"The ship is your life," Corporal Greaves reminded him. "You have to become more comfortable in there than out here."
The man was hanging on the edge of the simulator pod. Oz nodded at him from the seat within, his hands wrapped tight against the joysticks.
"You find one target. You destroy it. You find the next. That's how this works. There may be a thousand things coming at you, friend and foe alike. But you focus on one target. You kill it. You move on. Understood?"
Oz nodded again.
"Learning through failure," Greaves said. "Let's go." He slapped at the control button.
The seat rumble forward as the pod sealed itself. There was a moment of darkness, and then the controls blinked to life. The view screen ahead of him flickered, and then showed the air field ahead of him, a perfect copy of the real thing.
The corporal's voice echoed around the pod, fuzzy from intercom static. "Take off pre-check. Let's go, private."
Oz worked his way down the list, reading off items as he verified them. "Cameras... not in order," he said, stopping suddenly. "Looks like the rear eight is out. Or, there's interference."
"What do you want to do about it?" the corporal, his voice giving away nothing.
Oz scrambled, trying to picture the training manual in his head, and the troubleshooting indexes.
"Running diagnostic now." When in doubt, reboot. The scan ran for a moment, then finished. The static still remained. "I think it's a cable loose."
"Can you see out of it?"
"Not well."
"Are you asking to scrap the mission?"
Oz weighed his options. It was some kind of protocol test. "Yes, sir. I want a mechanics check."
There was a long moment of silence. A sigh came through the intercom. "A good decision."
There was a click, and then the camera returned to normal. "Better now?"
"Yes, sir."
With the checklist complete, there was nothing left to do but to set the take off procedure in motion. The computer rolled him onto to track. At Command's word, he was sent rocketing forward down the runway.
The visuals might have been virtual, but the motion inside most definitely was not. Oz's body flattened into the chair as the force of take-off crushed against him. Before it had even settled in, an alarm was blurting against his ear. The sound of it was drowned out in the pressure that pounded through his ears. But something was wrong.
The floor trembled violently. There was a hard pull to the side, and then he was in a spiral. The world flipped upside down, then flipped again, spinning him wildly. The ground appeared and, with one final, violent shake, the lights were gone and the pod slid back open.
Oz unbuckled and crawled out on his elbows, vomiting onto the floor as he went. The training room was spinning around him, and he collapsed onto his back, shaking.
"Did you see what happened?" Greaves asked. He sounded far away.
Oz felt sick again as he tried to respond.
"Enemy clipped you as you left the ground. Did you hear them fire?"
"No," Oz grunted. He spat against the floor.
"And you never will. Listen for the alarms, check your screens, stay alert." The corporal watched him for a moment. "In this case, though, there was nothing to be done. Better get used to having your guts in your lungs and the world in freefall.
"It comes with experience. Fight through it, private."
Oz climbed to his feet. "Can we run it again, sir?"
"Absolutely."
By the third time, he was able to 'die' without getting sick. Either he was getting better, or his stomach was empty, he decided.
"No time for lunch," Greaves told them as they headed back down the hall an hour later. Their allotted time slot was complete and the floor outside the pod had been polished clean again.