Ex-Isle by Peter Clines (electronic reader TXT) 📕

heroes. Especially Stealth, who stood on the other side of the table, surrounded by her cloak.

Of course, most people were timid around Stealth. She still insisted on wearing her full uniform. Even people who didn’t know what she was capable of found the black, eyeless mask unnerving.

It also didn’t help that it had been her office for many years. Blinds had kept it shrouded in perpetual gloom, but now it was bright and well lit. The marble slab serving as the mayor’s desk had been her war table. Richard’s assistant, Todd, had even found some potted plants and a few generic paintings to give it some life.

The room was very different now…but to St. George, it still felt like her room.

Barry’s wheelchair had been pushed back into the corner to make more space around the table. He balanced on the edge of the desk and shoveled food into his mouth. His bowl held scrambled eggs, half a dozen random vegetables, and a good-sized helping of the “goat cheese” that came out of the Corner. Everyone just called it goat cheese rather than wondering where it might’ve really come from.

St. George looked at his friend. Barry still got double rations, but it wasn’t enough. Zzzap burned up more than he took in each day. Not by much, but the cumulative effect was starting to show. He’d always been thin, but recently his appearance leaned toward gaunt, and his dark skin looked ashy. Barry caught his eye, winked, and scraped up another spoonful of egg and veggies.

“Are you certain?” asked Stealth.

Barry looked at her blank mask. “There’s a man-made island out there? Yeah, of course.”

“Of the location.”

“Oh.” He swallowed another mouthful of food. “Pretty sure, yeah. I mean, there aren’t any landmarks. I’m going off magnetic flux lines in the atmosphere. It’s maybe seventeen or eighteen hundred miles from here, south-southwest. I saw the magnetic signature on the water from a few miles away and doubled back to check it out.”

Richard looked up from the map. “Magnetic signature?”

Barry’s bald head went up and down. “It’s a huge chunk of metal, so it makes ripples in the Earth’s magnetic field. Nothing huge. It stood out because it was in the middle of the ocean on top of the water.”

St. George drummed his fingers on the edge of the map. “What’s it like, this island? Is it a lot of boats or rafts or what?”

Barry set down his bowl, swept up a legal pad and a pen, and began to sketch quick outlines. “Boats,” he said. “It’s kind of like Waterworld. But, y’know, believable. Or maybe the Drexel colony.”

“The Drexel what?” asked St. George.

“Yeah,” Barry said. “When I was six I saw The Empire Strikes Back. That’s what turned me into a real sci-fi nut. My cousin Randy, he gave me this big pile of Star Wars comics he’d kinda grown out of and didn’t want anymore. A bunch of the old Marvel ones. I don’t think he had any idea what they were worth. I mean, I didn’t either, but I was six.”

Stealth flexed her fingers. “Is there a point to this story?”

He nodded again, with even more enthusiasm. “In one of the early story arcs Luke ends up on this planet, Drexel, that’s all water. But there are a bunch of old wooden ships that’ve been lashed together to make a big floating island, and the colonists who live there are in this ongoing war with people who ride sea dragons. And Luke has to figure out—”

“Sea dragons?” Richard interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“In Star Wars stories?”

Barry smiled. “I know, cool, right?”

“If the planet was all water,” asked St. George, “where’d the wooden ships come from?”

“Huh.” Barry’s smile faltered. His pen tapped against the notepad. “Y’know, I never thought about that as a kid. It wouldn’t be cost-effective to bring them there from another planet, would it?”

“If we could return to the matter at hand,” said Stealth. “The layout of this island?”

“Right.” Barry scratched at his diagram again with the pen. “There’s a cruise ship here in the center,” he said, tapping at the sketches. “Like the mountain in the middle of Skull Island. Then there’s an oil tanker and a freighter on either side of it, both facing the other way. The freighter has a bunch of shipping containers, but it looked like they’ve all been emptied out.” He circled part of his diagram, looked at them, and shrugged.

“How large are the ships?”

He closed his eyes. “I’d put the cruise ship around…nine hundred feet, maybe? The tanker and the freighter were both longer, but they sat a lot lower in the water.”

Stealth’s mask shifted beneath her hood.

“Thoughts?” asked St. George.

“Possibly a Panamax tanker, if Barry’s size estimate is correct. Although it would be unusual for one to be so far out in the Pacific.”

She said nothing else. Everyone’s attention drifted back to Barry. He finished some new additions to the diagram and sat back up on the desk’s corner. St. George offered an arm for balance, but Barry waved it away and leaned into the sketch again.

“Okay,” he said, pointing with the pen, “if I remember right, here and here are fishing boats. Or maybe some kind of oceanographic research. Greenpeace or something. Definitely some kind of business-work boat. These three are yachts. Really big, expensive-looking things. And then there’s a half dozen or so little boats around the edges. Smaller fishing boats, things like that. I think one of them might’ve been a tugboat.”

St. George glanced at him. “Out in the middle of the ocean?”

Barry shrugged. “It could’ve been a banana boat for all I know. I’m just saying what it looked like. And over here”—he tapped one side of the sketch—“was one of those boats where it’s two narrow hulls with a platform between them.”

“A catamaran,” said Stealth. “How are they all connected?”

“Ropes. Chains in a few places. There’s something between them, keeping the boats from hitting each other too hard. Maybe tires?”

A frown crossed Captain Freedom’s face. “Tires?”

Barry shrugged. “A bunch of