Conflagration

The Ol' Switcheroo

The rest of that day, Lyssa found her nerves too tightly wound to even think about the dive or the HEVA suit. She knew she should put the suit on and at least try to practice the search pattern, but she needed to get her mind off it. Instead, she spent a couple hours directing the welding together of a steel descent trolley. The trolley would attach to one of the carbon fiber support cables which anchored the platform to the lake bottom more than a kilometer below. Tomorrow, when Lyssa put on the HEVA suit, climbed aboard the trolley, and released the brake, it would run along the cable all the way to the bottom. Lyssa really didn't like the idea of more than a kilometer of water between herself and the surface.

Once the trolley was assembled, she climbed into the maintenance mech's cockpit, slid her arms into the control sleeves, and began its engine startup sequence. In the big mech, designed for mounting wings and engines to spaceplanes, Lyssa crossed the small service platform in only two strides. She took a subtle joy in watching the pirates scurry out of her way. With a single swipe of the mech's massive arm, she could send most of the men flying into the water. Let whatever was in that water eat them! She was tempted. She'd always loved piloting mechs. Inside a mech, she never felt weak or small. Inside a mech, she was large, powerful, strong. Piloting mech suits was one of the first things that had attracted Lyssa to learning to be a mechanic.

She picked up the HEVA suit easily with one of the mech's massive liftarms. The HEVA suit was bulky in its own right, but in the hands of the mech, it looked like a child's doll. She gently set the HEVA suit onto the newly assembled descent trolley and stood back as a couple of the pirates used chains to secure it to the trolley. That done, Lyssa moved back in with her mech and picked up the whole trolley, HEVA suit and all. She activated the Mech's thrusters and lifted slowly off the platform to hover a few meters in the air. She turned the suit to face the shimmering lake surface.

She wasn't as worried about going into the water in the big, powerful mech. She'd like to see something try to mess with her now. She'd cut its goddamn head off with the mech's plasma torch. Bring it on, motherfucker! she thought at the deceptively placid lake water. Too bad the mech couldn't be modified to work on the bottom like the HEVA suit. She piloted the mech over the edge of the platform and lowered it into the water. Even in spite of the mech's seeming indestructibility, she couldn't help but feel a little frightened as the water came up over the mech's cockpit canopy.

Under the water, she piloted the mech to one of the several carbon fiber anchor cables near the edge of the platform. She secured the trolley's guide wheel around the cable. She made extra sure the trolley's brake was secure. Cautiously, she let go of the trolley and was relieved to see its brake hold it in place. It would be a very bad thing to drop the trolley with their only HEVA suit chained to it. Next, she secured an extra safety chain from the trolley to the underside of the service platform.

She backed away from the trolley and looked up. The HEVA suit, chained to the trolley, stood in what looked to be about waist-deep water at the edge of the platform. Tomorrow, the HEVA suit would ride that trolley all the way to the bottom of the lake. With her inside.

Lyssa tried not to think about that.

That job done, she looked through the murk and could barely make out the shape of the hardpointer's belly in the water. She needed to inspect the repairs on the plane. Ever since that first day when something had touched her in the water (it made her shiver just to think about it), she'd been unwilling to go back into the water. Instead of carrying out the repairs herself, she'd just programmed the mech's "Bot Mode" to carry out the repairs. Mechs like this one had sophisticated onboard computers which could allow the machine to perform basic tasks without a pilot. She was confident that the mech had done good work, but she just couldn't allow people (particularly Erin) to fly aboard 788NC until she personally inspected the repairs and put her guild stamp in the plane's logbook.