Rei stayed aboard Yukikaze, searching in vain for the cause of the problem. He had twenty minutes of electricity left from the auxiliary power unit. He couldn’t make contact with the base, either. The twenty minutes were soon up.
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.”