You open the heavy door and are immediately struck by its cool darkness.

“Jack, lights on,” you call into the darkness and note the way your voice gets swallowed by the room’s anechoic walls. Your personal assistant hears you though and dutifully obeys.

The lights come on dimly and get gradually brighter, feeding you light comfortably as your pupils adjust. You look around the room, searching for your suit on its hanger on the rail in the corner. Your name is printed across the suit’s shoulders. You walk over, grab it and start pulling it on quickly. In the muted calmness of the room, it’s easy for you to forget the urgency of the situation.

Once donned, you seal the magnetic strip on the front of your suit. As you stride over to the printer, tucked into its alcove in the wall, you feel the gentle stretch of the suit’s clinging material.

“Jack, printer on,” you say, and the printer comes to life, lights flashing and small motors spinning noisily.

“Screen on.” In response, the wall mounted screen above the printer instantly turns on. It is split between two video feeds. The first is an aerial shot of a large sleek object moving slowly through water which is the same greeny-grey colour as the object itself. The second murky image appears to show the same object from below.

“Jack, can you make a model of the mine please - one tenth scale.”

The print carriage starts to move rapidly back and forth, with the extruder starting to build up a model of the mine. After a few seconds the model is complete and you wait for the green light to come on, to show the object is fully set. You pick the model up and study it with interest. You don’t recognise it. It looks like a streamlined cigar with a propulsion system at one end.

“Jack, do you recognise this mine?”

“No, it’s not in the database,” your personal assistant responds through your earpiece. “It appears to be similar to the EM-75, but it’s a different shape.” He then proceeds to reel off various data derived from UUV’s sensors about the estimated payload and its velocity. It is big, but thankfully travelling quite slowly. Despite not recognising this mine, Jack seems pretty certain it was originally anchored and then released in response to either a command or some stimulus.

Questions are buzzing through your mind. “Okay, well I’d better go and take a look before it finds an oil tanker in the middle of the shipping lanes.”

You walk over to the VR area, grab your gloves and take your lens case off the shelf, popping the case in your breast pocket. You put the thin, tight gloves on and then take the seat inside the metal control rig, stationed in the centre of the area. You place the harness belt around your waist, place your elbows into the rest pads and grip the two familiar levers.

With one last breath out, you take the lens case out of your breast pocket and open it. One at a time, you take out each lens on the tip of your index finger and place one in each eye. Temporarily blind, you blink furiously as light streams into your eyes through the lenses. You focus hard on the world that now appears to surround you, stifling the urge to hold your breath and thrash around in the underwater seascape.

Above you, you can see a slightly blurred dark shape. You take hold of the rig’s control levers again and look down, reassured to see your virtual hands wrapped around the virtual levers. You move them both forward slightly and your view thrusts towards the object. You ease off as you get about a metre away.

“Jack, can you enhance the view a bit please.” The view becomes lighter and less blurred. Now you can see what you’re dealing with. From beneath, the mine looks just like the model you printed. You use the rig’s levers to manoeuver yourself round to the rear of the mine in order to study the propulsion unit. Your priority needs to be stopping it from moving towards the shipping lanes and colliding with a ship.

You ask Jack whether he can detect any incoming signals to the mine, hoping you might be able to jam them and cut off any external control. Unfortunately, he assesses the mine is autonomous, making it much more difficult to deal with. You consider your options, conscious that the mine is getting ever nearer to one of the busiest commercial shipping lanes in the world.

You know the obvious next move, but you also really want to recover this mine if you can. It’s the most advanced example that you’ve seen. If the enemy has got a lot more of these, then you know you need to try and get it to the experts in the labs so that they can study it and develop countermeasures.

“Okay, Jack, can you keep me moving at the same speed as the mine please.”

Once Jack has taken over control of the UUV, you move your hands to grab on to the underside of the mine gently. In your field of view two mechanical arms reach round, synchronised with your movements, feeling uncannily like an extension of your body. Your hand movements drive the mechanical arm’s bionic fingers. As they latch onto the mine, your gloves apply gentle pressure to your fingertips, allowing you to feel its smooth surface.

You visually inspect the propulsion unit. It looks capable of providing a lot more speed. You wonder why the mine is travelling so slowly. Perhaps it is malfunctioning. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be released, although none of that will be much consolation if it blows a hole in the side of a tanker. You probe the propulsion system with one of the UUV’s mechanical digits. You think it should be straightforward enough to disable. Suddenly, your view is obscured by an effusion of bubbles. You feel the mine detach from your grip and then see the mine ahead of you. It has picked up considerable speed and is moving away from you.

“Jack, can you catch it up?”

“Negative, it’s travelling too fast.”

You’re now left with no choice. You ask Jack to prepare the mine destruction weapon system.

“Jack, discharge the weapon.”

“Please confirm the command,” he responds crisply.

“Discharge the weapon.” On your command, you watch the small mine neutraliser shoot off and quickly intercepts the mine. A second later, you see a small white sphere erupt underwater. It oscillates as it reaches out towards you. You rush to take the lenses out of your eyes before the explosion sweeps over you, and then sit there in the rig waiting for your heart to slow down before you contemplate going to provide your post mission report.