The landing bay shrieked in the thin air as the atmosphere began to grip the ship and rip her limb from limb. The ruined interior wall shredding and debris hailed off the starfighter, the rear wall now catching the air and bending, bending, buckling in the middle like an invisible fist pressed firmly and relentlessly in the center.
Colson held the severed hand tight against his chest as he reached down, flipped the engines into active mode, and punched the throttle. The sudden screech as they kicked in, a jolt that the gravcomp couldn't keep up with, pushing him back in the ejection seat. And then the skelt tore forward like some demon ripping through the air itself and flashed out through the flames of the dying warship.
An all-consuming wash of fire and then a harsh and piercingly cold wall of air, throwing the starfighter around. Much too far in the atmosphere, Riccana's snowblasted expanse spinning sickly beneath him. So close now, and coming up to meet him. He held on the stick, let the fighter ride it out, watching the white wall below, that unstoppable force that seemed unwilling to slow, rushing onward as the engines screamed in protest.
Turning once to look behind him. The destroyer wreathed in flame. A discarded and dismantled thing, whole sections torn off. Some large enough that they splintered and traced their own burning trajectories through the crisp sky. The command walkway long gone, the ship's skin glowing red, the gun emplacements cleaned off. Spiraling to its final resting place, a frozen grave for the hundreds of dead crewmen littering its decks.
At last, the fighter came up. A long sweeping turn. Nearly dusting a mountain peak, snow and ice billowing in a furious wake as it swung up and hung level for just a moment and then streaked along at near impossible speeds, a torrent of snow now behind it, and then rose again. Arching up out of that ice valley on a jet of flame, craning for empty space and punching a hole in the atmosphere as it ripped itself free of Riccana's gravity well.
9
It took a while for her to stop swearing into the comm and so he flew silently, packing the severed hand into his flight suit's front pouch and running a diagnostic to make sure the skelt wasn't too toasted from the fire and locking the wings back into their cruising position. Glad for the smooth ease of space after the turbulence of atmosphere. Looking below to see if he could watch the destroyer hit the surface, but already too far away to make out the impact.
When she finally stopped yelling he keyed the comm. Kiena's fighter hanging out in space in front of him, her location lights flashing. “Good to see you, Eight.”
She sounded out of breath. “That's it. That's what you say.”
“Lost you there for a second. Comm seems to be working now.”
“Reid, I'm gonna tear your--”
“Comms, Eight. Use your callsigns.”
He didn't hear what she said next. The comm acted up again. He wondered if maybe flying through the wall of fire had fried the external transmitter, but there was no way to know for sure until they got back to base.
10
Below them, Riccana turned slowly in the dark, absorbing the entirety of the dead ship without so much as a flinch in her rotation. An enormous eruption of snow and ice as the destroyer hit the plain, cascading into the air almost in slow motion, the wave of it rolling over itself as it raced off across the wasteland. But, soon enough, the ship lost below the ice, the burning pieces that were left tunneling themselves a hundred meters deep, even as above a blizzard fell and began to cover over any sign of impact. Any sign that the dead girl or any of the rest of the slaughtered crew had ever existed.
The Dead Ship (Firehawk Squadron Book 1) Page 4
