the data link from the AWACS plane, the 402nd TFS broke up into four smaller flights. Each flight of six planes assumed a stacked three-ship spread formation. One threeplane group would attack while the other would fly support, acting as spotters and defense. The attacking and defending roles weren’t fixed beforehand but instead varied according to the needs of the battle. The point of this fluid formation was to separate the enemy aircraft and attack them three-onone. When these conditions weren’t met—for example, if two enemy planes were approaching from the rear—the attacking group would abort and shift to a defensive role, creating an opportunity for the other group to strike.
In this sort of close-in dogfight, there was no time to rely on radar. The pilots had to depend on their own senses and on the information transmitted from their fellow planes. The only way to retain the advantage was to make constant, rapid, and accurate decisions. Combat pilots with bad instincts didn’t last for long.
“Ox 2, Ox 3, engage.”
The flight leader slid his throttle forward. The enemy had broken into two groups, one going high and the other low. Ox team climbed rapidly.
“Tally on bandit, two o’clock,” called in Ox 2. His sharp eyesight had allowed him to spot the JAM’s faint contrail. Ox leader kept his eyes glued to it. His radar acquired the enemy plane and highlighted it on his HUD within the target designator box. He quickly toggled his dogfight switch. One wing of the enemy formation was lagging behind.
“I’ve got him.”
The flight leader pushed forward. Speed had to be maintained at all costs. Speed was life. Ox 2 and 3 followed him.
“Ox leader, engaging. Break, starboard.”
“Roger.”
Acting on a warning from Ox 4, which was monitoring the situation, that their target was maneuvering to attack, Ox leader’s group dove to the right. The JAM pursued them. Ox 4, 5, and 6 rolled in from above, trying to interdict the JAM, which evaded them with a 3G hard-right climbing turn.
Ox leader pulled into a 3.5G turn, his angle of attack pushed to twenty degrees. The JAM responded with a 5G slice, and Ox leader followed, diving inverted. Countering his lead turn, the JAM pulled vertical, and Ox 3 and 4 simultaneously performed pitchbacks, banking left to chase it. The JAM continued to rise, its afterburners blowing fire, turning at 6Gs to prevent Ox 2 and 3 from maneuvering behind it. Within three seconds, it was over a thousand meters up, turning hard to the right to come around to Ox 4’s six o’clock. Ox 4’s radar warning receiver shrilled an alarm.
Ox leader pushed his plane’s nose through a 7.4G turn at the maximum angle of attack. In response, the JAM aborted its attack on Ox 4, cut sharply to the left, and rolled into a 180-degree turn. Ox leader rolled into his own turn, committing to the two-circle fight, both aircraft trying to maneuver the other into its kill envelope.
And finally, Ox leader had it.
RDY AAM
appeared on his HUD. The short-range missile’s seeker acquired the enemy aircraft and the plane’s onboard fire control system input the JAM’s heading, relative altitude, and speed data into the missile’s guidance system. Ox leader closed on his quarry.
At six thousand meters’ distance, a tone sounded in his helmet to alert him that he was within the missile’s firing range. He pressed the weapon release button on his side stick without a moment’s hesitation. The missile’s rocket motor and gas-turbine power generator activated, launching it away from the plane. The target was now four seconds away.
The JAM jinked violently, trying to evade the missile that was twining up its trail, but it was too late. The AAM slammed into the enemy craft. Target, destroyed.
Ox flight retook its formation.
ABOARD YUKIKAZE, REI Fukai watched the enemy symbol vanish from his multi-function display. According to FAF tactical theory, victory was a secondary objective: the primary objective was not to lose. The FAF had been charged with the duty to defend Earth from the persistent attacks launched by the JAM, but because the true nature of the JAM remained a mystery, and because the FAF had never discovered the key to killing them, it could not devise a strategy for winning the war. Therefore, a single tactical accomplishment was regarded not as a victory but rather as an avoidance of defeat. The war was hopeless, but at least they had yet to lose it.
The 402’s doing well,
Rei thought to himself. They were using tactics devised to make sure they didn’t lose.
“Something’s wrong,” said Lieutenant Burgadish from the backseat as he checked the long-range search radar.
“What do you got?”
“Not sure… Wait. Thought so. It’s a second wave. The ones the 402 are fighting are decoys… Here they come. Missiles. Ground-to-ground missiles, headed for TAB-14, fast.”
“Does the base know they’re coming? How’s their interceptor deployment look?”
“Doesn’t look like they’ll make it in time.”
Yukikaze accelerated, climbing into the airspace above TAB-14. Rei tried to identify the approaching enemy missiles in the tactical data bank, but the result came back as
UNKNOWN
. He switched the MFD to moving target indicator mode.
Eighteen enemy missiles, closing.
“Damn, they’re fast. That’s an ultra-high velocity. Looks like the JAM have a new missile, Lieutenant Fukai.”
“Activate the TARPS. Get a shot of them.”
“Activating TARPS.”
The swarm of missiles crossed hundreds of kilometers in what seemed like a matter of seconds. As he banked Yukikaze Rei could see them arcing toward TAB-14 with his own eyes. They plunged toward the base, looking like red comets or meteors, long, fiery tails stretching out behind them. The tails were not formed by the exhaust gases from the warheads’ rocket engines: the missiles were flying so fast that they were glowing red hot just from the air friction generated by their passage.
TAB-14 was annihilated in an instant. No trace remained of the buildings on the surface. An enormous crater on the base’s broad runway marked the spot where the interceptor squadron, the 401st TFS, had been hot fueling for its takeoff. Yukikaze silently recorded the devastation with her TARPS cameras.
“With that kind of velocity, they don’t even need an explosive. The shock wave alone blew everything away.”
“Lieutenant Fukai, third wave of enemy missiles, incoming. They’re antiaircraft, moving much slower than the GTGM just now, but they’re three times faster than the norm. The 402nd’s in danger.”
“Tell them to take evasive action. PAN, code U.”
“Roger.” Burgadish got on the guard frequency. “PAN, PAN, PAN. 402 TFS. This is Yukikaze, B-503. PAN, PAN, PAN. Code U, Uniform, Uniform.”
The 402nd leader received the emergency message from Yukikaze at the same instant that his own plane’s alert system sounded its warning. He immediately began evasive maneuvers, but he had no idea what the approaching threat actually was.
“JAM antiair missiles?”
He scanned his surroundings to try to visually acquire the missiles. It was hard, but you could usually spot them from the faint contrails they left. If he could see them, he was sure he could evade them.
There they were, coming at him from six o’clock low. But… what were they? They were moving fast, more like laser beams than missiles.
He never had time to dodge. A split second after he’d sighted the missiles, he and his plane were consumed in an explosion.
“Nineteen 402nd planes down. No survivors,” Lieutenant Burgadish stated impassively.
“Roger,” Rei replied. “No point hanging around here. RTB.”
“More JAM, closing. Range 120 klicks. There are three large units, possibly missile carriers. No escorts. They’re just flying along, like they don’t even care if they’re attacked.”
“Are they where those AAMs were launched from? Do they just shoot until they’re empty? What are they after now?”
“They may still have more missiles. Hell, the planes themselves may be giant bombs… Looks like the survivors of the 402 are moving to intercept.”
The five remaining units of the 402nd reformed then turned toward the three massive JAM aircraft, firing medium-range missiles as they closed the 100-kilometer range to the enemy. But the 402nd’s missiles didn’t even go thirty klicks before they were destroyed by the much faster interceptors the JAM had launched nearly simultaneously. The 402nd planes began to withdraw. They were quickly picked off from behind, gone in flashes of light and flame. Black smoke filled the sky.
“All remaining 402 units destroyed.”
“Fands are an older plane. To hit an enemy like that we need more power and maneuverability. Something like the Flip Knight system might work.”
“Unmanned aircraft?” Burgadish said doubtfully. “They could act as decoys to draw off the missiles. Then once the JAM’ve exhausted their payloads—Lieutenant, they’ve locked on! Engage!”
Their RWR had picked up the waves of enemy targeting radar. Rei sent Yukikaze into a sliceback and then ran the throttle to MAX, fleeing the oncoming enemy.
“Two high-velocity missiles, closing from the rear at a little over two-point-one. Range forty klicks, approximately ten seconds to impact. The second one’s six klicks behind it and will hit three seconds after.”
Yukikaze fled at a speed of over a thousand meters per second, the JAM missiles tearing after her.
“We’re not going to make it.”
“Yukikaze isn’t a Fand.”
Rei hit the emergency jettison switch, dumping the TARPS pod, then fired six medium-range missiles as decoys and activated ECM. No effect.
Taking his hand from the throttle, he reached down to the panel near his left knee and flipped the V-max switch. This cut out the limiters on Yukikaze’s twin engines, squeezing power from them beyond their designed safety limits.
Auto-maneuver system, ON. Yukikaze was now free from Rei’s control, and in a fraction of second had used all her sensor data to formulate the sequence of maneuvers that would save them from the JAM missiles.
The moment Rei released the side stick, Yukikaze abrubtly yawed to starboard, her attitude unchanged. Rei was thrown against the left side of his seat. The G-forces were terrific; he felt like his internal organs were being crushed.
The JAM missile passed by them barely 110 meters away on the left side and self-destructed. Yukikaze pitched and shuddered in the shock wave of the explosion.
A warning tone sounded in Rei’s helmet, signaling the approach of the second missile.
Rei steeled himself. They were going to die.
Ejection at this point was impossible. Yukikaze’s ejection seats had no capsules to protect them; firing them at supersonic speed was tantamount to suicide.
He watched the rapidly moving symbol on the MTI and relinquished it to Yukikaze to deal with.
It took a second for her to correct her attitude after having been hit by the explosion shock wave. Two seconds to impact. Evasion was impossible.
Yukikaze initiated an offensive combat maneuver.
Rei wasn’t expecting it. He was suddenly pressed into his seat, the G-forces seeming to crush his eyeballs back into his skull. His vision blacked out. He had an instant’s impression that all his blood had turned solid and impossibly heavy—then he lost consciousness.
Yukikaze then did something Rei would have thought impossible.
Dropping her engine power to idle, she slewed around her center of gravity, spinning 180 degrees like a top, letting the momentum remaining from her forward velocity carry her backwards tail-first through the sky at subsonic speed. She was now confronting the enemy missile nose-on.
RDY GUN
. Ultra high-velocity auto-fire control system, activated. Eighty rounds from the nose cannon slammed into the enemy missile in 1.4 seconds.
The missile detonated 0.2 seconds from impact.
Yukikaze returned to her previous attitude shortly before Rei regained consciousness. She had automatically assumed a return course to base.
Fighting down a wave of nausea, Rei immediately checked the master caution light panel. Nav and electrical systems, check. There was damage to one of the hydraulic systems. He twisted and craned his head around to look at Yukikaze’s vertical stabilizers. The right rudder was gone. It wouldn’t have too dangerous an effect on their flight, though; as long as the left one remained, it’d be enough.