Chōhei Kambayashi: Yukikaze

Yukikaze fired her last remaining high-velocity missile into the black swarm of insects. The flare of the detonation, like a miniature sun, temporarily robbed Rei of his sight.

When he opened his eyes, Yukikaze was flying in familiar airspace. She was going slow, almost brushing the canopy of Faery’s forest. Rei looked up at the blue sky. The gunshot wound hurt like hell, but he felt a lot better. We made it back, he thought.

But the threat hadn’t vanished. As they began to accelerate and climb, Yukikaze’s radar picked up three JAM fighters to the rear, practically on top of them. Flying as low and slow as they were, there was no way for them to evade.

There was a burst of cannon fire. Yukikaze’s right vertical stabilizer shattered. Fire spouted from the right engine.

Describing a wide turn, she plunged toward the forest.

Rei lost consciousness. When he came to, he realized that he had miraculously survived. They had made an emergency landing on the spongy surface of forest canopy, which was dozens of yards thick, robust enough to support the fighter’s weight. The JAM hadn’t withdrawn but had ceased their attack.

Analyzing Yukikaze to the bitter end, Rei thought. He activated her self-destruct system. No response. He then remembered: the switch in the electronic warfare officer’s seat had to be thrown as well. He started to release the seat harness, his hands slippery with blood, then stopped. His arms weren’t working very well, and besides, it looked like the self-destruct wouldn’t be necessary. Yukikaze’s rear section was burning furiously. It was only a matter of time until the fuel tanks ignited.

Rei closed his eyes. He doubted he could pull the eject lever, and he didn’t even feel like trying.

This was the death he’d always imagined. It’s better this way, he thought. He’d always felt that this moment would come one day… The moment when he and Yukikaze would die together.

He heard a beep. Rei slitted his eyes open. He had the fanciful thought that Yukikaze was saying goodbye to him. As he looked at the multidisplay his eyesight grew dim. He slowly reached out and turned the brightness control up. On the screen was the symbol for a single TAF plane flying toward them.

The FRX00. Too late. Too late…

The canopy was now dyed crimson with the light of the flames burning behind him. Enough, thought Rei. He was going to die with Yukikaze. It was all he’d ever wanted. She had never betrayed him.

However, she then did something he couldn’t have anticipated, a singular action beyond anything he could have imagined. His eyes widened as he read the display.

LINK-FRX00-05003. TRANS-CCIF.

“What?”

TRANSFERRING CORE FUNCTIONS OF SAF-V UNIT 3 TO FRX00.

Rei screamed at her to stop, but no sound came from his throat.

Yukikaze was… She was abandoning this aircraft. She was abandoning him.

Glowing columns of numbers and characters began to flow down the display. Yukikaze was transferring her central combat information file to the FRX. There was nothing Rei could do to stop it.

He became aware that his vision was growing dark. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything… He had the sensation that he was soaring. In skies where fairies danced. Faery airspace.

TRANS-CCIF COMPLETE. blinked on the display. Rei didn’t see it.

Yukikaze had kept him aboard to initiate the self-destruct sequence in case the need for it arose during the transfer. As soon as the transfer was complete, she ejected him. He was thrown clear of Yukikaze and into the air, but he was long past the point of consciousness.

MAJOR JAMES BOOKER sat in the rear seat of FRX00-05003, monitoring the new plane’s electronic warfare armaments.

Just after they acquired the three enemy planes, he noticed an abnormality in the FRX’s central computer. Its learning section was still fairly clean, but the rest of it began to run wild.

“What the hell is this?” he wondered aloud.

A huge amount of data was being transferred from somewhere. Is this a new JAM tactic? In the same instant that the thought formed in his mind, the FRX00 kicked into a high-G acceleration.

“What is it? What’s going on?” the pilot said over the com, his voice tight with tension. “I don’t have control. Major, I thought this couldn’t function as an unmanned plane.”

“Could be the JAM. Kill the flight controls.”

“They won’t disengage.”

“Can we eject?”

“No way. We’re going way too fast.”

Far away, at a distant point in the forest that spread out below them, Major Booker saw black smoke rising.

“Can that be Yukikaze…? Get us over there, now.”

“It’s not responding to anything I do. We might have a fatal defect here. And what’s with all this data input?”

The FRX00 closed rapidly on the three JAM fighters, passed them at full power, and then banked steeply into a high-G turn. The maneuver sent Major Booker and the pilot into GLOC.

It continued its turn around the three JAM aircraft, plotted an orthogonal attack line to their course, and took that heading. It flew direct abeam toward the JAM at supersonic speed. An instant later it was veering up and away, the three enemy aircraft disintegrating behind it, ripped apart by highvelocity fire.

The FRX00 rolled out of its loop and dove toward the forest. It centered Yukikaze in its gun sight and fired a short burst. The rounds impacted precisely on the area of the fuselage housing Yukikaze’s central computer, silencing it forever. The fuel tanks ignited and an orange fireball blossomed on the forest canopy. Metal fragments torn off in the blast danced in the air, reflecting the twilight glow of Faery’s twin suns.

The FRX00 picked up the rescue beacon signaling the position of Yukikaze’s ejected pilot and relayed this information to TAB-15, the nearest frontline base. However, it did not respond to the inquiries of the search and rescue team regarding the condition of the survivor. As though it wasn’t interested in human life and death.

It took a return course for Faery Base, flying in auto mode. Opening a communications link with the Tactical Air Force SAF control room, it relayed the following: DE YUKIKAZE. ETA 2146. AR.

Yukikaze, having obtained a new body for herself, flew on at supersonic speed.

Major Booker and the pilot, still unconscious, didn’t see her transmission to Faery Base of her estimated time of arrival. Neither could they see the setting suns, the sky of Faery as its colors shifted to night, nor the forests below.

Yukikaze landed back at Faery Base and informed control that her mission was complete. Six TAISPs had been successfully dropped at the targeted sites. Mission success rate: 100 percent.

The Faery Air Force acknowledged Yukikaze’s mission completion. Or, at least, the computers did, if not the humans. And there was no doubt that the JAM recognized it as well.

Yukikaze taxied over to the SAF’s section and was towed onto the elevator platform. She descended, vanishing into her lair to prepare herself for the next battle.

And, however briefly, silence returned to the planet Faery.

Aircraft Serial Number:79113

Division Attachment Number:SAF-V-05003

Development Number:FRX47

Model Designation Number:FFR31-MR

Model Name:Super Sylph

Attachment:

Faery Air Force

Tactical Air Force

Faery Base Tactical Combat Air Group

Special Air Force 5th Squadron