Sunset
The plan seemed monstrous to the LAM pilot.
The WSP 100b buzzed alone and low over the ocean’s dark surface, its LTV 150 engine straining. The watery horizon had swallowed the planet’s sun minutes earlier. The LAM was rapidly fading from view.
The man in the cockpit looked over a series of blue-lit instruments. No sign of the pod yet.
At the briefing, the intelligence officer said the Federated Suns were “working on something new”. Meaning they had found something old and were trying to figure out what to do with it. This caught the attention of the DCMS brass. Plans were proposed, politicized, and preached.
The Davion research and development station was hidden under fathoms of seawater on an isolated planet. But Dragons have sharp eyes and long arms. So said the Tai-sa as he concluded the briefing with an artful striking of the table.
The Wasp reached the waypoint. The pilot’s gloved finger depressed a button, sending the expected signal. He then cautiously triggered a transition to AirMech mode. The grey machine slowed and shuddered as limbs emerged from the airframe. The unusual machine hung suspended between dark waves and diming sky as it circled and waited.
The plan was described as an honorable mix of daring but clever. With utmost stealth and secrecy, a dropship would deliver ‘Mechs to an isolated, rocky island some distance from the station. Two ‘Mechs, each assigned to a submersible filled with troops, would then walk into the surf, step off submerged cliffs, and sink to distant ocean bottom.
The submersibles were equipped with breaching air locks designed to seal against the exterior bulkhead before cutting through metal, insulation, wiring, and whatever else separated dark, frigid water from breathable air. The breaching force would enter the station, secure whatever it was they were looking for, and return to the submersibles. The ‘Mechs would then walk back the cliff edge where the submersibles would blow their precisely calibrated ballast tanks and lift themselves and the ‘Mechs from the depths. The Davions would be left only with holes in a doomed station. He could picture the troops, far below him, bunched together with weapons raised as the cutting lasers finished their work. Daring, indeed.
The real tactical acumen, however, was to send the object of the raid immediately to the surface in a buoyed pod.
And this is where he came in, thought the pilot with a wry smile. Grab the pod, stow it, and meet a second dropship in orbit. Clever.
A combined-arms masterpiece they said. Akin to an orchestra. But harmony was notoriously difficult. A gloried getaway car for an otherwise suicidal mission, he thought.
A ping emitted from the instruments. The pod had surfaced.
Glory to the Dragon.
9th
