There were weapons control personnel also there on the surface, but Rei personally walked Yukikaze’s perimeter and pulled the safety pins from all four of her short-range missiles. Once he’d finished, the canopy automatically lowered and locked. She was now ready to take off without a pilot.
“Good luck, Yukikaze,” Rei murmured.
“Yukikaze is your best friend,” said Captain Foss to Rei as she approached.
“My best friend?” he replied.
“Or perhaps your lover?”
Rei turned to face Captain Foss. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“It must be reassuring to have such a powerful friend, Captain Fukai.”
Yukikaze’s onboard engine starter system activated, despite the fact that Llanfabon’s engines weren’t started yet. Her vertical stabilizers unfolded from their horizontal storage position and rose into place. Her twin turbofan engines then started up, first the right, then the left. Rei and Captain Foss stepped away from her.
“Yukikaze isn’t my friend either. Lover? That’s ridiculous.”
“So then, what is she to you?”
As the scream of Yukikaze’s engines nearly drowned out Captain Foss’s question, Rei raised his voice to answer her, as though not wanting to let his plane have the final say.
“Yukikaze is the most dangerous combat machine on this planet,” he yelled. “She has a combat awareness that’s uniquely hers! Human relationships don’t apply to her!”
If she was anything, Yukikaze was a wild animal.
He didn’t say that, but that was what Rei thought. She was a partner with whom he was entangled in a dangerous relationship. One in which she cooperated only so long as they sought a common prey. Or perhaps, rather than a partner, he could more accurately be thought of as a trainer, teaching her how to hunt. A coach, instructing her how to fight.
Yukikaze was neither a best friend nor a lover. She was a being beyond human understanding. And he was going to get closer to her.
She wheeled around and stopped, lowering her nose. Her cannon was fixed on Llanfabon nearby, her stance now saying that she could fire at any time. Rei could just imagine the look on Lieutenant Bruys’s face as he sat aboard his plane. He must have felt like he was being stalked by a wild animal.
Yukikaze’s airframe was a little smaller than Llanfabon’s. But the Maeve aiming at the graceful body of the Super Sylph somehow seemed larger and more ferocious.
3
REI LOOKED OUT across Faery base’s vast runway but could make out nothing but fighter planes. If this lunch meeting were going to take place in the air, he’d expected there to be a large transport plane, but it looked like he’d been wrong.
So then where was it going to be?
Before he could ask, Captain Edith Foss told him to follow her and began walking in the direction of the control tower.
“The food’s probably going to be very good,” Rei said as he walked along beside her. “I’ll bet Major Booker got his hands on some food that you normally can’t get here and didn’t want the computers to know about the delicacies we’re going to have. Are you invited too?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Who else is coming?’
“I don’t know. And as appealing as a delicacy-tasting party sounds, somehow I don’t think this is going to be such a pleasant lunch. In your manner of speaking, my guess would be that Major Booker has called me in to act as a poison taster for his food. I doubt my role as the attending physician in your psychological care is unrelated to this.”
“Hm.”
“I noticed you arrived in Yukikaze. Quite a display you put on there. Did you mean that as a threat to the other participants in this meeting? Major Booker certainly knows how to liven up a show, doesn’t he?”
Captain Foss didn’t know that Yukikaze’s appearance had been wholly unexpected, and he figured she probably didn’t know that Llanfabon had been assigned to observe and protect the meeting either.
Rei said nothing. Captain Foss gave him a sidelong glance and then asked, “Or did you and not Major Booker plan that little production?”
“You don’t have to examine me anymore, Captain.”
“I’m asking this out of personal interest. I know you aren’t the sort who’d take offense at the question. You didn’t show up here in Yukikaze for some other duty, right? I don’t know why you’d go out of your way to do something like this, though. There’s a lot of things about you SAF people that are a mystery to me.”
“Having Yukikaze show up here wasn’t my idea or Major Booker’s. It wasn’t a show. It didn’t happen by chance, and it wasn’t for any other duty.”
“Could you just talk straight with me? The inability to get to the point is sometimes evidence of mental illness—”
“Okay, I don’t like you. Is that straight enough?”
“Perfectly. Now why did you show up here in Yukikaze?”
“No comment. Major Booker didn’t tell me it was okay to tell anyone else about it.”
“But you just said it wasn’t a show and it wasn’t by chance. Was it okay to say that?”
“He didn’t say to keep completely quiet about it either.”
“So then why do you say ‘no comment’ about anything more than that?”
“Because I’ve always wanted to say ‘no comment’ to somebody.”
“Are you mocking me?” Foss asked.
“Boy, there’s no hiding anything from you, is there? Yeah, I am.”
“You have some serious character issues.”
“You and me both. You’re the one who said I rode up in Yukikaze to liven up the show here. I figured, fine, have some fun and mock her right back.”
“You thought I was making fun of you?”
“I don’t get what you mean,” Rei said.
“I’m still interested in your relationship with Yukikaze. Did you really think I was mocking you when I asked if she was your lover?”
“No, you were being serious, so I answered you seriously. Why are you asking me this?”
“Why? Because this isn’t fun for me. There’s nothing fun about being mocked. You aren’t the only one who engages in this roundabout game of tit for tat. Everyone in the SAF is like that,” Foss said. “Talking to any of you pisses me off, and it’s all I’ve been able to do to maintain my personal feelings in the face of it. That goes for me both as a doctor and as an individual. But everyone has their limits, and I’ve reached mine. I hate you. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Do you understand?” A long time ago, a woman whose face he could no longer remember had said the same thing to him. Rei stopped walking and looked Captain Foss in the eye.
I hate you. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Do you understand?
What was it about him that prompted such words? What thing, what deficiency inside of him inspired such black rage?
Captain Foss also stopped walking and met Rei’s gaze. Her mouth was open, but she noticed the hard expression on his face and slowly pressed her lips back together. Rei didn’t overlook how the pupils in her eyes contracted.
This doctor had been personally angry with him before, but now something had changed. His reaction was unexpected, and so either out of curiosity or her sense of duty as a doctor, she had raised her head to study him. What was it about this patient that made him constantly contradict what she said and react so excessively?
Rei himself was bewildered by his reactions.
He thought he’d forgotten everything about his past, so why was he dredging it back up now? He’d heard similar words from other people ever since he’d joined the FAF. He’d never once been bothered by anyone saying that they hated him. All he’d said to Captain Foss before was “I don’t like you,” to which she’d responded, “I hate you. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Do you understand?” That was all it was. So what of it? He shouldn’t have any problem with that.