Good Luck, Yukikaze

True, it would be an ideal situation to gain absolute authority over the FAF and fight the JAM that way. While humans did operate as collectives, it was necessary to win power struggles within that collective. That fact put them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the JAM, and they’d be sure to exploit it. The JAM must have understood humanity’s Achilles’ heel. Their analysis must have also shown them that a weak point could be turned into a strong point. For example, conflict within a collective might be necessary to replace a bad boss with a superior person.

The JAM had admitted that the SAF was beyond their understanding. They might as well have said that it was Cooley herself that they didn’t understand, since she was the one who’d set the SAF up in this way. That was the JAM’s weakness. The FAF and the JAM might not be equally matched, but it could be said that the SAF was now in the same position as the JAM. It was a position she couldn’t abandon. The one thing she couldn’t afford to do was behave as her opponents expected.

What she needed to make clear to the JAM was that humanity didn’t merely consist of the types of people that they could comprehend.

“The JAM are like gods?”

Major Booker had said that regarding the JAM as an unknowable enemy called to mind words and concepts like god. Booker told Captain Foss that he’d prefer to avoid seeing the JAM as gods, but also feared that it might be impossible. General Cooley understood how he felt. But, she thought, a part of her hoped that they literally were godlike beings. Because to stand up and fight against the gods was something that young Lydia Cooley had always hoped she could do.

4

AFTER CHANGING CLOTHES, Rei and Lieutenant Katsuragi joined Captain Foss and Major Booker on their way to see General Cooley in the command center.

In response to General Cooley saying that she hadn’t summoned the two pilots, Major Booker whispered in her ear to explain about Yukikaze’s discovery of two unidentified humans within the Systems Corps — men who were claiming to be Lieutenant Burgadish and another dead man. How Yukikaze had recognized them as JAM, and how Rei felt that her concerns were likely a JAM trick. The general betrayed little surprise as she listened. After brief consideration, she ordered First Lieutenant Eco, the chief of fighter plane maintenance operations, to begin repairs on Yukikaze at once.

“Yukikaze won’t resist our moving her to the repair bay now.” There had been some fear of her self- destructing. “However,” General Cooley continued, “we need to keep her linked to the tactical computer while she’s in the repair bay. Can you do that?”

“Of course we can.”

“How long will the repairs take?”

“I’ll know that once I get a detailed look at exactly what’s damaged on her. From what the maintenance team saw when they eyeballed it before, dismounting the damaged engine shouldn’t take too long. It should just slide right out. There’s nothing fatally damaged on the airframe, and the root of the primary tail stabilizer she lost is just fine. It should take us an hour to move her into the repair bay and run a damage inspection. Swapping out the engine and the other miscellaneous repairs should take about three hours if we push it, another two for general maintenance and inspections, so... Yeah, six hours should do it.”

“Do it in four.”

“Okay, we’ll aim for four.”

Lieutenant Eco began to issue orders to the maintenance team from his terminal, the display on the monitor mirrored on the big screen at the front of the command center. Data from Yukikaze’s onboard airframe self- monitoring system began to scroll onto it as well. Confirming that Yukikaze had agreed to the repairs, Cooley told the still-standing Major Booker and his subordinates to take seats at the empty consoles.

“Captain Pivot, enter Captain Fukai’s and Lieutenant Katsuragi’s reports into the strategic computer. Lieutenant Katsuragi, you assist him. Major Booker, monitor what the strategic computer does. Captain Foss, present your formal prediction of the JAM’s strategy and the results of your profacting. Please wait here while I read it to answer any questions I may have.”

“I want to delete the data related to the retraining unit in the Systems Corps,” Rei said. “Authorize the attack.”

“You are to read through the data that you and Yukikaze brought back, as well as the data analysis report we’ve generated here at HQ. Whether or not we attack will be determined by a comprehensive judgment of all available information,” Cooley said. “If you haven’t eaten yet, order anything you want. Captain Foss, Major Booker, that goes for you too.”

“Great, I’ll have a two-pound steak, please, and make it rare,” said Lieutenant Katsuragi. That immediately broke the tension.

This might be our last meal, Rei thought. Thirteen people weren’t nearly enough to be doing this. It occurred to him that there were thirteen planes in the squadron as well. When the final battle came, they’d probably all be served fuel and weaponry at the same time too...

The general’s young secretary, who hung by her side like a shadow, took their orders and called them in to the SAF mess hall.

Rei ordered a ham bun, and by the time the round, extra-large roll stuffed with ham and vegetables had arrived, he’d gotten to the part of the analysis report that General Cooley had reread, wherein Captain Foss and Major Booker had discussed the ontology of the JAM.

If they start calling the JAM gods, then it’s all over, Rei thought. The FAF will lose its reason for existence.

If what Major Booker had predicted came to pass, the FAF would split into two groups: believers and nonbelievers. Three, if you counted the group who wouldn’t care either way. And then those groups would probably split into even more subgroups. At any rate, since the JAM were unperceivable entities, it was impossible to ascertain just what was the correct way to conceive of them. With the stress of all these various groups within it, there’d be no way that the FAF could maintain its role as a coherent organization against the JAM. If the groups within the FAF started using force to validate their views, it’d turn into an outright religious war. Major Booker had been right on the money to call it “JAMism.” Even now, there were a lot of people on Earth who claimed that the JAM were illusory, with some of them practically believing that they were gods. The groups back home hadn’t yet begun making moves that threatened the FAF, but there was a real danger that they might.

“If humans really can’t perceive the JAM,” Rei said, “the FAF must never let that information go public.”

“I’d expect the Intelligence Forces have a media control plan ready to go,” said Major Booker, nodding. “What about it?”

“I was just thinking I’d like to tell Lynn Jackson about this. About what we’ve got here. She’s an Earther. She has a right to know.”

“I agree. There’s a saying that the three most useful friends to have are a doctor, a lawyer, and a journalist,” Booker said. “Although you’re inviting disaster if they aren’t very good at what they do. Still, we can rely on Lynn. She can understand the SAF. It’ll be tough to pull off, but I think it’d be worth it. If you were going to make a last will and testament, I can’t think of a better person to entrust it to.”

“It’s not certain that we’re going to lose,” said Captain Foss. “And it’s not certain that we’re going to die.”

“A will is something you write while still alive,” said Major Booker. “We’re losing our chance to leave it with the FAF.”

“The Intelligence Forces aren’t incompetent,” said Lieutenant Katsuragi. “They must have predicted the implications of knowing the JAM’s true form. You might say that the SAF was slow to figure it out. Well, I suppose that comes from being a combat unit. You only believe in what you can practically confirm. Still, this inability to pin down where the JAM exist is almost like quantum theory, isn’t it? Maybe the JAM are quantum beings.”

“You’re talking about the Uncertainty Principle,” said Captain Foss. “That’s the one that says the means of human observation itself makes knowing an object’s location unclear, since you can’t measure two exact values at the same time, right?”

“That’s not entirely correct,” said Captain Pivot, the man in charge of data analysis. “The values that can’t be simultaneously observed are those with attributes in conjugate relation to each other. For example, position and energy have no conjugate attributes, so it’s possible to know both simultaneously if you measure them precisely. If