Certainly, Lieutenant Yagashira’s piloting skill was unmatched by anyone else there, but the most important thing for the team was ensuring that they did not lose. Attacking an enemy that could beat you was just foolish.
Nobody wanted to fly with him, and the reason for that was pretty simple: everybody hated him.
Including me, Lieutenant Mayle thought. Yagashira didn’t inspire confidence in other people. He was missing a fundamental part of what allows basic human interaction. Mayle wanted to know what sort of environment he’d grown up in, since Yagashira wasn’t even aware that he lacked basic human kindness.
“I’m so glad he told us how he felt about dogs,” Mayle murmured to himself sarcastically.
One day, the guys had been talking about how much they liked dogs. Lieutenant Yagashira had unexpectedly joined in and, upon hearing that the subject was dogs, had said, “I hate dogs. Let’s talk about cats,” and then started rambling on about them. Nobody was particularly interested, but the lieutenant didn’t notice. It was like he’d forgotten that he was talking to people. If he’d been talking to a computer, it would have been fine, since computers could change subjects without any trouble. In fact, it’d be best if he exclusively interacted with computers. Aboard his plane, the man could work wonders. Once he’d climbed down out of it, he could do everyone a favor by not talking to anyone and especially by not mimicking them. That was really irritating. The man just couldn’t communicate with humans. Hell, you could go so far as to say he wasn’t human, period. Despite that, he wasn’t aware of it and thought of himself as being as human as the rest of them. That was why he was so hard to deal with.
The guy must know that nobody likes him, Lieutenant Mayle thought. But he probably didn’t know why he was so disliked, and he’d probably go to his grave still wondering. The SAF might be able to make use of Yagashira, though. He’d heard that their pilots didn’t mix together much. They were an inhuman group. Truly not human. There, Lieutenant Yagashira probably wouldn’t be liked or disliked. He lived his life dressed in the skin of a human, but the guys in the SAF had stripped themselves of it. If Lieutenant Yagashira realized that, he might understand why people hated him. If he cared, that is.
But no matter where he goes, Lieutenant Mayle thought, that guy will never change. The guys in the SAF wouldn’t want to be friends with him. It would be okay if he’d then just keep quiet and withdraw from his comrades, but since Lieutenant Yagashira thought of himself as human, he wouldn’t do that. When he tried to make friends they’d grow irritated with him. Visibly. And when the SAF pilots got irritated, the lieutenant would probably hate them for it.
Before they got irritated though, the SAF pilots would likely just tell him, “We don’t want to have anything to do with you,” but the lieutenant probably still wouldn’t get it. He’d try to “act human.” A truly human response would be to respect a request of “Leave me alone,” but Yagashira wouldn’t get it. The SAF will eventually figure out his true nature, Mayle thought. Maybe they’d grabbed him from his unit because they knew. Maybe they were confident that he could be used as a perfect combat machine. A man who would be an asset in the war against the JAM.
Lately, the number of people like Yagashira was increasing, thought Lieutenant Mayle. Well, he’s somebody else’s problem now. The guy probably couldn’t care less about his old unit, and here I am still thinking about him, and no way does that make any sense. I hope the JAM kill that guy soon, the lieutenant thought.
Nobody said it out loud, but everybody thought that. The time that Yagashira’s plane had been shot down, Mayle’s plane had been the one in the covering position. Yagashira’s plane had two JAM fighters on its tail, and he was in a high-G turn trying to shake them loose. I can handle one JAM fighter, he’d probably thought. Mayle had understood at once that Yagashira wanted him to take care of the one on the starboard side, so he’d put his plane on a course to allow Mayle to easily attack it. Lieutenant Mayle had understood that. It was a precise decision, made with lightning speed. Ingenious. Like a trap sprung with mechanical precision on the two JAM fighters. In hindsight, Mayle agreed with the plan, but at the time, he didn’t.
Lieutenant Mayle’s covering fire had been an instant too late. Yagashira’s plane is going to get it, he’d thought in a rush. Come on, kill him! It was stupid to think that that momentary, automatic thought had been enough to make him hesitate. He didn’t think he had it in him. Still, he thought, if that hadn’t been Yagashira’s plane, I doubt I’d have hesitated. In the end, he hadn’t defended Lieutenant Yagashira’s plane. It wasn’t like he could have helped it. It might have been a reaction from his body, not his mind.
Your body doesn’t think; it just reacts. And since it doesn’t think, Lieutenant Mayle still didn’t know why he’d hesitated. It was unnerving to know that things like this could happen in the FAF. That a human would wish a fellow human dead. He didn’t talk about it. If he had, he’d have been convicted of willful dereliction of duty and executed. And if that happened, this battlefield would turn into one where human fought human. It would destroy the 505th strike group. That was why, even if pressed, he’d never, ever say that he wished death on Lieutenant Yagashira. Not even as a joke.
Lieutenant Yagashira and his flight officer in the rear had ejected from the crippled plane and hadn’t been rescued till two whole days later. This was because the fierce battle had raged on, preventing a good fix on their mayday beacon, but they’d been found unharmed. Yagashira had seemed different after the rescue, more distant. It was probably the shock of an ace like him getting shot down. He didn’t remember a thing from the time he bailed out till the search and rescue plane had found him.
After that, having lost his beloved plane, he took it upon himself to conduct the maintenance inspections on the other pilots’ planes. Lieutenant Mayle had found it a bit surprising that, even as Yagashira practically shoved the other pilots out of the way to do this, he never asked to fly in one. Maybe he’d developed a fear of flying. Even as the other pilots offered their planes for him to use, they were glad that he didn’t want to fly any more sorties with them. However, the FAF wasn’t about to let an excellent pilot spend his time goofing off, and the thought of having to fly with Yagashira again had filled Mayle and the others with dread. And then, just as they were all praying for him to disappear, word had come from the SAF asking if they had any expert pilots.
What a lucky break that had been. The whole squadron had congratulated Lieutenant Yagashira on his new posting, saying he was definitely moving up in the world and how jealous they were of him. The sentiments of the celebration had been genuine. They might not have been getting promotions, but at long last, they were getting rid of this annoying presence in their midst.
The party would have been even merrier had it been his funeral, the lieutenant thought. He would be going to Faery base, the FAF’s main base. The elite. The only thing that threw cold water on the whole thing was the question of why that guy? Mayle might never see his face again, but with Yagashira in the SAF, he’d be in his plane looking down on his old squadmates. The way all those guys at Faery base looked down on them. Mayle didn’t like it.