She climbs up to him, swings his seat around so that he's lying on his back, facing the rear bulkhead. She locks it into position, tries to keep his broken leg reasonably straight.

"Ow," he cries.

"Sorry. Try not to move. Your leg's broken."

"No shit. Oww." He shivers. "Christ I'm cold." Clarke sees it sink in. "Oh Christ. We're breached." He tries to move, manages to twist his head around before some other injury twists back. He relaxes, wincing.

"The cockpit's flooding," she tells him. "Slowly, so far. Hang on a second." She climbs back down and pulls at the edge of the cockpit hatch. It sticks. Clarke keeps pulling. The hatch comes loose, starts to swing down.

"Wait a second," the pilot says.

Clarke pushes the hatch back against the bulkhead.

"You know those controls?" the pilot asks.

"I know the standard layout."

"Anything still working down there? Comm? Propulsion?"

She kneels down and ducks her head underwater. A couple of readouts that were alive before have gone out. She scans what's left.

"Waldos. Exterior floods. Sonobuoy," she reports when she comes back up. "Everything else is dead."

"Shit." His voice is shaking. "Well, we can send up the buoy, anyway. Not that they're about to launch a rescue."

She reaches through the rising water and trips the control. Something thuds softly on the outside of the hull. "Why wouldn't they? They sent you to pick us up. If we'd just gotten away before the thing went off..."

"We did," the pilot says.

Clarke looks around the compartment. "Uh—"

The pilot snorts. "Look, I don't know what the fuck you guys were doing with a nuke down there, or why you couldn't wait a bit longer to set it off, but we got away from it okay. Something shot us down afterwards."

Clarke straightens. "Shot us?"

"A missile. Air-to-air. Came right out of the stratosphere." His voice is shaking with the cold. "I don't think it actually hit the 'scaphe. Blew the shit out of the lifter, though. I barely managed to get us down to a safe level before—"

"But that doesn't— why rescue us, then shoot us down?"

He doesn't say anything. His breathing is fast and loud.

Clarke pulls again at the cockpit hatch. It swings down against the opening with a slight creak.

"That doesn't sound good," the pilot remarks.

"Hang on a sec." Clarke spins the wheel; the hatch sinks down against the mimetic seal with a sigh. "I think I've got it." She climbs back up to the rear bulkhead.

"Christ I'm cold." The pilot says. He looks at her. "Oh, shit. How far down are we?"

Clarke looks through one of the compartment's tiny portholes. Green is fading. Blue is in ascension.

"Hundred fifty meters. Maybe two."

"I should be narked."

"I switched the mix. We're on hydrox."

The pilot shudders, violently. "Look, Clarke, I'm freezing. One of those lockers has got survival suits."