Read Online YUKIKAZE by CHŌHEI KAMBAYASHI - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: CHŌHEI KAMBAYASHI
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barracks, he headed in the opposite direction from the city center, toward the rocky cavern walls at its periphery. He soon entered a tunnel that opened up into a large hall three hundred meters further in. The combat base was a solid underground maze. The path cut left, then right, rose and descended. Rei boarded an elevator in a junction hall, got off, and walked through a gradually narrowing corridor—presenting his ID to the guards at the entrance to each block—until he finally reached his room in Boomerang Squadron’s offices. The whole procedure was vaguely irritating. Once he fed his ID card into a terminal of the personnel management system and confirmed he had arrived for work, he was in the clear.
Deskwork was tedious, but neglecting it could get him disqualified from flight time. Sitting down at his desk, Rei wondered what he’d do if they ever took his beloved Yukikaze away from him. Thinking about soaring through the sky was the one thing that made the mind-numbing paperwork bearable.
“What’s the point of these sortie reports, anyway?” he groused to himself. Then he abruptly stopped jabbing at the keyboard, flashing back to Colonel Guneau’s statement about humans being unnecessary. He wondered if Yukikaze considered him unnecessary, then immediately rejected the notion. Yukikaze was the one thing that Rei trusted, and he didn’t want to even entertain the possibility that she could betray him. It might have been absurd to think that she wouldn’t abandon him just because he needed her, but that was what he chose to believe.
He quickly finished up the multitude of reports and went to see his plane. Checking the airframe was a routine daily task, yet he found it anything but tedious.
The underground hangar was quiet. Units 5 and 7 were out. Rei began his inspection of Unit 3’s airframe, starting on the forward left side and moving aft. He circled back to the nose from the right side, checking the exterior for oil leaks and surface damage. There were over a hundred items on the inspection checklist, and although some of them were not mandatory on a daily basis, Rei checked them all.
Once the visual inspection was done, he climbed into the cockpit to perform the onboard tests. Thick cables dangled from Yukikaze’s underside, connecting her to the external power supply and the SAF computers. He set the master test selector to onboard test mode. Then, after confirming that the throttle was disengaged and the master arm switch was set to SAFE, he initiated the programmable electronics self-test and began ticking off the items on the checklist. As test signals were sent to all of the avionics and navigation sensors, simulation checks were run on the air inlet control programmer, the automatic flight control set, the central air data computer, the throttle control auto-mode, and a host of other systems.
After that, there were the communications systems to check, the fuel transfer control system, the operations of all the displays, the cockpit opening and closing function… And by that point, it seemed almost a half-measure to not simply go ahead and run the engines, too. Still, it couldn’t be helped. Rei climbed down from Yukikaze, feeling like he was being separated from his lover.
“Figured you’d be here, Rei.” Major James Booker’s voice echoed through the hangar. “So, what was so important that you had to consult Yukikaze after leaving the office without permission?”
Rei had forgot to log his airframe inspection into the personnel control system that Major Booker used to manage Boomerang Squadron. He was Rei’s friend, but they were on duty and Booker had not come down there on personal business. The major’s tone indicated he was in full superior officer mode.
“What’s my punishment, Major?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve talking like that after what you pulled.”
“What’s up? Something happen, Jack?”
The major told Rei to come with him. Rei did as he was told
Deskwork was tedious, but neglecting it could get him disqualified from flight time. Sitting down at his desk, Rei wondered what he’d do if they ever took his beloved Yukikaze away from him. Thinking about soaring through the sky was the one thing that made the mind-numbing paperwork bearable.
“What’s the point of these sortie reports, anyway?” he groused to himself. Then he abruptly stopped jabbing at the keyboard, flashing back to Colonel Guneau’s statement about humans being unnecessary. He wondered if Yukikaze considered him unnecessary, then immediately rejected the notion. Yukikaze was the one thing that Rei trusted, and he didn’t want to even entertain the possibility that she could betray him. It might have been absurd to think that she wouldn’t abandon him just because he needed her, but that was what he chose to believe.
He quickly finished up the multitude of reports and went to see his plane. Checking the airframe was a routine daily task, yet he found it anything but tedious.
The underground hangar was quiet. Units 5 and 7 were out. Rei began his inspection of Unit 3’s airframe, starting on the forward left side and moving aft. He circled back to the nose from the right side, checking the exterior for oil leaks and surface damage. There were over a hundred items on the inspection checklist, and although some of them were not mandatory on a daily basis, Rei checked them all.
Once the visual inspection was done, he climbed into the cockpit to perform the onboard tests. Thick cables dangled from Yukikaze’s underside, connecting her to the external power supply and the SAF computers. He set the master test selector to onboard test mode. Then, after confirming that the throttle was disengaged and the master arm switch was set to SAFE, he initiated the programmable electronics self-test and began ticking off the items on the checklist. As test signals were sent to all of the avionics and navigation sensors, simulation checks were run on the air inlet control programmer, the automatic flight control set, the central air data computer, the throttle control auto-mode, and a host of other systems.
After that, there were the communications systems to check, the fuel transfer control system, the operations of all the displays, the cockpit opening and closing function… And by that point, it seemed almost a half-measure to not simply go ahead and run the engines, too. Still, it couldn’t be helped. Rei climbed down from Yukikaze, feeling like he was being separated from his lover.
“Figured you’d be here, Rei.” Major James Booker’s voice echoed through the hangar. “So, what was so important that you had to consult Yukikaze after leaving the office without permission?”
Rei had forgot to log his airframe inspection into the personnel control system that Major Booker used to manage Boomerang Squadron. He was Rei’s friend, but they were on duty and Booker had not come down there on personal business. The major’s tone indicated he was in full superior officer mode.
“What’s my punishment, Major?”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve talking like that after what you pulled.”
“What’s up? Something happen, Jack?”
The major told Rei to come with him. Rei did as he was told
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