YUKIKAZE Read Free

looked like a bloodstained path, and so it had been named the “Bloody Road.”
    Rei set the cockpit illumination to its lowest level and lifted his gaze from the instrumentation. Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was quiet. He thought back to the battle just fought by the 666th TFS.
    “Delta 4, engage. Break right. Right. Starboard.”
    “This is Delta 4, I can’t see them.”
    “They’ve spiked you! Look out!”
    “Where’s the JAM?! I can’t see it on my radar!”
    Delta 4 had broken into a hard-right diving turn but couldn’t shake the JAM fighter.
    A pilot who couldn’t control his plane perfectly was a dead man. To Rei, that was the natural order of things. Emotions had no place in battle. A fighter plane feels nothing, and a pilot is a part of the plane. Therefore, a pilot who couldn’t set aside his emotions and become one with his plane was no warrior. And with someone like that piloting it, even a high-performance fighter would be no match for the enemy. And then that fighter would be—
    Yukikaze’s wide-area radar warning receiver chimed an alert.
    “What’s up?” Rei asked his backseater, the electronic warfare officer. “Verify that.”
    “Not sure,” the other man replied. “The passive warning system’s activated, but I can’t track the location. It could be a bogey.”
    “A bogey?” asked Rei. “Then… It’s gotta be a JAM. Find it.” Saying that, he switched on the fire control system and set the radar to long-range, moving target auto-search mode. The target was entering radar range.
    “Target sighted,” the EWO called out. “It’s small. A fighter. Pretty fast. Speed is two-point-nine and he’s nose-on. We should merge in approximately two minutes.”
    Rei checked the moving target indicator. Was the other craft a hostile? A friendly? But the MTI’s display simply showed it as UNKNOWN.
    “What is it?” Rei asked.
    “Negative on the IFF.” If there was no response on the Identification, Friend or Foe system, then…
    “It’s a hostile,” said Rei.
    He entered the unknown craft into his tactical computer as an enemy. The system automatically adjusted the radar search pattern, frequency, power output, and pulse width to their optimal efficiency and tracked the target.
    “Hey, Boss?” said the EWO. “We should confirm this first. It might be a friendly. Maybe their IFF’s off-line. I doubt any JAM would be flying around here.”
    The unknown plane was closing fast, its course unwavering, on a straight line for Yukikaze. Like a giant bullet , thought Rei.
    “Lieutenant, take evasive action.”
    In response to the rapidly approaching target, the tactical computer switched the radar mode to super search and automatically locked on to the target.
    “Okay, let’s reconfirm this. What is that thing? Contact them on the emergency channel.”
    “I’m trying, but there’s no response. Looks like their communications equipment is out.”
    Yukikaze turned ninety degrees and dived. The unknown plane climbed rapidly, opening from them. However, Rei could still easily track it: Yukikaze was equipped with a powerful, omni-directional pulse Doppler radar that could accurately detect the target and display its location, velocity, and acceleration data on the MTI.
    The target banked steeply and began to dive toward Yukikaze at high speed.
    “He’s a hostile,” said Rei. “I’m engaging.”
    “It’s not a JAM!”
    “How do you know that?”
    As Yukikaze pulled a sudden high-G evasive turn, from his seat in the rear the EWO caught sight of the unknown craft nipping at their heels. It was just under a kilometer away, a large fighter plane glittering in the light of the setting suns. Via the digital camera in their tactical reconnaissance pod he could make out the distinctive, sharply pointed twin vertical stabilizers on its back.
    “You see that, Lieutenant Fukai?” he called out over the com. “That’s a Sylph. A Sylphid.”
    “A Sylph? Who’s it attached