The **main body** of the CME slammed **into** the sunlit side of planet G-173c!
The Nightingale trembled violently, like a small boat in a storm! It wasn't a physical impact, but the sheer shockwave of energy transmitted through the planet's structure and space!
At the same time—
****Overload Propulsion! Activate!** Rex's roar mingled with the terrifying rumble from the engine room, like a beast awakening!
The auxiliary thrusters at the Nightingale's stern, which had previously been weak, suddenly erupted with **almost white, scorching plasma streams far exceeding design limits**! The immense thrust instantly slammed Kane and Leah into their seats!
The spaceship, as if kicked hard, accelerated forward violently!
"Orbital deviation! Correcting!" Kane, enduring immense G-forces, frantically manipulated the control levers, fine-tuning the thrusters to full power, struggling to keep the ship flying along the narrow escape route calculated by Leah!
Outside the window, the scene was hellish. The planet's sunlit side was completely engulfed in blinding white light, massive plasma clouds eroding and stripping away the planet's surface material, triggering a series of explosions more violent than any previous geological upheaval! The entire planet seemed to groan and collapse in agony under the scorching heat of the CME!
And the Nightingale was clinging to the edge of the shadow of this impending doomed planet, using a combination of the planet's gravitational pull and its own overload thrust in a dance on a knife's edge!
"Accelerating! But gravitational disturbances are beyond expectations!" Leah's voice was distorted by the G-forces, "Escape window calculation in progress... **Remaining window time: 41 seconds!**"
Six seconds less than calculated! Because of the CME impact's gravitational effects on the planet!
"Rex! How much longer can the thrust last?" Kane roared.
"I…I don't know! The engine temperature…is off the charts! The alarms…are all red!" Rex's voice was broken, interspersed with the noise of explosions and tearing metal. "I feel…this thing…is about to…collapse!"
Misfortune never comes singly!
Just then, a massive jet of high-energy particles and rock vapor, generated by the intense evaporation of the planet's surface by the CME, erupted from a huge crack in the planet's side, blocking the Nightingale's planned escape path!
"Emergency evasive maneuver!" Leah screamed a warning!
Kane's pupils constricted. Almost instinctively, he yanked the control lever, simultaneously pushing the fine-tuning thrusters in another direction!
The Nightingale narrowly missed the edge of the deadly jet in an almost contorted posture! The scorching particles grazed the ship's hull, leaving burn marks, and the shield energy instantly depleted!
But this emergency evasive maneuver also caused the spaceship's trajectory to deviate!
"Off-orbit loss! Recalculation needed!" Leah's voice was filled with despair.
"No time!" Kane stared at the chaotic data on the navigation screen and the ever-approaching edge of the planet's shadow—that was the death zone of the CME!
Could it be… all for naught?
At this most desperate moment, Kane's gaze suddenly locked onto a previously overlooked detail on the navigation star map—a fragment of an asteroid, several kilometers in diameter, shattered from the planet's surface by the CME impact, was hurtling out of the planet's shadow at extremely high speed, its trajectory… pointing precisely to the outer edge of the safe zone!
A crazy idea flashed through his mind in an instant!
"Leah! Calculate the trajectory to intercept that fragment! We'll hitch a ride!"