Luckily the two had the wherewithal to put all of their tools in easily moved crates. A quick survey of the little seashell-shaped isle showed them a nice spot at the edge of the lagoon where they could land the grasshopper and unburden the vehicle so they could better prepare it for what they had in mind. Sabatine and Tiber hauled the crates out and even disassembled the two back seats to create more lift, carrying all of the items a dozen meters from the surf to keep any wind-washed waves from soaking them, before hopping back into the grasshopper and skimming over the water until they reached the center of the lagoon. 

"Glad you brought the cables." Sabatine said, unwinding the fiberweave and taking the small stopper at the center of the cable, attaching four smaller hooks to what looked like a miniature platform. The central cable was twenty feet long, and the three attached cables doubled the length. As she prepared them and laid them out to be readily accessible for her new partner, Tiber stripped off his shirt and shoes, revealing a well proportioned and hard muscled form, deeply kissed by the sun. "Looking good skipper." She teased. 

"I don't know. I hear the Empress likes shorter guys." He remarked back. Truth be told, he felt out of shape. The Ultimus Legiones had been hell, but he had never felt more on edge than during his service there. Tiber had felt he had slacked off in the Onocentauri, when he had been given double downtime and a reduced training regime. This past year he'd been positively lazy. 

"There's surgery for that." She joked, winding the cable around the mount on the back of the grasshopper, triple checking the integrity by monitoring the hooks were in place, and placing her boot on the stern and yanking on it, striking the cable with a few bumps of her fingers. It thrummed beautifully. "Shave off a few inches and you'd be proper roman."

"Yeah, yeah. Just get the engine going." Tiber sat down on the starboard edge, trying to add rhythm to his breathing. Only an extremely small contingent of the Imperial military actually required real diving, but training for zero G combat was often done in the ocean, and as fortuna would have it, the Ultima Legiones did teach their men how to dive in case of extenuating circumstances or off-the-grid infiltration. Sabatine tossed him the platform with the other three cables attached. He caught it and found one of the hooks at the end. "If this doesn't work, we'll need to think of something else." 

Three...two...one... 

"Maybe we can ask the empress for help?" Sabatine said just before his eyes and ears were full of water.

Tiber flipped backward, plunging into the lagoon. To do the combat swimmer stroke, one needed dive in or kick off as you would in freestyle, but at the end of your glide, execute a large horizontal scissor kick instead of your normal paddle. As the horizontal scissor kick tilted your body so one arm is slightly higher than the other, you needed to pull that arm back while leaving the other outstretched.

He rotated the movements back and forth, gliding down towards the bottom of the shallow lagoon. Frilled and large finned fish ranging from the the size of hand to a gladius rifle floated like asteroids in space until they zipped out of his way like they were powered by some means of jet propulsion. Last he checked, he could hold his breath for a period of one hundred and eighty seconds. It was likely down to two minutes now. 

Tiber saw a snake-like creature sinuously gliding across the water to his left. Three meters long if he had to guess. He kept an eye on it but found it paid as much attention to him as a falling rock. There were a few dangerous seabeasts on the planet, but other than the venomous, multicolored Coroda Fish and a few sharks, the more dangerous beasts were in far deeper waters. Kicking his feet another three times was all it took to reach the last stretch to the gunboat. Finding a hold on the armored canopy, he pulled himself down to the left and grabbed the hooks strapped to his belt loop. The ship was half submerged in sand, and if he really needed to he could come back down and clear some of it out. As it was, it looked like only the left side was exposed enough to be hooked. He found a nook under the grill at the front, and then another two spots around its armored plating, one by the repulstor lift and the other at the angling lappet.

He felt a tinge of burning in his lungs, and once satisfied the hooks were secured, he kicked off the small encryptor dome at the top and sped back up to the surface. The grasshopper should have the capacity to lift the thing when accounting for buoyancy, provided the sand didn't interfere. The sun above him grew brighter and brighter, and he idly wondered if this would work until he saw a movement to his left. The flick of a serpentine tail. His head whipped to the side to see the serpent that had ignored him earlier gaping at him with razor sharp teeth protruding from its maw, dead eyes locked on his form. [i]Shit[/i], he thought. Apparently the creature had decided he didn't like Tiber so close to his flight path. It suddenly shot at him like a missile, Tiber reaching for the knife at his boot, only to realize he hadn't brought one. [i]You stupid bastard[/i]. 

Angling himself to face the vicious thing, he treated it like he would any knife fight. Limbs up front and feet spread and ready. It darted up and then down, going for his face. Tiber whipped his large forearm across its path, needle-sharp teeth biting into his flesh, blood beading out of the punctured skin of his arm. He whirled, grabbing the fish-snake hybrid with his other arm to squeeze its body, kicking at its sinuous belly from below with his feet. He didn't expect this thing could kill him, but he was about twenty seconds away from a critical need for air, and he had another ten seconds to swim.