Good Luck, Yukikaze

round and round, but the truth was that they hadn’t even made two circuits yet. The target plane and Yukikaze were tracing a whirlpool-shaped course through the sky, the turning radius growing ever smaller as they approached the center.

He could see on the passive air space radar the shock wave the target plane produced as it crossed the sound barrier. Yukikaze was flying out of its range, but Katsuragi realized that it would be dangerous if that shock wave struck them head-on.

Suddenly, a shining white spot appeared on the display panel right before his eyes. Lieutenant Katsuragi couldn’t believe what he was looking at. He thought at first that it was some sort of shock wave caused by an intense explosion, but it didn’t propagate like a shock wave. Instead, the shining spot just stayed as it was. Fighting the G forces tearing at him, he looked out of the cockpit in the direction where the spot should have been. It seemed to be centered over the crater where the JAM had self-destructed and caused the cave-in, but with his naked eyes, he could see no difference from before. He wondered if the radar had broken down. The display appeared frozen.

It had clearly picked up the shock wave of the base’s self-destruction. Enlarging its range to maximum, he could see the traces of the pressure-change waves from the blast still spreading outward, the sound of the explosion itself. So the radar was still working fine, but that glowing dot on the display still wasn’t moving. What did it mean?

The lieutenant knew that the passive air space radar was nicknamed “Frozen Eye” and operated by means of a cryogenically cooled ultra-high sensitivity visual sensor. He didn’t know the details of how it worked, as that was a closely guarded FAF secret, but he imagined that the Frozen Eye picked up irregularities in air density, similar to how heat mirages would cause whatever one saw behind them to seemingly shimmer. Katsuragi understood that these microchanges in air density, invisible to the eye, would then be image-processed by a high-speed computer. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be able to sense differences in density unless there were observable moment-by- moment changes taking place. In short, the lines and points Frozen Eye was displaying on the panel had to be constantly moving.

So, this dot had to be vibrating. The instant he had decided it, the dot became a circle and began to slowly expand. And Yukikaze and the target plane were flying straight into it.

Rei realized this too. The airframe was violently shaking now. It seemed about ready to shake itself apart, but he knew that the plane could handle it. The question was whether or not his body could. Here we go, he thought, bracing himself for the impact. Their turning radius continued to shrink as he maintained power.

Lieutenant Katsuragi felt his eyes burn as sweat ran into them. He knew his body was trembling with a fear he unconsciously felt. His head kept telling himself that he was just experiencing what it was that Captain Fukai and Yukikaze were doing, as though this was all somebody else’s problem. His body, on the other hand, wasn’t buying any of it.

For first time, the lieutenant felt that he was behaving as suicidally as his pilot; he was terrified of these maneuvers Yukikaze was pulling. His life was in danger. He could die here, and he couldn’t accept why he was doing this. Even so, this was real. It was happening, and there was no use in trying to deny it.

That was when he saw something outside of the plane that made him wonder if any of this was real at all.

The air space indicated by Frozen Eye was distorting the scenery around it. The changes there were now visible to the naked eye. It almost seemed like an enormous transparent lens was floating over the ruined base. It extended up and down, in a spindle shape. And it was growing larger.

It’s like the Passageway, the lieutenant realized. The Passageway to hyperspace. He tried to twist his head down to check the display panel, but the G forces were just too strong now. He couldn’t move his body at all.

He saw the target JAM plane suddenly roll over, white vapor trailing behind it. A contrail, he thought, caused by the sudden maneuver. An instant later, he felt a shock like an enormous invisible hand swatting Yukikaze.

5

BLACKOUT. REI HAD no sense of losing consciousness, but he figured he might have blacked out for a moment. He heard the sound of a distant alarm. He swallowed saliva as his hearing normalized. He was clearly conscious but could see nothing of his surroundings. Nothing but gray all around. He raised his helmet visor and checked his instruments. A white vapor was rising in the cabin. He thought it was a fire at first, but the alarm was all wrong for that. It was water. Mist.

“Lieutenant Katsuragi, give me a damage report. Lieutenant, wake up!”

“I hear you. Running diagnostics now... Flight systems are all green,” he answered, breathing rapidly.

“Fix the cabin environment.”

“The defogger’s running. Current position: unknown.”

There must have been a sudden, temporary loss of pressure in the cabin, Rei thought. That was the cause of the mist. Thinking the canopy might have been blown off, Rei rolled Yukikaze through one turn, confirming her flight responses as well as trying to determine which way was up. Even so, his instruments weren’t telling him anything. Not knowing which way was up, he reversed the roll in case he’d unexpectedly changed course during the initial one.

The alarm indicated TARGET PLANE LOST. Canceling it, Rei checked to see if the wide area search radar was still operating.

Lieutenant Katsuragi noticed that the barometric and radar altimeters were now at wide variance in their readings, way more than the usual measurement error. He looked out the now-clearing canopy to see which reading was more accurate. He had a feeling that both were probably wrong. Yukikaze was flying nearly level, very close to the ground.

It was a strange scene. Dim, with thick clouds spreading overhead as far as the eye could see. Below them was exactly the same. The lieutenant suddenly realized that the “ground” below them was just another cloud formation. Yukikaze was flying through a clear layer between two thick cloud banks above and below. Far ahead of them on the horizon he could see a band of blue light, probably a break in this sea of clouds. Craning his head around to make sure that Yukikaze’s tail stabilizers hadn’t been damaged, he saw that the brightly shining gap extended completely around them. It was colored red behind them. Katsuragi’s entire field of view showed only a ring of light, sandwiched between two layers of clouds.

“No visible damage to the wings. Current altitude is around three thousand meters, and I don’t think this is Faery’s environment, either,” Lieutenant Katsuragi informed Rei. “I think this is some sort of artificially created space. Our altimeter readings are unreliable here.”

“Yeah,” replied Rei. “There’s also a huge cloud layer above us that reflects back radio waves.”

“Holy shit...” Katsuragi murmured. The clouds above and below weren’t so much like the ground than gigantic walls, with this clear area suspended between them. “This is a spatial pathway the JAM use to transport themselves around Faery.”

“Maybe.”

“If we keep flying, will we come out of it, Captain Fukai?”

“I don’t know, but I think we’re going to make contact with the JAM before we leave here. Keep your eyes peeled.”

The engines were running smoothly, but there was no real sense that they were moving forward. It was quiet. The situation was bizarre, but Rei was relieved to see that Lieutenant Katsuragi in the rear seat was dealing with it calmly and not falling into a panic. Yukikaze was silent except for the message on the main display, which declared that she was searching for the enemy. No doubt she was using every means at her disposal to search the skies surrounding them.

“Where’d the target plane disappear to?” Lieutenant Katsuragi asked. “It looks like it didn’t come in here with us.”

“You’re probably right, seeing as it’s not here. It was probably just sent to guide us in,” Rei replied.

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“Are you asking me if I knew beforehand that we’d be lured into this weird space?”

“Well, that too...”