"Wait!" I said quickly, before Desai could turn around in her seat. I should have trusted her not to engage the controls without my order, for she held her hands in the air, not poised over the controls. "Skippy, can you eject those ships, get clear, and jump them into this Saturn planet, before they can launch those drones?"

"Please, Colonel Joe, you insult me. Easy-peasy."

Chang didn't have any objection, or a better idea. Simms was enthusiastic, and I saw a new respect in her, and Desai's, eyes. We jumped twice through the emptiness of interstellar space, and then, with a press of a button by Desai, the view of black interstellar space in the screens was suddenly replaced by a gray-blue gas giant in the blink of a eye. The planet completely filled the viewscreen, I mean, Skippy must have been showing off his navigational skills, it sure looked like we jumped in really close. I didn't have time to shout an alarm, because the star carrier immediately shuddered as fourteen Kristang ships and the cargo pod of sleeping Thuranin were violently subjected to emergency separation, and then our ship surged forward under normal-space thrust from Desai. Skippy had given her no course instructions other than get the hell out there ASAP, and don't point the ship toward the planet. We could see almost immediate flashes from aft as the Kristang ships unwillingly formed jump points. "Pilot, you can cut thrust. Watch this." Skippy announced excitedly.

"Watch what?"

The view screen zoomed to a section of the cloudtops, which were suddenly lit from within. "I jumped all fourteen ships into a hundred cubic kilometers, so the endpoints of their jump entry points overlapped, as insurance that nothing is left of them."

"Isn't that a bit of overkill?"

"Overkill is underrated." Skippy said smugly. "Hmm. Uh oh."

"Uh oh?" The light within the clouds below kept growing, becoming searing in brilliance, and the cloudtops boiled up toward us. Fast. "Uh oh? What the hell did you do, Skippy?"

"The energy released within the planet was much greater than I anticipated, somewhere way up in the sustained petawatt range. Wow. It’s become self-sustaining. Darn."

"Darn?" The clouds was racing towards us. "What the hell is a petawatt?" I shouted.

"Trouble. We are safely out of range. Uh, I think." Skippy's tone of voice didn't fill me with confidence.

"You think? Desai, move us away from the planet, higher orbit, whatever you call it. Step on it."

"Aye aye, sir." She said with a big grin on her face. Piloting a giant starship was something she clearly enjoyed. "Pedal to the metal."

We watched the planet retreat behind us, as the cloudtops boiled rapidly into a truly enormous mushroom shape, and projected high above the atmosphere like a solar flare. Skippy reported excitedly that a significant part of the atmosphere had exceeded escape velocity, and was being permanently blown into space. Enough that the ship's sensors could measure the change in the planet's mass. The atmospheric gas was still climbing, but Desai now had us moving faster, I was confident we weren't going to get swallowed up. "Skippy, what went wrong?"