Good Luck, Yukikaze

Just leave the legal wrangling to him.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“You just have to trust him for now,” Booker said.

“No, it’s not that. It was the way he walked around unarmed, like he thinks he has some right not to get killed here. That’s just a delusion.”

“A shared delusion. Pollack operates within the delusion of what Earth society calls common sense. That doesn’t apply here. Not in the FAF or on Faery. Especially to us in the SAF, with the JAM constantly at our throats, the kind of confidence that man has would naturally seem bizarre. Talking to him makes me feel like we live in entirely different dimensions. He walks in the world of Earthly common sense.”

“Earthly common sense,” Rei pondered. “I never was very familiar with that.”

“I know what you mean. It’s the same for me. If you go back to Earth, it’ll probably be even stranger to you. There were always people who said that the JAM invasion was some giant hoax, but now there are apparently a lot of people who don’t even believe they exist. The number of people who aren’t conscious of the fact that the JAM threat is real is growing, and to them the war on Faery is just fiction. Everything that happens on this planet is becoming fictional.”

“Fiction. Like a fairy tale.”

“Exactly. We and the JAM are just characters in a story. If this collective delusion continues to hold sway, it’s possible that humanity wouldn’t understand what was happening if the JAM broke through the Faery defense line and invaded Earth. If it gets to where we can’t recognize the JAM anymore, will fighters and combat intelligences like Yukikaze who are fighting against the JAM even recognize them as the enemies of humanity? Maybe we wouldn’t be able to tell what the real threat was without Yukikaze flying overhead to keep an eye out for it.”

“The ones suffering from that delusion are happy to get killed off without ever sensing a threat or feeling fear,” Rei said, carefully folding the documents he held. “It makes things easier for the JAM, doesn’t it? If the JAM are making those human duplicates with the thought of using them as anti-personnel weapons, their strategy is wrong.”

“I doubt that’s what the JAM have in mind. For now, they’ve only made a small number of duplicates exclusively for gathering intelligence. I think they’re using them in the same way that we use Yukikaze. They’d need to mass-produce them if they were to be used as anti-personnel weapons, and it would require a lot of resources to maintain a squad. Just producing food for them would be a huge problem. I doubt they’d adopt such an inefficient strategy. If the JAM are creating human copies, it means they’ve studied the human body thoroughly. If they know enough to make a human body, it stands to reason that they could easily engineer a virus to wipe us out. It’d be child’s play to spread — an autonomous, infectious, self-propagating micro-weapon. That would be the most efficient way to kill us.

“Maybe they haven’t perfected it,” Booker continued, “or they don’t want to for some reason, but the fact remains that we don’t know what the JAM are after. We may never be able to communicate with them. We operate under the assumption that, given enough effort, a means to understanding an opponent with a rational mind can be found, but that may simply be a human delusion. I think it’s a conceited notion. We humans don’t really know what Yukikaze and the FAF computers think, and we made them.”

“The same goes for strangers. We make enemies of other people.”

“True understanding may be impossible,” the major said, “but we can believe. Humans have that capacity.”

“I believe in you,” Rei said, slipping the folded papers into his pocket. “And in Yukikaze. And in the JAM as well.”

“Then why are you so eager to return to Earth? Do you even know, Rei?” The question was so unexpected that Rei was flummoxed. He just looked at his old friend for a long moment, wondering if his silence was proof that he really didn’t know.

“I think I know why,” the major said at last. “I understand, because I get the same feeling a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to see for yourself that Earth still exists, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You should go. You’re free now. Nobody can tell you what to do. I’ll wait for a week after your retirement is finalized. If I don’t hear from you in ten days, I’ll reorganize the SAF without you.”

“I understand.”

“That is all, Lieutenant Fukai.”

“Roger, Major.”

Rei straightened up and saluted. Major Booker sat up in his seat and returned the salute with a casual wave, like he always did. It was an attitude that said that, true to their nickname, a Boomerang soldier would return without fail. If the boomerang hit its target, he would go out to recover it. That was Major Booker’s role to play. It’s thanks to him that I was rescued, Rei thought. From one viewpoint, Booker was just doing his duty, but from another, it was confirmation that the major didn’t simply see Rei as a weapon. Had it not been for his faith in his friend, Rei wouldn’t have wanted to return from the void in which he’d been trapped.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Rei said as he lowered his hand. “I’d better get to the administration office.”

“I’d hate to see you not come back to the SAF, but you do what you have to do,” the major replied. “This is a gamble I’m taking, Rei. Drastic action. It’s the only thing I can offer you so that you’ll be a soldier again. There’s a chance I’m going to lose this bet.”

“I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen,” Rei said.

“Since you’re going back to an Earth you don’t really know anymore, anything could happen. I’d feel better if you had a navigator to help you out. I contacted Lynn Jackson and made a private request. That was me acting as an individual, not as a major asking a favor.”

“Lynn Jackson, huh?”

“The FAF Intelligence Forces are probably already moving and may refuse, but that has nothing to do with me. Lynn Jackson is a first-rate journalist. She’ll keep you out of trouble.”

“It sounds like Earth is more dangerous than the JAM.”

“In your naively fragile state, it definitely is. I’m praying you don’t have a total nervous breakdown there.”

As Rei turned to leave, Major Booker wished him luck. Rei left his friend’s office without another word.

THREE DAYS LATER, Rei was safely retired from service. The process had been complicated and mysterious, but apparently Chang Pollack had earned his hefty fee, sparing Rei from having to deal with any annoying contingencies. Once his confiscated Japanese passport was returned to him, it was all over. Rei Fukai was no longer a soldier in the Faery Air Force. He was a civilian, with all debts to society paid.

Just as he had when he’d first arrived at base, Rei walked through the tunnel which connected the surface to the underground, though this time he was going up instead of down. Carrying only his jacket and a Boston bag he owned, Rei headed for the exit. As he neared it, the outside light growing brighter, Rei felt as if he were awakening from a dream.

No one was there to see him off. There were about twenty other people who, like him, were making the trip back to Earth, along with four others still in uniform, going back on temporary leave. The guys in uniform were mainly jovial, but the expressions of ex-servicemen varied, sullen frowns outnumbering smiles considerably.

Emerging from the tunnel, Rei looked up into the light of Faery’s twin suns.

A huge eddy of gas jetted out from one side of the binary stars, forming a reddish belt that resembled the Milky Way. The Bloody Road, as it was called, was more diffuse than when seen from a plane at high altitude. Normally, it wasn’t visible from the ground at noontime. Perhaps, Rei thought, finding yourself forced to see something that you normally wouldn’t is the essential nature of homesickness. A formation of FAF tactical fighters crossed the sky overhead. Opposite them stood a huge, white pillar of clouds — the Passageway that connected Earth and Faery. Rei thought the scene looked like some sort of painting.

A United Nations transport plane bound for Earth sat at the end of the runway. This was the shuttle that made the trip through the hyperspace Passageway from Faery to Earth. Generally, FAF planes never went