Good Luck, Yukikaze

A short while later, Lieutenant Katsuragi informed him in a businesslike tone that they were nearing their refueling point.

“Three minutes out. I’ve made contact with the tanker. Weather looks good at the refueling point. Just maintain course and you can’t miss it.”

“Roger.”

If I told him that Yukikaze’s automatically maintaining her optimal flight attitude was an example of her will, Lieutenant Katsuragi would most likely say that was “out of the question” and chalk it up to some foolish delusion on my part, Rei thought. But he would only say that because he had no experience with Yukikaze. It didn’t matter what some stranger who had nothing to do with her said. At any rate, every individual lived in a world of their own delusions. How other people lived their lives had nothing to do with how Rei lived his own. The problem was that this man was riding in the same plane with him, and if he maintained a view of Yukikaze that was different from her pilot’s, they were going to end up operating her differently. In an emergency, that could be fatal.

Rei wanted Lieutenant Katsuragi to feel the same as he did about Yukikaze and the JAM. However, if he could agree that Katsuragi’s cool viewpoint was more rational than his own, then Rei should have no problem matching himself to it. Still, it looked like it was going to take some time — requiring several combat sorties — before they’d be able to harmonize in performing their duties.

After completing their in-air refueling, Rei tensed his body as they headed toward the combat zone. The battle was on.

3

THE JAM BASE code-named Cookie by the FAF had been nearly destroyed by the time Yukikaze arrived for her reconnaissance duty. The fact that they couldn’t detect any JAM radar waves emanating from either the base itself or its surroundings made that clear enough. Radar sites are vital to an air base’s defense, and the FAF had initiated this operation by targeting several of them, and after successfully destroying them after four Faery days of intense resistance, the operation appeared to be 80 percent successful.

The FAF, however, wasn’t letting up the attack and was now engaged in an operation to destroy any JAM that took off to intercept them. In short, their forces were to shoot down any and all enemy planes, leaving none alive.

From aboard Yukikaze, Rei could confirm the destruction of several ground installations with just his naked eye. Black smoke was still rising from the largest one. They could also see the three runways which surrounded the central installation like a triangle — two of them had been torn apart with ballistic missile strikes. The third seemed miraculously untouched, but only because the operation had included orders to keep one intact until the very end.

This operation was going to be the first chance the FAF had ever had to directly explore a JAM base. Major Booker had told Rei that this was being done on the strong recommendation of the Strategic Reconnaissance Corps. The SRC had, naturally, pushed to handle the exploration themselves, but FAF high command had decided that the investigation couldn’t be left to them alone. It would be investigated, of course, but the FAF had plans beyond that: they wanted to seize the base for themselves. They must be worried that the base might recover suddenly if we just hit it without capturing it, Rei thought. The top brass must want the base because its sudden recovery would make this attack meaningless, and they must now see how futile the last thirty years of the war have been in that respect. The SRC’s “discovery” of the JAM’s paired-base operations must have had a great influence on them.

Their assumption was that Cookie was paired with Richwar base, and now that Richwar had been destroyed, Cookie would receive no support from it, creating a perfect opportunity for its capture. And, in fact, no large-scale retaliatory response from the other JAM bases had been seen against Faery base. The FAF high command had judged the SRC’s discovery to be correct.

However, the SAF held a contrary viewpoint. First of all, they didn’t believe that their battles until now had been as futile as some believed. Rather, they felt that the enemy had been engaging to gather information on humanity’s true nature, which the JAM didn’t understand. If the JAM hadn’t been fighting the humans till now, then it meant the JAM hadn’t known or understood that the FAF’s fighter planes were being operated by humans. Had the FAF sent ground forces to occupy a JAM base early on in the war, things might have developed in an entirely different way. The JAM would have realized early on that the humans were their real targets, and mankind might have been exterminated. The idea that the defensive stance they took in prosecuting the war might have actually saved mankind meant that the fighting hadn’t been meaningless. Despite that, as successive generations of FAF commanders came and went without seeing real progress made in their one-sided defensive strategy, the idea that they had to take the fight to the enemy began to take hold. However, with the enemy’s true nature and objectives still a mystery, it was reckless to act on this idea. And, in fact, what attempts they had made in the past never netted them much in the end. But this time it would work, the FAF thought.

Even so, the SAF felt this was premature. The SRC’s conclusion hadn’t been proven at all. It was true that no enemy support was coming from Richwar and they hadn’t seen any JAM retaliation thus far, but it wasn’t known if that had anything to do with the SRC’s discovery. Major Booker had felt that the JAM might be keeping quiet for an entirely different reason. In fact, he was sure that this was a sign of the JAM changing their strategy for fighting the FAF. They mustn’t fall for it, he’d warned, and this plan to try and capture Cookie base was too risky. The JAM might be waiting for them with a large force. He could even imagine that they might be able to replace the FAF occupation force with Jammies, the human duplicates they were now creating. Since there was no way to tell duplicates from the real humans, the FAF could be torn apart from within.

They shouldn’t think about trying to capture the enemy base, Major Booker had continued. They should instead go on as they had, just destroying them. Even if the bases were repaired, it wouldn’t be a waste of time. It would still temporarily reduce the JAM’s fighting strength, and there was always the possibility that the FAF or SAF would find some clue as to how the enemy effected their repairs as well. And if they were intent on capturing the bases, then the FAF should send in tanks equipped with machine intelligences like Yukikaze instead of humans. Unfortunately, Major Booker’s words went unheeded by the FAF high command. Though Booker truly believed that humans needed to be the main actors in this war, he knew what would happen if the JAM began to target men rather than machines. It would become too dangerous for humans to show themselves at the battlefront, and the decision would eventually be made that advanced machine intelligences would be needed to replace them. The FAF authorities must realize that too, Booker had explained, but the SAF had never been told that the FAF’s real intention was to reorganize their troops in order to initiate a full-scale land war. The top brass knew full well that the JAM had infiltrated their forces with human duplicates, so Major Booker couldn’t understand why they were still taking the actions they were. They had kept the details of this plan to capture the enemy base secret from the SAF. It was possible the high command had decided that the old Yukikaze’s contact with the JAM had compromised the SAF, and so they’d taken steps to avoid leaking any information pertaining to the base capture plan to them. If that were the case, then the SAF would eventually be smashed by the FAF itself. How loyal the SAF was or whether the SAF had committed any treasonous acts would be beside the point. Just the appearance of danger would be enough. There was the distinct possibility that the unit and its computers would be wiped out.

In any case, the situation had changed even more drastically than the SAF had originally expected. As far as the SAF were concerned, they had to figure out what the JAM and their own forces were up to and then deal with both. If the SAF hoped to survive, they were going to have to find the answer to all these mysteries on their own.

“Recon the hell out of that place.” Those had been Major Booker’s parting words to Rei and Yukikaze.

The SAF was sending out all of its fighters on rotation to conduct combat intelligence gathering missions, so when Yukikaze arrived on the scene, she was met by the unmanned Rafe fighter that had just finished its sortie. Once Yukikaze approached it and identified herself with her IFF code, the Rafe followed its programming and set out to return to base.

The Rafe didn’t exchange the data it had collected while in flight, since its duty was to carry it back to base without allowing the JAM to intercept it. Rei wondered if it might have been attacked by the JAM, but he decided against that possibility after judging the situation and seeing no sign of damage. It had been sent to scout a greater area than usual because it was able to avoid danger better than any of the SAF’s manned planes. While it wouldn’t approach hazardous airspace, it would still be able to shake off any attackers at high speed if it encountered any. If the enemy didn’t give up, it would avoid combat and retreat. Combat mode was only selected if escape wasn’t