Because of the ECM interference, Booker’s words didn’t reach Rei. The control plane initiated ECCM. The approaching enemy missiles appeared on the radar screen. After another twenty seconds, when they were within a hundred kilometers of the Fand II and Yukikaze, the missiles split into four. Minx watched them from on high.
On Yukikaze’s remote console, Rei saw the message RDY GUN appear.
“No,” he said softly. “You can’t pull any high-velocity maneuvers now.”
His hand hovered over the remote switch. He wanted to protect Yukikaze, but protecting the Fand II came first. And for that…the image of Captain O’Donnell and his lover suddenly floated into his mind… for that, he might be forced to use Yukikaze as a shield. Make it back to base, even if you have to watch your comrades being wiped out. Minx had now been charged with that duty. Strange, Rei thought as his heart grew cold. I’m worried about abandoning Yukikaze. I… Am I jealous of her, after she betrayed me?
Without sorting out his feelings, he flipped the switch and seized the control stick without a second thought. But there was no reaction.
“What’s wrong with you, Yukikaze?!”
Before receiving the instructions from Rei, Yukikaze linked with the Fand II, taking control of it. She launched four of the Fand II’s HAAMs, which took out two of the JAM’s four missiles. Her priority was to protect herself, not the Fand II. The remaining two missiles flew toward the Fand II.
“Captain, get out of there!” Rei shouted. Yukikaze hadn’t interposed herself between the missiles and the Fand II as he’d directed her to. She had decided that Rei’s orders were in error and was ignoring them. After determining that she was safe, she began directing the Fand II through evasive maneuvers.
O’Donnell soon realized he was no longer in control of his plane. He removed his hand from the side stick as violent G-forces assaulted his body. The Fand II jumped like a fox, the first missile passing below by the thinnest of margins. Its proximity switch activated, detonating the warhead. To minimize the damage, the Fand II turned its tail toward the explosion and began to withdraw at MAX afterburner. Just 0.3 seconds later, it jinked hard and barely evaded the second missile. The shock wave from the first explosion had damaged the Fand II’s right stabilizer fin, and now the sudden evasive action snapped it right off.
The Fand II spun away from Yukikaze like a boomerang. Yukikaze immediately began working every control surface on the plane to bring it back to controlled flight. It took four seconds to arrest the spin and regain the proper flight attitude. The Fand II’s engines were stalled. Yukikaze glided it down and restarted the engines.
Rei looked at the data being sent by Yukikaze. There was a problem with the Fand II’s fuel transfer system, which had been caused not by the JAM missiles but by the wild spin it had gone into from the evasive maneuvers. It was now using gravity feed to move the fuel from its tank and took a return course to Faery Base.
On the way back to the base Yukikaze got the FTS working again. She informed Rei that the Fand II could resume normal high-velocity maneuvers. ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL, she reported.
“Are you kidding?” Rei said to himself. “I doubt the captain will ever want to go through that again. Captain O’Donnell, come in. Captain O’Donnell. Do you read me? Captain O’Donnell, respond.”
There was no answer. As they returned to Faery Base Yukikaze flew tight alongside the Fand II, as if in sympathy for its damage. Once communications with the base were restored, Rei told Major Booker to have an ambulance standing by.
“Captain O’Donnell isn’t responding, and I don’t think he’s just passed out. Yukikaze put the Fand II through some intense maneuvers. It may have…” Rei put his hand to his chest. His injuries ached.
The Fand II landed in formation with Yukikaze, its engine dropping to idle at the runway’s end. The flight test personnel and ambulance crew ran out to the planes. Lieutenant Emery shoved Major Booker aside and turned the external canopy control handle. The Fand II’s canopy yawned open.
She scrambled up the boarding ladder and leaned over the cockpit. “Hugh, it’s me,” she said. “Are you all right? Talk to me.”
O’Donnell was slumped in his seat, motionless. She reached out and removed his helmet and mask. And screamed. Blood poured over her hands, streaming from his mask and mouth. His head lolled to one side. He wasn’t breathing.
“Hugh… Say something… please…”
Major Booker signaled the medical team.
If Rei had been aboard Yukikaze, this might not have happened. As that thought was passing through his mind, Lieutenant Emery did something he couldn’t have anticipated. She drew her service pistol and aimed it at Captain O’Donnell. For a split second, the major couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“What are you doing?!” he shouted as she fired a shot into her lover’s chest. She then threw the gun aside and collapsed against O’Donnell’s body, embracing it and crying hysterically.
“He can’t have been killed by the Fand. Not by a machine. No… I killed Hugh! I did! A man whose heart was taken by a Fand deserves to die!”
Major Booker wrapped his arms around the now incoherent Lieutenant Emery and gently pulled her away from the body.
“What’s wrong with this plane?” she sobbed. “Hugh’s dead. After what happened to him, why…why doesn’t it react? Why… No! No! No!”
Over her shoulder, Booker looked at the blood-spattered instrument panels inside the cockpits. Condition lights, all clear. All systems normal.
Neither the JAM nor Lieutenant Emery had killed Captain O’Donnell. The Fand II and Yukikaze had. And to those two machines, his death was insignificant.
Major Booker left Lieutenant Emery in the care of the medical crew, opened Yukikaze’s canopy, climbed into the cockpit, and turned the auto-maneuver switch off. The link with the Fand II was severed, and then, as though awakening from a dream, Yukikaze alerted the major via her display that the pilot harness, anti-G suit hoses, and mask weren’t properly secured. To indicate that he had no intention of flying, he flipped the hydraulic system cut-off switch, inactivating the control surface hydraulics. Yukikaze cancelled the alert. In this standby state, any speed over 30 mph would automatically engage her brakes.
Booker taxied Yukikaze over to the elevator that led down to the SAF’s underground hangar, then handed her over to her ground crew.
Meanwhile, the control plane had landed. Rei climbed down from it and watched silently as they wheeled Captain O’Donnell away, Lieutenant Emery clinging to his body.
“Rei…”
He turned at the sound of the major’s voice.
“Jack. How’s Yukikaze?”
“Machines can be repaired. Yukikaze protected the Fand II, not the captain. I was wrong. I never should have sent Yukikaze up unmanned.”
“It’s not your fault. If she hadn’t taken control of the Fand II, the captain and the plane would both have been destroyed by the JAM. The result would have been the same. As far as the captain’s fate was concerned, at least.”
“But it would have had a different significance. He was killed by his own machine—”
“Does it matter?” Rei asked quietly. “This is a battlefield. Every death here is a combat death. What other kind of death is there?”
Major Booker couldn’t answer him.
0807 hours. The combat flight test was concluded. The Fand II was approved for deployment.
VII
BATTLE SPIRIT
For the first time in a long while, he had the chance to speak with someone from home. But he did not use Japanese. He was angry that he could not convey his thoughts, frustrated that he could no longer express his feelings in his mother tongue. He had forgotten the language of home.