Yukikaze

insectoid shape. A multicellular mechanical life-form. A JAM spy.

“Lieutenant, there’s no time. I don’t think those things will touch a human. If they wanted to kill us, they could have done it easily... They probably thought I was a machine. A machine... Am I a machine?”

“Don’t try to talk. I’m taking you back, no matter what.”

Just as Rei was leveling his machine gun at the JAM, it released a high-density burst of energy. The shock wave hurled Rei back into the panel behind him. Momentarily stunned, he took a few heaving breaths, registered that he still had a grip on the gun, then lifted it and opened up at the JAM. It scattered into its component parts. He scrambled to his feet, feeling a vague surprise that he didn’t seem to be badly injured.

The JAM weren’t after Rei. They wanted Tomahawk. Or, more accurately, Tomahawk’s heart.

“Tom John! Captain!”

“Stay back!” Tom rasped, his voice barely audible. “You’ll be exposed to the radiation... Rei, just tell me... I am human... aren’t I?”

“Of course you are. You are.” You’re alive. That’s enough. Or are you telling me that you’re actually a corpse? “Captain John... Tomahawk!”

Rei watched as the captain’s still form was haloed by the rich red of his blood seeping onto the floor. He turned away, snatched up the system analyzer as a memento, and ran for the exit. As he grasped the blast door handle, he looked back at Tomahawk.

The single imperative order of Boomerang Squadron clawed at his mind: make it back alive, even if you have to let your comrades die.

A corpse is just a thing... Rei said his farewells to the dead man, then sprinted toward Yukikaze.

He made it to the hangar bay. He vaulted up the boarding ladder, tossing the system analyzer into the cockpit, then sank into his seat. Engine start. He was about to execute the command to raise the elevator when he suddenly realized: this wasn’t the main hangar. The spotting dolly he’d blown up wasn’t there. A shudder convulsed through him, as though he’d been doused with icy water, and he scrambled out of the seat. The engines continued to rev up. No. That wasn’t the sound of the Phoenix Mk-X. It was only just the slightest bit different, but those weren’t Phoenixes.

This wasn’t Yukikaze.

It was identical in appearance, but Rei knew. This wasn’t his beloved plane. It was a copy made by the JAM. He clung onto the edge of the cockpit and switched the engines off. They wouldn’t stop. Were the JAM intending to infiltrate the SAF’s main base with this decoy?

He emptied the machine gun’s entire clip into the plane’s consoles. The engines still didn’t stop. He hurled the gun away and looked around for the firefighting truck that should be present in the hangar. He saw it, ran over and jumped into it, then backed it up to the ghost plane. He opened the fire extinguishing door on the side of the near engine and shoved the extinguisher nozzle from the truck into it. He opened up the retardant and black smoke began gushing from the engine exhaust. The engine revs began to drop. Flame out. Engine stop.

Rei headed toward what he thought was the main hangar. He passed through a blast door, and a massive wave of relief surged through him. He’d guessed correctly. Yukikaze was there, waiting.

He tried to operate the elevator controls manually, but they wouldn’t work. The auxiliary control was a fully electronic system, so it needed an external power supply. He found the power supply unit in a trailer. He ran over and switched it on, then connected an AC cable to the auxiliary control panel. With a terrific racket, the elevator slowly began to rise. The sliding bulkhead above the elevator opened.

Rei climbed into Yukikaze. Canopy, closed. Mask and harness, secured. He suddenly realized that his memento of Tomahawk, the analyzer that may have recorded the true form of the JAM, had been left in the ghost plane. But there was no time to go back for it. Engine, start. The Phoenix on the right came back to life.

They rose onto the deck and Rei grunted in frustration. In front of them, hovering before the bulkhead opening, was what looked like the ghost plane. Its engines were off and its flaps were down, but it was still just floating there casually. It was going to ram Yukikaze. Rei hit the button to release the wire anchors and in a flash explosive bolts sheared them from the fuselage. Flaps, down. Yukikaze floated up from Banshee like the ghost plane. The left engine ignited and started up.

Banshee’s enormous form began to move forward below them. The ghost plane seemed to drift on the wind and approached. Rei rolled Yukikaze over and jammed the throttle forward to MAX, burning into a steep turn. The powerless ghost plane couldn’t keep up with them. It dipped its nose down and plunged toward Banshee. Was it trying to land?

After accelerating to supersonic speed, Rei came about to try a beam attack from a position ninety degrees relative to Banshee’s course. The black hulk of the carrier filled his view. The ghost plane was landing on the elevator. Rei pulled the gun trigger. Rounds from the cannon tore through the ghost plane, and after a couple of seconds it exploded. Yukikaze blew through the black smoke and withdrew from Banshee at maximum thrust.

Yukikaze climbed into the blue sky. Rei didn’t look back.

Altitude, 25,000 meters. The sky grew dark. Stars in the daytime. He could see the great red whirlpool that poured from Faery’s suns. The Bloody Road. For a brief moment, it was overlaid by Tomahawk’s blood, pouring from his slight and broken frame.

Tom John’s last words came back to him. I am human... aren’t I?

“Of course,” Rei whispered. “Of course you’re human.” He had died with a faint smile on his face, as though he had finally received the reassurance he sought. As though saying that his life hadn’t been so bad after all.

Banshee’s symbol blinked out on the radar.

YUKIKAZE LANDED BACK at Faery Base.

Rei taxied to Boomerang Squadron’s area. After raising the right engine output to 80 percent for fifteen seconds, he cut it off. He then did the same for the left engine.

After he’d killed the engines, he just sat there in the cockpit, looking up at the cloudless sky.

Major Booker turned the exterior canopy control handle and peered inside the cockpit.

“You all right, Rei? Where’s Tom? What happened to — ”

“Jack... Could you check my environmental control system?” Rei raised his helmet visor and swiped at the tears on his cheeks with his gloved fist. “Something’s stinging my eyes.”

V FAERY – WINTER

He had to protect Yukikaze. He had to eliminate anything that stood in her way — even if it was his fellow man. That was what he believed. And then he learned that the computers, the machines built by men, were working to the same end.

SNOW WAS FALLING on Faery.

Winter was always the busiest season for the Maintenance Corps. They ran the snow removal equipment on twenty-fourhour rotation while the finely driven flakes numbed the skin on their faces and froze their hair, eyelashes, and beards into crystalline spikes. They always prayed for the weather to let up, but the snow always continued to fall, heedless of the desires of the humans caught in it.

Second Lieutenant Mamoru Amata (FAF Maintenance Corps, Faery Base 110th Airfield Maintenance Division, 3rd Mechanized Snow Removal Unit) sat in the cab of a motor grader, waiting for his turn to go out and growing increasingly pissed off that the grader’s door didn’t shut properly.

Visibility was low thanks to the howling blizzard outside. The storm was blowing with such force that it was less like it was snowing than like the air itself had partially solidified into ice. To Lieutenant Amata, it looked as if there was more snow than air out there right now.