I have seen what no one else has seen. I alone dared to enter the sun and gaze within. My bomber shot through the transition region in an ultraviolet blink.

The chromosphere bathed me in darkroom washes of crimson and rose-colored light. The photosphere was a butterfly, tickling my nose with fluttering rainbows and scintillating wisps. Prominences swelled and spicules danced. I peered out through the canopy in silent awe. I wanted to remember this for the rest of my life. There wouldn’t be much more of it.

I soared into the convection zone. The Starmine’s rings were spaced roughly two seconds apart, holding back a dense ocean of boiling plasma. There were so many rings! The great freighter fleet must have chewed the inner planets into husks. Perhaps even Jupiter’s core had been tapped, bent into the silver ribs of the dag gadol.

Beyond the magna-walls, the substance of the sun boiled towards the photosphere. I was in the Rayleigh realm of the convection zone where Bénard cells billowed into thousand-kilometer steeples. My mind kept latching onto forms, trying to insist there must be some meaning, some function to the infinite instability.

I was captivated by the dancing plasma and didn’t notice I was in danger until I almost collided with a freighter. The giant ship was just meters beneath my Yama’s belly. I thought I must have drifted down into the line of freighters, but I was flying level. The freighter had broken away from the others. It climbed on a course that would crush me against the magnetic wall.

It was a ludicrous matchup. The freighter was almost three kilometers wide. It was an ocean of gleaming metal, rising to swallow my ship. In a fit of claustrophobic panic, I changed course abruptly and rammed the throttle.

The Yama shuddered in complaint, but I was too keyed-up to feel pain.

I was such a fool! How could I have let something so massive sneak up on me? I didn’t let off the throttle. I had an illogical fear I would look back and find the freighter right on top of me.

Why had it flown off course? Did it malfunction?

I could visualize the wayward freighter crashing into a ring, collapsing the tunnel, drowning me in a wave of plasma. I found the courage to look back.

It was following me! The freighter’s nose was pointed directly at my ship, and it wasn’t alone. The once-rigid lines of freighters wavered. Dozens of ships diverged from their orderly ranks and closed in on me.

The master of this place had decided I’d gone far enough. Freighters flew into my path and converged all around me. A single brush with one of those hulks was instant death. I had a vision of my bomber crushed between two freighters, the phase-diamond hull popping like a glass ornament.

I had to escape! I accelerated, dipping between two ships trying to bar my way. Beyond them, there was a shrinking triangle between three intersecting giants. I shot through, bracing for the peal of shattering diamond. I made it unscathed, but a tangle of ships waited on the other side.

The Starmine had become a train-wrecked pandemonium of freighters. Yet, the chaos was coordinated and purposeful. The enormous freighters passed within meters of each other, but they never made contact. It was getting harder to find a way through.

There was a dark blot ahead where freighters arranged themselves into an impassible wall. I understood now. This obstacle course was meant to slow me down and force me to stop.

How many rings had I passed?

I was nowhere near the tachocline. If I deployed, the mission would fail. The wall of ships was coming up fast. I needed to decelerate.

I didn’t.

I maintained speed, hurtling towards the wall. At the point of no return, I angled my nose at the narrow junction between two freighters. They were barely a meter apart. Though the Yama couldn’t possibly fit, I rolled sideways to try and slip through. If I was wrong, it would be a quick death.

I wasn’t wrong. At the last possible second, the two freighters lurched apart, permitting me to pass. I flew through the wall, giddy with fright. I knew it! The automatic freighters could neither kill me, nor could they allow me to kill myself. I exploded with short-sighted joy.

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At once, the freighters seemed to realize they’d been found out, and they abandoned the tactic. The jumbled ships resumed their orderly lines. I had been flying along these ships for hours, but the way they moved in perfect unison still unnerved me. Soon, they were all back in place as if nothing had happened. I knew they couldn’t harm me, but I still felt uneasy. They were just too damn big.

☼

I continued to descend. Deeper inside the Starmine, the tunnel flared into a spherical chamber. I slowed so I would have more time to react.

The chamber was a thousand kilometers wide, with tunnels branching off in every direction. At the center was a featureless black orb, one of the sun-stabilizing spheres. The orb was a nexus of activity. Lines of freighters flew close, and then whipped into a new direction, rocketing into one of the tunnels that branched off from the chamber. The streams of ships interlocked. Freighters fired away as fast and precise as bullets shooting between propeller blades. If only old Oswald Boelcke could see this!

I gave the sphere the widest possible berth, flying along the outer wall of the junction. Anything that could fling the freighters around like toys would surely destroy me. It was a wise choice. Even at the outermost edge of the chamber, the gravitational pull from the dark sphere was immense. I had to push the throttle until my exchangers wailed to make it through the junction.

What the hell was that sphere? Some sort of hyperon- vortex? A micro-singularity? Whatever it was, I hoped I wouldn’t encounter others.

As I flew deeper into the convection zone, I saw immense forms beyond the magna-wall. These were megastructures, obscured by currents of rising plasma. My eyes were drawn by a massive black spire, which rose from a ring to thrust into a supercell. The spire was an axle.

Along its length, spokes twisted in the current. Each terminated in a plume of whip-like antennae. The strands danced and writhed in the roiling plasma with such intensity I wondered if they were alive. Were they sensors? Was it some kind of plasmic dynamo? I could only guess. I continued to fly alongside the mute freighters in a state of continual awe.

There was no sun-stabilizing sphere at the next junction. Leading up to it was a group of three rings. They were joined by the roots of three colossal silver structures that looked like cubist interpretations of trees.

I slowed for a closer look, paying a terrible price for opposing the pull of the core. My weight doubled, then tripled. It was a terrible reminder this was a one-way ride. My body could not possibly bear the strain it would take to escape.

The upper branches of Triggdrasil extended deep into the rivers of plasma. High in the branches, there were crystalline spheres swaying in the current. Through patches of less-dense plasma, I sometimes saw swirls of multicolored motes glittering inside. I had a childish moment of delight, imagining they were fruit from the galaxy tree. I wanted to linger, but gravity was ever-insistent.

As I delved deeper, I remained wary of trickery from the freighters. When the lines slowed abruptly, my hands were already poised on the spurs, ready to evade. The freighters braked hard. Shock ripples raced through their hulls. Ahead of us, other ships accelerated. A large gap formed.

It had to be a trap. I gunned it and continued into the empty section. Then an unusual movement outside the mine caught my eye.

A dark line formed in the convection cell beyond the wall. The filament cavity whirled out of control and became a cyclone. Burning wind hammered the magna-walls, which shuddered under the onslaught. I hit the throttle, but it was too late.

Like a cracking whip, Leviathan’s tail lashed against the Starmine. Bolts of brilliant lighting arced in all directions. I winced, and the canopy phased opaque momentarily.

The magna-wall breached, and a torrent of plasma jetted into the Starmine. If I had been in its direct path, I would have been vaporized. Instead, my ship was struck by overspray and thrown into a terrible spin. I fought with the spurs, but they would not respond. The Yama shuddered in pain as we were blasted towards the opposite wall. I kept fighting the controls, expecting to crash at any moment.

Then the ship stopped spasming, and I regained control. I was able to pull out of the spin and re-orient. After I pulled up, my eyes shot to the breach, wondering what had saved me.

An enormous shadow deflected the plasma stream. One of the freighters had flown into the breach! The enormous ship melted like wax, burning in a flare of brilliant blue light.

The freighter sacrificed itself to save me! I’d ignored the warning when they all slowed. I felt a pang of guilt, though I knew they were just autonomous machines. Hordes of spidery robots issued from the nearest ring, linking together in chains and swarming around the dying freighter. I wanted to watch them repair the magna-wall, but I was flying away too fast.

My Yama was hurt. Its insides pulsed and shook, kneading me like dough. All I could do was try to go limp. Too well, I remembered the ballooning agony on Addict’s face and the remains of Toucher gurgling out of the hatch. I took a beating, but the tremors subsided. I felt a twinge of senseless pride. I had always thought my Yama was a little tougher than the others.

I continued to descend. Now that I knew breaches could happen, I couldn’t stop peering through the walls, flinching at the slightest flicker. The Starmine had seemed so monumental. I’d never dreamed it could fail, and now, it felt as if the whole thing might collapse at any time.

I realized I was being drawn in. The Starmine could have ended me at any time. The sun-stabilizing sphere could have ripped me to shreds. The freighters pulled their punches and let me slip past. Instead of crushing me, they had warned me. One even sacrificed itself to save me. What was this place? Why was it luring me in?

I had a long way down to think about it.