<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/fa/Mars_test.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Lt Colonel Louise Cotter</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Hangar</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td>Alone, for the moment</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td>Admiring the ride.</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>Louise walked around the bulk of the orbital shuttle, and stopped as her eyes fell on the craft she was going to be flying. It wasn't a thing of beauty by any means. Clearly intended as a long range cargo aircraft, the control surfaces were way out of proportion to the size of the thing, It's swollen belly made it look pregnant - her thoughts returned to her lover for a moment and she tried to imagine what the major would look like with a swollen tummy. The variable geometry wings were folded in for take off and the massive engines were rotated vertically, the turbo-props horizontal. The propeller blades were long, fat and sharply curved, designed to produce maximum thrust in the thin Martian air.<br/><br/>"Hmm. Well aren't you a fun looking bird", Louise muttered to herself, and began walking around the VSTOL craft. For some reason she kicked all the tyres. It was something of a tradition among pilots. Reaching up, she jumped in the light gravity and just managed to get a fingertip to the elevator flap on the left stabiliser fin.<br/><br/>"Ah, Colonel", One of the maintenance staff came out of the back of the plane, dressed in greasy blue overalls. "She's all prepped and fuelled and ready to go." The groundie handed Louise a digital tablet, which listed the craft's specifics, the load, the life support capacity, the fuel load, the range, the ceiling. "If you fly great circle, you'll have more than enough fuel to get back, but if you have to fly around any weather on the way out you should abort, because you may need the reserve to fly around weather on the way back."<br/><br/>"Right, I'll bare that in mind Matthews, thanks." The civilian technician didn't salute, something that Louise was still getting used to. She trotted up the ramp, briefly inspecting the cargo in the hold. It looked to be secure, but that was Q's job as load-master on this trip. Instead she climbed the short stairwell and through the pressure door into the passenger compartment, then forward, noticing how the twenty seats so closely resembled the old twentieth century economy class aircraft seats in the way they were crammed together into two rows across the width of the small cabin Forward of that, were the toilets, then the small galley, and last another pressure door that led through to the flight deck.<br/><br/>Louise slid into the left seat and plugged her implant into the ship's on-board systems.