“I understand perfectly, General.”
“How is the lieutenant doing?”
“Physically, he’s fine. That’s because TAB-15 was so close to where he ejected. Those front-line surgeons are rough, but their work is top notch. I swear, they could probably cure a dead man, which is pretty close to what Rei was when they got to him.”
“I understand that he didn’t sustain any severe brain damage.”
“Probably because those front-line docs gave him the right initial treatment. The surgeons we have here at Faery base are good with the theory, but they don’t have the real-world experience. Our chief flight surgeon Dr. Balume is pretty good, as long as you get to him in the first five minutes before the booze messes him up.”
“I expect you’ll do fine with him,” the general said. “Fukai was shot with a pistol, wasn’t he? Was he shot by his flight officer, Lieutenant Burgadish? And where did he disappear to? If Fukai doesn’t recover, we’ll never know that either. I want to know what happened out there. Within the month. Our SAF can do anything, can’t it? That is all. Any questions?”
“None, General.”
“Very well, then,” she replied, nodding. She didn’t seem to want to leave the office.
“How about some coffee?” the major offered. “You look tired.”
“So do you, Major,” she replied. “I’ll pass on the coffee, thanks. How’s the battle analysis going? We’re definitely seeing the action intensify around TAB-15. Do you think all the Sylphid losses are due to the old Yukikaze being shot down?”
“We’re about to have a tactical mission briefing. You can hear it then—”
“I want to hear your personal opinion, Major.”
“Off the record?”
“Yes.”
Strategy sessions, tactical development sessions, mission planning sessions, mission conduct briefings, and on and on and on. There were lots of meetings to attend, the faces varying with each group. At the strategy sessions where the requirements of the next generation of planes were discussed, people from Systems Corps would be in attendance. The tactical development sessions featured lots of soldiers, as you’d expect. And aside from all of those, there were the preflight briefings held before each sortie, with General Cooley invariably in attendance. At those meetings and in her office, the major had asked her for her personal opinions before. However, this was the first time she’d ever come into his own office to ask for his opinion on anything.
“This is just between you and me, Major.”
“What are you after, General?”
“I just want to hear your opinion.”
“Hm…”
The general was worried. The normally confidant, unflappable head of the SAF who usually had the bearing of a queen was losing her nerve.
This is a crisis for the entire SAF, the major thought. The Yukikaze incident had set off a shock wave that shook the entire Faery Air Force, but the SAF had absorbed the brunt of the blow. Yukikaze had become the first plane in the SAF to be destroyed by the JAM. She’d transferred herself from that plane to the FRX00, and among that data was information related to the Sylphid and the Super Sylph, not to mention data on their performance envelope. If the JAM had gotten ahold of that too, it definitely would have put the Sylph at a disadvantage against the JAM. Just as Systems Corps had said. But it was impossible that Yukikaze would have let that information leak out to the JAM.
“It has nothing to do with the Yukikaze incident,” the major declared. “Yukikaze would never have allowed the JAM to get that data.”
“But there is a possibility.”
“There’s also the possibility that the JAM gained data on the Sylph’s weaknesses from a plane other than Yukikaze. I’d say the odds of that are much higher.”
“I’d like to think that, Major.”
“Believe it and it’ll be true. This isn’t like you. If you stay this indecisive, you’ll blow your chance for a promotion, General.”
She didn’t answer; instead she simply sighed faintly.
“General, the method Yukikaze used to transfer her data has never been seen before, even by us. It was just as novel a feat to the JAM. There’s no way the JAM could have known what it was. Yukikaze used the U/VHF communication system on the FRX00 to send out false data. The real, vital information was transferred into the FRX00 via the attack control radar.”
Yukikaze had switched her fire control radar into single plane pursuit mode to boost its directionality, then targeted the FRX00. She’d then broken her data up like a jigsaw puzzle and transferred it to the FRX00 by modulating the radar wave. The FRX00, being an electronic reconnaissance plane designed for the SAF, simply hadn’t sensed it as an attack lock-on and began recording and analyzing the data in real time. Yukikaze had made use of this.
“The FRX00’s main functions include an emergency decryption system. Even if the JAM somehow got hold of the decryption hardware, they couldn’t analyze it with the hardware alone. Only when the decoder was activated by the central computer could the code be deciphered. To decrypt the data that Yukikaze was transmitting, you’d need something that used the same function structure. In real time. That was the FRX00.”
“There were three JAM in the area, though.”
“It’s possible that they possessed the same function structure as Yukikaze. That’s why, as soon as she’d gotten her new body, Yukikaze had to destroy them immediately, even if it meant risking killing Captain Samia and me. She struck and destroyed them before they had a chance to report anything to their friends. The new Yukikaze confirms that.”
“Indeed.”
“There’s another cause for all the Sylphs we’ve been losing on the front lines. The FAF has been mass-producing the Sylphid in conjunction with its next generation fighter. As you must know, a number of reasonable design changes were introduced in order to make the Sylph easier to produce. You could call it a new design. Another word for a more reasonable design is ‘simplified.’ They cut corners compared to the original model Sylphids. It’s possible that doing so introduced a defect into the design.”
“The losses aren’t limited to the new model Sylphs that have been introduced into battle, as you well know.”
“Hm…Well, if the fault isn’t in the planes, then it’s probably in our using less and less experienced pilots. Besides that…” the major said casually, “even if they did get the data from Yukikaze, it’s old data now, like the Sylph itself is old. It wasn’t the FRX00. The SAF needs to introduce it into service. Let’s restart our plans for mass production.”
“Not the unmanned version?”
“Humans are necessary. It’s best to have a lot of means to gather information.”
Major Booker said this while looking at Rei, who still sat silently in his wheelchair. What was making him and the general so fainthearted was Rei’s being stuck in this state, he thought.
“Speaking of new pilots, what do you think of the new man I transferred into our unit?” the general asked.
“Lieutenant Yagashira? He’s only been out on one sortie so far, so I can’t say anything about him.”
“He has plenty of combat experience. His record is exemplary.”
“He was an ace pilot at TAB-15. But he got shot down and sent here.”
“He was excellent. That’s why I grabbed him.”
“Oh? You fancy him that way?”
The general glanced up at the major where he stood. “Beg your pardon, ma’am. The thing is, the SAF needs pilots like Rei.”
“Ones who don’t care about anything but themselves? Who act like machines? Look at Fukai now. He’s a broken machine.”