There was a pause before Lander answered. “A man always has to be ready for surprise attacks. I was careless. Even though I half-anticipated it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lander kept his mouth shut, and Rei was relieved to have been freed from his annoying questions. Now he and Yukikaze could become one in the silence.
The clear sky was dazzling and lonely. A three-ship formation, most likely flying a CAP, overflew Yukikaze high above. From this distance the planes almost seemed translucent, like they were made of glass.
As he stared at the beautiful sight, a warning tone brought him back. The passive airspace radar was getting a reaction. He output the data onto the multidisplay and frowned, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The radar was showing an enormous wall about a hundred kilometers ahead of them. It was like a tsunami. Rei lifted his head and looked out of the cockpit, but all he could see was the quiet scene of Faery’s primeval forest and the sky.
He couldn’t confirm the existence of the wall with the standard radar system either. It reflected no electromagnetic radiation. What the hell was this?
The passive airspace radar was a detection system that had been developed to counter the various methods JAM fighters used to mask themselves while attacking. Because it utilized a type of cryogenically cooled visual sensor with an ultra-high receptivity, it had been nicknamed “Frozen Eye.” No matter how an enemy craft might hide itself electromagnetically or optically, as long as it displaced air it could be detected. The system gave the SAF pilots an ability to find and kill the enemy that was so accurate it seemed almost instinctive. And now that same system was telling Rei that something monstrous was before him.
Was it a JAM force? It seemed way too big to be that. It was almost like a massive disturbance of the airspace. The bright horizontal line on the display was drawing closer fast.
The AVOID cue appeared on his HUD. If he did nothing, Yukikaze would automatically maneuver to evade the obstacle when they got too close to it. But Rei didn’t wait for that. He pulled the plane back into a high-G Immelman loop, reversing their direction.
The line on the display bowed inward, seeming to wrap around Yukikaze. Rei didn’t know what was going on, but he understood that they’d fallen into some sort of trap. The line on the display was now closing into a circle. Aiming for the rapidly disappearing gap, Yukikaze accelerated.
She didn’t make it. The circle closed and its diameter began to quickly contract. It fell inward upon Yukikaze, as though intent on swallowing her.
“Brace for impact!” Rei yelled automatically, although the scene outside the cockpit still betrayed nothing out of the ordinary.
The impact, when it came, was like flying into a wall of iron. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t see. A gray haze was obscuring his vision.
He reflexively checked his instruments. Both engines had stalled. The turbine intake temperature read 560°C, only a little below normal. The auto-restart system should have activated after ten seconds, but it didn’t. Rei pushed the airstart button. No response. Had he accidentally pulled the throttle back during the impact? No, he hadn’t. Then had the engines themselves been damaged? He checked the tachometer. It was dropping precipitously. If it fell to 8 percent RPM, the engines wouldn’t be able to supply power or hydraulic pressure. He had to raise his airspeed and force the turbines to spin faster.
Confirm rate of descent and airspeed. Confirm sufficient altitude. Canopy defogger switch, ON. He thought maybe the canopy had become clouded, but as they fell, the haze cleared a bit. The sky had been cloudless just moments before.
A strange panorama spread out before his eyes. The world looked colorless, like a black-and-white photo. The terrain swirled below them as though it were the surface of Jupiter. He could see parts that looked like trees, and others that looked like deserts or the ocean.
Lander was stirring in the backseat. “What... We were just flying, weren’t we, Lieutenant?” He had apparently lost consciousness. “My ears... They hurt.”
“It’s Flier’s Ear.”
“What?”
“Otitic barotrauma. Inner ear damage caused by a sudden change in air pressure.”
“You did that on purpose! Why — ” Lander suddenly paused. “Hey, am I wrong, or are the engines stopped?”
“I can’t restart them.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have time to figure that out.”
Rei began searching for terrain that would allow for an emergency landing. He switched the radar to ground mode, real beam ground mapping, but the only thing that came on the display was a strangely fixed image. It looked like the transmitter was off-line.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something that looked manmade. He banked into a slow turn to get a better look. It was a long and narrow construction without any crosscuts. A runway. It had to be. Even if it wasn’t, he was going to use it as one, because otherwise he would have to abandon Yukikaze, and he didn’t want to even think about that.
All he could get over the comm system was static. He set the radar altimeter but didn’t think he could trust it. If these weren’t the skies of Faery, he couldn’t be sure of his barometric altimeter, either.
“Mister Lander, do you think you can measure our altitude with that video camera’s range finder?”
“Huh?”
“Quickly.”
“No good, it’s broken. Wait a minute, I’ve got some digital binoculars with me. Let me try it with those.”
Rei inverted Yukikaze.
“Measure in a straight line below us.”
Their rate of descent was increasing. That was the only data he could determine for sure. Rei didn’t know what the linear proportion was between his barometric altimeter and his actual change in altitude, but he could combine them with Lander’s reading for a rough estimate and then reset his altimeter.
He was over the flat expanse that looked like a runway. He executed a wide turn, correcting his attitude, and once again put them on the virtual approach line.
“We’re landing.”
Gear down. Air brakes opened slightly to regulate their speed. Forty-degree bank angle as they turned and descended. While describing a semicircle, Yukikaze’s altitude dropped by a sixth, then a quarter, then to half of what it was. Their altitude was now 700 meters. He had a good line of sight now.
Final approach. Flaps down. Pitch regulated. Glide slope, three degrees. Rate of descent, twenty-six meters per minute. A little high. Yukikaze’s nose floated up due to the ground effect, which felt a little weaker than normal. Touchdown.
The ground rushing by them at 185 kph was a grayish light brown. Rei stomped on the toe brake, nervous that they might hit a rock and cripple themselves. They were approaching the edge of the runway.
When they finally came to a stop Rei was surprised to see that there was still plenty of runway left. He must have underestimated its size from the air. He was relieved that their landing had still been successful, despite his misjudgment.
They were surrounded by what seemed to be a forest the color of seaweed. So who had cut this runway out of it? He couldn’t see any hangar facilities. Maybe it was for super heavyweight planes to land and take off from. If so, the enormous size of the runway implied that these phantom planes would be similarly huge. Since there was only one runway, did that mean there was little wind here, or that the wind direction didn’t vary? Maybe they used both the length and width of the wide surface? Or maybe this wasn’t a runway at all...
“This is a major scoop!” Lander exclaimed. “Who’d believe there was someplace like this on Faery?”
“I don’t think this is Faery.”
“Very funny. You don’t have to hide it. It’s possible you didn’t even know about it. I’ll bet it’s a top-secret area.”
