elements of the 33rd Infantry Battalion, which had been out practicing maneuvers for the last two days. Since the object of today's lesson was nothing more than gunnery practice for new recruits, they already knew exactly where they would be located.
'Five seconds to target area and exposure,' Matt reported as they neared the last ridge before the plains beyond.
'Copy,' Dwyerson said. 'Get ready for some hard flying. I'm gonna bank hard right and parallel the ridgeline and then dart back in after you get your shots off.'
'I'm ready,' he said, his hand gripping the firing stick.
They cleared the ridge and the ground dropped away beneath them. The entire aircraft banked severely to the right, slamming Matt with nearly 3Gs of force. He grunted under the strain of it, feeling fresh vomit come rising up from his stomach and splattering the inside of his helmet. His hand was jerked off the firing button and slammed against the far panel hard enough to sting. Meanwhile the computer automatically scanned the ground below and turned the camera and the gun towards the zone where most of the armored vehicles were. Matt fought the G- forces, trying to force his hand back onto the firing button while his eyes peered over the glowing shapes of the vehicles in his view screen. He tried to turn his head to put the recticle on target but his head wouldn't turn either, so harshly was it being forced to the left.
'You're not shooting,' Dwyerson said mildly as he straightened out his bank, throwing the G-force in the other direction.
'My hand slipped!' Matt yelled. He could now move his head and cover one of the targets but his hand had yet to reacquire the firing button. Finally he got eyes and hand in the right place but it was already too late.
'Egressing,' Dwyerson said, cutting sharply to the right once more. A second later they had disappeared back into the ridges and hills. The targets on Matt's screen disappeared from view.
'Goddammit!' Matt cried in frustration. 'I didn't get a fuckin shot off.'
'I told you it was a little different in real life,' Dwyerson said. 'Let's make another run. Just remember though, now they know we're here. They'll have their guns ready for us the next time we pop out.'
Dwyerson flew them in a broad circle, once again darting and dashing over hilltops and down into gullies, hiding the plane from the infrared and radar targeting systems that their ESM could now detect coming on line from the targets.
'What's doctrine for exposure on the second run?' Dwyerson asked him as they neared the entrance to the plains once more.
'Less than three seconds with enemy weapon systems active,' he reported, gripping the firing button with increased strength now.
'Right. That's not a whole hell of a lot of time, is it?'
They flitted back out over the plains and banked hard left this time. Matt was slammed to the side once again by the G-force but this time he was expecting it and managed to hang on. On his screen the computer once more aligned his targeting system with the heaviest concentration of armored vehicles. His eyes, trained by hours in the sims to look for the distinctive shapes of armored personnel carriers and target them first, quickly found a group of them near the top of the screen. He moved his head in that direction, which in turn moved the cannon under the belly and the targeting crosshairs on the screen. In the sims he had learned to smoothly set the crosshairs over an APC, unleash a shot, and then repeat the process with the other barrel of the cannon, all in relation to the movement of the aircraft and the targets themselves, and all in less than three seconds. Here, with the wild pitching and turning and the battering of the centrifugal forces, something that was not present in the sims, his fine motor control was thrown all to hell. Try as he might, he could not get the crosshairs to slide smoothly where he wanted it to go. Presently, the targets disappeared from the screen again as Dwyerson banked the aircraft back into the safety of the hills.
'Fuck!' Matt screamed as they dove down over the top of the first hill and banked hard to the right again. His mood was not improved by the sound of Dwyerson laughing over the intercom. 'How the fuck does anyone hit anything out here?' he demanded.
'Practice, newbie,' Dwyerson said. 'That's what we're doing out here. Let's make another run. You don't get to go back to base and clean the puke out of your helmet until you hit something.'
And while Jeff Waters was learning to get along with his new playmates and his best friend Matt Mendez was getting first degree burns on his neck from the stomach acid in his vomit, Lisa Wong was enduring a tribulation of her own.
She, along with fifty-nine other members of the special forces training class, were eight kilometers outside the safety of the base, in the wastelands, all of them dressed in full biosuits, their M-24s slung over their shoulders, and all of them lugging large equipment packs that weighed twenty kilos in the reduced gravity. They had been in the training class for two days now and this was their first physical training run. Since the primary job of the special forces teams was to operate outside, far from the protection of the pressurized environment, that was where they were doing it. Since all of the recruits had been regular soldiers before the training all of them were already in better than average physical shape. The eight kilometer run over the sandy hills and rough terrain of the Martian surface had been tiring of course and had been quite a bit more than most of them were really used to, but no one had been forced to drop out of formation. Their oxygen levels however, were all getting low. The physical exertion they were under was causing them to use more out of their reservoirs than the extractors could replace. Even the most physically fit of them had been in a constant state of discharge since kilometer number two.
Lisa's suit was currently at 38 percent in the reservoir, about enough for another thirty minutes of running at the rate she was consuming it. Her legs were sore and her face beneath her helmet was sweaty but otherwise she felt good. She was glad that they were starting them off slowly in the physical training department. The reputation of the special forces school was somewhat notorious for being grueling in this particular category. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, the horror stories about running the recruits into the ground were just rumors.
The run ended a few minutes later at the base of a large hill that rose up from the red soil. It stood about six hundred meters above the ground and the mapping program in their combat computers listed it as a defensive emplacement for infantry troops. Its slopes were about forty-five to fifty degrees. A winding, twisting trail that snaked between boulders and outcroppings of rock could be seen leading to the top.
'Okay folks,' said Lieutenant Wilton, the primary instructor of this particular training platoon, his booming voice coming through their tactical radio earpieces, 'in front of you you will note a large piece of rock and soil known as a hill. Specifically, it is Hill 607, which is part of the inner defensive perimeter for Eden. On top of this hill is a large trench in which there are ammunition storage containers and mounts for heavy machine guns. You will also note that the hill is quite steep and that it is accessed via a foot trail. Your task now is to climb this hill and enter this trench. You will climb quickly, as if enemy forces are moving in on you at this very moment. Stillwell,' he barked, calling out the name of one of the trainees, 'let's go back to basic infantry training here for a moment. When climbing a hill to position yourself, do you want to do it quickly?'
'Yes, Lieutenant,' Stillwell answered immediately, his voice somewhat breathless.
'Correct,' he said. 'Wong, tell me why that is.'
Lisa took a deep breath of the manufactured air in her helmet. 'Because you're vulnerable to enemy fire while ascending,' she answered. 'Your movement and cover are limited and the enemy can see you and engage you from a long way off.' Out of the corner of her eye she saw several of her teammates casting contemptuous looks at her, obviously unimpressed by her military knowledge. There was little she could do or say to impress them. She was the only woman among them, indeed the only woman in special forces planetwide and they had already made it quite clear that they did not think she belonged there.
'Very good,' Wilton said tonelessly. 'And that is why you will all proceed up that hill immediately and as quickly as possible. You will not stop along the way to rest. The first person to make it to the top will earn himself or herself a twenty-four hour pass and a one hundred dollar intoxicant credit at the club. So lets get going. Up, up, up! Right now! Everyone! Move it out!'
Lisa moved with the others towards the base of the hill, her suited legs and heavy boots treading carefully over the rocky, sandy terrain, utilizing the shuffle step which was how one walked in the reduced gravity. Several of the others pushed in ahead of her. One of them, Stillwell as a matter of fact, deliberately nudged her shoulder with his, almost throwing her off balance.
'Sorry,
