The missile detonated. Barely three seconds had passed from its initial launch. The explosion blew apart the right main wing of the unknown plane. Fragments rocketed in every direction.
A piece of the missile’s shrapnel hit Yukikaze. It happened in an instant, penetrating the canopy and striking Rei directly in the forehead, smashing into his helmet visor. The pain was intense, and he let out a groan.
“Lieutenant, both engines are out! Flight control’s messed up, too.”
Yukikaze rolled lazily and began to go down, spinning.
Rei put his hand to the wound, staining his flight glove with blood. If the explosion had happened any closer, the shrapnel probably would have punched its way into his head and torn it off. He felt no fear, though. There was no time for fear. Yukikaze was falling.
“We have to punch out!”
“Wait… I can’t leave Yukikaze.”
The blood was streaming from him now. The right side of his head and his right shoulder ached.
“The engines are gone. It’s no use!”
“Don’t panic. There’s no way Yukikaze’s going to crash.”
“Lieutenant!”
“The turbines are spinning. I can airstart the engines.”
“It’s too risky to waste time trying for a restart!”
Yukikaze was now roughly level, and the EWO wasn’t going to let this chance slip away. He made sure the command lever was set to eject only the rear seat and then quickly yanked it. The canopy blew off the plane, followed by the rear ejection seat. The shock of it sent Yukikaze back into a tailspin.
Rei checked his altitude. The cold stabbed at him, the wind howling in his ears. He still had enough altitude to try for an airstart. The engine burner pressure was low. He tried the auto-restart switch, but there was no response. The low-voltage generator wasn’t giving him enough electrical power. There wasn’t enough time to activate the jet fuel starter, and he feared that using the secondary power unit would kill his computer systems completely.
The right engine was now burning. Fuel transfer to it was automatically cut off. Rei checked the turbine revs indicator, then pushed Yukikaze into a dive. She eagerly nosed down, as though intending to fly straight into the ground.
The increased airflow spun the turbine blades faster, and the generator circuits came back to life. Rei hit the airstart button. The engine ignition system activated and the ignition exciter spark plug flared. The airstart lamp was now lit. Yukikaze plummeted. The left engine came back to life. The turbine intake temperature rose. The revolutions increased. Cutting off the ignition operation, Rei gripped the side stick. Yukikaze climbed quickly, still spinning. He focused all his attention on the side stick, executing a sudden roll to the opposite side to arrest the spin.
The flight control’s failed, he thought. He worked the stick cautiously. They were no longer rolling, but now Yukikaze was beginning to fall backwards. He nudged the plane into a gentle roll to try and level it. Suddenly, Yukikaze began rising quickly, bucking like a wild horse. Rei was feeling tired now. There was no time to check the gauges to determine exactly what was out of order. Without the canopy’s protection the cockpit was freezing, and the wind pressure kept him from seeing clearly. His arm was numb. Yukikaze began to buck harder.
A signal indicated a fault in the flight computer system. Of the five high-speed parallel processing computers that analyzed his flight data, three were now completely off-line. Of the two remaining, one wasn’t working properly, and it was unclear which of them had the fault. Because the calculations they came up with didn’t agree, the central computer had cut off the entire flight computer system. It entered the signal for control of the wings via the direct control assembly.
Rei saw this at the top of his display, and the cause of Yukikaze’s wild flight suddenly became clear to him. He loosened his grip on the stick and switched on the autopilot. Yukikaze’s violent shuddering immediately ceased.
Rei himself had been the cause of Yukikaze’s strange behavior. The injury he had sustained had left him with almost no sensation in his right arm. Yukikaze had been just faithfully following the input from the side stick even though Rei was exerting much more force on it than he should have been. The stick was pressure sensitive: every control surface on it responded to the way the pilot changed the grip of his right hand. The stick itself was immobile—there was no need for motion since it was pressure sensitive—and so under the correct conditions it could execute a pilot’s will with lightning speed. Now, the lack of sensation and the pain of his injured arm had caused Rei to accidentally send it the wrong instructions.
He adjusted the altitude on the autopilot, inputting a groundrelative setting of 300 meters. Yukikaze began to descend, her radar altimeter monitoring the distance. By the time the pressure altimeter read 1,260 meters above sea level, the fighter was flying roughly level. They were over an area of low mountains, and as Yukikaze flew she followed the soft vertical undulations of the landscape. Rei set the radar to real beam ground mapping mode and activated the forward surveillance system.
“Let’s go home, Yukikaze.”
The data for their return course had been lost. With his EWO gone, Rei had to work out his plane’s position himself with the help of the central computer. The navigation computer linked up with high-altitude support satellites, and the central computer used the data to calculate their current position. He flipped the auto-maneuver switch to ON and the tactical computer initiated guidance, with Faery Base as the objective.
Yukikaze was now locked in enemy auto-search, a mode where in the event of enemy contact she would automatically attack any opponents, fly to a position above the objective, and then bomb it. Fortunately, since she wasn’t carrying any bombs at the moment, there was no danger of inadvertently bombing the base.
Rei could have flown back to base via autopilot alone, but if they met any other enemies on the way he wouldn’t have the strength to fight them. Sticky, clotted blood had already dried his right eye shut, and the wind pressure was keeping him from opening his left eye all the way. His helmet visor was too damaged from the impact to deploy. So he input the target data into his tactical computer—he could do that using just his left fingertip—and sat back in his seat.
Tactical operations were easier than inputting coordinates into an autopilot. Rei was a warrior, not a navigator. He set the head-up display to its brightest level. Normally, it would be set to its lowest level for nighttime combat, to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but right now he needed it that bright just to be able to see it. The steering cue marker above the HUD showed a straight line toward Faery Base.
Subsonic speed. Flying on one engine. Bleeding heavily. It took him barely thirty minutes to reach the skies over the base, but he was half unconscious by that point. He heard Yukikaze signal to him that they were over the target as though from a great distance.
“B-3, report. Say your status.”
“Mayday… Can you read me? I’m in bombing mode… Is this Faery Base?”
“Affirmative. How long are you planning to circle over us?”
“I’m bringing her down now. Emergency landing. I’m wounded. Can’t see clearly.”
“Can you still land?”
“I’m bringing Yukikaze down in one piece, even if it kills me. I’m coming down. Give me ALS guidance.”