Sweat soaked the sides of my helmet. I gave my entire attention to the flying, absorbed. Dedicated. Focused.

Though I never lost control of my flying, a part of me started to feel disconnected. The insides of my helmet began to grow hot, and I could swear that I could hear voices inside my head. Just fragments of words.

… detonate…

… turn…

… booster…

Nedd and I burst back into that cavernous opening at the outer rim of the shipyard. My focus faded into relief, and I didn’t need M-Bot’s instructions to turn straight for the glowing gap in the wall.

Nedd and I darted out of the hole and nearly plowed right into the ground. The shipyard had almost hit the surface.

I pulled up and skimmed the blue-grey surface, kicking up dust behind me. Nedd cursed softly. We’d entered a narrow, shrinking gap of space between station and ground.

“The Krell have just detonated several large explosives on the top of the shipyard,” M-Bot said.

I bolted forward under the shipyard. The steel ceiling overhead lowered, chunks of metal breaking off and warping around us as the thing’s structural integrity collapsed.

“At current velocity, you will not escape the blast wave,” M-Bot said softly.

“Overburn, Nedd!” I shouted, slamming my throttle all the way forward. “Mag-10!” The GravCaps kicked in, but quickly overloaded, and a moment later I was smashed backward in my seat.

My face grew heavy, the skin pulling back from my eyes and around my mouth. My arms felt leaden and tried to slip away from the controls.

Ahead, the way out—freedom—was an ever-shrinking line of light.

My Poco started to rattle as I hit Mag-10, then continued, pushing to Mag-10.5. The vibration got worse, and my shield grew bright from the sudden heat of wind resistance.

Blessedly, it was enough. Nedd and I exploded out from underneath the shipyard as it crashed down, spraying dust and debris after us. But at these speeds, we quickly outran that—and outran the sound of the crash, since we were going several times the speed of sound.

I breathed out, decelerating carefully, the rattling subsiding.

Nedd on my wing, we swooped around—and in those seconds of flight after escaping, we’d gotten far enough away that I couldn’t even see the dust of the crashing shipyard. My sensors barely registered the shock wave when it finally hit us on our way to rendezvous with the others.

Eventually, we did get close enough that I could make out the enormous dust cloud the crash had caused. The wreckage itself was just a big dark shadow in the dust, swarming with smaller specks above. Krell ships, making sure nothing useful could be salvaged from the enormous wreck. Acclivity stone could often be recovered from the core of fallen debris, but concentrated destructor fire—or the intense heat from the right kind of an explosion—would ruin it.

“Finally,” Jorgen said as we fell in with the flight. “What in the stars were you two thinking?”