Good Luck, Yukikaze

“The crew have ejected,” Lieutenant Katsuragi reported. “Confirm ejection of both front and rear seats. Are they running away? But why? What happened?”

The lieutenant followed the two ejected seats with his gaze. They fell behind and to the side of their flight path, tracing a double-helix path through the air as they spiraled away around one another. He saw no sign of the crew’s bodies separating from the seats or of parachutes opening, even as he twisted his neck as far around as he could to keep them in sight. They were enveloped in a reddish phosphorescence, sprouting glowing red tails as they grew smaller and smaller until they finally vanished from sight. It was as if they’d been incinerated in freefall. He instinctively checked the radar display, but saw nothing there. They’d been annihilated.

“Answer me, JAM,” Rei said. “I want to talk to you, not your human duplicates. Respond! This is Rei Fukai in B-1.”

The response came.

“I cannot understand you. Why do you fight?”

Lieutenant Katsuragi shivered. The owner of this voice, he realized, was the JAM themselves, who wished to make contact with Captain Fukai and Yukikaze. The ejected JAM humans had been nothing more than intermediaries whose role had been to act as translators. The owner of the voice had probably discarded them when it judged that they were hindering negotiations. Like they’d been some sort of disposable weapon.

The target plane continued to fly alongside Yukikaze, as though nothing had happened. The JAM voice might have been coming from the plane, but most likely it was acting as a relay transmitter to convey the JAM’s will. No doubt it wasn’t the actual voice of a JAM, but the results of their efforts to convey their thoughts in human speech through the manipulation of radio waves.

What we know as JAM do exist, but they’re some sort of invisible beings, and what we fight are their shadows. What Rei had thought, Lieutenant Katsuragi could now understand as a palpable sensation. A sensation of fear. It hadn’t just been a theory.

“I cannot understand the intelligence known as Yukikaze. I cannot understand the intelligences which comprise what is known as the Special Air Force. Why, Lieutenant Fukai? Why do you fight?”

“So that I can live and not die at your hands. Why can’t you understand that? Are you saying other humans, the groups aside from Yukikaze and the SAF, aren’t like that?”

“I believe that the machine intelligences of the SAF, including Yukikaze and you contained within her, are like me: intelligences that do not possess personlike consciousness. What I cannot understand is why you do not separate from the group known as the FAF and continue to fight to thwart my plans. Yukikaze refuses to ratify my nonaggression pact. You are the only one who can convince her to withdraw her rejection. Lieutenant Fukai, I desire to awaken you. Come back to me.”

“Wait, what... What do you mean, I don’t possess personlike consciousness? Ratify a nonaggression pact? Come back to you?”

“The current people as well as the artificial intelligences that manipulate them are beings that can be made to deviate from their essential natures by our plans. You people, however, are not like that. You are essential beings, and your enemy is not me. It is not my intention to let you be consumed. It is my desire that you choose to come over to me.”

“In short...” said Lieutenant Katsuragi, cutting in. Rei didn’t stop him. He was going to need time if he was going to figure out what the JAM were saying. “You’re saying that since we’re like the JAM, you want us to join you, switch sides, and help you to fight the FAF?”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Akira Katsuragi, Yukikaze’s flight officer and electronic warfare operator. I serve at FAF Faery base in the Tactical Combat Air Corps, Special Air Force 5th Squadron. My rank is second lieutenant and I am a human. If you want to know why I fight you, it’s pretty much because it’s my job to. My job, do you understand? My duty. I do this because there’s no other suitable path I can take through life.”

“You can live without fighting me.”

“I can interpret your thoughts to mean that you want the SAF to be your allies, can’t I? Does that mean you’re offering me a job?”

In this situation, what he’d just asked was so base it was almost funny. But they waited for the JAM’s answer, even as Rei wondered what the lieutenant’s real motives were.

“You people and I are similar, but we are not comrades. But I wish to explain that I see the possibility of forming a common front against the FAF. I judge that will provide a path through life for you, Lieutenant Katsuragi. I seek your answer. If you have any intention of withdrawing from the FAF and joining me, then declare it to me, Lieutenant Fukai.”

Its strained, unnatural circumlocutions made it difficult to follow, but what Rei could basically make out was that the JAM were demanding to know, if he intended to continue fighting, would he join the JAM’s side. His destiny was riding on how he answered this question.

What would the JAM do if he told them no? Would it eliminate him to rid itself of an opponent beyond comprehension? No, it would likely keep working to understand him till the bitter end. The JAM probably wouldn’t let him escape from this space. Maybe lead him, and Yukikaze, to be confined in a safe place, like Major Yazawa had said. Somewhere unimaginable that was neither Earth nor Faery, where the JAM could take its time in figuring them out, with special attention paid to Yukikaze. What if the JAM brainwashed him to get him on their side? If they succeeded at that, he imagined they could bring the entire SAF there to brainwash as well and then use them against the FAF. In other words, turn them all into JAM...

Well then, what if he said yes? What if he joined the JAM? Yukikaze wouldn’t accept that quietly, surely. He had no doubt in his mind that she’d pitch both himself and Lieutenant Katsuragi out of the plane, to end up the same as Major Yazawa and whoever else had been with him.

“Your answer, Lieutenant Fukai.”

Rei sensed that the JAM was in no hurry.

It had plenty of time. It had been observing the FAF for thirty years, so why would it rush? Rei was still under observation in this space, as well. The JAM didn’t seem intent on killing him, but as long as he didn’t answer it, he’d have no way to take any proactive steps toward saving himself. Unless he did something, he would end up starving to death, and Yukikaze would exhaust her fuel and fall silent.

What do I want to do, Rei asked himself. Not what should I do, but do I want to do? Is that the answer?

“I wish to know more details about what sort of beings you are,” Rei said. “I don’t understand anything about you, but you seem to grasp at least a bit about me. I can’t ratify a nonaggression pact with you as long as this unequal state of affairs persists. First of all, I don’t think you completely understand or know how to use human speech. Just what are you people? Living things? Beings that consist only of intelligence, will, and data? Do you have physical forms? If so, then where are they?”

“I cannot explain in a way that would be comprehensible in your terms. I am that I am.”

Lieutenant Katsuragi felt a smile spasm across his face. The tension was so unbearable now that he could feel his train of thought starting to derail. “I am that I am.” Well, fantastic. They are just like Captain Fukai and Yukikaze, then. As he was thinking how the resemblance was astonishing, the feeling of tension returned. He concentrated every nerve on Rei’s answer.

“If you don’t have words that can explain more than that, then any further communication via words is meaningless,” Rei declared. Taking a deep breath and preparing himself for the worst, he gave his answer.

“I refuse your request.”

“Understood,” the JAM replied, without any emotion.

“Strategic reconnaissance, complete,” Rei declared. “Returning to base.”

VII RETHINKING FIGHTING SPIRIT

1