The 'liberation' of Tetsuyama occurred when human military forces conducted an extremely rapid raid on the Tripod forces encamped there (the Tripods had previously taken the planet from the humans colonized there; this is why the invasion was called a liberation).  A critical part of the human attack was the storming of virtually all of the Tripod positions simultaneously; this was accomplished through extensive use of direct space-to-surface rapid insertion craft, such as the one depicted above.  The craft's strange shape is a result more of the necessity of carrying it and several like it on a single starship than any atmospheric concerns.  The use of such craft is expensive, and as it turned out, the Tripods were preparing for an evacuation already; thus, the Liberation of Tetsuyama was in fact something of a humiliation for human intelligence-gathering.
 

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