outside the cockpit. In the skies of Faery, all that mattered was the simple principle of kill or be killed. Anyone who allowed himself to be distracted by questions about why he was fighting or why the JAM were here would be killed by his opponent in short order and never make it back alive.
The winners were the ones who made it back.
Rei looked up at the deep blue sky above him. What more was there to think about than that?
Above the thin atmosphere hung the flattened ellipses of the binary suns. The Bloody Road that spilled out from them painted a crimson swath across the sky. A little higher up and he could see it, even in daylight: an enormous whirlpool, like a red Milky Way. Maybe if Faery didn’t have twin suns and there were no Bloody Road and the sky looked the same as it did on Earth, then maybe he would be able to look at things more rationally. This world was too illusory, so exceedingly unreal with its bizarre sights. It was like a dream, or an amusement park, or something out of a fairy tale. It seemed more so at night, as if the very air itself contained a hallucinatory power.
They were approaching the training area. Making a tactical guidance call, Yukikaze headed toward the target point using the comm line and tactical data link it established with the control plane. The control plane remained inside of C-zone and would continue to direct them from approximately a hundred kilometers to the rear.
Lieutenant Burgadish had already picked up their opponent’s radar emissions on the passive detectors. Yukikaze’s central computer automatically input the data into its file and compared the radar waves’ frequency and special characteristics to data on known types it had stored. The onboard computer classified the radar signature as UNKNOWN, but just then a call came from the control plane: “B-3, tactical control signals for the Flip Knight system detected.”
Their passive detectors could not pinpoint an exact target location, so the control plane fed them the necessary data. Lieutenant Burgadish confirmed the position of the Flip Knight’s carrier plane on Yukikaze’s radar display. It was about 250 kilometers out and closing. While Yukikaze’s radar was better than that of most fighter planes, it could not compare to the giant radome of the AWACS plane.
“The carrier’s taking its sweet time flying to our rear,” Burgadish said over the comm in his usual bored tone. “The Knights should be launching soon.”
“B-3,” called the control plane. “K-I, K-II, K-III, closing rapidly on your position.”
“What?” said Rei. “Lieutenant, confirm.”
The fire control radar Rei was operating had acquired the target and was tracking it, but it could only detect on a very narrow range.
“Can’t confirm... I see them now. Behind us, closing fast.”
A target symbol appeared on the multi-function display near Rei’s knee.
“Why didn’t the control plane give us an intercept course faster? Are they trying to kill us?”
“The point of this exercise is to simulate an actual assault. Okay, let’s do this.”
Rei sent them into a loose roll down toward the pure white sand, then pulled hard up and about. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the glitter of the Knights climbing up at them. He set the radar mode to super search, flicked the master arm switch to ARM, and pushed Yukikaze into a power dive toward the odd mountain rearing up out of the sugary sands before them. Trying to shake off the pursuing Knights, he used the velocity gained from the dive to whip around Sugar Rock, flying in its shadow with wings parallel to the mountain’s face.
He had anticipated that the Knights would break formation at this point. Most likely, one plane would stay high while the other two would split up to fly around either side of the mountain. He was hoping dearly that they would, because unless he split them up, he’d have no chance of beating them.
About three-quarters of the way around Sugar Rock, the fire control radar picked up Knight-II ahead, almost dead abreast of them, and locked on immediately. Range 1.6 klicks. Rei set the dogfight switch to ON, and the head-up display automatically switched to gun mode.
The Knight was small and hard to see, but the target designator reticule on the HUD framed the plane and showed him its position. However, Knight-II evaded him before he achieved optimal firing position. Not three seconds had passed since the radar lock.
Rei banked Yukikaze hard at full thrust and pursued Knight-II. He got back into targeting position, and as soon as they were within firing range he squeezed the trigger. The number readout on the HUD that showed the rounds remaining in his cannon rapidly began counting backwards. No hit.
“Evasive, right!” Burgadish called out.
Rei reflexively aborted his attack and went into a high-G turn. Knight-I was savagely charging up at them from below: Knight-II had been a decoy.
As they accelerated and slipped over the peak of Sugar Rock, diving starboard, Knight-III came at them nose-on. They merged before he could even pull the trigger. Knight-III made a sharp turn and was on his six in an instant.
“Okay, B-3, that’s it. RTB.”
“Roger.”
“B-3,” Colonel Guneau’s voice cut in. “How does it feel to get killed twice, Lieutenant Fukai?”
He hadn’t been killed, though. He was still flying. He was still alive, so he hadn’t lost. That was the single essential truth of these skies.
“MK-1, Colonel,” Rei replied. “Looks like this flight test turned out just the way you planned it. Satisfied?”
“Very satisfied. The Knight really is brilliant. It exhibited even better combat decision capacities than I had expected.”
“Was that attack conducted in full automatic mode?”
“It was.” Colonel Guneau sounded very pleased with himself. “Are you starting to accept the truth now?”
Rei was silent. The fact he couldn’t object irritated the hell out of him. It wasn’t so much the result of this flight test that pissed him off as it was the colonel’s attitude. The outcome of the flight might have been different if the initial parameters they set up for him had been changed, but Colonel Guneau just now had all but admitted that the outcome was a foregone conclusion, one that had been fixed in the planning stages. Rei recalled how frustrated he felt when he couldn’t adequately put into words his thoughts that, no matter how advanced machines became, people would still be needed.
He didn’t want to believe that he was here only to become a corpse, because that line of thought inevitably led to the colonel’s conclusion.
“I know how hard this must be for you,” the colonel said, “but a loss is a loss. Just accept it.”
“Colonel Guneau,” Rei asked. “Do you have any real combat experience? Any actual flight time in a fighter?”
“No.”
As he climbed higher to fly his CAP on the way back to the base, Rei thought about nothing. Lieutenant Burgadish didn’t say a word about the flight test, either. Rei didn’t ask his partner what he thought about the colonel. He could pretty much imagine the response. “What the colonel thinks has nothing to do with us,” or something to that effect.
With their quiet patrol over — they didn’t encounter the JAM that day — Yukikaze came in for landing. As they descended to the maintenance bay on the elevator, Rei’s tension dissipated somewhat. But the fact that he hadn’t managed to shoot down even one Knight, that in the end he hadn’t beaten Colonel Guneau, left him agitated.
Major Booker was waiting for them in the maintenance bay, with his usual “How’d it go?” greeting to his returning soldiers. Rei gave the same reply he always did: “We’re still alive.”
“How was the Knight?” the major asked as he followed them to the locker room. “Tough as we thought?”
“We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose either.”
“Hm,” said the major, nodding. He knew how Rei felt. “I want a full flight test report from you. We can use
