confronting the threat to Yukikaze in her new body, the power of that moment stimulating him back to consciousness. In that instant, he knew for certain that Yukikaze needed him.
Awakened by his experiences, he didn’t want to go back to the way he’d been. Rei had begun to feel closer to the JAM.
What were the JAM? How did the JAM view him? He used to be able to forget those questions when he flew with Yukikaze, but after encountering JAM weapons that looked human, and having a taste of Lieutenant Burgadish, he couldn’t just ignore his questions anymore.
Human existence must have seemed a strange thing to them. Doubtless, the JAM perceived it as something they couldn’t understand, wondering why these things called “humans” were always riding around in the Faery Air Force’s planes. As far as the JAM were concerned, their enemy was the planes of the FAF, not the humans. They recognized the combat machines of Earth as their opponents, not the blobs of organic matter inside them. If the combat machines and computers of Earth were the main adversaries, then the humans were weapons they were equipped with, like computers or missiles.
He could see them now, the JAM desperately analyzing their data, searching for the reason for why the enemy planes were always equipped with organic human matter. It had taken them some time, but it was possible that they now saw the humans as some sort of organic computer that supported the actions of the combat intelligence. At any rate, having realized they could no longer ignore these things, the JAM had likely been devising a countermeasure for them since early in the war. They’d undoubtedly concluded that, since these weapons called humans could move around autonomously, they would create a weapon just like it. Perhaps they’d been deployed for some unimaginable purpose or strategy, but the simple fact was that the JAM were making human copies.
They might have been indistinguishable from humans, possessing will and even emotions, but in the end they were weapons. There could be no other purpose for the JAM to make them, that much was certain. They were organic weapons created by an inorganic alien intelligence that might not even be properly termed a life-form. It was exactly the same idea as when humans created their combat machines.
He wondered how these human copies felt, these men and, possibly, women. An SAF investigation had concluded that there was an extremely high probability that the man called Lieutenant Yagashira, who had taken up a post in the SAF, had been a weapon created by the JAM. The original Lieutenant Yagashira had been killed in action during a mission with his previous squadron, and the JAM had created a weapon based on his body and then deployed it to infiltrate SAF forces. The same went for Lieutenant Lancome, who had been killed at TAB-15 by Yukikaze’s gun. However, the SAF couldn’t prove this conclusively, and so the FAF couldn’t accept their conclusion officially. It was being handled as a top secret matter for their squadron alone.
Despite his vegetative state, Rei had a hazy memory of Major Booker bringing Lieutenant Yagashira to visit him in the hospital. He’d said that he wanted to be a top-class Sylphid pilot, just like Rei. He’d said that he wanted to be his friend. He was a JAM weapon, and yet he’d said that.
Rei had never thought of himself as a consumable weapon in this war. He’d never been particularly concerned with whom or for what he was fighting either. But now, when he thought about the weapons the JAM were making, he couldn’t help but think that he was just like them. A weapon was only concerned with its own effectiveness. If it started to wonder for whom it was being effective, its effectiveness would decrease. Since Rei never thought about things like that as he grew to become the best soldier there was, it meant that when a JAM weapon said, “I want to be like you,” it was telling him that he was more like a weapon than a JAM weapon.
No wonder the JAM perceived him as a threat.
He didn’t know if Lieutenant Yagashira was conscious of having been made by the JAM. It was possible that, even if he did, his sense of identity as a human grew stronger than his identity as a weapon, preventing him from exhibiting his true effectiveness as such. Perhaps Yagashira had said he wanted to be like him because, despite his being human, he recognized Rei as being a far superior weapon. If that were true, it also meant that Yagashira had been a far better human being than Rei was. Far better than a man who didn’t care if he was a human or a weapon.
When Rei had targeted Yagashira’s plane and fired his missiles from the cockpit of the new Yukikaze, he had hesitated for a moment, even though there was no doubt at all that he was shooting at a JAM. Why was that? Was it because he had sensed in Yagashira someone who could have understood him?
The thing he didn’t understand, the thing he now feared, wasn’t the JAM. It was himself. He wanted to take a hard look at the changes he was seeing in his heart. He would return to Earth, the planet that had borne him.
Rei told his only friend and commanding officer Major James Booker exactly how he felt, and the major simply replied that it was a good idea. They were in the SAF hangar bay.
The thirteen fighters were lined up, with Yukikaze in the space for Unit 1. The old Yukikaze had been Unit 3.
“It’ll make you more human,” Major Booker said. “You’ve awakened. Yukikaze has been reborn also, into an even more powerful body. She’s Unit 1 in name and reality. The same should go for you as well.”
Her fighter number had been overwritten with 05031. Yukikaze was now the fourth plane to hold the position of Unit 1.
“I don’t think I want to be reborn,” Rei answered.
“You’ve taken a shock to your mind and body,” the major said. “A change of environment will do wonders for you. The SAF’s also replacing its planes. We’re working over the plan we’d suspended before. The plan is to gradually introduce the FRX00, although the Systems Corps is still convinced the FRX99 is better.”
“Why aren’t you accepting the unmanned planes?”
“Because humans are necessary in this war,” the major answered. “The pilots of the SAF are effective counters to the JAM’s strategies.”
“Humans acting as combat machines, you mean.”
“Not quite. Humans are different from machines. The JAM see that as a threat.”
“Jack, what I’m trying to say is —”
“I know, Rei. I know what sort of damage you’ve taken in all this. The way you are now, you can’t fly. You need leave. God knows, you deserve some, even if the authorities won’t authorize a return to Earth for you.”
“You’re saying I won’t get to go back?”
“The Faery Air Force doesn’t want you wandering free. You’re a great pilot and they need you, but they’re also terrified that you might be a JAM.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rei said.
“The nature of the SAF’s mission means that you constantly see those sorts of contradictory sentiments. That’s always been the case.”
“If I were a JAM, I wouldn’t tell you that the JAM were making human duplicates, would I?”
“That’s a good question,” Booker said. “Maybe the JAM’s objective is to drive a wedge between the humans and the machines of the FAF. Maybe they revealed this to you on purpose.”
“Well, JAM or not, I’ve already done the damage, then.”
“True, but nonetheless, there’s no evidence that you
“So if I want to go back to Earth, I have to retire?”
“Well, good news for you, then,” Booker replied. “Your term of service in the Faery Air Force is almost up. In four days. You can renew your contract instead of retiring, of course. According to the terms of renewal, you can request a promotion to the rank of captain. If you say you’re going to retire, the authorities may try to keep you here by offering you a special two-rank advancement. That’s a typical bargaining tactic they use.”
“I don’t care about rank. It doesn’t mean anything here, anyway,” Rei said.
“I don’t know about that,” Booker said. “If you get to be a field officer, you can start meddling with personnel affairs and make yourself a big man in some other squadron.”
