No wonder the JAM perceived him as a threat.
He didn’t know if Lieutenant Yagashira was conscious of having been made by the JAM. It was possible that, even if he did, his sense of identity as a human grew stronger than his identity as a weapon, preventing him from exhibiting his true effectiveness as such. Perhaps Yagashira had said he wanted to be like him because, despite his being human, he recognized Rei as being a far superior weapon. If that were true, it also meant that Yagashira had been a far better human being than Rei was. Far better than a man who didn’t care if he was a human or a weapon. And if he was a perfect human, Rei thought, then I must be a perfect combat machine. That was totally the opposite of the way it should have been.
When Rei had targeted Yagashira’s plane and fired his missiles from the cockpit of the new Yukikaze, he had hesitated for a moment, even though there was no doubt at all that he was shooting at a JAM. Why was that? Was it because he had sensed in Yagashira someone who could have understood him?
The thing he didn’t understand, the thing he now feared, wasn’t the JAM. It was himself. He wanted to take a hard look at the changes he was seeing in his heart. He would return to Earth, the planet that had borne him.
Rei told his only friend and commanding officer Major James Booker exactly how he felt, and the major simply replied that it was a good idea. They were in the SAF hangar bay.
The thirteen fighters were lined up, with Yukikaze in the space for Unit 1. The old Yukikaze had been Unit 3.
“It’ll make you more human,” Major Booker said. “You’ve awakened. Yukikaze has been reborn also, into an even more powerful body. She’s Unit 1 in name and reality. The same should go for you as well.”
Her fighter number had been overwritten with 05031. Yukikaze was now the fourth plane to hold the position of Unit 1.
“I don’t think I want to be reborn,” Rei answered.
“You’ve taken a shock to your mind and body,” the major said. “A change of environment will do wonders for you. The SAF’s also replacing its planes. We’re working over the plan we’d suspended before. The plan is to gradually introduce the FRX00, although the Systems Corps is still convinced the FRX99 is better.”
“Why aren’t you accepting the unmanned planes?”
“Because humans are necessary in this war,” the major answered. “The pilots of the SAF are effective counters to the JAM’s strategies.”
“Humans acting as combat machines, you mean.”
“Not quite. Humans are different from machines. The JAM see that as a threat.”
“Jack, what I’m trying to say is—”
“I know, Rei. I know what sort of damage you’ve taken in all this. The way you are now, you can’t fly. You need leave. God knows, you deserve some, even if the authorities won’t authorize a return to Earth for you.”
“You’re saying I won’t get to go back?”
“The Faery Air Force doesn’t want you wandering free. You’re a great pilot and they need you, but they’re also terrified that you might be a JAM.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rei said.
“The nature of the SAF’s mission means that you constantly see those sorts of contradictory sentiments. That’s always been the case.”
“If I were a JAM, I wouldn’t tell you that the JAM were making human duplicates, would I?”
“That’s a good question,” Booker said. “Maybe the JAM’s objective is to drive a wedge between the humans and the machines of the FAF. Maybe they revealed this to you on purpose.”
“Well, JAM or not, I’ve already done the damage, then.”
“True, but nonetheless, there’s no evidence that you aren’t a JAM agent. That’s why the authorities want to keep you under close observation. Come on, you know how hard it is to get authorization to return to Earth. Besides that, there’s never been any instance in the SAF’s history of somebody asking for leave. This unit is full of people who have no interest in visiting Earth or their hometowns. The only people who go back are ones who retire or get drummed out of the service.”
“So if I want to go back to Earth, I have to retire?”
“Well, good news for you, then,” Booker replied. “Your term of service in the Faery Air Force is almost up. In four days. You can renew your contract instead of retiring, of course. According to the terms of renewal, you can request a promotion to the rank of captain. If you say you’re going to retire, the authorities may try to keep you here by offering you a special two-rank advancement. That’s a typical bargaining tactic they use.”
“I don’t care about rank. It doesn’t mean anything here, anyway,” Rei said.
“I don’t know about that,” Booker said. “If you get to be a field officer, you can start meddling with personnel affairs and make yourself a big man in some other squadron.”
“Yeah, and get buried in a ton of miscellaneous crap.”
“Being a captain might be the best position for you, but someone with higher rank can still get in your way. The smart move would be to leave when you get the chance.”
“I have Yukikaze here. I’m not going to retire.”
“Figured you’d say that,” the major said with a nod. “I’ll talk to the higher-ups and try to negotiate a temporary leave for you. You’re going to come back here, no matter what, because Yukikaze’s here.”
Rei looked up at Yukikaze, his face expressionless.
Her airframe carried an air of menace. She was a modified FRX99, a plane developed as an unmanned fighter. Compared to the Super Sylphs on either side of her, there was no softness to the design at all. They at least show some touches that reflect human aesthetics, but Yukikaze’s new airframe engenders a sense of complete strangeness, Rei thought. She had that beauty born of the total efficiency an advanced weapon needs, but the airframe looked threatening, and one could sense a sort of spooky atmosphere around her. In the gloomy light of the hangar, Rei suddenly realized why. Yukikaze was black, just like a JAM fighter. It wasn’t just his imagination. She was shaped like one too.
“She… she looks like a JAM fighter.”
“Because they borrowed the good points of their planes in the design,” Booker explained. “I realized that too. When you just come out and say it, it sounds awful, huh? The JAM planes don’t have cockpits, but we added that onto this design. It’s built to be piloted by humans, but it was designed to be unmanned. She can pull maneuvers that can kill her crew.”
Yukikaze was no longer the FRX00 prototype. As their new tactical combat electronic surveillance plane, she’d been given an official name: the FFR41, nicknamed “Maeve” after the goddess who ruled the wind fairies.
“A pretty wild goddess, this one. It’d be dangerous to piss her off. Even on a Super Sylph, it’s the human pilot who chooses to fly it. This one leaves that all behind. Not just any person can fly her. You’re necessary, Rei. Make sure you come back here, because I don’t want to lose you either.”
Rei silently stroked Yukikaze’s fuselage. Her body felt warm.
While Rei had been making the rounds to his various debriefings, Yukikaze had flown a mission unmanned, one determined to be simple as far as SAF operations went and not a problem for a pilotless plane. Major Booker had thought it was dangerous to have Yukikaze fully exhibit her new abilities without Rei in the cockpit. The likelihood was steadily increasing that she could behave in wholly unexpected ways while in flight, and they’d need a crewman aboard to find out why. Moreover, Rei would probably be the only one who could completely understand her, and Rei knew that perfectly well. Even so, he wanted to leave the battlefield, to leave Yukikaze, and try to find himself.