Teaser Tuesday (1 March)

Marching headlong into spring, this is the first Teaser Tuesday of the month.
...well, it's Tuesday already somewhere in the world.

"Are you in trouble again? Did you kidnap another world leader when I wasn't looking?"
"No, but the day's young yet," Picard said, pulling down on the front of his uniform.

p. 21, Paths of Disharmony. Dayton Ward.

Combat was physically exhausting for even the strongest of fighter pilots, requiring enormous effort from limbs that were stiff with cold, as well was constant, almost superhuman alertness, split-second reaction to danger, and complete physical indifference to rapidly building g-forces and stomach-churning changes of direction that no fairground ride in the world could have imitated -- with your mouth dry from breathing oxygen; your eyes smarting from the fumes of gasoline, oil, and exhaust seeping into the cockpit and from staring into the sun; and the radio pouring into your ears a constant tumult of static, orders, warnings, and awful cries of pain and despair. All this in the knowledge that you were sitting behind (or in the Messerschmitt, in front of and above) many gallons of high-octane fuel that could turn you into a blazing torch in seconds, not to speak of hundreds of rounds of ammunition, while somewhere from above and behind you another nineteen- to twenty-year old might already be swooping down on you from behind the sun to change your role in an instant from hunter to prey and end your life in a burst of fire lasting less than a second. 

p. 65- 66, With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain. Michael Korda.