Good Luck, Yukikaze

momentary, automatic thought had been enough to make him hesitate. He didn’t think he had it in him. Still, he thought, if that hadn’t been Yagashira’s plane, I doubt I’d have hesitated. In the end, he hadn’t defended Lieutenant Yagashira’s plane. It wasn’t like he could have helped it. It might have been a reaction from his body, not his mind.

Your body doesn’t think; it just reacts. And since it doesn’t think, Lieutenant Mayle still didn’t know why he’d hesitated. It was unnerving to know that things like this could happen in the FAF. That a human would wish a fellow human dead. He didn’t talk about it. If he had, he’d have been convicted of willful dereliction of duty and executed. And if that happened, this battlefield would turn into one where human fought human. It would destroy the 505th strike group. That was why, even if pressed, he’d never, ever say that he wished death on Lieutenant Yagashira. Not even as a joke.

Lieutenant Yagashira and his flight officer in the rear had ejected from the crippled plane and hadn’t been rescued till two whole days later. This was because the fierce battle had raged on, preventing a good fix on their mayday beacon, but they’d been found unharmed. Yagashira had seemed different after the rescue, more distant. It was probably the shock of an ace like him getting shot down. He didn’t remember a thing from the time he bailed out till the search and rescue plane had found him.

After that, having lost his beloved plane, he took it upon himself to conduct the maintenance inspections on the other pilots’ planes. Lieutenant Mayle had found it a bit surprising that, even as Yagashira practically shoved the other pilots out of the way to do this, he never asked to fly in one. Maybe he’d developed a fear of flying. Even as the other pilots offered their planes for him to use, they were glad that he didn’t want to fly any more sorties with them. However, the FAF wasn’t about to let an excellent pilot spend his time goofing off, and the thought of having to fly with Yagashira again had filled Mayle and the others with dread. And then, just as they were all praying for him to disappear, word had come from the SAF asking if they had any expert pilots.

What a lucky break that had been. The whole squadron had congratulated Lieutenant Yagashira on his new posting, saying he was definitely moving up in the world and how jealous they were of him. The sentiments of the celebration had been genuine. They might not have been getting promotions, but at long last, they were getting rid of this annoying presence in their midst.

The party would have been even merrier had it been his funeral, the lieutenant thought. He would be going to Faery base, the FAF’s main base. The elite. The only thing that threw cold water on the whole thing was the question of why that guy? Mayle might never see his face again, but with Yagashira in the SAF, he’d be in his plane looking down on his old squadmates. The way all those guys at Faery base looked down on them. Mayle didn’t like it.

A warning chimed, rousing the lieutenant from his reverie. They’d just entered JAM-controlled airspace. The JAM weren’t actively tracking them yet, but sooner or later, they’d be spotted.

He radioed the other planes to prepare for combat.

“Let’s drop off our presents for the JAM and bug out of here before they send out their interceptors.”

Lieutenant Mayle took his plane higher to make it easier to spot their target. This made it easier for the JAM to spot him as well, but that was also part of his duty. We’re decoys, he thought. Their role was to act as a setup for the first wave’s ground attack. The second wave would be the main force: the sixteen planes of the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron, which would be launching from Faery base to link up with TAB-15. Lieutenant Mayle’s group were on a completely different course, targeting a JAM base to buy time and delay the aliens.

They’re the elite and our job is to support them, Mayle thought. There was no way to tell which group would be in danger, but common sense told him that his guys would be. They were intentionally attracting the JAM’s attention, after all.

A warning chimed again, in a different tone this time. JAM tracking waves had been detected. Mayle’s plane went into a zoom climb, streaking high into the air. Spread out below him were the forests of Faery, vivid with the colors of summertime. Purple hues dominated, with blues and greens glinting metallically in the light of the twin suns. Then the forest was behind him and ahead lay a desert of pure white sand.

The JAM base was somewhere in there. He couldn’t see it with his naked eye, but the attack target data had been loaded into his plane’s central computer. The FAF had judged it to be one of the enemy’s large permanent bases. The JAM normally treated their bases as disposable, with their fighters moving in from places still unknown and constantly launching from their front-line bases. For this target, however, their planes had taken up a posture that indicated that they wanted to defend their base instead of just abandoning it. The assumption was that the JAM had fighter production capacity there. There was no way they could ignore such an inviting target. They’d made six raids on it already, but thus far TAB-15 had lacked the air power to score a decisive blow. This time, however, they’d have added help from Faery base. Mayle’s mission was just a sideshow, meaning they didn’t have to hang in there till the bitter end.

Lieutenant Mayle climbed to nearly the plane’s operational altitude limit, the Fand II squadron a little bit ahead and below him. They were arrayed to meet any enemy planes, but Lieutenant Mayle wanted to perform an inverted breakaway before that became necessary.

He waited for the target to enter the firing range of his air-to-ground missiles. The IR (infrared) receiver detected an abnormality. JAM interceptors were launching from the base. The IR receiver couldn’t get an exact fix on their location, but an exact fix wasn’t necessary right now. He could see a countless number of enemy planes headed right for them.

He hoped they would launch all of their fighters. He hoped that they’d concentrate on targeting the missiles they were about to fire. In those precious few moments, the guys from the 9th TFS would strike the main section of their base. That was the point of this operation, after all.

Target and steering indicators flashed onto his head-up display. The distance to firing range indicator was nearly zero.

Lieutenant Mayle ordered the other planes in the attack group to switch to auto-attack mode. All they needed to do was fly their planes following the steering indicators on the display.

All of the air-to-ground missiles his plane carried fired automatically. A pull-up cue flashed onto his HUD. Lieutenant Mayle executed an inverted breakaway at full thrust. The other planes followed.

All that remained to do was fly back to base in a straight line. The missiles they’d fired had scored hits, but there was no need to assess how much damage they’d caused. That would be the job of the guys from Faery base. The Fand II squadron split into three groups: one to cover Lieutenant Mayle’s squadron with the other two going to back up the 9th TFS.

As Lieutenant Mayle’s group withdrew from the battle zone at maximum speed, the Fand IIs behind them engaged the pursuing JAM interceptors. As they did, the planes from the 9th TFS were probably using the chance to attack, but Lieutenant Mayle didn’t have time to think about that. His plane’s engines were malfunctioning. Something had gone wrong with the engine controllers. His speed began dropping rapidly.

“What the hell’s going on?!” screamed the flight officer in the rear. A violent oscillation shook the plane. “They’re gonna shoot us down! JAM fighters, closing fast!” Mayle didn’t need his flight officer to tell him that. What was causing this? Had someone screwed up on the plane’s maintenance?

Lieutenant Mayle couldn’t hear the engine failure alarm sounding. None of the caution lamps were lit. He couldn’t tell what was going on or where the malfunction was occurring. The throttle was set to max, but his speed was still dropping. The fuel flow gauge read normal, but the combustion efficiency in the engines was definitely deteriorating. And what was causing this furious vibration through the airframe? It was like they were being buffeted by turbulence.

JAM fighters that had evaded the Fand IIs were approaching. Lieutenant Mayle wasn’t alone; all of the planes in his group were experiencing similar failures. None could get up to full speed. None could break away. In that case, they were going to have to fight.

“Engaging,” called out Lieutenant Mayle. Ordering his flight officer to make visual contact with the enemy planes, Mayle looked out of his cockpit as well. He sighted a lone aircraft, flying even higher than his own plane. It wasn’t a JAM. It was an FAF plane.

Special Air Force, Unit B-3: Yukikaze. She flew unmanned. Even Lieutenant Mayle had been informed of that. Well, unmanned or not, he expected no help from her. The SAF didn’t join in the battles.

The JAM behind them held the dominant position, seeming to mock Mayle’s now-lagging plane. He banked sharply, trying to shake them off. “No, other way! Other way!” his flight officer shouted. “Starboard!”