Echoes in the dark: Hope begins. [OPEN]

“Skies and oceans are all one and the same. They’re all blue.” These were words spoken by a flight instructor of New Melbourne Defense Force Naval Flight School; words that echoed in the hearts and minds of pilots who had proven that they were ready to pilot some of the world’s most advanced crafts that had ever been made. The oceans and the skies were indeed blue, but there came a point where the blue gave way to the blackness of nothing. This was a fact that each pilot soon came to learn and trained to overcome, because the blackness of the empty skies above and engulfing depths of the ocean below caused more failures and withdrawals than the rigorous combat and performance exercises that each pilot undertook. While flying through the high-altitude skies may have been a feat of wonder and amazement that most were able to handle, it was the absolute blackness of the ocean’s deep dark that often consumed the mind of a pilot.

With nothing visible to the naked eye, the pilot became reliant on the technology that surrounded them. Though, during the scenarios when such equipment failed and became inoperative while pilots were in the deep dark, the crushing sensation of the blackness that surrounded each person became more mentally damaging than getting shot down. The only thing that defeated pilots even more than the claustrophobic emptiness of equipment failure was the sensation of being shot down while in the deep dark. To this end, pilots in simulation training and dry-run exercises were subjected to impossible odds while in the dark depths of the ocean all to simulate the experience of getting shot down in the crushing black. Out of the many recruits that entered naval flight school in hopes of flying such advanced crafts, only half of the pilots ever made it through the program because of these mental scares. Yet, for a very select few, it was in these depths that they found their homes. Even if they had the freedom of flight at high altitudes, these few found solace in the empty, sightless void of the ocean’s deep dark. It was in the deep that Amyas Raeburn found his peace.

Clad in a flight suit of grey-blue, the middle-aged man with was awash in the soft light that glowed in their colours of blues, reds, whites, and greens. Each of the three main multi-function displays fed constant information of the Rokh ASC as it tore a gaping path through the dark waters. The nose of the strike craft pierced through the water at supersonic velocities, creating a gaseous void that completely engulfed the vessel. Two spears of white stabbed at the blackness behind the Rokh, evidence of the two liquid-fueled rockets working to sustain the supercavitating effects caused by the craft’s immense underwater speeds. The broad-bodied fuselage nosed its way up as the control surfaces and the exhaust ports of the engines angled the vessel to begin its rapid ascent towards the surface, while the thrust began to decrease due to the dropping pressure.

“Acionna’s Sorrow,” Amyas called out in a calm and leveled voice as he pulled the throttle back completely once he neared a depth of thirty meters to bring his vessel to a stop. He leveled out his craft and looked up at the surface of the water to catch the ever-shifting glowing silhouette of the sun that hung high in the pale blue skies above the Solomon Sea. His helmet’s visor remained opaque for the time being to allow his eyes murky hazel to take in the shifting blues of the pristine sea water above him. The forever-undulating surface of the ocean bent and split the blinding light of the sun into shafts of light that illuminated the white paint of the Rokh that floated silently in the waters of the sea. Shifting shadows of waves toyed along the delta-wings of the craft, dancing in their endless scurry in the hopes of touching and teasing the metal contours of the vessel.

“Unidentified craft,” replied a harsh, authoritative voice over the communicator in a tone that was akin to the deranged yelling of a crazed man, “state your business and authenticate identity immediately or you will be destroyed.”

Amyas shook his head as his hand reached up from the flight stick to begin keying in his identification while supplying the authentication counter-sign of his employer. Such was the nature of these touchy military commanders who had too much pride in them for a country that had little respect for neither itself nor its people. Still, the contract he accepted required that he made his way to the decrepit and enslaved ocean city of Acionna’s Sorrow, so that was what he endeavored to do. While he could have simply spent his time supercavitating at the bottom of the Solomon Sea to his destination and smuggle himself in, he would rather have had open access to his strike craft if and when he ever needed it.

“Rokh, you are cleared for approach to Acionna’s Sorrow,” informed another, calmer voice that did not sound as if the person on the other side was going to have a hernia from yelling too much. “Approach heading one-one-four, cleared for dock with Module 7. Do not approach the Central Hub or you will be fired upon.”

“Willco,” Amyas returned as he pushed his throttle forward once more. The rockets flared back to life, roaring behind him as they drank hungrily at the tanks of fuel in the fuselage of his Rokh, though they did not bring the craft to the terrifying effects of supercavitation this time around. Instead, Amyas angled his fighter out of the water and began to fly just above the surface at a steady subsonic velocity to cover the last fifty kilometers that Acionna’s Sorrow maintained as a border. He looked down at the map on his left MFD after having cycled to it and began to turn towards the heading indicated as the approach heading to the dock that he had been directed to. As he leveled out in the final approach, though, he watched on as a large dome-like structure climbed over the horizon. Like a monstrous discus that found its way to the ocean’s surface, colossal eight-kilometer wide Central Hub of the once-magnificent ocean city floated on the ocean’s surface. The hull glistened in the light of the sun as even in its worn condition, one could have easily understood the beauty and wonder that the city must have been. Even through the now-tinted visor of his helmet, it was easy to see the pockmarks and scoring that dotted the surface of the heavily damaged upper hemisphere of the Central Hub, scarring from the decay of time and poor maintenance coupled with the abusive tendencies of the nearby Kayuratan navy.

Amyas guided his vessel towards what was indicated as Module 7 on his visor’s HUD that projected onto the tinted glass. He lowered his speed and his altitude until he finally collided with the rippling surface of the ocean. The entirety of the fighter shook and shuddered from the impact forces though the pilot in the cockpit gave nary a flinch. As a vessel designed to fly through the air and the sea as well as capable of handling rough transitions, a few bumps were barely noticeable and were merely taken as a normality. With only a few hundred meters left on his approach, he turned off the rocket engines and switched to the pump-jet engines for precise low-speed maneuvers. The roar of the rockets disappeared immediately while the covers of each pump-jet engine retracted, revealing the inlet and the outlet of each of the motors integrated into the fuselage.

With absolutely no guidance from what would have been Module 7’s dock control, Amyas Raeburn pulled his Rokh Aerial/Submarine Craft into a seemingly deserted hollow. There were no vessels of any kind, but yet the waterways were clogged with almost no way to navigate through to a proper docking point. A shanty town of repurposed and salvaged metals instead floated on the water with fastenings and anchors attached to one another to prevent from drifting apart. Mooring lines once used to hold ships, fighters, and boats to the main structure of the dock now held these floating homes of raggedy-dressed people in. What were once the retractable doors of the dock to protect the insides from weather effects and prevent flooding during times when the entire city was submerged now remained the framework with completely rusted mechanisms. Amyas let out a breath of annoyance against the inside of his helmet and decided to nudge his craft in carefully. The onlookers that stared in curious wonder began to move away from the edge of their little town as he crept nearer and nearer, the pump-jet engines of his fighter maintain a steady velocity with their powerful albeit small selves.

After some careful maneuvering and scaring the residents out of one floating structure in particular, Amyas Raeburn, freelance pilot that accepted most any contract, finally pulled his strike craft to a halt. He shut off all propulsion systems and the powerplants of his rockets while powering down the computer systems. Precariously placed between two floating structures, the Rokh was not in a place that the pilot enjoyed but it was necessary since it was the only dock of the module. In fact, it was the only dock that he was allowed in. Why Module 7 of all places? Why not the Central Hub? Amyas shrugged it off while the canopy of his Rokh opened up. He did not care at this point. He just wanted to complete his task, receive his pay, and get out of this dump.