Greenies

seat.

'No,' he burped, closing his eyes and desperately trying to fight off the nausea and vertigo.

'Just breathe through it,' Dwyerson advised as the outer door of the airlock began to slid upward on its track. 'And keep your eyes open. The sooner you can convince yourself that you're not really falling, the sooner you'll start to feel kind of normal again.'

'Right,' Matt grunted into his throat mic, not even offering one of the smart-ass remarks that were his trademark. He tried to stretch a little in his seat but the biosuit that covered his body and the tightness of the restraining straps prevented any motion that would be therapeutic.

The door finished its upward motion and Dwyerson throttled up the aircraft, bringing it out onto the taxiway. It bumped and swayed a little as it rumbled away from the base at a sedate forty kilometers per hour, it's engine humming along at barely over idle. Matt continued to take deep breaths and to focus his eyes on the outside scenery and gradually, little by little, the vertigo and the nausea faded away. By the time they made it to the head of the runway, he felt almost normal except for a last lingering gurgling in his troubled stomach that was probably more from nervousness than anything else.

'I'll keep this first flight as sedate as possible for the mission,' Dwyerson told him over the intercom. 'We'll work our way gradually up to the more extreme turns and maneuvers. Still, we're gonna have to do some turning and burning when we get to the target area. It's the only way to do it, you know?'

'Static,' Matt said sourly.

'Chances are you're gonna puke. Don't be ashamed of it. Almost every sis does on their first flight. But cleaning that puke out of your helmet when we get back will make you fight like hell not to do it on the second flight. Gradually, as you put in more and more hours in these things, you'll hardly be sick at all.'

'Hardly?' he asked.

Dwyerson managed a shrug despite his restraining harnesses. 'They tell me that it never goes away completely. Looking at a computer display while we bounce up and down all over the place has that effect I guess. What can you do?'

'Static,' he repeated, depressed at the thought that he would always be sick when he flew. For the thousandth time since being told what his MPG assignment was going to be he wondered if the powers-that-be had really analyzed his ASVAB test correctly. They had told him that his learning skills, psychological profile, and reaction times were ideal for the position of Mosquito weapons and navigation system operator, or 'sis' as the term went. His medical exam had confirmed this supposition as well. And so, while Jeff, whom he had hoped to serve with out in the field, was on the other side of the base learning to shoot M-24s and anti-tank lasers, he had been sitting in a classroom being taught the finer parts of the Mosquito's navigation and weaponry equipment. He had played with the systems in the simulators for no less than two hours of each day. Now it was time for his first flight in an actual aircraft.

'Give me a rundown on your take-off checklist,' Dwyerson told him as he positioned them at the end of the runway for take-off.

Matt swallowed a little and looked at the display screen in front of him. He read from it aloud. 'GPS is synchronized. Mapping software operational. Main guns discharged and on standby. Cockpit depressurized.'

'Excellent,' Dwyerson told him. 'We have clearance for take off. What is my route to the target area?'

'Turn right to two-three-four upon lift-off,' he told him, looking at the map. 'ETA to first waypoint is twenty- one minutes.'

'How many minutes?' Dwyerson said, his voice with just a touch of sternness in it.

'Uh, two-one minutes,' he corrected, utilizing the proper phonetics this time. 'Two-one.'

'Very good,' Dwyerson told him. 'Let's do it then, shall we?'

'Light it up,' Matt said, bracing his head against the back of his seat as he'd been taught. 'Let's get this shit over with.'

Dwyerson throttled up the engine sending a dull roar and more than a little vibration thrumming through the cockpit. He released the ground brakes with a pull of a lever and the boomerang shaped aircraft suddenly shot down the runway, accelerating quickly. Matt was pushed roughly backward as the ground outside became a blur of motion. His body flooded with adrenaline. He had never ridden in any vehicle that did not have an inertial dampener system installed and the sensation was very unnerving. It took less than six seconds for stall speed to be achieved. Once they were there Dwyerson pulled back on his control stick and they rotated off the runway, still accelerating.

Matt watched nervously as the ground dropped away from them and they began to climb into the sky. His eyes kept darting back and forth between this and the laser altimeter display on his screen that showed their altitude above the ground. When they passed through four hundred meters Dwyerson suddenly banked sharply to the right, putting them into a forty-five degree bank. Instinctively Matt wanted to close his eyes, to not look at the ground directly out the right side of the cockpit. He fought through the urge, knowing that he would have to get used to this sort of thing.

When the digital compass display neared 230 degrees Dwyerson smoothly rolled out of the turn, bringing them back to horizontal exactly at 234 degrees. They continued to climb into the reddish sky, the ground receding ever more beneath them, their airspeed indicator winding upward before finally settling on 720 kilometers per hour.

'How we doing back there, sis?' Dwyerson asked.

'I'm fine, Lieutenant,' Matt answered, actually starting to enjoy the sensation of flight now, looking in fascination at the features of the ground from high above.

'I'm glad to hear that,' Dwyerson told him, unmistakable sarcasm in his tone. 'But I was not inquiring into your health and well-being. I was asking for a status report on my navigation.'

Matt felt the familiar flush of anger that he felt when someone talked to him in that manner. As a product of the streets, his instinct was to strike out at anyone who condescended to him in any way, even if they were right in doing so. He resisted the impulse. 'Sorry, Lieutenant,' he said. 'We're right on the line. One-nine minutes to first waypoint. From there you'll turn left to one-eight-zero.'

'Thank you,' Dwyerson said. 'Try to remember to give me that update every time we change course. I know that I have the same display on my HUD but when we're flying low and ducking and running from anti-aircraft fire, I don't always have time to ponder that display.'

'Got it,' Matt said.

They leveled off at two thousand meters above the ground, their course taking them towards the mountain ranges to the west. As they flew on Dwyerson talked to Matt about the various aspects of their mission and the gunnery skills that would be needed to complete it.

'Your skills on the sim gun were pretty good if I recall, weren't they?' he asked him.

'Yes,' Matt said with a certain amount of pride. 'Number two in the class so far.'

'That don't mean shit out here,' Dwyerson told him, unimpressed. 'The sims can't reproduce the G-forces and the inertia that we're gonna be dealing with. All they can do is give you the basic mechanics of gunnery. You're gonna have to learn how to hit your targets all over out here in the real world.'

'Right,' he agreed, although he couldn't really see how much difference a little inertia could possibly make. The name of the game was acquiring and striking a target quickly, so that the aircraft would be exposed to potential enemy fire for less than five seconds, which was the amount of time it was generally agreed it took an anti-aircraft system to acquire and shoot at a moving target.

'I can tell by your voice that you think I'm talking out of my ass,' Dwyerson told him. 'Trust me, I've been flying these things for six years now and I've been in training for two. You're gonna have problems.'

Matt said nothing, he simply continued to monitor the instruments before him and take glances out at the passing landscape far below. He had already decided that, terrified or not, he was really starting to like flying in an aircraft. The view, something that he'd never given a second thought to before, was inspiring. The sensation of acceleration, the bouncing of the craft in the Martian air currents, the vibration of the engines, the taste of manufactured air from the bio suit, the thought that they were hundreds of kilometers from the safety of the city all conspired to give him a thrill unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. And soon they would be shooting at actual armored vehicles with their laser cannons. True the armor belonged to MPG units that were performing training of their own and the laser would be set to a level just low enough to activate the training sensors on the vehicles, but none of that mattered. It was if he were playing an incredibly realistic video game. Had he been told