“Can they break through the ice at the other end?” BJ wanted to know. “Even a few centimeters can be pretty tough, and it might be thicker than we think. Things freeze fast on Europa, you might’ve noticed!”
“The Mantas carry remote drones for carrying instrument packages. Kaminski here has assured me he can rig some drones with a few grams of antimatter as warheads. That ought to break through anything up to a couple of meters thick.”
“Our maker of exotic weapons,” Melendez said.
“Or our icebreaker,” BJ added. “First from above, now from underneath!”
“‘Icebreaker,’” Kaminski mused. “I like that. I’ll be sure to put that on my resume when I get out of the Corps.” The others laughed.
“So…sir, what do we do when we achieve that surprise?” Graham asked. “Especially given that we don’t know the enemy’s strength.”
“We’ll need to work out the details, of course. What I’d like to do, though, is have a fair-sized force emerge from the ice close to the enemy LZ at just about the time those reinforcements arrive.”
“That’s going to require some pretty close timing, sir,” Kuklock pointed out.
“Yes it is. But if we hit them too early, before their landing craft are committed to touching down at their current base, they would just land somewhere else—maybe a lot closer to Cadmus. And if we wait too long, they’ll be down and fully established, maybe with a lot of hardware and some unpleasant surprises.
“What I’d like to try to do is come up out of that hole with a bunch of Wyverns just as those landers are balancing down out of the sky. A few men could do a lot of damage in a short time. Maybe enough to hurt them so badly that they stop hitting us. We need time. If we buy ourselves just three more days past the twenty-seventh, the Jefferson will be here. If we’re going to pull this off, though, we have to move quickly. We must launch within the next twenty-four hours if we are to reach the Chinese LZ by 0700 hours Zulu on the twenty-seventh. Are there any questions?”
There were a few scattered questions, mostly of a technical nature relating to how the Mantas would be deployed, and how the men would debark from them. At the end, however, there was a single hand in the air—raised by the lone civilian present in the room.
“Yes, Dr. Ishiwara?’
Shigeru Ishiwara had been granted a special status with the Marines, as liaison between them and the CWS science team. Not everyone trusted Vasaliev, and fewer liked him; Ishiwara, though, seemed to be a man of integrity and trust. Jeff had agreed to let him sit in on planning sessions like this one so that they could have his scientific input—and the cooperation of the civilians.
Jeff had especially wanted him in on this meeting, since his submarines were a topic of the discussion. He wanted the quiet Japanese xenoarcheologist to be on their side in this one.
“Major,” Ishiwara began. “What you propose sounds like a bold and daring plan. I have only one question.”
“Yes?” Here it comes, he thought. If there’s going to be a problem with the scientists, this’ll be it….
“If I understand you right, you’ll be following a straight-line chord from point to point, with the Manta submersibles reaching a depth of approximately eighty kilometers at the midpoint.”
“That’s right,” Jeff replied. “I’ve checked those boats out…even got to take a ride in one in the Bahamas, Earthside. They’re rated as safe to a depth of ten thousand meters on Earth—that’s a thousand atmospheres—or the equivalent of a depth of seventy-seven kilometers here on Europa. And we have a bit of a safety margin to play with. We shouldn’t have any problem at that depth. If we do, we can adjust our path to keep to a shallower level.”
“It was not the depth that was concerning me, Major Warhurst. Are you aware that your proposed course will take you very close to the position of the Singer?”
Jeff’s breath caught in his throat. No, he hadn’t known. Or rather, he’d known, in general, where the alien artifact was, but he had not put that bit of information together with the rest when he’d been working out the plan.
“I’d…not considered that, Doctor. Are you suggesting that we avoid the straight line path?” They could take a longer route, but the less time the Marines on board had to remain in their pressure suits, the better. The total time they’d be living off their PLSS backpacks was dangerously long already. And after the strike, they would have to make the same voyage back.
“Not necessarily,” Ishiwara said. “The Singer has not shown any interest in us, or in the remote probes we have sent to that location. And it’s not exactly on the straightline path, but a little to the south. It seems likely that the Mantas would pass unchallenged.”