Heart of the Sun

------ Bakur Tinwe, aboard

Magmito

, in orbit around Anoria ------

"Marlin, they're not changing course," Bakur said over proxnet, adding a micron of extra barb to the growing tension aboard

Magmito

. The mercenary vessel adjusted course slightly, enough to avoid a head-on collision with the ship thirty thousand kilometers away. Their counterpart,

Charger

, adjusted course to meet them.

"Bakur, hail

Charger

again and tell them this is suicidal. I get that Counter Corp wants their fair share of transport, but this is gerushit." Marlin sounded less sure that hailing their rival mercenary company's ship would do any better than last time.

Bakur flipped the comm transmitter to narrownet and hit them with a targeting laser. There was no way they could miss this transmission. He keyed to record. "This is Bakur Taroth of Terminus Rex transport

Magmito

.

Charger

, adjust course to avoid collision. Failure to change course will result in immediate defensive action from

Magmito

. Please respond. Taroth, out."

They waited for several tense minutes as the message beamed across the void. Bakur looked at Gen and Beorn strapped into their gunnery mounts, lying flat on their stomachs in the galaxy's most compromising position.

If things came to it, they-

"Magmito

, you're stomping around our wells again. Drop your cargo and leave; we'll let you go.

"

Bakur set his jaw. "

Charger

, this is a violation of an

innumerate

number of Unity laws. You're committing an act of piracy."

Even though the planet below was supposed to be a resort world, both crews had nearly come to blows on the surface. A Galactic Unity security team had broken them up before anything more than shouting and posturing could happen, but this escalation was drastic by any means.

Magmito

was turret-equipped, as

Charger

surely was.

Did they really think this kind of reaction was warranted?

Another message from

Charger

chimed on the comm network. Bakur opened it and forwarded it to Marlin.

"

Looks like you picked on the wrong crew then, doesn't it Rex? Some datist back on Poros is going to have a lot of fun putting Rex under fire for trying to dust us out here. Makes it easy to collect your bounty."

"Missiles," Gen nearly shouted over proxnet. "What the fuck there's seventy-three of them?! Is this right, Bakur?"

The communications officer was silent.

Whatever this Counter Corp nobody thought he was doing, it wasn't the time to analyze it. Even just admitting that his company had a bounty on Terminus Rex property was tantamount to nuking Counter Corp's headquarters. Let alone the fact that they were planning to cover it up.

Bakur opened the local tactical map display and highlighted the umbrella of red targets ringed with several

warning

and

danger

signs.

Seventy-three missiles in two seconds. Conical spread. Higher maximum velocity than

Magmito

. Higher maneuverability. Auto-targeters. Counter-battery fire effective for four minutes. That's about a target every sixteen seconds. Targeting-

"Bakur, confirm target count," Marlin ordered.

There wasn't enough ammo or time to commit to spot remove on this scale.

Magmito

was just too small of a ship to handle this amount of ordinance. "Marlin, we're looking at a target every fifteen seconds. And that's if

Charger

doesn't start shooting us for fun."

"That's doable."

Bakur rolled his eyes. "No, it's not. We need to abandon ship."

"Not on my watch,

communications officer

." Marlin's tone hardened considerably. Bakur bit back a retort and a personal insult. There was a more important task at hand, that of actually surviving this encounter.

"Marlin, this isn't your Unity frigate; we're going to die if we stay. We have to abandon ship."

The captain held his head forward even as his eyes cut across the command deck at Bakur. A tense few seconds passed before he shook his head. "Terminus Rex didn't hire us to abandon ship when fired upon."

"And they didn't hire us to get blasted into dust in the Void either! We've got enough ordinance closing to atomize us five times over. We don't have enough guns to target even half of it, even with flak and decoys, which we don't even have. We have to abandon ship. Otherwise we're just staying to get dusted."

"Then we should get to picking off targets at extreme range, shouldn't we?" came the humorless reply, helmet closing over the last word. Marlin's comm switched on over narrownet. "Besides, if we abandoned ship now and shit lead on course for Anoria, how far do you think we'll make it before they crack the pods?"

Bakur unstrapped himself from his harness and walked over to Marlin at the command seat, struggling as gravity nearly tripled. Marlin didn't look over, only setting an evasive course without giving away any emotion behind the reflective visor of his helmet.

"Marlin."

"Bakur."

There was nothing left to do now but leave. The man's mind was made up. "We can't let them get away with this. If we're all dusted out here, they will."

"If all of us are, yes."

His meaning wasn't lost. Someone had to survive and it it clear from his taciturn demeanor that the weight of impending death was starting to affect him, despite his experience in the navy. Or because of it. Bakur couldn't tell. "I'll upload the footage to the database when I get back to

The Howl

."

Marlin just keyed the lift door to open and gave a voidsign salute with two fingers. Gen and Beorn stayed at their stations.

"You guys too? Nobody coming with me for insurance?" he asked.

Gen chuckled. "Marlin's been our captain since we were in the Navy. No better place to bite it than out here with him." He gave a little groan as his station injected him with a chemical cocktail affectionately called 'fight juice' by its users. "Besides, someone has to cover your ass end up here or they'll just dust you on entry anyway. Go take the data and tattle on Counter Corp for us."

"I will never understand the navy," Bakur said as he keyed the lift.

"When you love a thing more than you fear death, Bakur," Marlin answered. "That's when you'll understand. Remember that."

Bakur took the lift to the cargo hold and took a rifle and rations from the emergency lockers next to the rack of escape pods lined up neatly against the wall. He keyed his ID for one and the machine obliged, sinking into the floor toward the stern of the ship so he could slide in from the top.

The carrot-shaped vessel was snug, enough to make the rifle and ration packs seem like they weren't worth the trouble to bring. Regardless, he strapped in and chinned the command to close the pod and pressurize it.

A few seconds passed and everything lit up green.

A notification appeared on his HUD from Marlin with a file attached. Bakur accepted it and sent it to his notepad. When he got back to

The Howl

, someone at Counter Corp was getting thrown off a Porosian rooftop and shot for good measure when he hit the ground.

The escape pod launched with a slight

whum

. Shortly after, the navigation thrusters kicked on and Bakur's helmet synced with the on-board computer. Autopilot requested to take control of the pod's descent and Bakur chinned the accept command, feeling thrust gravity increase around him. His stomach leapt into his throat.

He braced as the pod started its entry into Anoria's upper atmosphere.

------------

Three minutes to impact and still not sign of the chute being ready to deploy.

Bakur shook a bead of sweat off his brow and tried to toggle through the escape pod's controls to find an emergency chute. It didn't appear that there was one. The primary chute had failed to deploy after interference from

Charger

upon reentry.

Somehow, the pod had managed to evade two salvos of ordinance from

Charger

at extreme range and then right itself enough to make a direct entry into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, with the primary chute damaged, that meant Bakur was now hurtling toward a serene stretch of golden sand at half the speed of sound.

Seeing no other option, the communications officer grabbed the emergency evac handle and pulled. The blast cap above him went off and suddenly he was sucked out of the pod hard enough for his suit to respond by locking up.

Well, that was smart

, Bakur thought sardonically as he watched the pod descend toward the beach at an astonishing speed. He wasn't going to be far behind, as things stood. He'd be just about as flat, if not more so, in less than two minutes now.

He jolted back with enough force to make his teeth click together sharply. His vision blurred as a number of concerning warnings flashed on his HUD. He tried to focus as the indication for his vitals flared with bright neon intensity. Probably something about his blood pressure. He could feel his nose bleeding back into his sinuses despite the chemical clotting agents already in his bloodstream.

THREE DOSES REMAINING

.

A surge of awareness overcame Bakur's senses and he felt a tingle in the back of his eyes that made him blink hard with discomfort. His blood pressure skyrocketed, although his suit indicated that this was intentional. His vitals leveled off at unsafe, but acceptable measures. The stimulant dose did its job as intended.

Bakur chinned through the growing number of useless status reports to find the one he cared about. Apparently, his suit's built-in zero-g thrusters had activated in an attempt to slow his lethal descent speed. So far, it didn't appear to be doing much, as it was trying to conserve fuel and save him in the same hand. Neither job was approaching completion in any real way.

He was forty seconds from impact when he managed to unlock the emergency settings and regain actual mobility. Leaning back, he slapped the thruster key on his shoulder twice and all three directional thrusters fired at once.

The next thirty-four seconds were a blur of panic and spinning nausea.

Thankfully, he missed the beach by almost a hundred meters. Instead, he impacted the rolling sea hard enough to send a pillar of foam and steam almost fifteen meters high. His suit locked up again with the expectation that his spine would be broken on impact.

To Bakur's complete and utter astonishment, he lived long enough to confirm that it wasn't.

Stress levels through the atmosphere. Hormonal imbalance due to seven unique factors. Alarming blood pressure. Vision strained. Multiple bruised ribs. Two stress fractures. Likely concussion

.

All in all, a resounding

not dead

.

He chinned through the command functions again, this time with a little less anxiety over falling to his imminent death. The suit unlocked and he felt the thick, viscous hug of an aquatic environment envelop him. A hairline crack in his helmet visor started to drip. He righted himself as best he could and looked up toward the light fading ominously into the distance.

I'm alive at least. No telling how deep this water is, though.

He looked down and saw nothing but billowing sand and mud below his dangling boots. Too far and he wouldn't be able to get to shore. The suit provided just enough mobility assist to have functionality down a gravity well. Everything else for the suit's architecture was devoted to life support and a myriad of mundane systems that generally went unused.

He made an abortive effort at swimming. The extra sixty

ish

kilos of weight attached to him made it like trying to walk through syrup. There was no choice but to wait and see where he stopped.

About twenty meters down, he finally touched the bottom. He toggled his helmet lights on and looked around. White sand still in motion with shells and scattered oceanic vegetation surrounded him. A bed of knee-high sea grass waved around in the limited visibility.

His HUD indicated that power reserves were under four percent and dropping at a steady rate. Bakur activated the compass and it pointed toward magnetic north with some uncertainty, flicking between two points without making a clear decision. Even so, it was enough to let him turn toward the approximate location of the shore and start walking.

He shut off all non-essential functions and killed the oxygen recycler, watching his estimated power exhaustion jump from thirteen minutes to nearly fifty. Enough time to trudge a hundred or so meters.

The sand and mud sucked at his boots, making the long walk more difficult than he anticipated. Every step was a fight against time and gravity, tiring him out with remarkable speed. He resorted to crawling on all fours to keep from sinking so far into the muck, eventually getting clear of the submerged cloud of sand and debris.

He could see the surface above him, glinting mockingly down at him just a few meters away. His oxygen supply was starting to thin out; his breath was coming on heavier with less efficacy. He switched back to air recycling and watched his power reserve timer dip dangerously low.

The shore didn't appear to be getting any closer, nor the surface any less teasingly-far away.

I have to make it. Marlin, Gen, Beorn; they're all dead for nothing if I don't find a way to do this

. Bakur decided that a dead sprint was his best bet. He switched the recycler off and hauled himself forward with all four limbs, feeling comically slow in the water. In zero-g, even the slightest touch would send an object moving. Without gravity, speed could only really increase until impact.

Here down the gravity well, every nanometer of progress had to be worked for. His entire body ached, even with the stimulant cocktail pumping his heart fast and hard enough to make adrenaline jealous. Time mattered more than air at this moment.

His hand broke the surface with fourteen seconds of power remaining. Struggling to his feet, Bakur slammed a fist into the emergency release for his e-suit's collar and his helmet nearly popped off with a

swoosh

noise, filling with a mixture of air and sea foam.

His lungs gasped for breath as a wave lazily collided with him. He struggled to stay upright, sputtering and coughing as he sucked in lungfuls of salty, crisp air. He tasted sweat. His vision blurred. Everything darkened as he waved his arms helplessly toward the shore.

His suit shut down a few moments later, dropping his arms with what felt like kilotons of added weight. His back slumped and he only kept his head above water with the effort of a man about to drown just a few steps from safety.

The next three steps felt like they were being pulled out of a black hole. Everything in Bakur's body told him that this was going to end badly, but he refused to give in. His back curled, unable to keep up with the demands he placed on it. His ribs protested. He ground his teeth so hard that his ears rang. Or was that his blood pressure spiking to a lethal level again? He couldn't tell.

Vision came and went in spots.

He collapsed face-down in the sand with consciousness barely lingering. The surf washed up in a bubbly fan around him, burying his fingers in loose, wet sand. Somewhere in the blinking dark of his oxygen-deprived vision, Bakur wondered if all meteorites felt this way when they made planetfall.

It took him several minutes to drag his body far enough onto the beach to keep his collar out of the water. He let his helmet go and rolled onto his back, still heaving with nausea and euphoria in the same breath. He was alive. He had fallen from orbit and lived, against every

literal

astronomical odd.

His throat closed as a wave of unwanted emotions overtook him. He tried to shake the raw shock and disbelief, but it manifested regardless. He lay in the sand half crying half gasping for control for what felt like hours. He had no idea what was going to happen. Voidsake, he didn't even know what was happening

now

except that he wasn't suffocating.

Eventually, he managed to reign himself in and sit up, trembling violently with every movement. He uncoupled his suit down the front, parting it with an immense amount of effort for such a simple, ubiquitous set of locks. It took him nearly five minutes to perform a fifteen-second task.

Crawling out of his suit brought on a new wave of unimpeded sobbing and shaking that took an even longer time than the first to bring to a stop. He was alive. That was everything that mattered. That was all he could accept. He made it.

I'm alive.

It was his only thought for several minutes in the cool maritime breeze.

Still on his knees, Bakur wiped away the sand clinging to his hands and took a deep, steady breath. The ocean air felt clean. It helped settle his stomach some. His pounding skull checked the progress.

Something ahead of him moved on the narrow beach and he turned his eyes up to it, quietly hoping it wasn't one of the local animals coming to investigate if he could be considered food.

Fortunately, it was one of the locals, a tanned woman with a large, reflective umbrella in hand. She approached with a mix of curiosity and concern on her face.

"Hello, visitor" she said casually.

Bakur struggled to speak. "Please stop."

"Are you injured?" she asked, continuing across the sand at a leisurely pace.

"Please. Stop."

She slowed. "Is this a request?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me when you would like me to approach." Her tone grated against the reality of the past two hours. It made his fingers curl against his knees with growing irritation.

"Just- just stay there, please. I just

fell

out of orbit."

"Then I will return soon," came the equally-irritating answer. She set up the umbrella, standing in the broad shadow beneath it for a few moments before turning to leave. She disappeared up a staircase hewn from the hillside rising away from the beach. After he was sure she'd left, he dragged his discarded e-suit across the sand and sat in the umbrella's shade. There, he managed to get the solar cells open and let them get to work. Even with the amount of energy refracted off the atmosphere, there was enough light to charge his suit, albeit slowly.

To his disappointment, the woman returned with something under one arm before his e-suit could even run a diagnostics report. This time, instead of an umbrella, the woman carried a small metal case in one hand. He didn't stop her as she sat down in front of him in the shade, holding the case out to him.

"Who are you?"

She smiled gently, inclining her head slightly to one side. "I am Nilim. Who are you?"

"Bakur."

She gave up trying to give him the case after realizing he wasn't going to take it and opened it herself. "I have brought something for you. I think you'll like it." She produced a canteen and a small sandwich and placed them in Bakur's hands. He just stared at them dumbly, hardly believing any of what he was seeing. The tonal shift of hurtling through the sky toward impending death to being handed refreshments from a demure resort hostess was too surreal.

"What is happening?" he asked to nobody in particular.

Nilim smiled broadly at that. "Do you not know what it means to be a visitor on Anoria, Bakur?"

He blinked away the disbelief.

A visitor. Isn't that one of the people that pay to come here and fertilize these hostesses? Is that what they call them?

Bakur felt his knuckles touch the sand. He deflated against the umbrella in exhaustion.

"I... I'm not a visitor," he explained.

"You're not?" Nilim asked, leaning forward slightly as if to find a lie in his words with closer inspection.

"My ship..." He looked up, but the umbrella shielded anything above them from view. "My ship was... Marlin...they're all gone. I have to go. To the outpost."