Yukikaze y-1 Page 10

  Yukikaze fell silent.

  In this situation, he needed to start the JFS since its generator system provided power to the self-ignition system and to Yukikaze’s vital electrical systems. The central computer’s backup power supply was working normally, so at least he wouldn’t have to worry about that for another twenty-four hours.

  But he couldn’t get the JFS to turn over. Lander was gone. Rei scanned their surroundings and saw him at a distance. He was apparently digging a hole in the ground, looking like a child playing by himself.

  Rei got down from the plane and inspected the fuselage. He couldn’t see any obvious abnormalities on the outside. Since he had no tools, any problems deeper than that were beyond his ability to fix.

  The air pressure here was considerably lower. If this were Faery, he’d estimate their altitude to be around two thousand meters. But he just couldn’t see how this place could be only a few hundred kilometers from Faery Base.

  There was no wind. It was quiet.

  The sky overhead was cloudy, but it wasn’t dark. The clouds looked white. The gray ground beneath them formed a vast, level plane covered with a blackish green haze. If I could get the engines started, Rei thought bitterly, I could fly above it and see what sort of place this is. Perhaps they’d stumbled upon some unexplored part of Faery. Was this a JAM base? Or maybe this wasn’t Faery at all but the JAM’s home world. He instantly dismissed the thought. If that were the case, he probably would have been shot down long ago.

  Rei recalled the image picked up by the Frozen Eye. It looked like a wall, a bright line that pushed relentlessly forward as though aiming for Yukikaze. He didn’t think it was a natural phenomenon. It looked like they’d been caught by some mechanism that could selectively transport objects through space. But Rei couldn’t even make a guess as to what intelligence was operating it or who had brought them to this place. Maybe it was the result of some as-yet unknown natural phenomenon. If this were a JAM trap, wouldn’t they have done something by now?

  Rei sat down on Yukikaze’s front wheel and sighed. Lander had returned. There was no hint of concern on his face. Rei couldn’t decide if this intrepidness was a personality attribute or whether the man was just stupid. Maybe a little bit of both. To Lander, Faery itself was an unknown dimension. Perhaps, from his point of view, their bizarre surroundings — which were completely alien to Rei — were merely an extension of an already strange world. And Lander obviously saw himself as a man who would never be beaten, who couldn’t be defeated, even in death. Rei could just imagine the upbringing, environment, and family history that had made him this way. He probably believed that he was carrying on the pioneer spirit of his forebears.

  “Well, why don’t we go and have a look?”

  “At what?”

  “I won’t let you stop me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Have a look through these, Lieutenant.” Lander patted the binoculars hanging from his neck. “There’s a cornfield just over yonder.”

  “A field?”

  “A big yellow one. This is a major discovery, you know.”

  At the mention of corn, Rei realized how hungry he was. He checked his chronometer. It would have been early evening on Faery. Lander had no objections to holding off on his exploration for a meal, so Rei climbed Yukikaze’s ladder and retrieved some emergency rations from his survival kit along with a thermos of coffee he had stowed away.

  The emergency rats were vacuum-packed crackers with jelly. Lander disappointedly asked if that was supposed to be a full meal as he took them.

  “No,” Rei replied. “Technically, one-third of the B-type is intended to be a full meal.” He read from the package: 1 MEAL CONSISTS OF 1 PACK CRACKER (A-TYPE) AND 1/3 PACK JELLY (B-TYPE).

  “Got it?”

  “Yeah,” Lander replied. “So, these crackers...” He sat down on the main wheel and scrutinized them. “I wonder what kind of wheat they’re made out of.”

  “Who knows?”

  The jelly was a fluorescent orange and tasted vaguely like apricot. Rei made a face. It was pretty bad.

  “I’ll bet it’s grown here,” Lander said as he stretched out his arms. “In complete secrecy.”

  “This isn’t Faery. The suns should have set by now, but it’s still light.”

  The FAF’s clocks were all set to Greenwich Mean Time. Since the base was underground and the fighting didn’t depend on it being day or night, there was no need to synchronize with Faery’s rotation. So it wasn’t unusual for noon in the base to be during night on the surface. The flight plan called for them to return when the sun was setting, yet there was no indication that it was getting dark.

  “If that’s true, it makes me even more suspicious.”

  “About what?”

  Lander chomped on his cracker, as though satisfied he had come to a conclusion about the origin of the wheat in it. “The FAF buys its food from Earth, right?”

  “I know that much,” Rei answered. “Our supplies go through the UN food management program.”

  “You know why that is, Lieutenant? It’s to prevent the FAF from becoming independent. To prevent the greatest military power there is from standing on its own. That’s why it’s forbidden for it to engage in food production.”

  “Huh,” said Rei. This was the first he’d heard of it. “They have restrictions like that? I never knew. So, you’re thinking this is some secret Faery food production base that’s been hidden behind an extra-dimensional wall?”

  Lander nodded, either ignoring or not picking up on the sarcasm, and continued to expostulate on his crazy idea. “The FAF has begun to amass money, presumably for industrial use. Now, where there’s money, you’ve got Jews. And then there’s the Chinese. China’s apparently been shipping its surplus labor to work on Faery. To make money for the state, of course. But the FAF authorities — ”

  “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard,” Rei said as he balled up the foil wrapper and tossed it away. “You seriously think the FAF is planning to invade Earth?”

  “Can you deny it?”

  Rei studied Lander’s face for a good ten seconds. “Are you kidding me?” he finally said.

  Lander serenely took a sip of the coffee.

  “What could we possibly do with only air power?” Rei asked as he got up off the landing gear. He walked back toward Lander and took the thermos from him. “Yeah, we may have the most powerful air force, but we wouldn’t be able to achieve anything on Earth without ground forces.”

  “The fact that the FAF has no regular soldiers is important,” Lander replied. “You’re all officers, right? What that means is that you already have the capability to command thousands of regular soldiers. And soldiers don’t necessarily have to be human, you know. They could be robots. Which the FAF has the capacity to manufacture.”

  “Our enemy is the JAM. And in case you forgot, they’re your enemy too.”

  “I suppose,” Lander answered reluctantly. “The JAM... Maybe the JAM gave up trying to invade Earth a long time ago, Lieutenant.”

  Rei was already well past irritated, and the absurdity of this argument was starting to push him over the edge into genuinely pissed off.

  “Listen. Every day I risk my life fighting the JAM. Just what the hell do you think I am?”

  “You’re a soldier,” Lander replied. “Risking your life is part of your job. That’s why I asked you earlier what you were fighting for. If you don’t actually know the answer to that, well, that would be pretty tragic.”

  “Are you saying the Earth would be protected even if the FAF were done away with?”

  “I am.”

  Lander told Rei that he had come to Faery to confirm that theory. In his view, the FAF was a modern-day foreign legion consisting of a mishmash of ill-bred traitors who had no place back in their homelands outside of prison. And the thought that Earth was being defended by this group did not sit well with him. Lander believed that Eart
h must be defended by the most advanced nations possessing the greatest power.

  “If the JAM’s military power increases,” Rei ground out, “you’ll find out real quick just how bad that idea is.”

  “I disagree,” Lander answered. “I think we could handle the JAM just fine. If necessary, we can have our regular forces stand against them.”

  Rei found Lander’s absolute certainty unsettling, but at the same time had the strange feeling that he was some sort of a heretic for thinking so. He recalled the words of the historian Lynn Jackson, who had chronicled the history of the war against the JAM.

  At that time, the JAM had presented us with the key to building a world federation. But the path we chose was the exact opposite. Perhaps world unification never would have been realized, no matter how strong an enemy we were confronted with. From what I can determine from the materials I’ve gathered — memoranda, official records, and direct interviews with the statesmen of that time — even when Earth was invaded, people held on to their prejudices to the bitter end. Paradoxically, we ended up treating the alien JAM as though they were just another neighboring nation.

  When Rei had read this, he had thought it was an extreme viewpoint. But now he agreed with it. Lander’s opinions had just confirmed that again. Still, he reasoned, reality isn’t that simple, is it? The people of Earth wrongly regarded the JAM as an existence analogous to themselves. But the JAM’s true nature remained shrouded in mystery. Humans still didn’t know what sort of life-form they were or even what they looked like.

  The JAM had yet to reveal the true extent of their power.

  Rei was convinced of this to the core of his being. It was his instinct as a soldier. However, he did not say this to Lander. The man couldn’t understand, or rather, wouldn’t understand. And honestly, Rei had had enough of his delusions. Let him live in his own reality, he decided. He thought soberly that, even if his existence was eventually deemed as unnecessary as Lander evidently believed it to be, by the time the man realized just how wrong he was, the regular forces he believed in so fervently would be wiped out. While Rei hoped that would never happen, a part of him also hoped he could be there to see Lander’s face when the time came. Maybe he would then have an inkling of how a soldier felt, would begin to understand the merciless imperative of survival, which was the opposite of theory. The JAM used extremely powerful weaponry and operated them with flawless reflexes. One needed to be just as cold and ruthless to oppose them.

  But Rei remained silent as Lander continued.

  “Guys like you are easy to manipulate. You’re the ideal type to be an enlisted man, but you’re not officer material. You don’t have any convictions.”

  “You sound just like a missionary.”

  “Listen,” Lander said, now sounding as though he were launching into a well-rehearsed speech. “The toughest things an invader has to deal with are the national patriotism and religious conviction of the invaded. If you can remold those, through propaganda or some other means, the invasion automatically succeeds. But the soldiers of the FAF don’t have any sense of patriotism or beliefs, and it’s nothing but a delusion to think the high command of the FAF has any sense of loyalty to Earth. If you’re not careful, one of these days you’re going to find yourself joining forces with the JAM and invading Earth. Do you think that’s impossible?”

  Rei took a deep breath and told him their conversation was over. Lander shrugged his shoulders and got up.

  Rei’s one imperative now was to figure out where they were. If this was an area that had some connection to the FAF — if it were a secret zone he didn’t know about, for example — then that meant there was the possibility of getting home. But if it wasn’t, then the situation was dire: no matter what Lander believed, they would never make it back to Faery Base again. If that were the case, Rei decided, then he would get in the plane and keep flying till his fuel ran out. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, especially since he’d be with Yukikaze. Since he couldn’t get her engines restarted, though, even that was just a pipe dream.

  As Rei was stowing the thermos back aboard the plane, Lander pointed at the small kanji characters painted just below the canopy. “What’s that say, anyway?”

  “‘Yukikaze.’ It was the name of a destroyer in the old Japanese imperial navy.”

  She’d seen thirteen naval battles and survived them all without a scratch. Rei hadn’t known that until Major Booker had told him.

  Lander looked impressed. Rei decided not to tell him that the name had been assigned randomly.

  Grabbing the survival gun Yukikaze was equipped with, he jumped down to the ground. Lander asked to see it, but Rei didn’t oblige him.

  “You’re a civilian. It’s my duty to guarantee your safety.”

  It was a short weapon, but since it was a Bullpup design, with the breech at the very rear, its barrel length was longer than it seemed. The trigger and handgrip assembly were in front of the magazine, which held thirty rounds of powerful rifle ammo.

  “What’s the caliber?” Lander asked.

  “It’s a.221. Air force arsenal-made, but the ammo’s Remington. Fireball.”

  “Copy of the Colt, huh?”

  “Is it? I wouldn’t know.” He checked the clip. “But I know how to shoot it, so don’t worry.”

  Lander looked like he was about to say something when his gaze was suddenly drawn to a spot behind Rei. He grabbed his binoculars.

  Rei turned around to look. A bird. No. There was something odd about the way it moved. Black. Flying in an angular, zigzag pattern.

  “Looks like a UFO. What is it?”

  “It’s shaped like a boomerang.” Lander offered him the binoculars. “Taking the distance into account, it looks pretty big. About the size of a small plane.”

  Rei didn’t take the binoculars. The object had disappeared.

  “You think it’s the JAM?” Lander asked, almost happily. “Or maybe it’s some weird Faery life-form.” He kicked Yukikaze’s tire. “This is quite a fighter you have here, Lieutenant. If you can’t get the engines started it’s nothing more than a very expensive hunk of metal, but I gotta say it’s allowing me to write one hell of an article.”

  “Yeah, well, it might be the last thing you ever write,” Rei said shortly. “Tell you what. If we make it back, I’ll buy you a drink. We can make a toast to your journalistic achievement.”

  Lander ignored him and checked to see if the camcorder was still working. “No use. Looks like it got busted in the impact.”

  Rei took it from him and peered through the electronic viewfinder. The image it showed resembled a color blindness chart, and after a few moments his vision began to blur. He handed it back to Lander, who finally gave up on it and drew a voice recorder out of his life-vest pocket. It looked old and well used. He turned it on and started walking, recording a narrative description of their surroundings.

  Rei was concerned that the UFO-like thing would return. Yukikaze was helpless in her grounded state, and if the object was a JAM fighter it would only need one shot to set her aflame.

  Unaware of Rei’s fears, Lander had moved quite a distance ahead. Rei couldn’t just leave him alone, so he followed after.

  “This looks like a dried-up wetland,” Lander said to Rei as he caught up with him. “A runway made from mud hardened by a chemical agent.”

  That was indeed what it looked like. Yellowish brown earth and scraps of plant matter were encased in a translucent, plasticlike substance that looked almost like glass. Judging from the construction method, Rei thought that maybe this hadn’t been intended to be a proper runway. As they walked toward the forest, the glossy surface gave way to damp mud, and before long they passed into the dark forest itself.

  It was quiet, yet the atmosphere seemed noisy somehow. The ground was soft, cushioned with accumulated bark that had peeled off of the trees. All of the vegetation surrounding them was dark green.

  It was completely unlike the strangely hued forests of Faery, wh
ich were so dense that you needed a tunnel excavator rather than a machete to get through them. Because of that impenetrable density, the animals that inhabited the forest were small, and either lived in burrows under the forest floor or had evolved to live on top of the canopy; as far as Rei knew, no larger creatures inhabited the forest proper. And any humans that had entered it, whether accidentally or deliberately, had been swallowed up by it and never seen again. It was almost as if the forest itself were one enormous life-form.

  This place was different. There was quite a bit of space between the trees. But Rei wasn’t so sure the things surrounding them actually were trees. He started listening to what Lander was dictating into his recorder.

  “They almost seem made out of metal,” Lander was saying. “Beneath a greenish outer layer, they shine like copper, and they’re shaped like... The little ones are cone-shaped. Cones that look more like they were designed and manufactured than like natural forms. The big ones stretch up vertically, with thick branches that spread out from the top and then droop down, encircling the trunks.”

  The branches wrapped around the trunks symmetrically, like precisely wound coils. To Rei, it seemed like they weren’t part of the trees at all but were instead some species of symbiotic plant. Several trees he touched felt warm. There were a few withered ones as well. Some were split, as though struck by lightning, and their exposed cross-sections were blackened as though carbonized, and yet they didn’t seem to have actually burned. Some trees had a golden mold growing on them as well. He couldn’t be sure that it actually was mold, but it was definitely some species of parasite. It looked like fine lace, and the trees that were wrapped in it didn’t seem to be alive.

  The overall effect was just as Lander had said: the forest really did look like something somebody had made. It was almost as if some entity had tried to tackle the problem of creating life and had only managed the external appearance of it. Were these trees actually made by some vast intelligence? And if so, what sort of unimaginable power would it possess to be able to do so?