Usurper of the Sun by Housuke Nojiri Page B

off the ship’s port side. Communications had been clear, with no interference from the sun or the gas clouds blasting up from its surface. The latest news and information was constantly uploaded onto the ship’s mirror server. Aki stayed focused on analyzing the streams of data, but it was impossible to keep from being distracted by news of the tragic and worsening conditions back home.
    Every day seemed to offer new visions of heartbreak. Lately, violent uprisings were more frequent. A few weeks ago it had been hunger strikes. The governments of the Commonwealth of Independent States nations had ceased to function as their citizens fled south. They sought refuge in South Asia, northern Australia and various parts of Africa, even though all of those locations were already overflowing with refugees. With their homelands overrun by glaciers, cut off from the rest of the world that had not yet frozen over, the refugees had little choice but to flee. The problem was that very few places were left unaffected. The environmental and meteorological changes meant that the sheer volume of refugees outnumbered the options for shelter.

    PROPELLANT TANKS 8 and 9 were jettisoned when the tanks ran dry. Gigantic metal balls drifted ahead of the decelerating ship, outlined majestically by the brilliance of the sun behind them as the tanks fell toward it. Shortly after the lengthy deceleration stage of the Phalanx ’s arrival ended, the ship spent four hours freefalling toward the Ring, entering its dark shadow from the upper edge.
    “Can we open the shield on the window, Commander?” Aki asked.
    “I suppose so. We are going to have to do it eventually.”
    Aki floated out of her cocoon into the crew area. She dimmed the lights, looked out the ship’s only window, and gasped.
    An endless mountain range of translucent white flames danced in front of her eyes. Staring at the elusive object, the scientist within her tried to make sense of what she was finally getting to see up close. Gazing into it, she started crying, almost hypnotized, reliving the memories of watching her first total solar eclipse when she was nine years old. When she made that connection, she realized that she was looking at the corona of the sun—a crown of plasma burning at over a million degrees.
    The lower part of her view was blocked by an object. The corona towered above, beaming rays in a radial pattern reminiscent of the Japanese military’s ensign from the late nineteenth century. Aki tried to change her angle by moving closer to the window, trying to see beyond whatever was in her way. No matter how she shifted her position, the object did not move. Was it part of the ship? Aki wondered if it was one of the propellant tanks. With a start and a shudder, she realized the visual trap she had fallen into and how she had confused herself.
    The obstruction to her view was not part of the ship—it was what she had spent her life waiting to see. Aki was staring at the blackness of the Ring.
    She had expected shiny silver, but the object she was looking at was as dark as space itself. Aki was mesmerized. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she noticed that the surface was less jet-black that it had originally appeared. There was a modicum of light from the surrounding stars that reflected off the surface, shimmering like an afternoon breeze blowing across a grassy meadow. The flickering of the light was most likely caused by pressure fluctuations from the solar wind that deformed the surface of the ultra-thin material enough to cause the reflecting starlight to twinkle. The view was more breathtaking than Aki could have possibly imagined.
    She drew a connection between the phenomenon she was observing and the aurorae seen in the polar regions when Earth’s magnetosphere acts as a funnel and causes particles carried on solar winds to converge and collide with the upper atmosphere. What she saw was caused by raw and undiluted solar wind. The particles