The titanic disc of the Earth Freighter was suspended in graceful orbit above a planet that was still largely blue. The great swathes of ocean, now more than three quarters of the Earth’s surface, were mostly unobscured by cloud. It was the remaining land that was shrouded in near-perpetual gray. The cycle of water moved faster than it once had. With far less ozone to block it, the ultra-violet rays of the sun drew up more water than it had three centuries ago, but the howling winds promptly blew the condensation toward the great continental ranges, where they halted, piling storm upon storm until they stretched in great tailbacks, all along the mountain ranges and thousands of miles wide. But the oceans were wider than they had been, and just as flat, and so they stayed blue, at least from this distance.

The Freighters themselves were unmanned, both to maximize cargo space and to simplify “re-entry” procedures by omitting the requirement to be survivable by humans. (The survivability of the structure, and any cargo, of course, remained a factor.) The fleet’s owners, the ANS Corporation, had traditionally ensured that each Freighter was state of the art, factoring the high costs of design, construction, and maintenance of the fleet into the price of their food. And all food was their food. The automated navigation systems were all contained at the core of the disc, or “saucer”, as people unthinkingly called them, maximally shielded from the intense heat of re-entry. Surrounding the core were the rows of 24 by 6 meter containers, empty now, to be used for the most perishable foodstuffs. They were five meters wide, and the innermost row was refrigerated. As the saucer narrowed toward the edges, it was filled with 12 by 3 meter containers for hardier foods: dry goods, grains and flours, and anything that had been canned or otherwise sealed to preserve it. These containers were insulated, but not refrigerated, and they were two and a half meters wide. The exterior of the saucer was a high-spec titanium alloy, mined from the Main Asteroid Belt and, latterly, the Kuiper Belt. Windows were entirely unnecessary, so there were none.

Ralf watched the Freighter hovering on his screens: four images in total, three captured in real-time by two satellites and the Orbital Space Station, which also provided the interactive digital fourth image, showing not only the Freighter, but also its projected flight plan, its scheduled progress and acutal progress. Ralf could tap on the image and zoom in on any part or area of the Freighter to observe its status, or even access real-time images from the Freighter’s onboard cameras. So far, the entire display was green, as were the two digital clocks, indicating a precise match of scheduled and real progress. The Real Time clock would go yellow, then red, if there were any delays. In theory at least. Ralf had never seen it happen in 25 years. As usual, the Landing was running precisely on schedule, which was comforting, if tedious. Ralf’s only real complaint was the incessant puffs of sour breath on the back of his neck as that jag-off Sime peered at the screens over his shoulder. Ralf had turned around to glare at the pock-marked kid more times than he could count, but the shit-bag wasn’t getting the message. Each time he just stared back at Ralf with that same dopey grin. If this kept up Ralf would actually have to say something to him. And the thought of that burned him right up. Because he shouldn’t have to say something. Shitheads like Sime should just know not to stand behind Ralf and breath down his neck. He hadn’t spent the best part of his career – his life, really – running the same missions, over and over again, just to have to put up with this crap.

But it was Sime, not Ralf, who spoke.

“Why do they call ‘em ‘saucers’?”

Ralf looked glared back at Sime again, but Jakub just said “Shut up.”

“But what is a saucer? Does it have something to do with sauce?”

“I said shut up,” Jakub growled again. “Stop being such a fucking moron.”

Ralf let out a guffaw at that, and Sime did shut up, but when Ralf looked around again, he still had that fucktarded grin on his face, and he didn’t stop breathing down Ralf’s neck.

Fucking kids. Ralf had been against taking him on in the first place. His dislike of a person was directly proportionate to how much younger they were than Ralf, though he would not have put it that way. And you got extra dislike for talking too much, which Sime did as well. Too much was defined as speaking at any time unless Ralf asked you a direct question.

This was why Ralf didn’t mind Jakub. Jakub was in his forties, or looked it anyway, so didn’t make Ralf feel too old at 56. And Jakub hardly ever spoke at all. His frequent rebukes of Sime during this flight was most Ralf had ever heard Jakub open his mouth in a single sitting. So he didn’t mind Jakub, which was as close to liking another person as Ralf ever got.

And yet, it was Jakub who had insisted on bringing Sime along. Sime was a little squirt at the La Grange Docks: green, stupid, inexplicably confident. Who the hell even knew what he did to get sent down here, but whatever it was, it hadn’t damaged his opinion of himself. In Ralf’s view he had no business flying on an actual mission, even one as routine as a standard Collect and Carry. And he had told the Director as much in a rant that had lasted three quarters of an hour. And as usual, the Director had sighed deeply and rubbed his temples, his usual ritual before giving in to Ralf’s demands. But then Jakub had spoken up. Jakub, who never spoke up at Meetings. Jakub, who hardly ever spoke at all.

“Of course,” he had said, “the boy will never be experienced if he doesn’t get experience. And if he never gets enough experience to fly, what was the point in hiring him?”

Those were the Magic Words. The Director hated waste. Keeping on an employee who didn’t pull his weight was wasteful. Sime would have to earn his salary. But did he have to get his precious experience on Ralf’s ‘copter?

“There’s one pilot in particular,” Jakub had continued, “who has more successful flights under his belt than any other in the outfit. One who has not a single Red in his record. Only one, if fact.”

The Director had tapped his screen and scrolled for a moment.

“Indeed,” he confirmed. “Sime will fly with Ralf.”

And that was that. The Director rose and walked out of the Meeting Room without another word.

So here they all were.

Ralf’s earphone crackled to life.

“All Escorts, this is Orbital Departure Control. Please confirm your positions.”

One by one, the Escorts confirmed their coordinates.

“Escort 1, three zero point seven zero three, minus one three six point eight zero four.”

“Escort 2, two zero point six eight eight, minus one seven two point three one seven.”

“Escort 3, seven point three seven seven, minus one three two point five nine one.”

Ralf read their coordinates on his screen as the pilots confirmed them, then read out his own position.

“This is Escort 4. Our position is twenty two point seven eight five eight degrees North, one hundred fifteen point zero 3854 degrees West and holding.”

Ralf hated that the newer pilots merely read out the numbers, without a thought to what they meant. He wondered if they even knew what underpinned geographical coordinates. Did they even teach that anymore? Ralf was sure that fuckstick Sime hadn’t learned it. If Ralf had his way, they’d still be giving coordinates in minutes and seconds. And Elevation! Departure Control never asked for Elevation anymore. Sure, it was there on everyone’s screens: 35,000 feet. And if the other two coordinates were correct, it wasn’t likely that the altitude was wrong. But it was sloppy. Just because it’s routine, doesn’t mean it don’t matter.

The voice crackled in Ralf’s ear again.

“Confirmed. Starting Descent Sequence. Departure Control Out.”

Far above the High Altitude Copters, the great saucer let out a burst of compressed carbon dioxide from its central reservoir. The brief jet stream nudged the saucer closer to the Earth, just low enough to catch it in the Death Spiral. From this point on, the Freighter would inevitably descend, though a casual observer would not have noted a difference in orbit at this stage.

Several more bursts of oxygen came, this time from two jets near the rim of the craft. They were simultaneous and on opposite sides, and had the effect of turning the saucer slowly on its side, at an acute angle. Then a longer burst from the rim propelled the Freighter closer to the Earth. It was clearly caught in the planet’s gravitational pull now. Finally, four long jets of oxygen from the rim set the saucer spinning, slowly at first, but accelerating until it was impossible to distinguish any features other than the craft’s approximate shape and size. It now looked like a gargantuan rotary blade hurtling toward the blue and gray planet below. No living creature could withstand the centrifugal force of the Re-Entry Spin, which was equivalent to 10 gs. The sidelong position and spin were designed to subject the smallest surface area possible to the incredible friction of the atmosphere, and to distribute that friction as equally as possible around the craft, reducing damage to the heat shielding and making the Freighter as reusable as possible. The spin also helped stabilize the trajectory. Still it was like a disc of fire as it streaked across the sky. If only anyone on Earth were able to see it. As it entered the mesosphere it was traveling at more than six miles per second, but when it broke into the stratosphere a burst of flame – from the Freighter’s fuel payload, tilted it again. Now the craft used its broad disc to provide deceleration. Still spinning, it cut a fiery path through the sky, hidden from human sight by the incessant cloud cover, but audible for thousands of miles.

The spinning slowed to merely dizzying levels, and the Freighter made frequent use of jet propulsion to slow its velocity and correct its route. This was all automated, but theoretically overseen by human observers at Orbital and in the Escort Copters, perched at the edge of the troposphere, awaiting the arrival of their monthly flying saucer.

Even at their great distances, the Copter pilots could see the streak of flame cut across the sky toward the west coast of a strange peninsula still all but connecting two great continents. The saucer slowed, uncannily, the flames cooling to thick smoke, then dissipating in the wind. All four Copters were in privileged positions over the ocean, away from the endless blocks of cloud cover, and the black smoke was the first brief smear on an otherwise uninterrupted clear sky.

Ralf ignored the tired spectacle of the flaming disc hovering over the ocean, keeping his eyes instead on the screen’s countdown.

“Hold on tight” he said, out of habit, really, for he didn’t give two fucks if his jack-ass companions fell and cracked their skulls. Then with the preternatural reflexes that come from long practice, he fired the thrusters precisely as the counter dropped to zero. Immediately the Copter rocked forward, accelerating to hundreds of miles an hour within a minute, creating g-forces comparable to a spacecraft launch in the process.

To an observer, it would have looked like a mechanical ballet. The great saucer spinning in the exact middle of an invisible circle. Then from four cardinal points, the Copters approach, at precisely the same speed, at precisely the same time, on what appears to be a collision course with the disc. But they swerve at the exact same time, matching their speed to the saucers spin, imitating a synchronous orbit. Then, precisely five seconds after the establishment of this orbit, four guided hooks towing four carbon-fibre cables shoot forth from the four Copters, connecting at four receivers. The aim is impeccable. As one unit, the Copters begin to slow their orbit, slowing the saucer in turn, until it lies motionless, suspended between them as they hover over the Great Ocean, whose depths had never been fully discovered before the Exodus. And this was the tableau that would have ended the ballet, if there had been anyone to watch. But there was no one, not even in the Space Station, far above the world.

Ralf spoke to the three other pilots, perfunctorily confirming their coordinates, then swung his Copter onto its new course.

“Why is it called Re-entry?” Sime asked. The little shit had been respectfully silent during the Pick-Up, probably gaping like a moron at his first glimpse of a Freight Saucer in motion. But clearly that moment of silence had passed.

Ralf let out a prolonged sigh, but Jakub merely repeated his former refrain of “Shut up.” Sime, however, was undeterred.

“If the Saucers are made up there, shouldn’t just be called ‘entry’? I mean, ‘re-entry’ is really what happens when it goes back up. If you think about it.”

Ralf winced, pulled his hand across his face, and blew his top.

“God damn it, you fucking moron, are you gonna shut the fuck up, or am I gonna have to kick you out the back door?”

A blank silence hung in the air for just a moment. Then a thin, high-pitched beep-beep chirped up from Jakub’s left wrist. Ralf involuntarily glanced down to see a dark, glossy square, flashing red numerals, composed entirely of short, discrete lines, attached to a black plastic strap.

“What the hell is that?” Ralf asked, forgetting the navigation screens for the first time in his career. Jakub cast his eyes down, covering his wrist with his right hand.

“Antique” he said, sheepishly.

“Where’d you get it?” Ralf asked. But there was no answer. Instead, a loud, angry beeping erupted from the helm. Ralf blanched, then colored as he spun his seat around to see the coordinates of the other Copters flashing red. All off course.

“What the fuck?” he yelled, reaching for the com. But before he could hail the other Copters, a cold, hard object hit him across the face, knocking him out of his chair. His headset flew off and clattered to the ground. The Copter began to shake, as the toe-cable began pulling it against its programmed course.

Ralf looked up in time to see Sime crouching over him, holding a black cylinder to his bruised temple, a look of exultant menace on his face.

“Well, you fat, fucking moron, are you gonna shut the fuck up, or am I gonna have to blow your head off and kick your bloated corpse out the back door?”

The Copter was vibrating angrily as the others dragged it along. Jakub slid into the pilot’s chair and began to override the course heading.

“What are you doing?” Ralf asked. His head throbbed, and he found it hard to make sense of the situation. What was this thing Sime was pressing against him?

“What did I tell you? What did I just fucking tell you? I said shut up or I’m gonna…” Sime took the cylinder away, pulled some part of it back toward himself, making an audible click, and then put it back against Ralf’s head.

At the helm, Jakub reprogrammed the course heading. The shaking stopped, and he turned in the chair to address Sime.

“Don’t be stupid. If you fire that thing in here, it will ricochet around and kill us all. Besides, we need him alive.”

Sime’s face tightened in a grimace. His eyes narrowed at Ralf. But he stood up, without taking his eyes off the pilot, all the time pointing the cylinder at him.

Ralf put his hand to the side of his face, winced, and took his hand away again. He didn’t know what was harder to believe: that he was being hijacked, that all four Copters were being hijacked, or that Sime had an actual gun. He had heard of guns. They were old-time weapons. Apparently, they shot bits of soft metal at you, at tremendous speeds, and this was enough to kill a person. Though some documentaries claimed the death rates from guns were greatly exaggerated. Ralf wondered if the gun was real, an “antique”, like that thing on Jakub’s wrist, and if it still worked. But if it didn’t, then maybe Jakub wouldn’t have warned Sime not to shoot it. Unless he knew that would make Ralf think the gun was real. His head began to ache, and he had to shut his eyes.

After a few seconds, Ralf began to wonder where they were taking the saucer, and why they thought they could hide it from the Eyes. Surely, They were tracking it even now.

“They’ll find you,” he said. He hadn’t meant to speak. He just blurted it out, as soon as he thought it. And as soon as he did, he was sorry. Surely Sime would hit him again. But Sime just smiled, a malevolent, condescending smile, unlike any expression Ralf had seen on his face before. Though he didn’t know it, it was the look Ralf himself sometimes got when trainees screwed up, leaving themselves open to some kind of punishment.

“They won’t find us,” Sime gloated. “They’re not even looking. We made sure of that.”

“Shut up!” Jakub said again, as if they were all still crowded around the helm, watching the routine escort mission play out as it had so many times before. Ralf noticed that Sime shot a brief glare at Jakub, but didn’t argue. Although Sime had the weapon, there was a hierarchy, and clearly Jakub was higher. Or maybe Jakub had a gun too.

Sime resumed holding Ralf at gunpoint. Jakub began typing into the console, and Ralf eventually realized he was communicating with the other Copters, but via text instead of voice. Ralf sank back against the floor and nursed his throbbing head, trying to think. He wondered if the other three Copter pilots were in the same situation he was, or if they were conspirators themselves. The idea that he was the only incorruptible one, the only one they couldn’t bribe or coerce into joining them, gave him a certain swell of pride. He wondered if the Eyes up on Orbital were traitors too, or if they were being kidnapped or what. Ralf hadn’t been to Orbital since he took the job down here. He wouldn’t have thought it was possible to keep something like what they were doing secret in such a confined space. But maybe things had changed.

And what were they doing? Why did they want to steal the saucer? The only thing he could think of was they wanted to ransom it back. This, too, gave Ralf a swell of pride, for he knew that ANS was super-rich and super-powerful. They would probably avoid paying the ransom, and if they did pay, they could well afford it, and would probably use it as a trap anyway. Marking the currency or something. Ralf didn’t know how it worked, exactly, but he was pretty sure he had heard of corporations installing hidden numbers or codes in the units, so they could be traced. It gave Ralf another swell of pride to think that he was smart enough to figure out the scam wouldn’t work, while his kidnappers were not.

Sime kept holding the gun in Ralf’s general direction, but his eyes darted around the Copter, and he began to fidget, and shift from one foot to the other. Jakub ignored them both, continuing to watch the screen, occasionally releasing a fury of typing. The throbbing in Ralf’s head steadied, then began to fade, though his left eye was puffy and partially shut.

Finally, after a last burst of typing, Jakub announced that they were approaching the destination. Then Jakub stood up and walked over to Ralf, staring down at him with cold, blue-gray eyes.

“I want you to take us down.”

Ralf took a deep breath and steeled himself.

“Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

Jakub did not even flinch. He merely repeated his instruction, calmly and cooly, adding “If you refuse to comply, I will allow Sime to execute you.”

Ralf actually smiled. He wasn’t stupid.

“You said it yourself. If you do, that thing will ricochet around and kill you both.”

“Maybe we won’t use the gun, then,” Jakub said, without a trace of emotion. “Maybe Sime will just kick you out the back door.”

Ralf had to turn away from Sime’s gloating grin. “If you do that,” he said, “How will you land this Copter?”

Jakub stared down at Ralf. He was no longer expressionless, but the look on his face was not anger, or worry, or any of the other emotions Ralf would have expected. There was something…thoughtful, or calculating. He looked like someone mulling over items on a menu, or playing one of those games like checkers or chess.

Ralf tried to press his advantage. “You can’t do it yourself, can you?”

“No,” Jakub replied. “I can’t.”

“That’s why you need me alive, isn’t it? You said so yourself. I ain’t stupid.”

“Neither am I,” Jakub said, after a moment’s pause.

He walked back over to the pilot’s chair and began typing again. Then they all heard the cable detach and the Copter gained a few feet of altitude, freed of its burden.

“What are you doing?” Ralf asked. He wanted to get up, but his head still hurt, and, in spite of his bravado, he didn’t trust Sime not to risk shooting him. But Sime himself leaned over to the nearest window, craning his neck to look down.

The next sound Ralf heard chilled him to the core: the rotors cutting out.

“What are you doing?” This time it was Sime’s turn to be frantic. “Did you cut the engine?”

“Our mission is accomplished,” Jakub replied. “That’s all that matters.”

“What the fuck?” Sime screamed. “No! This wasn’t part of the deal!”

But Jakub was eerily calm, as ever.

“Our lives are unimportant. Only the Cause matters.”

By now it was clear that they were losing altitude. Ralf felt his stomach rise up into his chest. Sime took the gun off him and aimed it at Jakub.

“No! Start her up again!”

“You know I can’t.”

Sime screamed in terror and frustration at Jakub’s calm. Then he dropped down next to Ralf, pressing the gun to his bruised temple, harder than before. Ralf cried out from the pain.

“Get up, fat ass! Get the engines back! Do it now! He’s crazy. We’re all gonna die!”

Ralf gritted his teeth against the pain, and quickly weighed the pros and cons of certain death against the satisfaction of prevailing over these two fucks. But Sime pressed the gun to his head again, and Ralf cried out “Okay! Okay!” and struggled to his feet.

Jakub stood up from the chair. Ralf struggle to his feet, wheezing, and hobbled, as if he had been lamed, back to the pilot’s chair. He dropped into it like a heavy sack of rubbish, dropped by a garbage collector, tired of the burden. Then he grunted and wheezed again as he bent down to retrieve the headset from the floor. Jakub knocked it out of his hand and it clattered back to the ground.

“Okay,” Ralf replied, sounding strangely calm. Whether it was a lack of oxygen as he struggled to breath in the depressurizing cabin, or a zen-like acceptance of his fate, or at least his situation, even he could not tell. He tapped the keys, re-logged into the system.

“We’ll have to soft start,” he said with the same strange calm. “The rotors weren’t designed to start in a dive. They could fly right off. It’s gonna be close.”

If Ralf was surprised at the detachment in his voice, Sime was not. His grip tightened on the pistol, and his teeth gritted in the face of his impotence to change the situation. He knew Ralf was right, and that shooting him, or even threatening him, would not keep them alive. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He looked out the window, hoping to reassure himself that the ocean was still safely far below. Instead, his gaze followed the Saucer as it plummeted down, its wide, flat form unable to arrest its fall. His mind reached for a calm place and attempted to calculate the wind resistance by estimating its rate of descent, and then its terminal velocity: simple, ancient equations from the time when humankind crawled along the surface of their home planet, gazing up at the stars or the now-extinct life around them, searching for answers to the mysteries of their vast, implacable universe.

Then the sea exploded as the Saucer hit. Jets of white, foaming water shot straight up and out in all directions. For a moment it reminded him of the video clips of mushroom clouds he saw once, when he still lived on Lunar, and he even wondered if there had been a bomb, or other incendiary material on board. But there was no smoke, only mist, vapour, as the circular waves rolled away from the great metal disc as it sank. Sime lifted his eyes and saw the other three Copters flying away in formation, up into the sunset.

Up? Sime looked down to see the ocean rocketing toward them. His scream was loud enough to drown out the sound of the revving rotors until they were in full operation, and the slow-motion panic masked the fact that their descent was rapidly decreasing. By the time Sime heard the rotors, they had reduced to a feather-fall, finally coming to a hover a scant hundred feet about the waves. He stopped screaming and caught his breath.

Ralf reached under his shirt and scratched his belly.

“Course heading? Sir?” Both sentences were loaded with sarcasm, but the last word was particularly dripping.

Jakub, however, merely shoved him out of the chair, or attempted to; Ralf’s bulk rendered the gesture merely symbolic. He sighed the same heavy, weary sigh he might have heaved when the cafeteria was out of his preferred synthetic gumbo, or when a noob like Sime asked an annoying question, which was any question, really. Back before noobs like Sime started toting antique projectile weapons, that is.

Ralf pulled himself into a standing position using both hands, and Jakub took the chair again. He angled the seat so that his back blocked both screen and keyboard. Wherever they were going, he didn’t want Ralf to see the coordinates. No biggie. He could pull it from the Copter’s computer some time later. If they didn’t kill him, or lock him up somewhere under constant guard. And if they did that, then the coordinates would hardly matter. Again, the unfamiliar calm. This hijacking must be doing wonders for his blood pressure.

“She’s on auto,” Jakub said as he rose. “There’s no need for anyone to go near the console.”

Ralf merely nodded, and then leaned against the cabin wall, gazing out the forward windows at the orange light of the setting sun. If he were honest, and he usually wasn’t, Ralf would admit that the main reason he kept flying was because he needed the money. What savings he had accumulated during his long, tedious career had mostly accompanied his ex-wife on her journey to her new life in her old home of Orbital, and food wasn’t any cheaper on Earth. Far from it, in fact. NSA charged extra for keeping organic food on planet. Everyone wanted to fuck the Earthers, in every way but literally. But the excuse Ralf usually gave for not retiring was the weather, particularly the sunrises and sunsets. In flight over the open sea was the only place left on Earth to see blue sky. All the land was just grey, with the sun a cold, silver disc more guessed at than seen through the gloom.

When the light began to hurt his eyes, Ralf looked to the disturbing, robotic expression on Jakub’s face, and then over to the perspiring post-panic of Sime, who still clutched at his gun like a talisman as his breathing slowly came under his control.

“I got it wrong,” he said, breathily, looking at Ralf with embarrassed, apologetic eyes. If more people would look at Ralf like that, he’d have more friends.

“I miscalculated our rate of descent,” Sime continued, noting Ralf’s blank stare. “I used the wrong gravitational constant.”

“You forgot that Earth’s gravitational force is 1 g?” Though it was a question, Ralf did not sound surprised.

“We use Lgs on Lunar. Lunar Gravitational Force.”

Ralf didn’t answer at first. He was struggling to reconcile Sime’s last statement with his knowledge of the way the universe worked.

“You’re a loony?”

Sime gaped at him, uncomprehending. Then the cold fear of realization began to dawn on him.

“Hey!” came Jakub’s shout from across the cabin. “Conversation is not required.”

There was an implicit threat in his voice, even though Sime was the one holding the weapon, while Jakub was, as far as Ralf knew, unarmed. Or was he? If Sime could produce an ancient pistol out of nowhere and smuggle it aboard, who knows what Jakub was carrying. And more worrying was the mechanical coldness with which Jakub shut off the rotors. Sure, it could have been a bluff; after all, he hadn’t prevented Ralf from restarting them. But if it wasn’t a bluff, then he really was ready to die for whatever this “Cause” was.

Ralf began to think. They had stolen a shipping Saucer. No, not stolen. They didn’t keep it. They dropped it into the ocean. And there hadn’t been sea-going vessels for over a century, let alone undersea vessels. So they didn’t want to use it or ransom it. They just wanted it out of service.

So what? A blip on the schedule of food delivery to the Off-Worlds. Granted, it could temporarily drive up prices, hit some people hard, put pressure on Mars, but in the long run? Useless. Futile. Unless they did it again, and again. But they wouldn’t. However they – whoever “they” were – had managed to pull this stunt, they wouldn’t get another shot. Whatever loopholes or lapses in security or procedure had made this possible, the Powers That Be would tighten them up. This would not be permitted to happen again.

So why do it in the first place? If it had no practical effect, the act was merely symbolic. But if so, what did it symbolize? What was the message?

Ralf looked at Jakub, who stood rigid, staring back at him hard, blocking the console and screen with his body, not to mention part of the view of the forward windshield. He was backlit by the setting sun, which cast his expression in shadow, giving him even more the appearance of a thing carved out of rock, rather than a living human being. But Ralf knew that he must be real; he must be flesh. He must bleed.

Then he turned his gaze to the still-hyperventilating Sime, leaning back against the wall for support, the gun wavering loose in his hand. And Jakub nearly a metre away, however diligently he may be watching them. Was there enough time to get the gun from Sime? It was risky. Ralf was tired, and, he knew, not in the best cardiovascular health. And though Sime was distracted and shaken from the fall, he only needed to tense his muscles in order to maintain his grip on the gun or hold his arm rigid. If he provided even a little resistance, that would certainly give Jakub time to intervene. And even if he got the gun, Ralf didn’t actually know how to use it. And Jakub probably did.

Of course, Jakub probably also knew if operating a gun were intuitive enough for Ralf to figure out quickly, or if these antiques were dangerous even in the hands of a novice. Looking at the thing (trying not to look at it too much, in case Jakub got suspicious), it seemed to be made of metal, but not one of the familiar alloys like titanium. Perhaps that was because they printed it. Printers didn’t make alloys, only elemental metals. So what was it? Iron? Lead? Was that what guns used to be made of? And if not, was this gun even functional? Had they held him hostage with an ornament? If so, then getting the gun off Sime would be useless. And it would explain why Jakub let that toddler hold it.

But on the other hand, it didn’t look like it had any sensors or pads to limit it to certain users or targets. So if it did work, then anyone could shoot anyone with it. It must have a button or something on it, probably in plain sight. These ancient things were always simple, right? People in the past were stupid. The main thing, surely, would be to keep the pointy end trained on Jakub. One way or another, the dangerous part, which was apparently some kind of small piece of metal, would come shooting out that end. Perhaps he could kill Jakub and Sime. Then he could turn the Copter around and head back to base. Probably as a Hero. Maybe even get a reward.

Ralf’s legs hurt. His chest hurt. He wanted to slide down the wall to the floor and surrender the immediate future to these assholes and whatever asinine plan they were a part of. He knew he didn’t really have it in him to make the kind of effort it would require to go for the gun. And he knew that if he tried and failed, which was likely, they would probably kill him.

But he also knew they would probably kill him anyway. And he knew that, at the end of the day, he didn’t really have much to live for.

A sudden updraft caused the Copter to jolt slightly. Nothing major, but it was enough to knock Sime off balance. His right arm shot out against the wall of the cabin, to steady himself. This put the pointy end of the gun uncomfortably close to Ralf’s head. Ralf shouted “Hey” and ducked – a natural reaction, and not one that would put Jakub on his guard, until it was too late. Ralf hadn’t merely ducked. He rolled forward, colliding into Sime’s body. He tried to lift his right arm up to grab Sime’s wrist, but he lacked the flexibility, so both men toppled over and landed hard on the floor.

The bad news was that Sime was in no position to keep hold of the weapon, so it clattered to the floor. The worse news was that he had been serious enough about shooting Ralf before that he had taken the safety off. The gun fired.

The bullet was indeed made of lead, and far too soft to puncture the titanium walls of the Copter. Instead, it ricocheted around the cabin at incredible speed, as Ralf and Sime instinctively plastered themselves to the floor and Jakub held himself rigid in place. All three men let out involuntary yelps, as of pain, every time they heard the bullet impact against the cabin. Then the it struck the aluminum silicate windows and they heard a different sound: a mix of crunch and crack. The bullet had exited the Copter, leaving a hole in the forward windshield behind it. There was an ear-splitting whistle that refused to stop, and the cabin began to depressurize. All three men put their hands to their ears and screamed.

He didn’t know how long it lasted, but eventually the sensation of falling alerted Ralf to their new danger. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he struggled to his feet and careened toward the cockpit. Jakub was already there, but he wasn’t looking at the screen. Ralf threw his bulk at Jakub and knocked him out of the way, then pulled himself into chair and took the controls.

All too soon, Jakub was on his feet again, but he didn’t fight for control. Instead, he put his hand on Ralf’s shoulder, to steady himself, and said “Make for that island.” First thing’s first, Ralf thought to himself. He hadn’t even pulled the Copter out of its dive. One of the main rotors seemed to be out. Thankfully it was only one, and he had been trained to land a Copter in water with only three. Though it was a long time ago.

Slowly, Ralf brought the plummet under control, bringing the Copter level, arresting its fall, intending to set it as gently as possible on the ocean surface, giving them time to get their lifejackets on.

“No, the island! The island!” Jakub shouted, his first display of emotion since the mutiny began.

“What island? Where?”

Jakub reached over and pounded the right-hand pane of the forward windscreen. Ralf had been facing the left pane, which was cracked and opaque. He peered through the right pane and saw it: a sickly white floating mass, like a clump of synthetic protein floating in a bowl of broth, or a monstrous, amorphous sea creature of legend. It rippled and undulated with the waves, especially at the edges, but even at a glance Ralf could see that it was thicker in the middle, more stable.

“What…What is that?”

“It’s where we’re landing, unless you want to swim back home.”

Ralf was no geographer. He didn’t actually know anymore what the nearest actual land mass was. What he did know was that they had been heading out to open sea for a long time, and he in fact did not know how to swim. Though that was a moot point, considering the distance and the toxicity of the oceans.

“Will it support us?”

“Take us down. Now!”

The fight for the gun, if you could call it a fight, had pretty much drained Ralf of his initiative for the time being, to say nothing of pulling the Copter out of a crash twice in one journey. And being kidnapped. And, you know, his whole life up to that point. He tilted the Copter and aimed for the island. He was going to ask whether to head for the interior or the beach, but wasn’t sure if “beach” was the right word. And before he could come up with a better substitute, he noticed that at the rate they were losing altitude, even the “beach” would be a long shot.

They were also losing speed, which killed the whistling sound from the pierced windscreen, but replaced it with the disconcerting sound of a massive metal contraption falling from the sky with increasing rapidity. Damn Sime. He got that stupid equation stuck in Ralf’s head. 9.81 metres per second, squared. And what was their starting velocity? And how many seconds had it actually been?

Sime was suddenly there, clutching at Ralf’s other shoulder, dry heaving and staring out the window.

“We’re…not…gonna make it” he gasped out between retching. Ralf wanted to tell him he had the wrong constant again, but actually the kid was probably right. Ralf looked at the two dinks standing on either side of him, and reflected bitterly that, after everything, he was going to as a tinned moron sandwich.

In a last attempt to buy some time, he pulled up on the yoke. Blue sky shone through the undamaged pane, even as the aft rotors hit the water. The Copter skidded across the surface for several hundred feet, then paused a moment before the forward end smacked down, just missing the edge of what Jakub had called an “island”. The Copter tipped, and they knew it was sinking.

By the time Jakub kicked the cabin door open, water was flowing around their ankles. Jakub stood aside, waving the other two through ahead of him, and Ralf didn’t wait to ask why. Before he could exit, though, he was pulled backwards off his feet as Sime wrenched past him, practically diving out of the sinking Copter.

“You fuck!” was all Ralf had time to shout before he scrambled out the door after him into the already waist high water. The island was perhaps a hundred metres ahead, and Sime was already well ahead of him. Damn it. Ralf couldn’t swim. He’d never clear that distance on his own, or even stay afloat long enough to keep the acidic water out of his mouth and eyes. And then there would be the sucking from behind him, as the Copter pulled him down with it to the cold, dark ocean floor. Might as well get it over with. Ralf closed his eyes and ceased kicking his legs. Please, let this be quick.

But he didn’t sink. Instead, he felt a hand lift him by the back of his collar and drag him through the water. Or that’s how it felt. He was squinting and holding his breath, but he realized that he was squinting from light. He opened his eyes and saw the sky above him, in that shade of purple he secretly loved so much. Jakub had turned him on his back, and was pulling him ashore.

When they hit the edge of the island, Jakub let go and left Ralf to scramble out of the sea on his own. It seemed to take forever to haul himself out. For a long time, every part of the island sank beneath his weight, creating a poisoned pool, until he began to wonder if the place was stable at all, or if they were just going to sit in toxic tubs until their skin melted away.

But eventually the material beneath him thickened, and the sea-sick swaying subsided. Ralf caught his breath. Then he took a quick inventory of his body. Did he feel any pain from his long contact with the water? Not yet. But he probably would soon. His eyes teared up, and he let them, hoping to cry out any splashed that may have reached them. He didn’t relish the thought of going blind.

When he could see again, he had a look at what he was lying on. Up close, it wasn’t completely white. More bleached. But he could see that the island was composed of many irregular pieces of originally multi-coloured material, all fused together in a massive heap. Some of the seems looked melted, and there were many gaps where a misplaced finger or even hand could get caught. But what was it? It was often smooth, and somewhat familiar. Like something he knew, but transformed just enough to make it hard to recognize.

“Plastic” he heard Jakub say. He had found his feet and was standing over Ralf, casting a long shadow in the dying light. “Centuries of discarded plastic, from all over the world, swept here by the ocean currents, fused together in the unbridled sun and the acidic sea. Uncharted, unacknowledged, unheeded.”

Now Jakub turned away and took a step toward the island’s interior, then paused again, contemplating the horizon.

“Welcome,” he said, “to the Isle of Man.”

Next Chapter: The Screens