Like a wild horse, the spaceship, following a forcibly altered and steeper trajectory, violently burst out of the shadow cone of planet G-173c and plunged into the relatively safe, dark expanse of space!
Almost simultaneously, the destructive energy torrent of the CME completely engulfed their previous location, instantly vaporizing and swallowing the asteroid fragment that had served as a springboard!
The Nightingale narrowly missed the edge of the CME energy storm! The scorching plasma turbulence, like the fingertips of a demon, grazed the spaceship's hull, leaving large scorch marks. The last vestiges of its protective shield energy vanished completely, and some external sensors and antennas melted and broke in the intense heat!
The spaceship lurched violently, like a ship lost power in a storm, drifting on inertia in the aftershocks of the energy.
A few seconds later, the most violent turbulence gradually subsided.
Kane and Leah struggled to recover from the dizziness of the overload.
On the main screen, the indicator bar representing the CME's energy intensity was rapidly declining from its peak. They… seemed… to have escaped?
"Orbit confirmed…" Leah's voice was weak and hoarse, the data stream in her eyes becoming intermittent, clearly severely damaged. "We… have escaped the main CME influence zone… currently in… a safe zone…"
Safe?
Really… safe?
Kane, unable to savor the joy of surviving, lunged at the communications console, shouting hoarsely, "Rex! Rex! Respond if you hear me! Rex!"
Only a deathly static noise came through the communicator.
The explosion in the power bay… Rex…
A chilling cold instantly swept over Kane.
The persistent, unsettling static noise in the communications channel, like icy rain, extinguished the last vestiges of warmth from their near-death experience. Kane called Rex's name again and again, but the only response was the faint metallic groan of the ship's structure due to cooling, and the intermittent electrical noise caused by the instability of the Leah system.
"Life signal scan... power compartment area... no... no valid biosignal read." Leah's voice was low and labored, her synthetic face appearing unusually pale in the dim emergency lights. "Explosion... massively powerful... and... may have triggered a secondary collapse or... vacuum exposure..."
No valid biosignal.
These words struck Kane's heart like a hammer blow. Despite his premonition, the moment he heard the confirmation, a torrent of grief, guilt, and helplessness almost overwhelmed him. Rex, that rough, belligerent, yet incredibly reliable heavy weapons expert, that comrade who, at the last moment, chose to manually overload the engines, sacrificing his life to buy them a chance to survive... might already be...
Kane closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the cold, burnt-smelling air supplied by the recirculation system. Now was not the time to wallow in grief. The spaceship was severely damaged, and they remained in grave danger.
"A comprehensive assessment of the spaceship's damage," he said, his voice hoarse, but he forced himself to remain calm.
"Yes, sir." Leah rallied her spirits and began activating all remaining functional sensors to perform an internal scan. A few minutes later, a shocking damage report appeared on the main screen.