Oris was having a bad day. It had started promisingly enough – a trip to the surface to deploy the clean-up crew, and then left alone to perform routine system checks – but gone rapidly downhill when the shuttle was boarded by a pathological native wielding a super-gun, who blasted a guard into chunks before his very eyes then forced an emergency take-off, ordering him to leave orbit entirely.

Now, heading into interplanetary space in a woefully ill-equipped vessel, on the run from his employers who, now that he had become an unacceptable security risk, would have no compunction about eliminating him along with his captor, he felt that he had reached his nadir. Surely, he thought, things couldn’t get any worse?

His attention snapped to the screen: two traces, just in range, but approaching rapidly.

“Pursuit?” asked Vana. He nodded.

“So. Fight or flight.”

“Unfortunately, neither is an option in this crate,” he said, grimly. “In fact, I’d say there is only one choice left open.”

“Which is?”

“To die.”