"Rex…" Kane looked at him.
"Enough talk, sir!" Rex stood up, his massive frame casting a huge shadow in the dim red light. "Sitting here waiting to die isn't my style! Either we charge out together, or we explode into fireworks with this wrecked ship! At least it'll be quick!"
Kane looked at the familiar, reckless determination in Rex's eyes and knew that persuasion was useless. He nodded heavily: "Be careful. We need your thrust."
"Don't worry!" Rex grinned, revealing a ferocious smile, turned, and strode towards the bridge exit, his heavy footsteps quickly fading into the distance.
"Leah, immediately calculate the optimal cover position and escape timing! I need the most precise orbital parameters!" Kane turned his attention back to navigation.
"Yes, sir!" The data stream in Leah's eyes surged to its limit again, even her synthetic skin surface was slightly hot from the overload. "Calculation in progress… needs to incorporate the planet's impact state model… numerous variables…"
Time ticked by. The countdown was now less than twenty minutes long.
**CME Arrival Countdown: 19 minutes 15 seconds…14 seconds…13 seconds…**
On the screen, the blazing plasma cloud was growing larger and larger, its swirling energy turbulence clearly visible at its edges, like the breath of death.
Rex's voice came through the communicator, a mix of the engine room's deafening noise and his heavy breathing: "I've arrived! This place is fucking hot! Manually adjusting the injector parameters… Damn, this thing is tight… Alright! Ready to overload at any moment! Listen for my signal!"
"Leah!" Kane urged.
"Calculation complete!" Leah looked up sharply, projecting a complex set of trajectory data onto the main screen and Kane's tactical visor. "This is the optimal entry point and escape window! The entry angle must be accurate to within 0.1 degrees! The escape window is only…**47 seconds**!"
47 seconds! To complete a precise gravity slingshot-assisted escape in a complex gravitational environment and energy turbulence!
This was practically an impossible mission! But this was the only chance.
"Orbital parameters received." Kane took a deep breath and placed his hands on the attitude control stick and the fine-tuning thruster console. At this moment, the autopilot system was no longer capable of handling such delicate and dangerous operations; he had to do it manually.
Under his control, the Nightingale, like a severely wounded dancer, began to adjust its direction with extreme difficulty, bit by bit, moving closer to the vast and desolate shadowy side of planet G-173c.
The planet grew larger and larger before their eyes; the enormous fissures and erupting volcanoes on its surface, created by geological catastrophes, were clearly visible. The entire planet resembled a dying giant.
And on the other side of the planet, the incandescent white light representing destruction had already illuminated half the sky.
Death was imminent.
The massive, curved outline of planet G-173c filled the Nightingale's entire field of vision, like a silent, scarred giant, lying between the ship and the destructive light behind it. On the planet's surface, bottomless rifts formed by violent geological shifts stretched out, and erupting volcanoes, like festering sores, continuously spewed lava and ash. The entire planet was in a highly unstable, teetering state.
Kane's hands gripped the control levers firmly, his fingertips turning slightly white from the pressure. His entire focus was on the complex orbital parameters and the ship's real-time attitude data displayed on the tactical eyepiece. The fine-tuning thrusters occasionally emitted brief, precise bursts of blue flame, correcting the ship's slow, sluggish course.
"Interception angle deviation: 0.3 degrees…corrected to 0.2 degrees…0.15 degrees…" Leah's voice, like the most precise clock, calmly reported every minute deviation. All her computing power was dedicated to auxiliary navigation, ensuring the ship continued along the theoretically only path to survival.