Viewpoint Sierra, 9:42 Local

I awoke as another fit of turbulence rocked the cargo plane we had been riding in. It was common to be transported across vast distances in a plane, but this felt strange, being in this massive craft and being completely alone. Well, almost alone, for there was Salt sleeping across a pair of seats opposite from mine, and snoring, loudly, Captain, who was copying something from a textbook into a notebook was farther forward, and Adley, who was playing with some kind of electronic game a seat ahead of me, which once in awhile emitted a beep or two. Mentioning Captain, he had seemed a disheartened when we finally left Crowbank. Captain was half Navajo and was a quiet type, although he did have his moments of emotion and was transferred to our crew after getting in a fight after a idiot first year student threw a racial slur at him and he responded. Violently. And then again, the title of 'quiet' doesn't really do him service. He was quiet because he would rather listen to us bark at each other then to himself talk, something I wish Salt would learn, and only did what was asked of him, nothing more, nothing less. Salt was basically the exact opposite, for he, one, never kept his mouth shut unless he had been explicitly ordered to, and two, always tried to showboat his skills as a gunner to whoever would listen, which combined to form a extremely infuriating personality which had gotten himself put on the M3 after he back talked McClay one to many times while being the gunner on his Pershing. But he was almost indispensable as a marksman, and could reliably hit a target at about a 300 yards, which was better than the majority of the gunners on our team. And Adley, poor little Adley. Adley was the runt of the team, he was the only one of our crew that had continuous problems completing our monthly physicals, and regular brought down the wrath of the older students upon himself, not to mention he was the only first year student in the entire program, which would explain his scuffle with McClay. Also, Adley had a bad habit of attempting to modify our radio equipment and rather than making it better, he usually made it much worse, sometimes forcing the maintenance crew (who were just auto shop students who wanted extra credit, like I had once been) to remove and replace the old radio with a new one. I stretched my legs, yawned and then stretched my arms over the back of my seat. I uncreased my dress uniform, which McClay had required us to wear while traveling, no matter how long or short the journey. The proper Crowbank School Tankary team's field dress (which was kind of ironic since we didn't wear it in 'the field') included a set of leather boots, cavalry style khaki jodhpurs and a olive green long sleeve collared shirt with a pleather Sam Browne belt. But the biggest insult, by far, was the fact we had to wear a neckerchief. A neckerchief. It made us look, instead of like tankers, like paramilitary boys scouts. The article was made mainly green cloth, with yellow trimming and a circular patch on the center of its back with our school's motto (Courage, Pride, Honor, Sacrifice) in yellow, encircling the image of a crow in flight on a sky blue background and was held in place by anything you wished to use. I personally either held it with the little metal slide we used on parade or didn't wear it at all.

"Does anybody know how long it's gonna be?" Salt asked in a slurred voice from across the aisle, raising his head and stirring from his slumber.

"Probably only a few more hours." I replied, sighing. Salt groaned, yawned and return to his head down position. Adley popped his head over his seat to face me, smiling,

"I wouldn't be surprised if he could sleep through a plane crash." he said playfully.

"I really wouldn't be surprised, tell the truth." I replied, looking out the window beside me. I had found the layout of the plane interesting, for it had been built as a freight carrier, however, it had later in its career been converted to carry a limited number of passengers in a compartment behind the cockpit where the front of the cargo bay would usually be. It was also separated from the cargo by an insulated wall, and pressurized like the cockpit, making it actually quite comfortable, except for the jolts of turbulence that rocked the aircraft every so often. Below us, the dark ocean stretched out to infinity, and a bright, cheerful sun was still low in the morning sky. We had left the airstrip at dusk and had made a short stopover in the middle of the night at someplace that was intensely warm for it being something like two in the morning, to refuel and exchange crews, and were suppose to be within a few hundred miles of our destination by now.

-Local 16:00-

Without much fanfare, a young woman with a orangish-blonde hair and a quiet voice came from the cockpit, introduced us as our copilot and asked us for our attention.
"I am to alert you that you should report to your vehicle, we're about ten minutes out from our destination, and that all of your equipment should have been checked and strapped down to your vehicle before you're dropped."

"Dropped?!" Adley cried out, confused. The outburst spooked Salt, waking him and attracted Captain's attention. Adley had missed the briefing before we went airborne to find a vending machine, and had ended up wandering around the airport for almost a hour and once he found a machine, managed to break it in less than a minute.

"It was part of your briefing that due to a lack of a accessible runway, you are to be dropped from an altitude of about two thousand feet inside your vehicle with all of your supplies strapped onboard." The copilot began, confused and with a slight tinge of annoyance in her voice. "You did pay attention during the briefing, correct?" She asked. Adley started to babble some excuse that was less than convincing. However, not intending to miss the target, I immediately got up and started towards the cargo bay, accepting my fate to be thrown out the back of a flying box in a metal brick, while motioning for the rest of the crew to follow. I heard Adley protesting, however, he still followed. When I reached the door separating the two chambers I found it was locked, however, the copilot was within seconds upon the door with a key and unlocked it, with Captain carrying his books in the crook of his arm and Adley in tow behind her and Salt behind them just rising from his seats. She then proceeded to open the heavy metal exit, allowing a chilly blast of wind to fill the cabin, forcing us to quake from the unexpected cooling and the sound of the wind and the engines, which had existed as a low, constant din but had now increased significantly.

"We'll open the doors when we get within a few miles of the target, I hope you had a nice trip!" The copilot said, almost inaudible over the wind.

"Thanks for the ride!" I replied before pushing past her into the cargo bay, which contained very little with the exception of our tank. I double checked that the bags and parachute that the ground crew had tied to the back of the tank, which now that I thought about it, might impede the M3's turret from traversing a full circle around, were secured in their places and began to mount our positions, although I had to help Salt up onto the turret due to his diminished motor capabilities. I dropped myself into the interior of the Stuart and found my seat, followed by Salt doing the same. A moment or two later, we heard a low rumble and the sounds of the wind and the engines intensify even more.

"They opened the hatch." Captain said, in his characteristic low monotone, peering through his viewport. I peered through the commander's periscope and could only see a mixture of blue-white.

"Yep." I replied, my voice breaking slightly, a sign of my slight terror of being dropped out of a plane onto the unknown. Suddenly there was a sense of slight acceleration as the deck the tank was strapped onto, which were usually used to launch supplies or other 'less squishy' items out of an aircraft, was rolled out of the hatch and into air. All we felt was a little lurch and then nothing. Freefall. It was only a few seconds long, but it felt like hours, just floating, weightless, small objects carelessly bouncing about the interior of the tank, as if we were in space, with the only indications of speed being the whistle of the wind. Then the drogue chute opened, shattering the sense of serenity we had, making the tank shudder from the deceleration, and then the main chute opened. When the actual parachute opened, it felt as if I had been hit by a car from above, a horrible, crushing feeling, causing me to grunt in pain along with almost knocking the wind out off me and nearly falling from my seat. The sensation of heaviness disappeared almost immediately though, and we began our slow descent in relative peace, the roar of the cargo plane's engines still audible, although quickly receding. It was a minute or two before we hit the ground, in a similar manner to a brick, with a loud thud.