YUKIKAZE (4 page)

“Why did you shoot down an ally aircraft, Lieutenant Fukai?”

“It was a JAM.”

“Your gun camera took pictures of a Sylphid.”

“It was a JAM. It wasn’t responding to me. The IFF read it as an unknown, and I made a decision.”

“Yukikaze’s transponder was working properly,” said General Cooley, who was acting as his defense. “No abnormality in its function was found.”

“The other plane’s IFF or communications equipment may have been nonfunctional,” said the judge.

“If I hadn’t attacked it, I would have died,” replied Rei shortly. “It may not have been identified as a hostile, but it wasn’t a friendly either. And that makes it an enemy.”

“But it was clearly a Sylphid. Don’t you trust your own eyes, Lieutenant Fukai? You made visual contact with that Sylph, didn’t you?”

“The way that you trust your own eyes is the way that I trust the warnings Yukikaze gives me. That’s exactly why I’ve managed to stay alive so far.”

“I have a request to make as defense counsel,” said General Cooley, pushing the powerful glasses she wore for nearsightedness up with her index finger as she spoke. “I’d like to find out which unit the plane in question was attached to.”

“That’s right,” Rei said, nodding. “I don’t recall seeing any unit insignia or personal marks on it. At the very least, it wasn’t a fighter from Boomerang Squadron.”

“It may have been a unit with the Aerospace Defense or Defense Reconnaissance air groups.”

“A strategic recon Sylph would have had a ramjet booster attached for greater speed, and it would’ve been flying angels above me, at 45,000 meters at least. And it wouldn’t have attacked me either.”

“You were attacked?”

Rei pointed at the dressing on his forehead. “This is a combat injury.”

“Caused by Yukikaze’s own missile, I believe.”

“If I hadn’t fired, I would have been shot down. Wait a minute, what about my EWO? The second lieutenant who was assigned to me. Why don’t you ask him?”

“He’s dead,” answered the judge after a brief pause. “Killed by one of the native reptiles.”

“I warned him. If I hadn’t gotten the engines restarted, I would have ended up just the same.”

“It looks like his parachute got fouled in a tree and he was attacked from below during the search and rescue…” The judge trailed off, then resumed. “I recognize the validity of the defense counsel’s request. We’ll adjourn for today. Lieutenant Fukai is restricted from operational activities and confined to quarters.”

There was no stockade on Faery. Anyone guilty of a crime that didn’t rate the death penalty was shipped back to Earth for imprisonment.

The punishment for a second offense varied according to the individual’s national origin, but if you were lucky you’d have only attempted escape added to the original criminal sentence. If you were unlucky, you’d face the death penalty with no chance for appeal. Rei wondered what Japan’s policy was, then took a deep breath; thinking about his homeland brought with it the usual associated irritation.

As he exited the temporary preliminary courtroom—which most of the time was known as Tactical Combat Group Conference Room #7—Rei was stopped by General Cooley.

“Do you want to smash my face in right now, First Lieutenant?” she asked in a chiding tone of voice.

“I must be going deaf,” he replied. “Did you just say ‘first lieutenant’?”

“I did—but on the assumption that you’re innocent. However, I am glad that you made it back here in one piece.”

I’m not surprised the general’s glad,
Rei thought. The Sylphid was an extremely expensive piece of FAF property.

“What’re you going to do with me while we wait for the preliminary court to hand down its verdict? Probably confine me to quarters, right?”

“You are ordered to assist Major Booker.”

“Be Jack’s aide? I expected some kind of ground duty, but aren’t I restricted from all operational activities?”

“There’s something the major has to take care of that’s been driving him crazy, and it has nothing to do with the war against the JAM. You’ll get the details when you see him. That is all. Any questions?”

“None.” They saluted.

BEFORE GOING TO see Major James Booker, the only man whom Rei could call a friend, he went back to the air force hospital to get his bandage changed. Although the SAF had its own medical facilities, Rei had been taken to the main base hospital for his treatment. After receiving confirmation from the computer there that his injury wasn’t getting worse, he headed to 5th Squadron’s quarters.

Faery Base was underground.

The base was the general headquarters for all the forces on the planet, and the importance of its role was reflected in its massive size. Buildings containing the residences that countless people returned to at night as well as military operational facilities had been constructed within an absurdly large underground cavern. Walking its streets, one would perceive no difference between Faery Base and an aboveground city on Earth: the sky seen between the gaps in the buildings was always bright and clear. Most of the time, the inhabitants would forget that the sky they were looking at was artificial. But occasionally showers of groundwater would rain down from this clear sky, and they would look up and think how strange it was for there to be rain when the sky was blue, and then be reminded that it wasn’t a real sky they were looking at after all.

Boomerang Squadron was located at a bit of a remove from the base’s center. The other squadrons had been given generous arrangements in consideration of their need to scramble quickly, but the Super Sylphs were boxed in a cramped hangar that resembled the below-decks of an aircraft carrier. The hangar was where Rei was headed now. He’d heard from the general that Yukikaze was being brought back from the factory and that he’d be able to see her there if he was lucky.

The sight of ten Super Sylphs arranged with their noses all in a row was something to behold. The ceiling was low—just under seven meters high, leaving barely a yard of clearance between it and the Sylphs’ vertical stabilizers—which made the hangar feel even more cramped. It was nearly three hundred meters long, but it could house only sixteen planes with a space of barely three meters between their wingtips.

The Super Sylph was a giant among fairies.

The hangar’s top floor was for maintenance and launch preparation. As long as the damage wasn’t too severe, a plane would receive its repairs up there, and most of the parts had been designed to be interchangeable between units. However, it wasn’t enough for Yukikaze this time; she’d had to be taken to the air force factory, a facility that had the capacity to produce entirely new planes.

Yukikaze had already been returned to the spot reserved for Unit 3. As luck would have it, Major Booker was there too. He was seated in Yukikaze’s cockpit inspecting her electronics, holding in one hand a thick sheaf of paper that looked to be a maintenance report. Rei walked around the plane, sidestepped a fat external power cable hanging from the fuselage’s underbelly, then crossed under to the left side and climbed the boarding ladder. Hanging on to a grip with his right hand, Rei raised his left in a salute.

“First Lieutenant Fukai, reporting for duty as your aide, Major Booker. Hey, Jack.”

“You all right, Rei—wait, did you say first lieutenant? Congrats on that.”

Booker told Rei to wait for him down below. He didn’t take long to complete his inspection of Yukikaze, only another fifteen minutes or so, then came down and handed the paperwork to Rei. It was a written report detailing every aspect of the repair, servicing, and refitting of the plane. The major folded up the boarding ladder and stowed it in the fuselage, then detached the comm headset and replaced it in a storage compartment in the floor.

“She may look the same, but she’s been made even better. The airborne weapons control set, the gun control unit, the central air data computer, the digital data link, the standby compass, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We’re doing a power test tomorrow, and no, you can’t do it. I’d be shot if I let you. I practically feel like I’m standing in front of the wall right now.”

“Sorry if I caused you trouble.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Major Booker frowned, which briefly made the scar that lined his cheek more prominent. There was a certain air of menace to him. It was rumored he’d murdered someone back on Earth and had been sent to Faery for it, but nobody had ever dared ask him about it to his face.

Rei knew the major better than anyone else, so he knew that the man was full of surprises. For example, Booker knew even more about Japan than Rei did. The expertly painted calligraphy below the cockpit that spelled out “Yukikaze” in kanji characters had been the work of the major’s brush. It was so artistically stylized that even Rei had trouble reading them, but it was beautiful. And Rei also knew that Booker’s past was the opposite of what his face implied. After his initial tour of duty ended he had continued to serve by choice and had been on Faery for a long time now. He’d once been a fighter pilot but was now mainly in charge of aircraft maintenance and duty scheduling. Since pissing him off could result in losing leave time, Rei had initially kept a respectful distance from him.

Then one day, out of the blue, this strange major asked him if he believed in God. Rei wasn’t sure if it was a joke, or a test, or if he was just being hazed. When he decided to do the most prudent thing and stay silent, he got punched. There was an unwritten rule acknowledged by everyone in the FAF that ignoring rank was acceptable once you were back on the ground, so the major probably would have let it pass if Rei had punched him back. But Rei hadn’t done that. He didn’t turn the other cheek either, but simply licked the blood away and went back to reading the equipment inspection chart he had been studying. “I see,” said the major. “You’re like me, then.” Rei had hung out with him ever since.

“You said you were my new aide? Dammit, if you don’t learn to get along with the guys at the top, you’re gonna make trouble for us poor sods down below. Did Old Lady Cooley tell you anything about this job? Never mind, let’s head upstairs. We can talk once we’re up there.”

The two men rode a small, human-use elevator to the upper floors and entered the squadron’s private briefing room, the most notable feature of which was a broad expanse of window that looked out over the maintenance bay. No sorties were scheduled, so nobody was in it. It was a narrow room, but with a high ceiling and an open layout designed for a good field of vision. There was a lounge nearby that was nicer and also had a higher than usual ceiling, but the soldiers of Boomerang Squadron preferred this unassuming room. They treated it as their own, and various personal belongings and hobby items were left scattered around it: books on philosophy, trashy magazines, an abstract painting sitting on an easel, a box full of electronic parts, even a basket full of knitting. Major Booker picked up a curved piece of wood that was leaning against the wall and stroked it idly as he sat down.

“So…first lieutenant?”

“It’s not decided yet,” Rei replied as he placed a paper cup under the spout of the coffee maker. “Anyway, it’s not that big of a deal.”

There weren’t any enlisted soldiers on all of Faery: all personnel were commissioned officers. Once they had completed their training on Earth and were deployed to Faery for active duty, they were given the rank of second lieutenant. It may have been a ploy designed to improve the reputation of the FAF on the outside, but the result had been the historically unprecedented creation of an army consisting entirely of officers and not a single rank-and-file soldier. Fully half of them were second lieutenants. Effectively they played the same role as enlisted soldiers, but they had the power of numbers behind them, and it was from this that the dynamic arose for people to treat each other equally when they were on the ground. (Combat time, however, was a separate matter.) It was a convenient system, and there wasn’t a person on Faery who opposed it.

This system applied to everyone, from the command staff on down to the girls working the streets in the red-light districts. Prostitution had been decriminalized on Faery, and so the women had volunteered to come there and work for the military. Like any other segment of the armed forces, they had their own fixed hierarchy of ranks and pay grades. They didn’t wear uniforms and of course bore no insignia on their dresses, but you could generally tell who was higher ranked by the amount of makeup on their faces: the older and more accomplished they were, the less they wore. The women also possessed a strong sense of professional pride.

If one didn’t want to use the services of the military prostitutes there were plenty of other potential partners for romance, since there were about an equal number of women as men in the uniformed ranks. But “romance” perhaps was not the best term to describe these relationships, and the women were a tough lot. At least once a year a man would be shot in the name of “legitimate self-defense.”

“Anyway,” Major Booker continued, “the salary bump is nice. Back when I first got here, I couldn’t even afford to get drunk after the alimony payments to my ex.”

Rei thought the major’s wife might be Japanese but kept that speculation to himself.

“Here,” Rei said, setting down a cup of coffee. “You finished making the perfect boomerang there?”

“Thanks. No. And perfection isn’t necessarily something to be desired. This scar on my cheek is proof of that… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The truth is, General Cooley drew the short straw in all this.”

The major put down the three-foot-long boomerang and sipped at his coffee.

“The first woman I banged when I came to Faery,” Rei said as he seated himself in a chair opposite, “was just like the general. She was a captain. She’d knock me down whenever I’d salute her. It was pathetic.”

“
Heh
…That’s what’s called being young.”

“Young, huh? So what did you mean before about her drawing the short straw?”

“You hate having to line up, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“I hear there’s some big-shot general from the Japanese air force coming to inspect us.”