Jin sat back in the hard copilot seat. He exhaled a long, shaky breath. He watched the radar screen. The eleven red dots representing the imperial cruisers stopped at the border. They did not cross into neutral territory. The First Prince's men followed orders, but they feared the Academy Dean more.
The immediate danger was over. They escaped.
Jin let his muscles relax. The adrenaline slowly drained out of his system. His chest ached. His lungs felt raw from the freezing air on the cargo ramp. He looked out the front viewport.
The Zenith planet loomed ahead in the dark void. It was massive. From a distance, it looked exactly like a giant, blooming lotus flower. But as they drifted closer, Jin saw the true scale of the bio-engineering. The "petals" were actually colossal orbital stations. They were connected to the planet's surface by thick, green biological tethers. The planet itself was a vibrant mix of deep blue oceans and sprawling green landmasses.
It looked peaceful. It looked safe.
Then, the cargo ship groaned.
It was a deep, terrible sound. It came from the structural ribs of the metal hull. Nyx had pumped her Level 4 Divinity Realm Aether directly into the ship's cheap wiring. She forced a garbage hauler to outrun military cruisers. The ship was not built to handle that kind of raw power. The internal systems were completely fried.
The green instrument panels on the dashboard flickered. Then they died.
A harsh red emergency light blinked on the ceiling. It bathed the small cockpit in a bloody glow. A new warning buzzer sounded. It was a flat, continuous tone. It was the sound of total system failure.
The ship gave one violent shudder. A loud popping noise echoed from the rear engine block.
The constant, high-pitched whine of the main thrusters stopped instantly. The deep vibration in the floor plates vanished. The ship went completely silent. In the vacuum of space, the silence was heavy and terrifying. They were no longer flying. They were just a piece of dead metal drifting on their remaining forward momentum.
"The engine core is fused," Nyx stated. Her telepathic voice sounded faint in Jin's mind. She was physically exhausted. "The biological circuits melted when I bypassed the limiters. We have absolutely no propulsion."
Jin looked at the black screens. He looked back out the window. The massive lotus planet was getting much bigger. They were drifting right toward it.
"We are caught in the planet's gravitational pull," Jin said. It was basic physics. They had forward momentum, but they had no engines to correct their course or slow them down. The planet was pulling them in.
"Use the manual override," Nyx told him. She pointed to the floor. "There is a mechanical lever under your seat. It deploys the emergency atmospheric drag chutes. It does not require electrical power."
Jin unbuckled his heavy harness. He leaned down and reached under his seat. His fingers brushed against a thick iron lever. It was covered in decades of dust and dried grease. He gripped it with both hands. He planted his feet on the floor.
He pulled hard.
The lever was stiff. It was rusted in place. Jin gritted his teeth. He used all the strength his weak Foundation Level 3 body had. He put his entire body weight into the pull.
The lever cracked backward with a loud snap.
A heavy explosive charge fired at the rear of the ship. The sound vibrated through the metal hull. Jin quickly sat up. He looked at the cracked rearview monitor on the dashboard. It was running on a separate battery backup.
He watched the heavy metal hatch blow off the back of the ship. A massive bundle of thick synthetic canvas shot out into space. It was the drag chute.
It was supposed to unfold. It was supposed to catch the friction of the upper atmosphere and slow their descent.
Instead, the rusted steel cables connecting the parachute to the ship simply snapped. The metal was too old. It was brittle from years of neglect. The cables sheared off instantly the moment the heavy canvas hit the edge of the atmosphere.
The parachute did not open. It did not slow them down. It just tumbled away into the dark void. It was a useless bundle of cloth floating past the side window.
Jin watched it drift away. He let go of the iron lever.
"The chutes are gone," Jin said. His voice was completely flat.
The cargo hauler started to tilt forward. The heavy, dead engine block in the back acted like an anchor, but the nose of the ship dipped down toward the planet first. The gravity of Zenith reached out and grabbed them. It was a slow, terrifying shift in direction.
Jin felt his stomach rise into his throat. The artificial gravity inside the ship failed entirely. He floated up an inch from his seat. Dust and loose metal screws floated up from the floorboards.
Then, the real planetary gravity took over. The ship breached the outermost layer of the Zenith atmosphere.
The freefall began.
It was not a controlled descent. It was a dead drop. The ship was a heavy metal brick falling from low orbit. The speed increased exponentially every second. Jin dropped hard back into his seat. He quickly pulled his harness straps over his chest and locked the buckle.
The G-force hit him like a physical blow. It pressed him deep into the hard cushion. The straps dug heavily into his collarbones. It was hard to draw a breath. The pressure on his chest was immense.
Outside the viewport, the black space turned into a hazy, violent red. They were hitting the atmosphere far too fast. The ship was not aerodynamic. It hit the air like a flat rock. The friction generated massive, incredible heat.
The rusted metal hull of the cargo ship began to glow. First dull orange, then bright cherry red. Jin heard the outer armor plates groaning under the thermal stress. The heat inside the cockpit spiked rapidly. He could smell melting plastic insulation and burning wire. Sweat poured down his face.
"Nyx," Jin gasped. He could barely force the word out.
Nyx did not sit in her pilot chair. She did not strap herself in. She stood up. The violent, erratic shaking of the falling ship did not seem to affect her balance. But Jin could see she was badly weakened. Her black graphene suit looked dull and dusty. Her posture was slightly slumped.
Fighting three Core Formation assassins, breaking an imperial shield, and manually pushing a dead ship across a border took almost all her Aether. She was a Level 4 Divinity Realm expert, but she was not a god. She had limits. Her energy reserves were nearly empty.
She walked over to Jin's seat. She braced her hands against the metal bulkheads on either side of his chair.
"The ship will not survive the landing," Nyx stated in his mind. The telepathic link was full of static. Her mental voice sounded strained. "The hull will disintegrate before we reach the ground. The impact will kill a Foundation Realm human instantly."
Jin looked out the window. The red glow of the atmospheric entry was blinding. The heat was unbearable. The metal walls around him were warping inward from the pressure.
He survived his old corporate life on Earth just to die in a new one. He survived his sister's soul-dissolving poison. He survived the mantis-blade assassins in his bedroom. He survived a massive space battle against a dozen elite military cruisers.
And now he was going to die in a simple plane crash because a rusted cable snapped.
It was a cruel, stupid joke. The universe did not care about his Level 10 genetic cheat. It did not care about his corporate logic or his plans for the throne. Gravity was an absolute law, and he was falling too fast.
The ship violently pitched sideways. It started to spin out of control.
The world outside the window became a blurry, dizzying mess of red fire and the distant green surface of the planet. The centrifugal force was crushing. Jin squeezed his eyes shut. His head pounded with the pressure. The blood rushed to his feet. His vision went dark at the edges. He was very close to passing out.
The ship broke through the lower cloud layer. The sky outside turned from burning red to a violent, stormy grey.
The ground rushed up to meet them.
Jin forced his eyes open for one second. He saw a massive expanse of dense, dark jungle directly below. Giant trees the size of skyscrapers pointed up at the falling ship like wooden spears. They were heading right for the thickest part of the forest.
The cargo hauler was falling like a meteor. The metal groaned one final time, and then the structural frame snapped. The left wing sheared off completely. It flew away into the grey clouds. The ship spun even faster, a chaotic mess of burning metal and exposed wiring.
Nyx moved.
She wedged herself into the tight space between Jin's seat and the main dashboard. She wrapped her arms tightly around him. She pulled his head down against her chest. She shielded his fragile, unaugmented body with her own.
She summoned the absolute last drops of her Aether.
A faint, thin layer of black energy formed a cocoon around the two of them. It was not a strong shield. It was barely visible. It was just enough to absorb the worst of the kinetic shock. She was using her own body as a physical buffer to keep his bones from turning to dust on impact.
"Brace," her telepathic voice echoed weakly in his mind.
Jin squeezed his eyes shut tighter. He grabbed her dark cloak. He waited for the end.
The ship hit the forest canopy.
The impact was deafening. Thick, ancient branches smashed against the viewport glass. The reinforced glass shattered inward instantly, showering them with sharp fragments. A massive, solid tree trunk tore straight through the bottom of the hull.
The metal buckled and screamed like a dying animal. The ship tumbled end over end through the giant trees, violently ripping itself to pieces against the thick branches. It tore through the canopy, leaving a trail of fire and shredded metal in its wake.
The remains of the cockpit hit the solid ground with the force of a heavy bomb.
Everything went black.