“Bullshit. There’s no fire.”
“What is going on, Lieutenant? Is the central computer—”
Burgadish’s words were cut off by the explosion of the canopy being jettisoned. Rei felt the vibration of the rocket motor on his ejection seat, and immediately jerked the face curtain handle down to protect himself. A second later, Yukikaze tossed her crew out into the sky.
She pulled a high-G diving turn and went for the JAM. Free from having to consider the safety of any human occupants, she rapidly brought down two of the enemy aircraft in a single highvelocity attack sequence. The third JAM dove for the planet’s surface, as though inviting Yukikaze to follow. Just as she was about to pursue, she seemed to hesitate, then climbed into a turn and withdrew at full power.
Four enemy fighters blasted out from under the sea of sand like missiles. They dropped their external power boosters and tore after Yukikaze. As though expecting this, Yukikaze twisted into a Split S, bringing her nose around to center the enemies in her sight, and then fired. She pulled up a moment before crashing into the ground and resumed her pursuit of the fleeing third JAM fighter.
Rei saw none of this. Hanging in the sky from his parachute, the only signs of the battle that reached him were the dry cough of Yukikaze’s high-velocity gun and the thunderous echo of her engines. The burning floor of the desert rushed up to meet him. He hit the ground, rolled, and detached the parachute. The white canopy bellied in the wind, looking like an enormous jellyfish. Rei decided there was no need to gather it up and bury it since the JAM didn’t care about humans.
He removed his parachute harness and unzipped the large survival kit hanging from its rear straps. He drew out the FAFissue pistol, stowed it away inside his flight vest, and then took out the emergency rations and water supply pack.
He saw Burgadish’s parachute about 200 meters away, flapping in the wind atop a pure white dune that shimmered in the heat, looking like nothing so much as a great wave frozen in mid-fall. Holding the gun at the ready, his helmet visor still down, he walked out under the powerful sunlight to go find his partner.
As he trudged through the sand, he wondered why Yukikaze had cut him loose. He thought that maybe she couldn’t accept the prospect that the TAISPs she’d spent so much trouble deploying would be destroyed by the JAM without ever having been used. That was why it was necessary for her to face the JAM head-on rather than withdraw from them as she usually did. And if she had to face them, then weak humans would just get in the way of what she needed to do to win.
If the situation had been reversed—if Rei had to sacrifice Yukikaze to defeat the JAM—he would have done the same. Since he’d have to say goodbye to Yukikaze in either case, he wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the emergency ejection handle. She had seemingly sensed his will and then executed it.
Rei suddenly felt a humanlike intimacy with her that he’d never experienced before, as though they were two life-forms that existed in the same dimension. She’s a part of me, he decided. A companion who knew how he thought, whom he could rely on…
But was that really the case? Rei knew Major Booker would say that he was being naïve. In ejecting him, Yukikaze had simply removed an element that would be disadvantageous to her while maneuvering. Having a pilot aboard meant that she couldn’t fly as she pleased. Or—and this was a possibility Rei didn’t want to consider—she may have decided that Rei might throw the self-destruct switch for the central computer and auto-maneuver system and had concluded that she had to do what she did in order to protect herself. That was definitely what Major Booker would say. That it was a struggle. A struggle of wills between Yukikaze and her human pilot. Rei decided that he didn’t care about that.
It was hot. Sweat was pouring down his body under the flight suit. Cresting the dune, he spotted Lieutenant Burgadish below. Just as he was raising his hand to signal him, he heard a metallic noise nearby.
A sandstorm was bearing down on them, moving fast. It was the bow shock wave from a JAM fighter, flying supersonic on the deck. An instant after he recognized the black speck as a JAM, the fighter burst into his field of vision, passing between himself and Burgadish. White sand rose up like a wall as the two men were blown back. Rei was hurled into the air like a doll and then slammed back to the ground, pelted by falling sand. Dropping his survival gun, he fumbled at the shoulder of his flight vest to switch on his emergency rescue beacon.
The howl of an approaching aircraft made him instinctively flatten himself against the sand, and an instant later Yukikaze roared past in pursuit of the JAM fighter. She fired in front of Rei. There was the flash of high-velocity missiles being launched. An avalanche of sand crashed down upon him. He lost consciousness.
HE DREAMED OF a pure white desert. He opened his eyes. The whiteness remained.
He felt something wiping his face. A white towel. He brushed the towel aside. The air was cold.
“Are you awake now?” asked a female voice in a crisp, businesslike tone. A nurse. That was Rei’s first thought upon seeing her white face. Her skin was so pale it almost looked blue. Maybe because of the lighting in here, he thought dazedly.
An air conditioner hummed faintly. The room was small and white. Spartan. A hospital, maybe? But this wasn’t the air force hospital at Faery Base. It seemed more like a clinic. Rei felt like a castaway who’d washed up on a lonely South Seas island. There were no windows, but he could imagine there’d be jungle outside, and maybe an old-fashioned electric fan slowly turning on the room’s ceiling.
His thoughts were drifting, fragmented. This sickroom was like something out of a dream, somehow not entirely real. He lay motionless on the hard bed and shut his eyes again, waiting for his body to recover sensation. He was still wearing his boots and flight suit. He could tell that his pockets still contained his map, flashlight, knife, beacon, portable rations, and service pistol. That meant that it hadn’t been long since he’d been rescued. But nonetheless something seemed strange. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was too tired to think clearly.
He took a deep breath and relished the oxygen filling his lungs. The fog in his head gradually cleared. He opened his mouth, the words emerging from his parched throat in a croak.
“Where… Yukikaze…”
“Yukikaze? Oh, your plane. We’re servicing it, Lieutenant.”
“What about… Lieutenant Burgadish?”
“He was badly wounded, I’m afraid…”
“Where are we? A frontline base? Who are you?”
“My name is Marnie. Just wait here a minute. I’ll go get Major Yazawa for you.”
The nurse walked out, to be replaced a few minutes later by a burly, narrow-eyed man wearing a major’s insignia.
“So you’re awake now, are you, Lieutenant?” the man asked, his voice as flat as Marnie’s had been. Rei tried to raise himself up, but the major stopped him. The uniform he wore was definitely that of the FAF’s Tactical Air Force, but the color and the details seemed off. The overall effect gave Rei the uncomfortable impression that he was seeing a vague, hazy image through frosted glass.
Noticing the way that Rei was staring at him, Major Yazawa chuckled. “Were you hit on the head, Lieutenant?”
“Maybe I was,” Rei replied, his tension not at all dissipated by this attempt at humor. He glanced around and saw that his helmet had been placed on a side table near the bed.