At the intimate closed-door enquiry into the crash, everybody present would agree that although it had sounded like the pilot said ‘bird strike,’ what he had actually said was ‘missile strike.’ And they all agreed that when it sounded like the co-pilot said ‘bird strike’ he was also saying ‘missile strike.’

  It was noted that the Daintree executive, Mr Kinnie, had been under a great deal of stress at the time. When you could hear him on the recording talking about seeing a vulture fly into one of the engines, that was more than likely a hallucination.

  And nothing any of the three soldiers assigned to guard Mr Kinnie said on the recording could be treated as having any evidential value. The three soldiers were, like the majority of the troops on Earth, suffering from malnutrition that made them, too, prone to hallucination and general confusion. Having dismissed the recordings of the soldiers and Mr Kinnie (RIP) and correctly interpreted the remarks made by the two pilots (RIP) the conclusion was clear.

  The aircraft, civilian in appearance, had been shot down with a cobbled-together EM launcher by insurgents. The crude and improvised nature of the ordnance meant it had disintegrated so completely in use that there was no evidence remaining for the investigators to draw from. Also, the crude and improvised nature of the ordnance was itself conclusive evidence of the weapon’s provenance. There was no doubt who was responsible for the horrific and tragic attack on an aircraft that was- everybody was keen to stress- civilian in appearance that had killed a Daintree executive and five young soldiers.

  Did someone say five? Four. Four young soldiers. Everybody on board dead. Such an attack necessitated an immediate response, so air strikes had already been approved. They would be surgical strikes, by which they meant targeting hospitals.

  The vicious disorganised ragtag insurgents and their campaign of terror against the fine armies of the most respected corporation in the galaxy must be resisted, for the safety of all humankind.

  ----------

  “Someone..?” asked Hesper. “Give me more information, Pallas.”

  “It’s, uh...a human?”

  “Are you in danger, Pallas?” demanded McPhail. “Is he threatening you?”

  “No, he’s in the medical unit.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “Uh...I think so, he’s looking at me,”

  “Does he look dangerous?” asked McPhail.

  “No, he looks pregnant,”

  Hesper sighed. “Pallas...describe this person. Is it a man?”

  There was a pause during which Hesper and McPhail could faintly hear another voice.

  “He says he is,” replied Pallas.

  “He’s there?” asked Hesper. “He’s talking?”

  “Yeah, he’s standing right in front of me. Say hi!”

  Hesper glared at McPhail as if he was to blame. “Hi,” said Hesper, speaking through Pallas. “You were talking to the machine, I’m its operator. Executive officer of independent transport A Good Man Gone. What’s your name?”

  “--------------”

  “What? Turn up your hearing, Pallas,”

  “Sorry,”

  “Okay, let’s try again. What’s your name?”

  “Orson,”

  “Okay, Orson. Would you like us to rescue you?”

  “Rescue?”

  “Yes, rescue. Would you like one? It’s optional.”

  “What would you be rescuing me from?”

  Hesper and McPhail looked at each other.

  A Good Man Gone had been minding its own business in some quiet space near the Dunbar hub, on its way to deliver something super secret for a shady client as usual. Just trucking along. Hesper had been piloting when suddenly she found herself piloting through more floating frozen human corpses than was normal. No cause for alarm, but unusual. She started looking around to see if there had been some sort of accident and what do you know? She found a big security services ship, a big prisoner transport, drifting dark and empty and wide open.

  This was the kind of thing you couldn’t just ignore, so Hesper had sent Pallas to go and poke about a bit. The robot flew over on its little one-man micro-light to take a gander while Hesper kept A Good Man Gone at a nice safe distance. Once Pallas had left, Hesper woke McPhail up and told him about the exciting thing that Pallas had gone to investigate. McPhail was not pleased that Pallas had gone to investigate, which Hesper had anticipated, which was why she had waited until Pallas had gone to investigate before she woke McPhail up.

  Hesper and McPhail might have had a bit of an argument just then, but Pallas radioed from the dead transport to say that it had found someone alive.

  “And that was you, Orson,” concluded Hesper.

  “I was the only person left alive on a...prisoner transport ship that had been attacked?”

  “Looks that way,” said the XO.

  “How was I alive if everyone else was floating dead in space?”

  “Pallas said you were in a med-pod. An auto-surgeon. Guess that protected you when the ship was depressurised,”

  “Oh…” said Orson. “But why would I be in the auto-surgeon?”

  “How would we know?” said Hesper. “Why don’t you know? You don’t remember?”

  “No…” said Orson. His head was pounding. “Well, I was lucky, I suppose,”

  “Were you?” said Hesper. “If you think so. Now that you’re aware of your situation, what do you think? Do want Pallas here to bring you over to our ship?”

  Orson looked at the impassive, helmeted figure in front of him.

  “I suppose I don’t really have any choice,” he said.

  “You do, you’re free to stay,” said Hesper.

  “Will I die if I stay?”

  “Maybe. You’re probably more likely to get picked up by security services when they come to investigate their dead ship and all their dead staff. They’re probably on their way which is why you’re going to have to make your decision quickly.”

  “Okay.” said Orson. He tried to avoid looking at his own reflection in Pallas’ reflective visor. He was pretty sure Hesper had said Pallas was a machine but it was human-shaped. Machines didn’t come human-shaped. It seemed rude to ask. “I think I’ll go with you, then,” he said.

  “Fine,” said Hesper. “Pallas, go and find our new friend a pressure suit. Orson, you stay where you are.”

  The small bike-thing bobbed lower under Orson’s weight, then lifted up a little higher than it had been sitting. Pallas paddled it towards the slowly-opening seal. “Should I hold onto you?” bellowed Orson and the helmeted head in front of him tilted. Orson leaned forwards, his belly pushing into Pallas’ back. He wrapped his arms around the small armoured body. He could feel Pallas straining slightly as it tried to reach its feet to the ground to tiptoe the little vehicle along. Orson thought about offering to help then remembered that his legs were almost as short. They were nearly at the opening anyway.

  He hugged onto the machine a little tighter. The robot turned the tiny craft so that they were side-on to the door. Orson assumed that it was intending for them to exit the ship facing forwards but they stood up on the foot-pegs, leaned over and tipped the vehicle over so they fell out the doorway sideways, plummeting down the side of the ship into nothingness. Orson was so shocked he didn’t even scream, he just gasped. They dropped. Orson felt as though he was being pulled out of his seat. He tried to grip desperately with his soft flabby thighs and caught his toes underneath the foot-pegs.

  Orson didn’t ever see many space-ships. There weren’t many windows on a space station. There was a sort of fancy restaurant (fancy by the standards of a transport hub) up at the top of the station, just underneath the traffic-control tower. Orson had been there once, for a work thing. It had windows all the way round and you could look out and see the outside of the station and all the ships docked around it, delivering stuff and picking stuff up and sometimes bringing cruise passengers who stopped off briefly for duty-free shopping. It was boring. Even the ships were boring. They didn’t look like Orson would have pictured space-ships, they looked like either a giant flying shipping container or a haphazard pile of shipping containers. They weren’t aerodynamic or sleek and they didn’t even have wings.

  The ship they were heading for actually looked like a spaceship. You could tell which way it was pointing, for one thing. It had an identifiable front end, with a snub little nose and windows where the cockpit was. It had little wings. It was difficult to judge in space, with no other objects for scale, but to Orson it looked pretty small. Much smaller than the cruise ships and cargo ships Orson had seen docked on the station, anyway.

  Orson clung to the small body in front of him as they banked around towards the rear of the little spaceship. There was a hatch yawning open at the back, bright light spilling out down a bit of a ramp that was just hanging out there. Orson thought that it wasn’t considered a good idea to have the door open on a spaceship in space. He’d heard that it could cause problems but what did he know? He’d never even been inside a spacesuit before today.

  The tiny craft they were riding was pulling upwards with all its might towards the ship. The increasingly steep angle they were at was starting to make Orson very nervous. Was this zip-tied-together little thing even supposed to carry two people, one of whom was additionally a bit of a porker? It seemed to be working terribly hard already and they were still maybe 50 metres below the ship. Orson was imagining them coming up just short of the ramp or stalling with the steepness and just falling away, tumbling down into nothingness. He shifted his big backside closer to the middle of the craft as though that might help, pushing his belly into the small pilot’s back.

  Maybe it did help (it didn’t) because the little ship found another gear or something and suddenly pulled harder, tipping up like a horse rearing so Orson was convinced he was about to slide straight off the back. His body was immediately flooded with adrenaline. He yelled inside his helmet without knowing he was doing it, screaming into the void he thought he was about to enter.

  And then they were over the lip of the ramp, bathed in light. The tiny craft bumped down onto the metal floor. The pilot stuck out a short leg on either side of it for balance as they skidded along. And then they stopped.

  Orson hadn’t felt so good in years. He was elated, spinny-headed, drunk with relief. His blinding headache eased mercifully. He tried to climb off of the little vehicle on wobbly, space-suited legs and managed to immediately climb himself straight onto the floor. He didn’t even care. He rolled onto his back, laughing inside his helmet.

  The small person hopped off the micro-light and gallantly offered Orson a gloved hand in assistance. Orson waved it away. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to tug his heavy carcass up off the deck anyway. Moving a lot faster than Orson could, they grabbed his arm and suddenly Orson was upright, hauled to his feet with one pull.

  “Thanks!” said Orson. “You’re strong,”

  The person just reached out one arm, pointing over Orson’s shoulder to something behind him. He could see his own blank helmeted image reflected in the mirror of their visor. “What?”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Orson turned around to see what they were pointing at. Behind him only a few more metres of metal floor and then a wall. There was a doorway very enthusiastically highlighted with warning chevrons, painted arrows, red and green lights and- most helpfully- lettering reading ‘airlock’. And then some more lettering that Orson assumed said ‘airlock’ in a few other languages.

  “Hello, Orson,” said a voice in Orson’s head. In Orson’s helmet. It was the same woman who had spoken to him before, when he was in the medical unit. “Hi,” he said. “What do I-”

  “We spoke earlier,” said the voice. “My name is Hesper. I can’t hear you so don’t bother talking. I think you can hear me but just to confirm, can you indicate with a hand gesture if you can hear me clearly?”

  Orson did an ‘OK’ sign with one hand and held it up, turning around since he didn’t know where ‘Hesper’ was. He noticed that the door they’d flown in through had closed up. “Got it.” said Hesper. “Would you step into the airlock, please? The door will open by itself so you don’t have to touch anything,”

  Orson looked around to see if his companion was coming too. They were gone: so was the little flyer. “Don’t worry about Pallas,” said Hesper. “It’ll come through later once it’s finished here. Chop chop,”

  Airlocks were another thing Orson didn’t have much experience with. They made him nervous. He walked slowly towards the large, heavy-looking door.

  “And of course” said the voice in his helmet, “Don’t touch anything on your suit yet. Don’t try to remove your helmet or gloves. Don’t touch any control panels. Okay? Please indicate that you’ve heard- thank you, very good. Opening the door for you now.”

  Orson waited until the door had swung wide enough for him to definitely walk through without touching anything. He kept his gloved hands awkwardly up front of him, elbows held in. The airlock was kind of like a big lift but with what seemed like deliberately alarming décor, all orange and more chevrons and red lights. “Stand still in the middle there, please,” said Hesper in his ear and Orson obeyed. The door swung shut. “Just a moment.”

  Orson had a vague idea that pressurising and depressurising things took a long time. His head started pounding again- maybe something to do with the pressure increasing? He was about to ask if he could sit down while he waited, then he remembered that they couldn’t hear him. He considered what hand signal might convey ‘I’d like to take a load off’. He couldn’t think of anything. And then some green lights started flashing and the door in front of him started to open.

  “Come on out, Orson, let’s have you,” said Hesper. “Step out of the airlock, take four paces and then stop. Hands up. Got it?”

  Orson had his hands up already. He shuffled forwards gingerly and waited for the door to swing out fully. It opened to reveal what looked like more of the same hangar space but with crap absolutely everywhere- boxes piled up against the walls, stuff hanging all over the place. As the door slid further over Orson saw his welcoming party: just two of them. The one on the right must be Hesper: a tall woman built like a rugby back, standing with her hands on her hips. She had glasses and long sleek dark hair. She gave Orson a worrying smirk.

  The other person was a man, older, as tall as Hesper but composed exclusively of long bones and sinew. He had greying hair shaved close on the sides and a short scruffy beard. Both of them had blackjacks dangling from straps around their wrists.

  “Hello, Orson Foster,” said Hesper. “I’m Hesper,”

  “I know. I mean, I figured,”

  “Keep those hands up, thank you. This is McPhail.”

  “Hi,”

  It looked as though McPhail said something. Orson realised that he could still only hear Hesper through the helmet.

  “You can take that off now,” said Hesper, apparently on the same page. “In fact-oh. You don’t know how to, do you? McPhail, would you…?”

  The skinny tattooed man advanced on Orson, alarmingly going straight for his neck with both hands. He caught Orson’s helmet under the chin and did something that made it release from the neck of the space-suit. The suit immediately went baggier and the visor of the helmet started to fog. “Just lift it off,” said McPhail in a low, quiet voice.

  Orson huffed about a bit, trying to get a hold on the helmet. McPhail hissed a sigh. He batted Orson’s hands down. “Keep still,”

  The tall man lifted the helmet off Orson’s shoulders and stepped back, holding it on one hip. “You can manage the gloves?” asked Hesper. Orson looked down at them. Hesper sighed.

  It took both Hesper and McPhail to get Orson out of the spacesuit. To his mortification they kept stripping him until he was standing completely naked in front of them. And then they searched him.

  “I don’t have anything on me,” said Orson. “Your little friend saw me naked ten minutes ago, ask him,”

  “It would have been so busy staring at your boobs that it wouldn’t notice if you were carrying a chemical laser or a mining bazooka. Which means that we have to search you. Thoroughly.”

  Orson had a very strong suspicion that they were just doing it for fun. He started to develop that suspicion when Hesper looked under his boobs for...whatever he might possibly be keeping under his boobs. He kept his suspicions to himself and his dignity, as much as possible, and just let them get on with it. “What’s all this?” asked McPhail, pointing at Orson’s scarred belly.

  “They use their human workers to grow replacement organs,” explained Hesper. “For sale. He’s been working there a while, he’s had a good few surgeries. Is that right?”

  Orson nodded, cheeks bright red.

  “Do you know what you’ve got in there justnow?”

  “No,” said Orson. “They don’t tell us,”

  “Huh,” said McPhail.

  “We’ll find out,” said Hesper. It sounded a little like a threat. “Okay, you’ve been a good little piggy, you can put your clothes back on.”

  Orson wanted to refuse just to show some defiance but he realised he’d prefer to not be naked. He started wriggling back into the medical scrubs the two assholes had dumped on the floor.

  “The only person left alive on a prisoner transport ship that we found drifting with all the crew dead,” said Hesper. “What’s your story?”

  “My story?” said Orson. The scrubs were very tight over his belly. He tried to pinch enough fabric to grip it and tug it down a little. His fingers scrabbled at the smooth cotton fabric. “I don’t have a story,” he said. “I don’t know anything about this,”

  “You must remember how you got onto that ship,” said Hesper. She pulled the wrist strap of her blackjack off over her hand and pushed the thing into a holster on the back of her belt. “Obviously you don’t work security. You must have been arrested,”

  Orson shrugged. “Don’t remember,”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.” said Orson. “Can I maybe sit down?”. He looked around for a chair.

  “No,” said Hesper. She gathered her long straight almost-black hair together at the back of her neck as though she was going to tie it into a ponytail and then just let it fall smoothly down her back. “The ship probably has records for anyone it was transporting. We can find out all about you from there. Pallas is looking for it now which means...well, it doesn’t mean anything, really. Just tell us if you remember anything, hmm?”

  “Sure thing,” said Orson. He nodded. “Will do that. Definitely,”

  The tall woman stared at him over her glasses. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Uh…”

  “Physically,”

  “Oh. My head hurts a lot. Other than that, okay,” said Orson. “I guess those medical machine things are pretty good.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Hesper. “Why were you in that one when Pallas found you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Orson. “I really...I don’t know why they’d arrest me. I don’t think I did a crime,”

  Hesper snorted. “You wouldn’t be the first person to find out that isn’t a sufficient defence.”

  Orson’s shoulders sagged. He looked very tired.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Hesper, a bit more gently.

  “Could you maybe just...take me home?”

  Hesper just stared at him for a moment. Was he...brain damaged? Maybe he was in a little bit of shock. “Take you home?”

  “Back to the hub,”

  Hesper felt a little sorry for the dejected man.

  “Orson...do you realise that you’ll be arrested again if you try to go home? I mean, we can certainly take you back there if you really want but you’d be put straight onto another prisoner transport,”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I won’t lie to you. You probably are going to be arrested again fairly soon. Don’t make any long-term plans,”

  Orson smiled weakly. “I never have,” he said. “But why did you pick me up, then? Could’ve just left me in the...thing,”

  “I would have,” said Hesper. “Easier for everybody,”

  “Thanks,”

  Hesper shrugged. “Pallas- the robot- opened the pod and woke you up before it called me to report finding you. Bloody machine. It must have liked the look of you,”

  Orson didn’t say anything.

  “Okay,” said Hesper. “I doubt you’ll be with us for very long, but we’ve got a spare bunk you can have for now,”

  “Thanks,” said Orson, meaning it.

  “It’s not much but I don’t imagine you were living in a mansion back on that transport hub, were you?”

  “It wasn’t bad, I had a couple of rooms,” said Orson defensively. “It used to be three but then one of the landlords wanted his room back so I had to...never mind. This’ll be fine. Are there any clothes I could borrow?”

  Hesper shook her head, arms folded across her chest. “No. You’re a lot shorter and rounder than any of us. We’ll have to take you shopping,”

  “Shopping?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll loan you. I assume you don’t have any money?”

  “Eh, I guess I don’t any more, no. Thank you,”

  “Like I said, I’m opening a tab. You’ll be paying us back.”

  “Sure.”

  ----------

  Silas was pretty sure the plane wasn’t going to explode: he reckoned it would have done it by now. He wasn’t going to go back inside anyway. Was he? He definitely wasn’t going to try to call for help. He had just decided he was done being a soldier.

  He felt the best he’d ever felt in his entire life. If his life had flashed before his eyes it all would have looked like absolute crap compared with the fantastic rush of coruscating brilliance screaming towards the ground at hundreds of miles an hour.

  If this was how good being close to dying felt, imagine how good actually dying was going to be?

  No wonder everyone else was dead already. Why would you hang around? Silas put his hands up in the air and whooped in excitement.

  This had been what he always wanted, he realised.

  A part of him was conscious that his sudden decision to quit could be related to all the drugs he had just been pumped full of. He ignored that part. It didn’t make sense anyway. Why would the army shoot a soldier full of chemicals that would make him want to quit the army? Stupid. Another part of him pointed out that if he quit the army he wouldn’t have access to these very enjoyable chemicals again. He ignored that part too (that bit was harder to ignore.)

  Even pumped full of uppers, opiate painkillers, glucose and vitamin B you would only get so far in a dying body. ‘So far’ turned out to be maybe a mile and a half from the western gate of Norov-Ava. Silas had stopped forming new memories about an hour before that, though, so looking back he wouldn’t remember the point at which the drugs and the electrical stimulation stopped working and he sank to his knees, curled up and fell asleep on the shingles.

  ----------

  “I think I’m brain damaged,”

  Hector laughed.

  “I’m not joking,” said Silas. “I really think I am,”

  “Well, you probably are,” said Hector. “But what does it matter?”

  According to the rescuers who had found him dying out in the desert, Silas had begged to just be left to pass where he was. He didn’t remember that.

  He did remember the two vultures who had been hanging around nearby waiting for him to die- or, he thought he did. He had been told about the vultures so maybe he was just imagining them.

  Silas had been rescued by some of the worst people he’d ever met. Medical students, part-time djs. One mech, three humans. They all shared a flat together.

  They explained that they had found Silas because they’d all been out in the desert to welcome the dawn, which was something they liked to do. They would walk out into the dunes in the early hours and pray or dance or do yoga or something. Silas didn’t ask questions: he didn’t want to know.

  Silas despised them for denying him an easy painless death and for playing the worst music he’d ever heard. They played it around the clock- they were all on different shift patterns which apparently meant that it was always somebody’s turn to party.

  Silas would have to be eternally grateful to them, though, for not taking him to hospital. He didn’t think their first concern had been for his wellbeing- he was pretty sure they’d just wanted to keep him as a toy and a practice dummy for themselves. Being medical students, they had known that if Silas was taken to hospital the hospital would be obliged to contact Silas’ base. The students said that they’d felt the decision to contact the military or not was up to Silas. They’d saved his life, which was unforgivable. Even though they hadn’t allowed him to die, however, they had done the second best thing which was allow him to pretend that he had died.

  The students had looked after him in their flat, bringing friends and tutors over to help. Everyone sworn to secrecy. They had seen plenty of squaddies and knew what they looked like so they shaved Silas and cut most of his shaggy hair off. Surgeries were performed on Silas in their living-room with the help of a mechanic and a sparkie. They really did make an effort to care for Silas, which was why he hated them so much.

  As his strength returned, it took more and more of it to resist the urge to murder them all in their sleep. They were attentive and helpful. “I made you a playlist.” the mech, Colin, explained once Silas was lucid enough to understand. “All the news reports on your crash,”

  “...How d’you know it was….my crash?”

  They gave him a handheld to watch the news videos on and that was when he found out that the accident had left him with a little...difficulty.

  They started looking into getting someone who knew about things like adjuncts to come and have a look at him. In the meantime they had to show the news to him on a big screen. “Will you find this upsetting?” he was asked gently.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  He was upset.

  “Shot down? We were not shot down! It was a bird strike!”

  “That seems...unlikely,”

  “That’s what happened!”

  “No, that’s what happened,” said someone, pointing. The news report was illustrated with stock footage of Callistoan ?gr?i rebels launching LRPs from crude railguns. “?gr?i shot your plane down,”

  “They did NOT! It was birds.” explained Silas. “I’m telling you. I was there.”

  “Yes. And because you were there, you have a bit of damage to the ol’ think-pan and you don’t remember things so well.”

  “I remember this,”

  “They wouldn’t just lie about something so serious.”

  Silas seemed about to have a seizure. “They’re lying about all of it!” he squawked, flapping. “Look! ‘Five killed’. There were six on board.”

  “Yeah, we know that one survived. You.”

  “But they’re saying I’m dead,”

  “Silas, it was a really bad crash. Really bad. It’s really a miracle you survived. Everybody would have been all...well, they wouldn’t have been identifiable. They made a very easy mistake.”

  Silas shook his head. “No.” he said firmly. “No mistake. This is a cover-up.”

  There were snorts and laughter all round.

  “A cover-up?”

  Silas nodded. “There was a sixth man on the aircraft with us and he wasn’t a soldier. He was a Daintree executive. That’s why we were flying over here. We were bringing him to Norov-Ava.”

  The students weren’t laughing at that but they looked doubtful.

  “Why else would we be over here?” said Silas. “Wait, that was brain-damage. Scratch that. This was a job and he was the job. Daintree. Cameron Kinnie. RIP. But not according to the news reports.”

  Still doubtful. Someone consulted their handheld.

  “Okay, that is a person. He exists. There’s lots of stuff about a Daintree Cameron Kinnie.”

  Colin hovered over Yannis’ shoulder as he looked at his handheld. “Nothing about him being in a crash.”

  Colin threw the image results from Yannis’ handheld up onto the screen. “You reckon he was on your plane and he died?”

  Silas nodded. “He was and he did. I saw. Everybody was still recognisable, pretty much.” he said. We didn’t get as mashed as you’d expect.” Silas looked around at them all. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Sorry, Silas,” said Blaire. “It’s just...you seem confused and...we see heaps of people with head injuries, brain damage…”

  “...And a lot of them talk about conspiracies and people being out to get them and government plots,” said Hector.

  “Of course we know you didn’t make up being a soldier and being in a plane crash, that part is clearly true,” said Colin, bobbing in the air.

  “But the part about some Daintree executive being on board that there’s no evidence for and none of the news is reporting…” said Yannis, trailing off.

  “I saw him.” said Silas huffily. “He looked like him and he was dead. They have pictures of me, it’s not like you could mistake us for each other. This isn’t a mistake, they’re lying. They’re lying about it being ?gr?i that shot us down and they’re covering up that Daintree guy being on board.”

  “Silas,” said Colin, doing little figure-eights in the air. “Who’s ‘they’?”