Rei once again thought back on what he’d just experienced.
What had that voice been? What was that voice that had crept into his heart just as the countdown till Yukikaze’s missile hit reached zero? In the moment, he’d thought it was some survival instinct that had come to life within him, but it wasn’t, was it? That had been the voice of the JAM. He had a feeling that Yukikaze hadn’t heard it, and that it hadn’t been recorded. But that was no hallucination. He was positive that what he sensed then was the JAM. The temptation, the anger, the confusion.
Take evasive action, it’s not too late, listen to me. That was what it had called on him to do. What would have happened if he’d listened?
When he realized that the counter had reached zero and the missile still hadn’t hit, he was aware that he had his hand on the flight stick to evade it. That action hadn’t come from his intelligence, but rather from an animalistic instinct to survive. The JAM had given him the extra time for that to happen.
Evade the missile. Don’t accept being killed by Yukikaze. You don’t really want to die. You may have decided that being killed by Yukikaze wouldn’t be death, but you’re wrong.
That was what the JAM had told him. Do as I say. If he just did what the voice said, he’d be saved.
He’d understood that, but he’d still rejected them.
But why? Why won’t you accept my offer? Why won’t you trust me?
The JAM’s demonic temptation had been a test of his resolve. If he’d accepted the offer and tried to evade the missile, the JAM probably would have vanished in that instant. Either the missile would have hit them, or possibly Yukikaze and her crew would have been captured, as Lieutenant Katsuragi had said. Even if the JAM captured them alive, there would be no more negotiations with the humans as equals.
In the end, he hadn’t moved the flight stick, and the reason was simple. What had been vital to him wasn’t life or death, but rather choosing between Yukikaze and the JAM. His distrust of the JAM didn’t exist because they were the enemy. In that instant, all the JAM had become to him was an annoyance.
That had angered them. The JAM couldn’t understand his attitude toward them, and they’d resented that he was going to be killed by Yukikaze before they could kill Rei themselves. Then they fell into a state of confusion.
There was no doubt that the JAM had an interest in exactly how Rei would get home after he had broken off the negotiations and ordered Yukikaze back to base. Despite Yukikaze’s actions, even as she told them, “This is not a warning shot,” they probably hadn’t believed her and certainly didn’t think that the humans aboard her approved of her conduct. Lieutenant Katsuragi was likely correct in saying that the JAM had waited till the very last instant to confirm the nature of the relationship Rei shared with his fighter plane.
In the end, the JAM couldn’t understand me, he thought. Most likely, the JAM had decided that they needed to observe him without interference for a little while longer. Maybe they hadn’t been able to immediately decide how to react to the attitude he’d displayed toward them. Either way, they’d allowed the crew to escape the mysterious battle zone. Or more accurately, the JAM hadn’t been able to stop them. Yukikaze had made sure of that.
How had the JAM felt when she’d said, “Let’s return home”?
Maybe, Rei thought, they’d sensed that Yukikaze was a definite threat. A terrible, implacable enemy. Yukikaze had won this battle. Of that, there could be no doubt.
5
WITH CARMILLA FLYING escort, Yukikaze made it safely back to Faery base. Aside from being thirteen minutes behind her planned return time, her actions were roughly on schedule. What had actually happened was entirely different, although the only ones who knew the details were Yukikaze and her two crewmen.
While taxiing over to the SAF’s squadron area, the SAF fire brigade sprayed them down, though they used pure water instead of fire retardant foam. After the washdown, Rei throttled up Yukikaze’s right engine to vent it. The left engine was completely dead; he thought it would never start again. It would need to be replaced. If the damage had been just a little more severe, the right engine might have been completely destroyed. We’re lucky to have made it back, Rei thought.
Rather than heading down to the SAF’s underground squadron area, Yukikaze’s crew deplaned on the surface and entered an isolation container prepared for them. Inside, they washed themselves down from head to toe with the showers inside, just as had been done to Yukikaze.
In a full decontamination routine, the crew would have been kept in an isolation room for at least three weeks, but the SAF didn’t take that step. They didn’t want anyone in the SAF to know the importance of the information Yukikaze had returned with, and General Cooley had decided that there was little risk of the SAF being contaminated with an unknown organism. The isolation container was brought to the SAF medical facilities rather than to their quarantine center.
Major Booker was also of the opinion that had the JAM wanted to release a weaponized virus, they would have already done so via the JAM duplicates. That was why he’d raised no objections to the general’s decision. If they went by the FAF manual, Captain Fukai and Lieutenant Katsuragi would have had to be subjected to a full-scale quarantine, and there was no way that the JAM hadn’t considered that contingency. No, the problem here isn’t finding an invisible bioweapon, but rather determining if the two men who just returned are the genuine articles, the major thought.
Rei and Lieutenant Katsuragi were told to change into the white sweatsuits in the container and then were ushered into simple plastic isolation tents that surrounded a couple of beds in a room in the SAF med center. Since they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the JAM had accidentally exposed them to a contamination source, the pair were ordered to these quarters until medical tests had cleared them of any danger. The two men knew that was another way of saying they were being held, kept in confinement and under observation.
Each bed had its own tent stretched over it, and it might have been a nice, private environment in which to rest, but they weren’t told that they could take it easy. Their orders were given to them by a doctor named Balume of the SAF medical staff. The written orders on clipboards he passed to them in their tents were from General Cooley, and they said that the two men were to write up reports of what had happened on their mission as soon as possible.
“Slave driver. And she wants it handwritten with pen and paper?” Lieutenant Katsuragi grumbled in his tent, but Rei just ignored him and began to write. Orders or not, he wanted to write down his experiences while they were fresh in his mind. Yukikaze probably hadn’t recorded the JAM’s temptation, or their anger and confusion.
Watching Rei begin writing, Lieutenant Katsuragi eyed his clipboard and sighed. What was he supposed to write when everything had been recorded by Yukikaze?
“Captain Fukai,” he called out.
“What?”
“What are you writing?”
“What happened out there.”
“Yukikaze recorded that.”
“They expect a report on the experience from a human perspective, seen through our own eyes,” Rei said.
“They gave me a guide to writing up reports, but I didn’t really read it.”