“There is,” said Lieutenant Katsuragi. “Earth. We should fly through the Passageway. The FAF would finish off any JAM chasing us. It’s the safest place.”
They all stared at the lieutenant, dumbfounded.
“It wouldn’t work?” he asked.
“Lieutenant,” said Major Booker. “What would we do then? We can’t keep flying forever. The nearest place to go would be an Australian air force base, but we’d violate their airspace if we headed there. They’d treat us like JAM.”
“Any evacuation to Earth,” said Captain Pivot, “would require consent from Earth. Only the FAF high command are authorized to negotiate that. It’s not like I haven’t heard of articles covering the emergency evacuation of FAF combat units, but in this situation, it would be something the FAF would have to do, not us. The SAF would send this information to General Laitume and have him call a top-level FAF strategic conference for the one thing we could do—initiate an emergency evacuation of the FAF.”
“We’d first have to get the general to consent to it,” said Rei. “Then he’d have to convince the other ones in the high command. I don’t know how long it’d take, or if they’d even act, but even assuming they went for it all we’d be doing is moving the battlefield from here to Earth. That’s probably exactly what the JAM want. There’d no longer be any point to the combat bases we have on Faery. Why did we even build Faery base in the first place? Earth would never go along with it.”
“It’d become a political war in which we wouldn’t be able to participate,” said Major Booker. “We couldn’t afford to wait to see what the outcome would be. Look, what we—what I want to protect isn’t the FAF. It’s the SAF and my own self.”
“I see. It wouldn’t work,” said Lieutenant Katsuragi. “And I thought it was a good idea, too.”
Looking at the lieutenant as he sighed, Rei thought of Colonel Rombert.
“Jack, what about Colonel Rombert’s demand for me and Lieutenant Katsuragi to join that retraining unit?”
“Yeah, that is a problem,” said Major Booker. “General Cooley hasn’t given an official reply yet. Captain Pivot, has Colonel Rombert said anything since then?”
“No, not that I’ve heard. There hasn’t been a peep out of the Intelligence Forces.”
“Even Colonel Rombert probably didn’t seriously expect us to swallow it,” said Major Booker. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been using a dead man like Lieutenant Burgadish in plain sight. If Rei went there, the cat would be out of the bag pretty quick. Maybe he sent for Rei deliberately to blow the secret… But still, Lieutenant Burgadish? I can’t believe it. Is he really there? How can we be sure of this?”
“Why don’t I go?” said Lieutenant Katsuragi. “I don’t know what this Lieutenant Burgadish looks like, but—”
“No,” said the major. “You already know too much about the inner workings of the SAF. I can’t send you.”
“Want to try a video call?” said Rei.
“And what if he answers?” asked Captain Foss.
“If it’s actually Lieutenant Burgadish, then—” he began, when suddenly Lieutenant Eco, who’d been silently engrossed with his work, piped up. “Order a pizza.”
“What?” asked Captain Pivot. “Why a pizza?”
“Because I like them. You can say it’s a wrong number. Damn, I’m hungry. I wish I’d ordered food with the rest of you guys.”
“How are the repairs coming on Yukikaze?” asked Rei.
“Taking a little more time than I expected,” said Lieutenant Eco. “General Cooley’s going to be mad, but what can you do?”
“Forget the video call,” said Major Booker. “Any moves we make to confirm it’s him will be noticed by the JAM. We can’t give up this grace period until Yukikaze is back in action.”
“The JAM aren’t giving us a grace period,” said Captain Foss. “As soon as that retraining unit is ready, they’ll begin their attack, just as Yukikaze predicted. They’ll destroy us.”
“There are probably around fifty people in that unit,” Captain Pivot said. “They’d be neutralized quickly. They won’t achieve anything acting alone, so maybe they’ll move in concert with a JAM attack from the outside. Major Booker, let’s send out our fighters. Tactical combat reconnaissance. It’d be safer to have them in the air. And we’d be able to save face with General Laitume.”
“Of course, I thought of that too. The question is just how far can thirteen fighters go against the JAM?” Major Booker said, crossing his arms. “If the JAM launch an all-out attack after they take off, it’d be dangerous for them to return to Faery base. It could be destroyed from within. I can imagine it becoming the most dangerous battlefield of all. Our fighters can’t just do the usual thing of avoiding combat to return to base. Without a safe evacuation point, taking off in this situation would be tantamount to suicide. So where do we find such a point? Earth is out of the question. SAF fighters may be top of the line, but they can’t fly forever.”
They can’t fly forever… Hearing that, Rei recalled that the FAF did have a craft capable of flying forever. Almost instantly, a plan floated into his brain that he was convinced would be the only way that their planes would survive.
“Call all flight personnel and have them get ready for a mission briefing,” Rei said, standing up. “We should have the planes’ central computers and the combat intelligences here in HQ participate as well.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Captain Pivot.
“Where are you going, Rei?” said Captain Foss.
“To the toilet,” Rei replied. “I’m going to freshen up and grab a little rest.”
“And what’s this mission briefing going to be about?” asked Major Booker. “Where are we flying?”
“Tell everyone what the situation is,” Rei said. “Everyone will think up their own individual survival plan. Since they’re pilots, they’ll think of flying. But without a base to back it up, a fighter has no place to land. We can’t have that, can we? But if we capture a base somewhere for ourselves, that problem disappears.”
“You’re going to fight the FAF head on?” said Captain Pivot. “And what about the rest of us who stay behind here?”
“Much as I’d like to say I don’t care, planes need ground support. And we can’t be obvious about this. There’s only one air base I can think of that we can seize in secret and drive out every single person on it.”
“You’re talking about Banshee,” groaned Major Booker. “I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Even its name is ominous. A fairy that cries out, warning of death.”
“Where is it?” asked Captain Foss.
“It’s a massive sky carrier used by the FAF defense air force,” said Captain Pivot. “A flying aircraft carrier. There used to be two ships, but there’s only one now: Banshee III.”
“It’s a miracle of modern technology made real,” said Lieutenant Eco. “Not state of the art anymore, but it’s amazing that they built that monster in the first place, let alone that it’s still flying. It was built in space and has never landed on the ground, even once. It doesn’t have any landing gear.”
“It’s fast, but tactically not very maneuverable,” said Captain Pivot. “It just flies around on a preset circular course.”
“There’s a risk of it crashing if you change course too wildly,” Lieutenant Eco said. “Like you’re flying by centrifugal force.”
“But it does have fighter plane fuel, weaponry, and plenty of food,” said Major Booker. “It really is a flying air base. Yukikaze once flew out to Banshee IV to investigate an anomaly. It was the JAM’s doing. Now that I think about it, they may have been trying to lure the SAF to them.”