Excerpt

'Get us out of here, Bek.' Ferrash kept his voice level, but the view beyond the canopy forced urgency into it. He tried to ignore that view. He tried to focus on the control panels instead, but it wasn't something he could easily look away from. His nerves thrummed, taut with fear.

Outside, the ice-crowned ocean depths of Everatus IV were burning. Sickening green waves of flame danced in blinding aurorae across the surface, never ending, soaring higher and higher, dancing away from the boiling water beneath them. Delicate traceries of canyons and arches, frozen for billions of years, vanished in incomprehensible seconds. Piercing cries lanced through the skies as whole herds of mesospheric animals saw a lifetime's flight snatched from them, the rarefied air they had evolved to breathe stripped by the hunger of the encroaching inferno.

They flew a bare dozen miles above it – far too close for comfort.

Beside him, blond hair painted emerald by the flames, Bek stabbed a finger upwards. 'You want me to head back up there? We won't make it out of atmosphere before they shoot us down.'

Ferrash didn't look where he pointed. He knew what was up there. A ship the size of a small moon, crouching high above them, near enough to be deadly. It was deadlier than most, the flagship for the galaxy's biggest nation and their employers' oldest enemy. He'd figured their ship being so small in comparison would make it easy to slip away. He hadn't counted on stumbling into this mess.

'Got a better plan?' Ferrash asked.

'Yeah.' Bek nodded, his eyes flicking between the control panels and the horizon. 'We've a few minutes before all that—' he tilted his chin towards the flames '—reaches us.'

'How'd you figure that?'

Bek shrugged. 'Guessed. But if we can make it far enough while there's still time, we can come out on the other side of the planet. Long as the ship doesn't move, we're good.'

And as long as debris doesn't take us out.

From where Ferrash sat in the navigator's seat, he had a good view all the way down to the planet's surface. He risked a glance outside. Ghosts flickered beyond the canopy, the vague shapes of animals that had been thrown to higher altitudes on jets of turbulent air. Engulfed by green fire – Empyrean fire, he realised now, and suppressed a shudder – the remnants of their forms performed agonised ballets before hissing away into smoke. But they were only the leading edge of the inferno. Further below, chunks of the planet's crust were splitting off. Green light seared into his eyes from between the cracks. Even when he closed them, the colour danced in his vision. His breath caught in his throat.

'You seen anything like this before?' Bek asked.

Ferrash shook his head. 'On a person, sure, but the Empyrean doesn't scale to a whole planet. This is…' What was it? It wasn't impossible, because it was happening. It was unbelievable, that was for sure, but it was happening.

A sudden crash of turbulence jarred his teeth together. The engine strained as Bek pushed it to its limits, trying to scud them across the planet's atmosphere before it was too late. They punched through vapour escaping from the chaos below, just as they should be trying to escape.

'Do you reckon it's the ship?' said Bek.

'Bile and… No, no I don't reckon it's the ship. Hegemony world, Hegemony ship. You really think they'd burn their own planet just to get a couple spies?' He shook his head, swallowed as a ballooning motion sent his stomach into his throat. 'Besides, I said – it doesn't scale that way.'

Bek said nothing. Their ship was fast approaching what should have been the night side of the planet. Light from the fires saturated everything. This close to them, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, like the flames were already trying to pluck them from his skin. Where the wires of his pain mesh sat beneath the surface of one side of his face, his skin fizzed, and he didn't know if it was the Empyrean reacting with its circuits as designed or if he was imagining it. He looked up, double-checked their ship's sensor readings via his implants. The flagship wasn't there – which was a start.

'Keepers take me,' Bek swore. 'Is that the orbital platform?'

Ferrash turned away from the sky and followed Bek's gaze. Sure enough, a tiny structure glinted in the distance. It wasn't that far below them. As he watched, a searing beam of light shot through it from the rising flames below. A split second later, as it began to fall apart, a small shape darted away. A shuttle, or an escape pod. He traced its path upwards, struggling to rise away from danger. The platform vanished into the inferno. Arcing tendrils lashed past it.

'That's our cue to leave,' Ferrash said. 'Follow that shuttle.'

Bek gave a slight shake of his head. 'Might have left it too late.'

Ferrash closed his eyes. 'Don't say that.' Those flames would consume everything they touched. Emotion, memory, life, matter. He'd rather they blew the ship up themselves than let the flames reach them.

The engine strained further, juddering the whole ship underneath them. For a long time, Bek said nothing. The force of their acceleration pressed Ferrash back into his seat, and he tensed against the strain. He smelt their sweat in the close confines. His own clung to his skin. How long until the Empyrean ripped it from him? Would it catch upon the fear first? Or his memories? You could never tell, beyond the flesh disintegrating, when you saw a person die to it.

The ship rocked and he jerked sideways in his straps, but the noise was beginning to die away. When finally everything went quiet, he opened his eyes again.

Bek had kept them pointed at the shuttle, and it glinted periodically as it spun on its axis. It must have taken a hit as it escaped atmosphere. Ferrash narrowed his eyes at it, wondering what the forces of that spin would be. If its inertial dampers were out, that would matter. Whoever was inside it might already be…

There were no stars behind it.

He paused. That was wrong. He should be able to see plenty of stars, unless their light was being washed out by something else nearby. On a hunch, he leaned closer to the canopy and peered back towards the planet. It wasn't there anymore. A bright new star lay where it had been, ice hanging there in multitudinous splendour. It danced with rocks, expanding ever outwards, each crystalline spark reflecting the light of the system's sun. Only minutes ago, it had been fully formed, its mountains rose-tinged with the sunrise. There was nothing left that might be called a planet now, though something of its shape remained.

Ferrash rested his head against the canopy, brows knitted together. Chills marched along his skin. He couldn't press the fear down into the white noise that formed the rest of his emotions. 'We need to put as much distance between us and here as possible.'