a gray blur.
“Here we go. Recheck the bombing system.”
“Roger.”
There was no sign of the JAM. They were only two thousand kilometers from base, and yet this was unknown territory.
And now Rei knew almost nothing about Yukikaze, the one thing he thought he knew best. The one thing he had trusted implicitly.
Yukikaze continued her supersonic incursion, flying on auto toward the TAISP release point. Rei switched the A/G-AS mode from automatic to CDIP.
“Lieutenant?” called out Burgadish. “What are you doing?”
“This is our last flight. I have control.”
“That’s not like you. Leave this to Yukikaze and relax.”
Rei didn’t respond. Sugar Desert drew near, the glaring light of the twin suns reflecting off the sands.
The first target point was indicated on the HUD. The pull-up cue appeared and Yukikaze climbed sharply, as though leaping into the air. Rei guided the plane while watching the fall line on the HUD. The release cue appeared. Keeping his eyes on the pure white sands of the desert, Rei pressed the button. A slight jolt passed through the airframe as the TAISP was fired. They flew level to the second drop point, reaching it in about ten seconds. Rei fired the second pod. Then the third, the fourth, and the fifth.
“Going good. Let’s drop these things and head home.”
“One more left.”
Yukikaze banked into a wide turn. Taking a return course, they headed for the sixth drop point. And then a warning alert sounded.
“What’s up?”
“We’re getting a warning from TAISP-4. Could be the JAM, but maybe it’s an operations test. Our passive radar isn’t picking up anything.”
“Start a bandit search, now.”
“Whoa!”
Yukikaze shuddered. Three small JAM fighters were attacking from directly beneath them, as though they had launched out from under the sea of sand. They may have actually done so, but there was no way for Rei to confirm. Yukikaze went into a high-G turn to shake them off. Rei looked out of the cockpit. He couldn’t see them.
“Lieutenant, evasive action! Break left!”
Almost unconsciously, Rei flipped the V-max switch and engaged the auto-maneuver system. The JAM were too fast for his eyes to follow. He couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see. Yukikaze, however, could see the enemy clearly. She fired highvelocity short-range missiles, but the enemy evaded them.
“Bandits are small assault fighter types. Heads up, they’ve spiked us.”
Yukikaze dodged the enemy missiles with a series of violent maneuvers. Rei and Burgadish both blacked out for several seconds in GLOC.
“We need to bug out of here, Lieutenant,” Burgadish said, huffing in G-strain. When Rei didn’t answer immediately he yelled, “Lieutenant Fukai!”
“Yukikaze is... Looks like she’s ready to fight to the end.” Even if he tried to turn the auto-maneuver system off, Rei knew that it would not disengage.
“God damn it... Yukikaze!”
Rei flashed back to Captain O’Donnell’s death.
“Bullshit. There’s no fire.”
“What is going on, Lieutenant? Is the central computer — ”
Burgadish’s words were cut off by the explosion of the canopy being jettisoned. Rei felt the vibration of the rocket motor on his ejection seat, and immediately jerked the face curtain handle down to protect himself. A second later, Yukikaze tossed her crew out into the sky.
She pulled a high-G diving turn and went for the JAM. Free from having to consider the safety of any human occupants, she rapidly brought down two of the enemy aircraft in a single highvelocity attack sequence. The third JAM dove for the planet’s surface, as though inviting Yukikaze to follow. Just as she was about to pursue, she seemed to hesitate, then climbed into a turn and withdrew at full power.
Four enemy fighters blasted out from under the sea of sand like missiles. They dropped their external power boosters and tore after Yukikaze. As though expecting this, Yukikaze twisted into a Split S, bringing her nose around to center the enemies in her sight, and then fired. She pulled up a moment before crashing into the ground and resumed her pursuit of the fleeing third JAM fighter.
Rei saw none of this. Hanging in the sky from his parachute, the only signs of the battle that reached him were the dry cough of Yukikaze’s high-velocity gun and the thunderous echo of her engines. The burning floor of the desert rushed up to meet him. He hit the ground, rolled, and detached the parachute. The white canopy bellied in the wind, looking like an enormous jellyfish. Rei decided there was no need to gather it up and bury it since the JAM didn’t care about humans.
He removed his parachute harness and unzipped the large survival kit hanging from its rear straps. He drew out the FAF issue pistol, stowed it away inside his flight vest, and then took out the emergency rations and water supply pack.
He saw Burgadish’s parachute about 200 meters away, flapping in the wind atop a pure white dune that shimmered in the heat, looking like nothing so much as a great wave frozen in mid-fall. Holding the gun at the ready, his helmet visor still down, he walked out under the powerful sunlight to go find his partner.
As he trudged through the sand, he wondered why Yukikaze had cut him loose. He thought that maybe she couldn’t accept the prospect that the TAISPs she’d spent so much trouble deploying would be destroyed by the JAM without ever having been used. That was why it was necessary for her to face the JAM head-on rather than withdraw from them as she usually did. And if she had to face them, then weak humans would just get in the way of what she needed to do to win.
If the situation had been reversed — if Rei had to sacrifice Yukikaze to defeat the JAM — he would have done the same. Since he’d have to say goodbye to Yukikaze in either case, he wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the emergency ejection handle. She had seemingly sensed his will and then executed it.
Rei suddenly felt a humanlike intimacy with her that he’d never experienced before, as though they were two life-forms that existed in the same dimension.
But was that really the case? Rei knew Major Booker would say that he was being naive. In ejecting him, Yukikaze had simply removed an element that would be disadvantageous to her while maneuvering. Having a pilot aboard meant that she couldn’t fly as she pleased. Or — and this was a possibility Rei didn’t want to consider — she may have decided that Rei might throw the self-destruct switch for the central computer and auto-maneuver system and had concluded that she had to do what she did in order to protect herself. That was definitely what Major Booker would say. That it was a struggle. A struggle of wills between Yukikaze and her human pilot. Rei decided that he didn’t care about that.
It was hot. Sweat was pouring down his body under the flight suit. Cresting the dune, he spotted Lieutenant Burgadish below. Just as he was raising his hand to signal him, he heard a metallic noise nearby.
A sandstorm was bearing down on them, moving fast. It was the bow shock wave from a JAM fighter, flying supersonic on the deck. An instant after he recognized the black speck as a JAM, the fighter burst into his field of vision, passing between himself and Burgadish. White sand rose up like a wall as the two men were blown back. Rei was hurled into the air like a doll and then slammed back to the ground, pelted by falling sand. Dropping his survival gun, he fumbled at the shoulder of his flight vest to switch on his emergency rescue beacon.
The howl of an approaching aircraft made him instinctively flatten himself against the sand, and an instant later Yukikaze roared past in pursuit of the JAM fighter. She fired in front of Rei. There was the flash of high-velocity missiles being launched. An avalanche of sand crashed down upon him. He lost consciousness.
