system’s efficiency as a whole, and so the human element had to be eliminated. The human body is like a fragile egg compared to a fighter plane, with its inability to withstand the violent maneuvers of combat, the fear of battle felt by the human heart, and in its far inferior ability to think. Playing nursemaid to a human pilot prevented the Super Sylph from demonstrating its true potential, and so the human wasn’t necessary, or so they said.
From this idea was developed the FRX99, the SAF’s next-generation tactical reconnaissance fighter plane. The engineers felt that even the Super Sylph would be ineffective against the JAM so long as humans rode inside of them. But the SAF’s Major Booker didn’t simply accept this conclusion. The major had concluded that the superiority of the SAF came from the pilots’ possession of a combat sense computers did not have, and that their planes’ central computers had developed their own version of that combat sense. What had been burning the JAM’s fingers on the now-aging Super Sylphs was the tactical combat judgment the planes had picked up from their human pilots, and human behavior was something the JAM found impossible to predict. It was for that reason that the unmanned planes, lacking a learning function, could not perform the duties that the current SAF did. The major felt that since the computers on current Super Sylphs had learned enough by that point, they should be converted to unmanned versions and then the new planes be deployed as manned fighters.
The major then requested that the Systems Corps produce an FRX99 designated as a manned fighter. That became the FRX00 prototype. Whereas the FRX99 is a recon version of the next-generation mainline fighter plane that the Systems Corps are developing, the FRX00 became a version modified for manned flight. While the details have not been made public here on Earth, several FRX99s and at least one FRX00 have been completed. Both types of plane are prototypes, with production versions pending.
The reason Major Booker was so adamant that there be a manned version is that he doesn’t want this war to become one between the JAM and our combat machines. The major’s feelings on this matter are complicated and cannot be easily encapsulated in a few words, but if I had to summarize the misgivings of a soldier such as he who has been on the front lines fighting the JAM for many years, it would be like this:
As things stand now, analysis shows that the JAM disregard the existence of human beings. Their direct enemies are the FAF’s fighter planes, and thus the JAM take no tactical actions against the humans who reside within the bases on Faery. I wonder if the JAM have declared war, not on humanity, but on Earth’s war machines. We may not even be the JAM’s enemy.
If this is the case, if this war becomes one between the JAM and the war machines and computers humanity has developed, then humans aren’t necessary.
However, humans can’t simply ignore the situation; the reason being that while we can no longer live without the existence of our computers, if the computers tell us that we humans are no longer necessary to them, then a new front on the war will open, and this time our opponents will be our own machines. We’ll have to deal with a challenge from the computers as well as from the JAM. In fact, the decision to end production of manned fighter jets came from a proposal by Systems Corps’ own computers. If we humans just unconditionally accept our obsolescence, then we’ll be surrendering control of the FAF and, later, the entire Earth to the computers long before we’d have to surrender them to the JAM.
I want the JAM to be humanity’s enemy, because if they aren’t, then what’s been the point of anything that I’ve done so far? Humans are the main leads in this war. We need to convey this to both the JAM and to our computers. We can’t just leave this war to the computers to win.
It’s difficult for me to accurately convey Major Booker’s feelings, separated as I am from the war with the JAM and the computers he uses to analyze the data about the conflict. It’s possible this is because of some misunderstanding of my own. However, I will add only this: the JAM’s true form remains a mystery to us, and we can’t ignore the threat they pose, no matter how indirect. They are a danger to all of mankind, and Major Booker is someone who senses that danger in his very bones.
The letter I received from Major Booker a few days ago dealt with an even more potent subject — for the first time ever, Major Booker lost a plane.
Since I can learn of the FAF’s war situation from regular official reports faster than extradimensional letters can arrive in my mailbox, I knew of the SAF’s loss even without Major Booker telling me. The fighter the JAM destroyed was Unit 3, personal name: Yukikaze. Her pilot was gravely injured, and the flight officer who normally flew in the rear seat was missing in action.
An SAF plane, a group whose pride in its perfect return record had given it the nickname Boomerang squadron, had been lost.
Yukikaze. Her pilot was Lieutenant Rei Fukai. Major Booker’s friend. The name I’d read on that casualty list wasn’t that of a stranger.
I’d seen the SAF fighter called Yukikaze up close. She’d landed on a Japanese naval aircraft carrier to refuel. That huge, graceful plane looked like a swan landing amidst a flock of ducks. Major Booker was the one riding in the rear seat at the time, and we’d spoken then. The pilot was Lieutenant Rei Fukai. He never came down out of the cockpit, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to the lieutenant, but even if he had, I think I’d have had as much luck having a conversation with him as I would with Yukikaze. That pilot was part of the systems installed into his beloved plane; he had a function to serve. I figured that he’d regard some stranger who was unrelated to a combat role as just so much static.
Yukikaze was the only thing in which he believed. That was what Major Booker told me as he stood looking at his friend and subordinate aboard the plane. A man who now trusted a machine more than other humans, and who was becoming increasingly machinelike himself. It seemed terrifying and sad to me.
I knew that the official report listed Lieutenant Fukai as having been gravely injured, so I sent off a letter to Major Booker to inquire about the pilot’s condition. Not as a journalist gathering information for a story, but as an individual. The major wrote me a polite reply and said that he appreciated my concern. That was the letter that arrived a few days ago.
The contents of that letter were beyond anything I had expected.
First of all, he apologized for the delay in replying to me, as he’d suffered a neck injury. He then went on to say that Yukikaze herself had made it back unharmed.
This opening paragraph perplexed me, but as I continued reading and Major Booker described exactly what had happened in the incident, I was able to understand.
Yukikaze had been shot down by the JAM during a mission and had made an emergency landing. Lieutenant Fukai, the pilot, ejected, and Yukikaze self-destructed. At that moment, Major Booker was riding in the rear seat of the FRX00 flying nearby, engaged in a combat assessment test flight of the SAF’s next-generation manned fighter plane.
The FRX00 was also attacked by the JAM, but the new fighter blew them decisively out of the sky. Its air combat maneuvers were so violent that the pilot who’d been flying the plane was killed instantly, unable to take the acceleration, while Major Booker in the rear seat injured his neck and lost consciousness. According to the letter, the FRX00 flew back to base on its own, carrying its dead and unconscious passengers, and then identified
The only explanation that makes sense is that the Yukikaze that was shot down by the JAM transferred herself into the newer fighter as it approached. Immediately after that, the FRX00 was out of the pilot’s hands. It was the decision of the plane’s central computer to initiate air combat maneuvers, not the pilot. In short, Major Booker wrote, having gotten herself a new body after being shot down by the JAM, Yukikaze decided to take revenge on the nearby JAM.
Yukikaze’s pilot, Lieutenant Fukai, was rescued, but he’d suffered a gunshot wound in the right side of his abdomen. In addition, his flight officer, Second Lieutenant Burgadish, wasn’t on board. Only Lieutenant Fukai’s ejection seat had been jettisoned in the emergency landing, which means that Yukikaze had landed sometime during its mission and Lieutenant Burgadish had deplaned.
Why he did or what happened, Major Booker doesn’t know. Yukikaze’s action record had been copied exactly onto the FRX00’s memory, which supports the theory that she copied herself into the new plane, and the data do seem to indicate that Yukikaze set down somewhere once before finally being shot down. However, they don’t know any details beyond that. Lieutenant Fukai is alive, but in a coma, so he cannot be interrogated. The bullet found in Lieutenant Fukai was from an FAF-issued sidearm, but nobody knows who would have tried to kill him. It seems doubtful that Lieutenant Burgadish would have shot his own crewmate, but the major doesn’t know the details.
