He shook his head and went back to eating his lunch of fried rice and meat loaf.
“Go to General Cooley. Your preflight briefing is at 1440.” The major got up from his chair.
“Yes, sir. This isn’t because I lost at poker, is it?”
Booker gave him a look. “And no matter what Lander asks you, you keep quiet. This is just a simple sightseeing flight.”
Rei shrugged. Then something occurred to him. “Hey, Jack?
Are those sunglasses Ray-Bans?”
Booker picked up his tray. “Nope. Nikons.” Then, a smile playing across his lips, he left the cafeteria.
AFTER A SHORT briefing, Rei boarded Yukikaze. He continued performing the preflight checks on the elevator up from the underground hangar and felt himself calming a little. Having to give a biased journalist from Earth his own personal little flight tour stuck in his craw, but he knew he’d feel better once they were in the air.
After he emerged onto the planet’s surface, a car approached from the side of the shade port and pulled alongside Yukikaze. General Cooley and a man got out. Andy Lander. Lander jovially waved at him. Rei answered with a slight nod. What did this guy come here to investigate? he wondered. Just going by Lander’s looks, Rei guessed he was after material to argue that Earth had to be protected with American-made weapons or something.
Lander was built like a wrestler; the flight suit he wore was ill-fitting and did not favor him at all. Major Booker deftly inspected Lander’s suit, then helped him aboard Yukikaze, fastening his shoulder harness and connecting his anti-G hoses.
Engine start. First the right, then the left.
“Take it away, Captain,” said Lander.
“We’ve got ideal weather for a sightseeing flight,” replied Rei.
Emergency generator test. Data link power display control power, on. Head-up display, activated. Flight control check via the indicators. Display, flight computer, check.
Once the check of authority was complete, they taxied onto the runway. The wind was strong, so Rei set the canopy control to BOOST. It lowered hydraulically and locked.
He called the tower for clearance to take off. Clearance granted. Throttle to military power. They began to climb. Rotation. Landing gear up. Flaps up. Hydraulic system set to flight mode, cutting the hydraulic supply from the landing gear and non-flight steering system. Reconfirm flight instruments. All systems normal.
Informing Lander that they would be climbing quickly, he moved the throttle to MAX. The afterburners kicked in and the thrust increased dramatically. Armed with just four shortrange missiles and a gun, unencumbered by additional tanks or equipment, the agile Sylph could climb nearly vertically. Still, he shouldn’t overdo it. Lander groaned. With a sigh, Rei brought them back to level flight. He performed a loose turn onto their flight path, a square of about 250 kilometers per side that would bring them back to their starting point.
“I heard that Faery’s sun is a binary star,” Lander said as he operated a camcorder, “but I can only see one. Just the main star. Wait, I see it. The companion star is that shadow, right?”
“You’ve got good eyes.”
“The camera’s digital viewfinder is picking it up. Can you fly steady like this for a bit without any maneuvering, please?”
Rei didn’t mind that Lander said this with the tone of a hunter ordering his guide. He couldn’t bring himself to be irritated by someone who he didn’t care if he lived or died.
It was quiet for a while.
Then, perhaps bored with shooting his video, Lander began asking all sorts of questions. Where was Rei from? Had he been on Faery long? What did he plan to do when he returned to his native country?
Rei gave suitable, innocuous answers, but when Lander asked him, “Why do you fly?” he was stumped.
“To kill the JAM,” he said finally, after buying some time with the excuse that he had to confirm their heading.
“That’s just the result of your actions, not the cause,” Lander replied. And with that, he’d crudely and unknowingly cut to the heart of the doubt that had been tormenting Rei. Rei tried to ignore him, but Lander continued, unheeding. “You must have a more concrete reason for fighting than that. For Earth, for your country, for your lover, for money, to get back alive, and so on. What are you thinking of when you’re in combat?”
At least that question was simple to answer.
“Nothing,” Rei said. “I don’t think about anything. I’m blank. Here, I’ll give you a taste of what it’s like.”
He gripped the side stick, cutting off the autopilot, and did some subtle footwork. Yukikaze snapped into a turn, executing a series of continuous barrel rolls. Returning to level flight, he performed a four-point roll in the other direction. They rose up vertical to the horizon, then were completely inverted, then vertical again, and finally back to normal. A steep climb that led into a loop. He performed several small, high-G loops, drawing Q-shapes in the sky. He pulled them into one final steep turn, and then they were back on course.
“How’d that feel, sir?” Rei asked.
There was a pause before Lander answered. “A man always has to be ready for surprise attacks. I was careless. Even though I half-anticipated it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lander kept his mouth shut, and Rei was relieved to have been freed from his annoying questions. Now he and Yukikaze could become one in the silence. Maybe that’s the reason I fly, he thought.
The clear sky was dazzling and lonely. A three-ship formation, most likely flying a CAP, overflew Yukikaze high above. From this distance the planes almost seemed translucent, like they were made of glass.
As he stared at the beautiful sight, a warning tone brought him back. The passive airspace radar was getting a reaction. He output the data onto the multidisplay and frowned, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The radar was showing an enormous wall about a hundred kilometers ahead of them. It was like a tsunami. Rei lifted his head and looked out of the cockpit, but all he could see was the quiet scene of Faery’s primeval forest and the sky.
He couldn’t confirm the existence of the wall with the standard radar system either. It reflected no electromagnetic radiation. What the hell was this?
The passive airspace radar was a detection system that had been developed to counter the various methods JAM fighters used to mask themselves while attacking. Because it utilized a type of cryogenically cooled visual sensor with an ultra-high receptivity, it had been nicknamed “Frozen Eye.” No matter how an enemy craft might hide itself electromagnetically or optically, as long as it displaced air it could be detected. The system gave the SAF pilots an ability to find and kill the enemy that was so accurate it seemed almost instinctive. And now that same system was telling Rei that something monstrous was before him.
Was it a JAM force? It seemed way too big to be that. It was almost like a massive disturbance of the airspace. The bright horizontal line on the display was drawing closer fast.
The AVOID cue appeared on his HUD. If he did nothing, Yukikaze would automatically maneuver to evade the obstacle when they got too close to it. But Rei didn’t wait for that. He pulled the plane back into a high-G Immelman loop, reversing their direction.