YUKIKAZE (27 page)
This is no win
, the captain thought. Yukikaze hadn’t been brought down. If it hadn’t been bound by the parameters of the combat flight test program, it would have easily accelerated out of the Fand II’s firing range and returned to base.
“Captain O’Donnell, the combat flight test is concluded.” Major Booker issued the order from the SAF’s underground control room back at Faery Base.
“It seems the Fand II has met our expectations,” said the Tactical Air Force’s commander.
“It evaded the high-velocity missiles and proved it could engage the enemy,” agreed Booker. “Although Yukikaze may still be regarded by the JAM as more of a threat since they have nothing like it.”
“That’s of little use if it breaks itself in the process,” interjected General Cooley. “If the Fand II had attacked it at that point, Yukikaze would have lost. The Fand II is impressive.”
A warning alarm suddenly sounded in the control room. Red letters appeared on the huge data screen, informing them that incoming hostile aircraft had been detected.
“It’s the JAM,” said Major Booker, a familiar knot forming in his stomach.
The early warning had been transmitted from Minx.
“Where’re they coming from?” asked the control plane’s radar operator. “I don’t see them.”
“Range 400 km,” said Minx’s EWO from 30,000 meters above. “They’re closing at super-low altitude. Definitely JAM. Two planes, combat recon types. Number of units increasing.”
“They penetrated that far in without tripping our warning network?” Booker said incredulously. “Minx, intercept them. TAB-15, scramble the 501st TFS. Fand II, return to base at once. Emergency withdrawal.”
“Copy,” replied Captain O’Donnell and flipped his armament switch to ON.
RDY GUN. RDY HAAM-4.
Real weapons this time. His gun and four short-range high-velocity air-to-air missiles.
The Fand II and Yukikaze were both closer to the JAM than Minx, which plummeted toward the enemy aircraft at maximum thrust, firing two long-range missiles as it went. An H cue appeared on the HUD. The JAM were climbing. The countdown until impact began.
9…8…7—the JAM launched high-velocity interceptor missiles—5, 4, 3… The numbers vanished.
“No good. Missiles down.”
Three planes from TAB-15 were now in the air and pushing at maximum thrust to intercept the JAM.
“Minx, abort your attack,” Major Booker ordered. “Climb and resume surveillance duty.”
“Roger.”
Static filled the channel. The JAM were using their highestoutput ECM. They pressed in behind the Fand II and Yukikaze, 300 km to the rear, and launched two high-velocity missiles.
“These’re moving as fast as those ground-to-ground ones we saw before. Rei, do you read me? The JAM probably want to see how the Fand II will evade these missiles.”
Because of the ECM interference, Booker’s words didn’t reach Rei. The control plane initiated ECCM. The approaching enemy missiles appeared on the radar screen. After another twenty seconds, when they were within a hundred kilometers of the Fand II and Yukikaze, the missiles split into four. Minx watched them from on high.
On Yukikaze’s remote console, Rei saw the message
RDY
GUN
appear.
“No,” he said softly. “You can’t pull any high-velocity maneuvers now.”
His hand hovered over the remote switch. He wanted to protect Yukikaze, but protecting the Fand II came first. And for that…the image of Captain O’Donnell and his lover suddenly floated into his mind…for that, he might be forced to use Yukikaze as a shield. Make it back to base, even if you have to watch your comrades being wiped out. Minx had now been charged with that duty.
Strange,
Rei thought as his heart grew cold.
I’m worried about abandoning Yukikaze. I… Am I jealous of her, after she betrayed me?
Without sorting out his feelings, he flipped the switch and seized the control stick without a second thought. But there was no reaction.
“What’s wrong with you, Yukikaze?!”
Before receiving the instructions from Rei, Yukikaze linked with the Fand II, taking control of it. She launched four of the Fand II’s HAAMs, which took out two of the JAM’s four missiles. Her priority was to protect herself, not the Fand II. The remaining two missiles flew toward the Fand II.
“Captain, get out of there!” Rei shouted. Yukikaze hadn’t interposed herself between the missiles and the Fand II as he’d directed her to. She had decided that Rei’s orders were in error and was ignoring them. After determining that she was safe, she began directing the Fand II through evasive maneuvers.
O’Donnell soon realized he was no longer in control of his plane. He removed his hand from the side stick as violent G-forces assaulted his body. The Fand II jumped like a fox, the first missile passing below by the thinnest of margins. Its proximity switch activated, detonating the warhead. To minimize the damage, the Fand II turned its tail toward the explosion and began to withdraw at MAX afterburner. Just 0.3 seconds later, it jinked hard and barely evaded the second missile. The shock wave from the first explosion had damaged the Fand II’s right stabilizer fin, and now the sudden evasive action snapped it right off.
The Fand II spun away from Yukikaze like a boomerang. Yukikaze immediately began working every control surface on the plane to bring it back to controlled flight. It took four seconds to arrest the spin and regain the proper flight attitude. The Fand II’s engines were stalled. Yukikaze glided it down and restarted the engines.
Rei looked at the data being sent by Yukikaze. There was a problem with the Fand II’s fuel transfer system, which had been caused not by the JAM missiles but by the wild spin it had gone into from the evasive maneuvers. It was now using gravity feed to move the fuel from its tank and took a return course to Faery Base.
On the way back to the base Yukikaze got the FTS working again. She informed Rei that the Fand II could resume normal high-velocity maneuvers.
ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL
, she reported.
“Are you kidding?” Rei said to himself. “I doubt the captain will ever want to go through that again. Captain O’Donnell, come in. Captain O’Donnell. Do you read me? Captain O’Donnell, respond.”
There was no answer. As they returned to Faery Base Yukikaze flew tight alongside the Fand II, as if in sympathy for its damage. Once communications with the base were restored, Rei told Major Booker to have an ambulance standing by.
“Captain O’Donnell isn’t responding, and I don’t think he’s just passed out. Yukikaze put the Fand II through some intense maneuvers. It may have…” Rei put his hand to his chest. His injuries ached.
The Fand II landed in formation with Yukikaze, its engine dropping to idle at the runway’s end. The flight test personnel and ambulance crew ran out to the planes. Lieutenant Emery shoved Major Booker aside and turned the external canopy control handle. The Fand II’s canopy yawned open.
She scrambled up the boarding ladder and leaned over the cockpit. “Hugh, it’s me,” she said. “Are you all right? Talk to me.”
O’Donnell was slumped in his seat, motionless. She reached out and removed his helmet and mask. And screamed. Blood poured over her hands, streaming from his mask and mouth. His head lolled to one side. He wasn’t breathing.
“Hugh… Say something…please…”
Major Booker signaled the medical team.
If Rei had been aboard Yukikaze, this might not have happened.
As that thought was passing through his mind, Lieutenant Emery did something he couldn’t have anticipated. She drew her service pistol and aimed it at Captain O’Donnell. For a split second, the major couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“What are you doing?!” he shouted as she fired a shot into her lover’s chest. She then threw the gun aside and collapsed against O’Donnell’s body, embracing it and crying hysterically.
“He can’t have been killed by the Fand. Not by a machine. No… I killed Hugh! I did! A man whose heart was taken by a Fand deserves to die!”
Major Booker wrapped his arms around the now incoherent Lieutenant Emery and gently pulled her away from the body.
“What’s wrong with this plane?” she sobbed. “Hugh’s dead. After what happened to him, why…why doesn’t it react? Why… No! No! No!”
Over her shoulder, Booker looked at the blood-spattered instrument panels inside the cockpits. Condition lights, all clear. All systems normal.
Neither the JAM nor Lieutenant Emery had killed Captain O’Donnell. The Fand II and Yukikaze had. And to those two machines, his death was insignificant.
Major Booker left Lieutenant Emery in the care of the medical crew, opened Yukikaze’s canopy, climbed into the cockpit, and turned the auto-maneuver switch off. The link with the Fand II was severed, and then, as though awakening from a dream, Yukikaze alerted the major via her display that the pilot harness, anti-G suit hoses, and mask weren’t properly secured. To indicate that he had no intention of flying, he flipped the hydraulic system cut-off switch, inactivating the control surface hydraulics. Yukikaze cancelled the alert. In this standby state, any speed over 30 mph would automatically engage her brakes.
Booker taxied Yukikaze over to the elevator that led down to the SAF’s underground hangar, then handed her over to her ground crew.
Meanwhile, the control plane had landed. Rei climbed down from it and watched silently as they wheeled Captain O’Donnell away, Lieutenant Emery clinging to his body.
“Rei…”
He turned at the sound of the major’s voice.
“Jack. How’s Yukikaze?”
“Machines can be repaired. Yukikaze protected the Fand II, not the captain. I was wrong. I never should have sent Yukikaze up unmanned.”
“It’s not your fault. If she hadn’t taken control of the Fand II, the captain and the plane would both have been destroyed by the JAM. The result would have been the same. As far as the captain’s fate was concerned, at least.”
“But it would have had a different significance. He was killed by his own machine—”
“Does it matter?” Rei asked quietly. “This is a battlefield. Every death here is a combat death. What other kind of death is there?”
Major Booker couldn’t answer him.
0807 hours. The combat flight test was concluded. The Fand II was approved for deployment.
For the first time in a long while, he had the chance to speak with someone from home. But he did not use Japanese. He was angry that he could not convey his thoughts, frustrated that he could no longer express his feelings in his mother tongue. He had forgotten the language of home.
THIRTY-THREE YEARS have passed since unknown alien life-forms opened a hyperspace corridor between Earth and the planet Faery in an attempted invasion of our planet. We still know nothing about them. We don’t even know whether they were the ones who actually created the Passageway. Five years ago, I collected data on how every nation perceived this war and compiled it into a book that was published under the title
The Invader.
I was only four years old when the JAM launched their preemptive strike. I remember what the adults, my mother and father, said back then as though it were yesterday.
“It looks like-----happened in-----. The president is sending the-----to-----.” I listened to them in wonder. To this day, I can clearly remember those blank spaces in the conversation, those words that, limited by my child’s vocabulary, I didn’t understand. And at the time, I wondered if I would understand them when I grew up.
As an adult, although I may experience blanks in a conversation, I don’t notice them. I automatically compensate for them by my understanding of the context in which they appear, and the
meaning of the sentences flows unhindered. It’s similar to the way that our sight works. We perceive things in our vision as a continuous flow of images, when in reality there are blank spaces in our visual input. However, our brains automatically fill in those gaps, so we don’t notice them.
It’s easier for humans to process things as analog data. We need continuity, the illusion that what we say, see, and think presents an organic whole. In other words, we function in the opposite manner of a digital construct, where data is quantified, discreet, and determinate. The digital world seems to run counter to the very essence of our humanity. Our language as well. Our civilization itself. So what, exactly, are we doing turning over more and more of our existence to computers?
It was the JAM who raised these doubts in me. They are aliens. But to me, they seemed almost more like evil gods, a presence that held up a dark mirror to the meaning of human existence. That was the basis upon which I wrote
The Invader.
Most citizens of Earth do not share my view. And that in itself points to the heart of the issue: the very concept of “citizens of Earth” is nonsense in light of the current international situation. There may be humans on Earth, but nowhere is there any group of individuals who regard themselves as inhabitants of Earth first and of their nations second. I think this a foolish and dangerous mindset, but when I say this to others they tell me that I am naïve.
I once told a scientist of my idea that humans lead an analog existence. He laughed and explained to me that our world—that the entire universe—is essentially digital. Objects, atoms, and even time itself are quantum in nature, and nothing works in a completely analog way. Everything from the subatomic world on up is digital. But humans exist on a macroscopic, not a microscopic, scale, I told him. He replied that if I insisted on clinging to that concept, then I could never understand what he was saying.
And so I asked him this in return: Are humans becoming more like machines, and in particular, more like our computers? Are we headed in the direction of digitalization? Yes, that may be, he answered, with an air of possessing some type of mysterious knowledge that I did not.
I became so intrigued by this notion that I began collecting data on the JAM and on the soldiers of the Faery Air Force who battle them on the front lines. Apparently the soldiers are beginning to have doubts about the still-unknown aliens and the war they are fighting with them.