“Nothing to worry about, sergeant,” he said, although I noted he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. “There’s a computer than does most of the flying, and a Kristang in orbit can take over and land this thing remotely if needed. The guys up front are there to make coffee.”

I didn’t laugh.

The flight was uneventful, except it ended in a landing so abrupt it made me think the pilot was Navy, not Air Force, and he was trying to land our Dumbo on an aircraft carrier. Then I saw the ‘airfield’, which was a dirt field, a field that had contained some sort of crops recently, before the land was cleared for airplanes. Without much waiting around, we were marched across the field to a rank of waiting Buzzards. I was excited, eager for a ride in the unfamiliar aircraft. Thirty of us crammed into a Buzzard. I wanted to sit in the doorway, legs hanging out into the air, rifle on my lap as the Buzzard roared low across the landscape. The copilot quickly straightened me out. “This bird isn’t a Blackhawk, sergeant, we cruise around four hundred miles an hour when we get to altitude. If you want to hang out the door, go ahead, but shut it behind you.”

I found a seat, a staff sergeant was grinning at me, but he later told me he'd been thinking of doing the same thing. The flight in the Buzzard was also uneventful, much smoother than any helicopter I’d flown in, and we flew across endless farmland and scattered forests and lakes, until we circled a village and set down.

When the door of the Buzzard popped open, we smelled it. You know the scent of new-mown hay, or, if you’ve lived in the suburbs, freshly-cut grass? That clean, fresh, invigorating scent, a scent of nature that reminds you of childhood, of running barefoot across a field, under bright blue heavens, with big puffy white clouds piled high in the sky? Yeah? This was not like that. The scent wafting from the hamster’s field of, whatever the hell they ate, smelled vaguely of-

Baker sniffed, and wrinkled his nose. “Damn. What is that?”

It wasn’t right there, in your face, it was more something at the back of your mind, or the back of your nose, a scent that makes you stop and try to identify it. I had a good memory for scents, but it took me a moment to figure it out, because it was close, but not quite right. “Parmesan cheese.” I announced.

Not parmesan cheese as in, a big hot bowl of spaghetti on a cold winter night, with a couple juicy meatballs on top, and you’ve been smelling that tantalizing tomato sauce simmering on the stove all day, and you’re sitting down with a slice of garlic bread and a glass of hearty red wine, and you sprinkle fresh parmesan on top, and it kind of melts into the sauce? Not that. This was parmesan cheese as in, you’re already sick with like the flu or just an epic hangover, and your stomach is already on the edge, and you smell parmesan cheese that’s been out of the fridge too long, and you know you’re going to hurl. That’s the parmesan cheese we smelled, coming from the fields.