Good Luck, Yukikaze
Page 8
“Rei…it is you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is! I’m no JAM. Quit talking like you’re half-asleep!”
“You’re one to talk,” Booker shot back, “seeing how you’re finally awake! Christ almighty…”
“Shut your mouth! I don’t want you puking back there!” Rei yelled.
“Don’t try any extreme maneuvers. Your body won’t take it in your condition. Just get after Unit 13. Do what it takes. Yukikaze’s been contaminated by the JAM.”
There were three JAM in pursuit. When he dodged the two missiles they fired with some high-speed maneuvers, Rei could feel exactly what Major Booker had meant. He didn’t have the strength for a dogfight. Rei could feel that the FRX00 was a terrific dogfighter, and he hadn’t even used it at 100 percent of its capabilities yet. If he unleashed all of its potential, it might kill him. Rei realized that Yukikaze hadn’t summoned him to guide her through a dogfight. What was necessary right now was to shake off the JAM at maximum speed and get after SAF Unit 13 flying ahead of him.
But he couldn’t get the engines up to full thrust. Just like Lieutenant Mayle’s plane. The cause was the AICS. Yeah, just like the tactical computer back at SAF control had said. No doubt about it.
“THE AICS?” REI recalled Major Booker asking from his personal terminal booth in the SAF command center that he used to talk to the tactical computer.
Correct.
Rei had looked with vacant eyes at the response printed out by the tactical computer on the display. General Cooley was in the booth too. Nobody else was in the huge control center outside of the booth. The lights had been set low.
To these three humans alone in the SAF, the tactical computer in SAF headquarters had presented the information Yukikaze had gathered about the abnormalities in the planes of the 505th Tactical Fighter Squadron: General Cooley, Major Booker, and the still vaguely conscious and wheelchair-bound Lieutenant Fukai.
The tactical computer had strongly urged Major Booker that Rei be there with them. Rei had regained the ability to talk for the first time in ninety-three days, but he still wasn’t able to access his own memories. Major Booker had wanted to immediately send Rei to the central FAF medical facility, but the tactical computer had rightly pointed out that there was a possibility that the information in Rei’s memories was crucial and should be accessed immediately. Since it proposed that it would be best to stimulate him and retrieve those memories in secret from other corps in the FAF and others in the SAF, the major had reconsidered.
The proposal made by the combat intelligence within the tactical computer was half suggestion and half direct order. It had a strong interest in whatever information Rei and Yukikaze had gathered. If the CI had any emotions, Major Booker sensed that its concern was tinged with fear, dread, and tension, and so he’d agreed with its proposal. The computer proceeded to question Rei.
The incident ninety-three days earlier. Who shot you in the stomach? What happened?
Rei answered mechanically. It felt like he wasn’t accessing his memories by his own will, but rather was giving words in response to an external stimuli by accessing the part of his memory devoted to answering questions. While Rei himself knew that he was talking, he seemed to do so in somebody else’s voice, showing no interest in what he was talking about or in his surroundings.
He had been shot by another Rei Fukai, he said. A human copy created by the JAM. Some sort of antihuman weapon the JAM created from the mirror images of the molecules that make up humans, he went on. He didn’t know how long he had been at their base, but when they saw that he couldn’t digest food made from the same optical isomer material, they had ended up feeding him meat from the body of his dead flight officer, Lieutenant Burgadish.
Major Booker and General Cooley remained silent, listening to the mechanical exchange between Rei and the CI. They couldn’t interrupt. The questions the CI asked were precise, unswayed by emotion, fear, or unease.
Had the major opened his mouth, he figured he would have said, “Impossible!” or “I don’t believe it!” or some such meaningless nonsense, and so he remained silent and let the sentiments swirl in his heart. Rei has no such whirlpool in his heart, the major thought. As he listened to Rei’s disinterested speech, he found himself fighting a growing urge to shake him or punch him in the mouth.
After the tactical computer had extracted the information from Rei, it was silent for a while. Then it displayed, I predict that the cause of the thrust fault in the 505th TFS is in the AICS on the monitor. Major Booker objected to the sudden shift in topic, insisting that Rei was not yet fully conscious and that he needed further stimulation. However, the tactical computer ignored the major, playing back the information gathered by Yukikaze on the main display of the command center. Its explanation was clear.
During her combat maneuvers with Mayle’s plane, Yukikaze had gotten a clear optical scan of its air intake port. The ramps in the intake port controlled by the AICS were essentially movable planks that directed the flow of air into the engines. The major could see that they were not in their normal position. It was the shock waves up in the intake port that had limited the maneuverability of Mayle’s plane. The violently disrupted airflow had drastically reduced the engine’s combustion efficiency. The unfavorable conditions from the resulting superheating added to that had destroyed the engines.
The plane never would have reached the edge of the performance envelope except during combat. The Sylphid’s engines had blades that could maintain an even airflow even during extreme turbulence. However, in air combat, a pilot will push the engine output and rev them past their design limits—Mayle’s plane being a typical example of this. Flying at maximum speed to escape the JAM, the AICS units in the planes of the 505th had operated abnormally. With the air intake flow so disrupted, afterburner flames and black smoke streaming from the rear, it was only inevitable for the engines to either stall or for their output to fall. The pilot, probably half-panicked, would likely slam the throttle as far forward as possible. If the engines were stalled out, he’d have to restart them. If he had time, he might figure out that the problem was in the AICS, in which case it was possible for him to cut out auto mode and set the ramp position manually. If there was a breakdown in the simple AICS system, you could do that. However, Lieutenant Mayle hadn’t realized that the AICS was the problem, and it was likely that none of the other pilots had either. If they had, well, they were already under attack by the JAM. Engaging the JAM in a high-altitude dogfight would have been suicide, as they would have to make a hectic transition from low speed to high in order to win, so all they could have done was set the ramps for ultra-high speed and then escape at maximum thrust.
Since none of them had done that, it meant there likely hadn’t been an alarm to warn them of a fault in the AICS. The major could only think that they either had realized there was a fault and hadn’t switched over or else doing so hadn’t yielded any response. That meant this wasn’t a simple mechanical failure, and so the CI had determined that the AICS units had been contaminated by the JAM.
The CI didn’t believe that the central computer on Mayle’s plane was malfunctioning. The central computer controlled the engines and control surfaces in an integrated system, but the AICS was independent. All it did was react to the plane’s speed. So, even though it was an independent system, that normally presented no problem. The JAM had apparently exploited this blind spot.
But how? The AICS’s circuits had secure electromagnetic shielding, so it seemed unlikely that electromagnetic wave exposure in-flight had caused the malfunction. That left only one answer: the AICS units aboard the 505th’s planes were malfunctioning from the moment they took off.
I believe the AICS units were modified by the enemy. The only thing that could touch the planes without arousing suspicion would be a human. A human working against the FAF or possibly a JAM in human guise. The probability of it being a JAM is high. If so, my guess is that the JAM have assumed human form.
I do not have a countermeasure for this problem, it continued.
A humanoid JAM weapon. Major Booker shivered. If what Rei claimed to have experienced was true, then JAM infiltration seemed possible. If there was a type not made of optical isomers that merely looked human, but a perfect copy that could eat and live like a real one, then there’d be no way to tell the difference between a JAM and a human.
“You’re saying this isn’t simply a problem with the AICS,” Major Booker said. “How do we find out for certain?”
The probability is high that humans who have gone missing on the front lines have made contact with the JAM. Probability high that the rescued humans are the new type of JAM.
There were two humans like that in the SAF: Rei and Lieutenant Yagashira.
“You mean Yagashira is… That can’t be!” said General Cooley, almost with a groan.
His mind still fogged in a sense of unreality, Rei thought that he’d never heard of Lieutenant Yagashira before.
AS REI CHECKED the AICS aboard Yukikaze after being told of the abnormality in the planes of the 505th that she had observed, he soon realized that the planes were being controlled by the JAM and rethought the situation. Yukikaze also determined the 505th TFS were no longer friendlies. Rei figured that the only way the JAM could have turned the 505th would be for them to have infiltrated TAB-15. The JAM.
He felt as if that had been a dream. A nightmare. He had been flying Yukikaze, but then suddenly communication had been cut and Yukikaze had gone away. Yukikaze, leaving him, as he had dreamed again and again. All of it was a dream.
But this wasn’t a dream now. The AICS was malfunctioning, but no fault light was lit. Switching over to manual yielded no response. The situation was desperate. If he didn’t do something and fast, they were going to be destroyed by the JAM.
Keeping the throttle right on the limit where the abnormal vibrations began, Rei activated the onboard test system. The recorded data on the plane’s preflight check seemed wrapped in a watery, unrealistic veil, but he could see that the AICS hadn’t showed any abnormalities. The test signals had yielded the correct responses.
So how about now?
The main display showed IN MISSION as though Yukikaze were shouting, Don’t run tests in the middle of combat, I’m flying here! She might have even been scared. The test program wouldn’t initiate with her interference. Even if Rei told Yukikaze to stop it and stay out of this, he knew his words probably wouldn’t reach her.
Rei immediately lowered the landing gear. The plane’s speed suddenly dropped. He manually activated the test mode. Yukikaze quickly understood from the change what Rei was trying to do and canceled the alarm.
“Break, port!” yelled the major.
Banking sharply to the left, he let the JAM slip past. His sudden drop in speed had been fortunate. The JAM had undoubtedly not expected Yukikaze’s maneuver.
Selecting the test signals for supersonic maximum speed, he initiated a test run on the AICS. He jammed the throttle to maximum. Gear, up.
The three JAM had swung around and were coming at him. Rei slipped the plane to the right, dodging the JAM’s cannon fire. He couldn’t keep moving left and right; it would be dangerous, since the plane’s acceleration would zero out in the instant he switched directions. With the enemy using cannons, they could anticipate those moments. What he needed to do now was to evade the JAM attack. He prayed for acceleration.
Yukikaze reached normal maximum acceleration in three seconds. The thrust was tremendous. In an instant, the JAM were far behind him.
Rei desperately gripped the control stick, sending Yukikaze into a climb. If he could reach high altitude, her speed would be greatly increased. There’d be no way that three JAM designed for dogfighting could ever catch him then.
He had no doubts that the JAM recognized Yukikaze as an SAF fighter and believed that the three of them could beat her. There was the proof that the AICS had been contaminated by the JAM. If he hadn’t known beforehand that the malfunction was being caused by the AICS, those three fighters would have shot him down long before he’d gotten the idea of trying to input those test signals.
“You got it back to normal,” the major said. “How’d you do it?”
“Emergency measures. I’m operating it with the test signals. Why wasn’t a new AICS swapped in before takeoff? We knew what the cause was. We should have known this would happen.”
“We didn’t want Yagashira to know that we’d figured out the problem in the AICS. This is top secret,” the major said.
Yukikaze flew in the skies above the pure white desert. This was JAM-controlled airspace. Only the JAM flew here without concern.
Just before Yukikaze took off, Yagashira’s plane had flown out to this desert to drop a reconnaissance pod. The exact same mission the old Yukikaze had had.
Major Booker confirmed that Yagashira’s plane was flying ahead of them in formation with a single JAM plane. “Yagashira’s plane is flying with a JAM.”
“I know,” answered Rei.
“I’m sure he’s a JAM,” the major said. “There’s no excuse for this otherwise.”
“I feel like…like I’ve spoken to him before,” Rei said.
The major answered that he had. He and Lieutenant Yagashira had met in the hospital. “I want to be your friend,” he’d said. Rei remembered that the man standing next to his bed had been very young. “Everyone looks at me like I’m some sort of weirdo,” he’d gone on. “Lieutenant Fukai, I want to talk to you about all kinds of things. The soldiers of Boomerang squadron have such skill. I want to be as good as you guys.”
“Rei thinks that he’s been abandoned by Yukikaze,” Major Booker had said. “If we don’t settle that, he’ll never fly again.” Yagashira went on. “It looks like you had a rough time out there. Actually, I was also shot down by the JAM. I don’t have any memory of what happened till I was rescued.”
Rei remembered Lieutenant Yagashira saying that in the hospital. That wasn’t a dream. In that case, it must have meant that he didn’t know that he’d been created by the JAM. He didn’t know that the original Yagashira was dead, his memories transferred into an exact duplicate.
“Yeah,” Rei said. “Lieutenant Yagashira came to the hospital. Said he wanted to be my friend. How long has it been since then?”
“Nine days,” the major replied. “If you don’t complete this mission successfully, I’m thinking of sending you back to Earth. I don’t want you connected to FAF weaponry and computers anymore. It was like you weren’t human.”
The thing was, Lieutenant Yagashira had seemed extremely human. Rei kept Yagashira’s Unit 13 in sight, still not entirely convinced that the man was a JAM weapon. Then Yagashira and the JAM fighter turned toward Yukikaze, assuming an intercept formation.
“He’s engaging,” Rei said.
“He’s panicking,” the major replied. “We didn’t tell him about Yukikaze’s current mission activities. None of the other FAF branches know either. If Yukikaze hadn’t come, he probably would have flown to a JAM base with his information and then flown back to the FAF. He’s a JAM tactical intelligence-gathering weapon. A JAM, not a human. Now that his cover’s been blown, he can’t let us get back to base alive. He’s desperate now. Either we kill him, or he kills us.”
“A JAM…weapon? Him?”
“Rei, don’t space out on me again. You’ve already met a JAM like him. You and that copy they made of you. Have you forgotten what you told us? This whole mission was designed to confirm that.”
Yeah, right. He had a feeling he’d heard something about that before takeoff. When the
official announcement had come to send Unit 13 out unmanned to run the same mission the old Yukikaze had, Lieutenant Yagashira had suggested that he fly it. Major Booker had half-expected this, but overcame the dread striking him so squarely to approve the mission. He wouldn’t need a flight officer, Yagashira had said. He could do this alone.
“He might have been planning to desert,” the major said. “Like a JAM version of us recovering our recon pods. He probably thought he wasn’t in any danger.”
“Yeah,” Rei replied.
He’d said he admired Rei and Yukikaze so much that he wanted to fly the same mission. Rei remembered that. He’d seemed a little arrogant, but that was human too, wasn’t it? Much more so than the Boomerang pilots usually were, Rei thought.
“Rei, they’re going to get us!”
The other planes were still in range.
Unit 13 was armed with short-range missiles and a gun. With Yukikaze’s AICS still not running normally, she’d be at a disadvantage in a dogfight. If he was going to attack, now was the time. Rei selected his medium-range missiles for launch. He hesitated for an instant before firing them, but he had almost no margin left for any hesitation. Kill or be killed. He launched four shots simultaneously: two of the new variable-speed medium-range missiles and two hyper-velocity medium-range missiles.
He didn’t know how Lieutenant Yagashira saw all this, whether he saw himself as a JAM or, to the end, thought of himself as human. But right now, there was no doubt that his actions were those of a JAM.
The human part of him was already dead, Rei thought as he watched the display count down to the missiles’ reaching their target. But he was troubled by why he was still even worrying about that.
It was because he looked human. He wouldn’t have hesitated to fire at a JAM fighter plane, would he? Even though the JAM might even be planes themselves, he’d have no problem shooting them, right? The JAM might have counted on Rei’s reluctance to fire at something that looked human, but no matter what the weapon looked like, if he was facing a JAM there was no reason to hesitate. It was clear that Lieutenant Yagashira was a JAM. There was no doubt that was true, even without Major Booker telling him that. So then, why did he feel this way?