“Figured you’d be here, Rei.” Major James Booker’s voice echoed through the hangar. “So, what was so important that you had to consult Yukikaze after leaving the office without permission?”
Rei had forgot to log his airframe inspection into the personnel control system that Major Booker used to manage Boomerang Squadron. He was Rei’s friend, but they were on duty and Booker had not come down there on personal business. The major’s tone indicated he was in full superior officer mode.
“What’s my punishment, Major?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve talking like that after what you pulled.”
“What’s up? Something happen, Jack?”
The major told Rei to come with him. Rei did as he was told and followed his CO out of the hangar.
“Jesus, Rei. Don’t I have enough to do around here without you dumping this crap on my plate, too?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“This thing with Colonel Guneau. And yes, I know it’s not your fault. I know that without even asking. A Boomerang pilot would never go looking for a fight like this. And you in particular. You meet flattery with a blank look, insults with indifference, tears with a cold heart, and threats with a cool head. You’d just say ‘Not my problem’ and leave it at that. But General Cooley isn’t a Boomerang pilot.”
“You mean Colonel Guneau talked Super Granny into it?”
“He said it would be ‘the perfect test of aerial combat technique.’ He came to see me, too. That bloke’s a smooth talker. Seemed more like a salesman than an engineer. Anyway, as much as I’d like to tell the higher-ups to back off, I’m being forced to do this. And you’re the pilot who’s going to handle it for me.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with this flight test.”
“And I don’t want to completely cock up the sortie schedule I’ve already put together. This is classified, but…there’s a big attack operation coming down. Believe me, I have no desire to be playing these games right before that.”
As he walked shoulder to shoulder with the major, Rei realized that the rumors he’d heard were true: they were probably going to hit the JAM’s largest forward base. In fact, it had practically been an open secret, so if the JAM had any spies in here, they probably already knew about it.
“We’ll be launching all of our squadron’s planes for that operation,” the major said as he opened his office door and stepped inside. “I finally get a schedule drawn up for the overhaul rotation for all our planes, and they hit me with this operations flight test. Now it’s all gone to hell.”
“So just refuse,” said Rei as he closed the door.
“Why don’t you go to the general’s office and refuse for me?” Booker gathered up a sheaf of papers from his desktop and handed it to Rei. “You can hit her with these.”
It was an operations manual for the Flip Knight system.
“I don’t think that would persuade her.”
As far as Rei was concerned, fighting a mechanical knight was a whole lot more appealing than having General Cooley snarling at him.
Major Booker kept Rei standing as he leaned on his desk and told him about the Flip Knight system.
“Listen carefully, Rei.”
The Flip Knights were small, unmanned fighter planes designed for dogfighting. They were to be loaded onto a carrier plane and launched in midair after arriving at the battle zone. They would then fight under the command of the carrier’s control staff.
“People operate them from the carrier?” asked Rei. “So much for humans not being necessary.”
“No, the RPVs have the ability to fight completely on automatic. The problem is the armament.”
The major indicated a schematic of a metal cylinder that was about 300 mm long and 40 mm in diameter.
“This is an energy charge for a laser gun. One of these is capable of generating a beam of 0.7 second’s duration. The Knight is equipped with a high-powered laser cannon which is practically unaffected by weather conditions.”
According to the data in the manual, the barrel of the gun could move 1.95 degrees in any direction, the major explained as he gestured at the document. When a target entered a thirty-four-meter circle within a thousand-meter radius in front of the fighter, the gun barrel would be slaved to the targeting radar to keep it constantly centered.
The major said that he had read the research thoroughly. “I think the accuracy rate for this thing is nearly a hundred percent. That’s because it doesn’t fire physical ordnance that can be put off course. Once it locks on to you, unless you get out of its firing range you’re almost surely a goner. You can’t outrun a beam of light. Besides that, the Knight has a much tighter turn radius than a Sylph. A Super Sylph is an incredible dogfighter, but the original Sylphid was an all-weather interceptor. Basically, it was designed to take a shot and then get the hell out of there. In a straight-on fight with a Flip Knight, a Super Sylph has no chance…”
Booker sighed. “I have to rework the squadron’s schedule. It’s a big job, and there’s no room for any mistakes. A miscalculation could get one of our soldiers killed.”
“We’ll do our best. It should be enough.”
“Anyway, I’ll let you know when the details of the flight test plan are ready. Since we have a major operation coming up, they probably won’t be able to put together anything large-scale, but General Cooley has made it a formal order, so it’s definitely going to happen. Get ready.”
They saluted each other roughly.
REI READ THE Flip Knight manual carefully. Afterward he was even more confused about the point of having aerial combat training between a Sylph and the Knight. It made about as much sense as pitting a sprinter against a marathon runner.
To beat the Knight, he’d have to avoid a close-in dogfight. His best bet would be to fire all six of his long-range missiles and immediately withdraw so that the Knight’s main opponent would be the swarm of missiles, not him. Meanwhile, his main opponent would be the carrier plane. Without combat data support from the carrier, even if the Knight could fight autonomously it would be no match for the Sylph. The Super Sylph was unparalleled when it came to electronic indexing of enemy capabilities. The Knight would be so busy trying to dodge those missiles that it wouldn’t be able to attack the Sylph. This fight was shaping up to be a proxy one: the Knight versus the Sylph’s missiles and the Sylph versus the Knight’s controllers.
In the end, Rei decided that the Flip Knight was the equivalent of the antiaircraft machine guns mounted on old heavy bombers, albeit a technologically advanced equivalent with fixed wings and a high degree of maneuverability. It was the command and control capabilities of the carrier plane that determined the Flip Knight’s value. Flying autonomously, separated from those systems, the Knight’s abilities were merely theoretical.
A good weapon may confer an absolute advantage, but an advantage does not necessarily ensure a victory. Just as in the old saying that a treasure unused went to waste, it was up to the individual to decide how and when to best utilize a weapon. That was why humans were necessary in battle.
“But why is that?” Rei muttered to himself. It was such an obvious thing that he’d never thought about it before. Why did people fight? Maybe humans should just leave it to the machines. In nearly every field of endeavor, perfect automation was theoretically possible. So why, exactly, were humans required to stay in the mix?
It wasn’t as though Rei had a personal creed that required people to be superior to machines. The revulsion he felt at hearing Colonel Guneau’s statement that humans weren’t necessary came from how it seemed to negate his relationship with Yukikaze, but it didn’t go beyond that personal reaction. Rei didn’t think that humanity would ever abandon Faery, no matter how good the machines got.