Chapter 11 #2
I had to hijack the flight.
I gritted my teeth, forcing my hand forward against the crushing weight of the climb. I tapped the screen, attempting to access the manual flight controls. A bright amber warning flashed across the display.
Auto-pilot locked. Manual override restricted to authorized security personnel.
A grim smile touched my lips. My fingers moved with rapid muscle memory across the screen, typing out the bypass sequences from my high-level negotiator credentials with the corporate safety grid.
I swiped the prompt away, pulling up the master security command terminal.
The capsule vibrated violently as we hit a pocket of severe atmospheric turbulence, the metal hull groaning as it sheared through the ash storm.
My fingers bounced off the screen, but I forced my hand steady, entering my personal, ten-digit corporate negotiator bypass code.
The screen flashed red, then transitioned to a steady, pulsing green.
Override accepted. Manual piloting interface engaged. Please select destination.
I didn't have time to input precise coordinates. I didn't need them. The compass was already locked inside my chest, the physical ache in my ribs pointing directly toward the epicenter of the volcanic storm.
I pulled up the regional geothermal map on the console. The Dead Zone was lit up in a massive, blinding crimson wave—a thermal anomaly so intense it dwarfed everything else on the screen.
I swiped the orbital destination away, dragging the targeting reticle directly into the center of that crimson wave.
Warning, the automated voice chimed, its tone finally losing its calm detachment. Selected flight path enters a high-hazard geothermal zone. Atmospheric density and thermal turbulence exceed safety limits. Proceed?
"Proceed," I growled, and slammed my hand onto the confirmation prompt.
The pod’s attitude thrusters fired with a series of sharp, pneumatic thuds.
The capsule tilted violently, the nose pivoting downward.
The vertical climb ended in a gut-wrenching lurch that left my stomach floating in my throat, and then the rocket engines roared again, driving the pod into a steep, high-velocity dive back down through the freezing ash clouds.
We were plummeting straight into the volcanic winter.
The descent was a terrifying, violent ordeal.
Through the lead-glass viewport, the world was a chaotic blur of pitch-black ash, freezing rain, and jagged, vertical streaks of purple ash lightning that arced across the sky.
The wind howled against the titanium hull, a screaming, relentless beast that buffeted the small capsule from side to side.
The G-forces shifted, pulling me forward against the heavy harness. The automated alarms on the console began to shriek in a rapid, continuous pitch.
Warning. Geothermal boundary breached. Ambient temperature rising. Thermal shield degradation at fourteen percent.
The air inside the capsule was growing warm, the heavy scent of hot metal and scorched insulation returning.
I grabbed the manual joystick on the console, my knuckles white as I fought the severe turbulence that was trying to rip the controls from my grip.
Every updraft of superheated gas rising from the caldera below hit the pod like a solid wall, tossing us upward before the thrusters forced us back down.
I looked out the viewport. The nose cone of the pod was beginning to glow, a dull, angry orange that cast a hellish light across the cabin.
The mate bond in my chest pulled tighter, a sharp, white-hot needle dragging my attention toward the center of the active caldera. The signal was incredibly strong now, a physical presence that filled my entire chest, humming with the frequency of Kaen's superheating core.
Warning. Proximity to terrain critical. Deploying emergency braking thrusters.
"Not yet," I shouted, holding the manual override trigger down.
If the autopilot deployed the braking thrusters too early, the wind would catch the capsule and hurl us against the sheer basalt cliffs of the crater rim. I had to time it perfectly. I had to wait until we cleared the high-velocity ash currents at the rim.
Through the spider-web of tiny, heat-induced cracks spreading across the lead-glass viewport, the active crater finally appeared.
It was a nightmare of shifting rock and boiling, liquid fire.
The basalt floor of the caldera had fractured, exposing a vast, churning sea of glowing orange magma that bubbled and spat liquid slag into the dark air.
In the center of the largest vent, standing on a narrow, collapsing shelf of dark obsidian, was Kaen.
He was a blinding, white-hot beacon. His massive wings were flared wide, his skin glowing with such intensity that his outline was almost lost in the blinding light radiating from his chest. He was kneeling, his claws buried deep in the cracking stone, his head thrown back in silent, agonizing endurance.
He was seconds away from detonating.
"Now!" I screamed, and released the joystick's safety cover, slamming my palm onto the emergency descent thruster toggle.
The downward-facing chemical rockets ignited with a violent, concussive blast.
The deceleration was brutal, slamming me back into the seat with enough force to blacken the edges of my vision. The pod shrieked, the landing struts deploying with a heavy hydraulic hiss just as we cleared the crater lip.
The capsule hit the cooling obsidian shelf at a terrifying speed.
Crunch!
The primary landing struts shattered instantly under the brutal impact, the metal buckling and shearing away.
The pod tilted forward, its heavy nose cone striking the hard basalt floor.
We skidded, a horrific, screeching slide that sent a massive shower of white-hot sparks and pulverized black stone flying past the viewport.
The pod spun violently, the world outside rotating in a dizzying blur of fire and ash, before grinding to a final, heavy halt against a thick mound of cooled lava.
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the rapid, high-pitched hiss of escaping steam from the ruptured thruster lines and the steady, frantic chiming of the cabin's emergency alarms.
The cockpit display was dead, half-melted by the blistering ambient heat outside. The lead-glass viewport was completely opaque, covered in a dense web of white fractures.
I fumbled with the harness, my fingers clumsy and weak from the G-forces, but I forced the buckle to click open. I grabbed the manual door override on the wall, my hand instantly blistering as my skin made contact with the hot metal lever.
I didn't care. I threw my entire weight against the lever, pulling it downward with a desperate, guttural cry.
The emergency hatch charges blew with a sharp bang, and the heavy armored door fell outward, crashing onto the dark basalt shelf.
A wall of blistering, sweltering heat rushed into the cabin, instantly singeing my hair.
I gasped, bracing myself for the toxic, sulfurous air to scorch my throat and suffocate me.
Humans couldn't survive outside the dome without a heavy rebreather, and the air out here was a lethal cocktail of ash, carbon monoxide, and volcanic gas.
But as I inhaled, my lungs didn't seize.
I took a trembling breath, and then another. The air felt heavy, hot, and thick with sulfur, but it didn't burn. Instead, a strange, soothing warmth spread outward from the core of my chest where the mate bond thrummed.
I stepped out of the smoking ruins of the pod, my boots sinking slightly into the soft, warming obsidian beneath me.
The intense, radiating heat of the active caldera beat against my exposed skin.
I expected to scream as my flesh seared and blistered.
But as the blistering wind whipped over my bare arms and shoulders, my skin only tingled, glowing with a soft, inner luminescence that absorbed the heat rather than fighting it.
The bond.
It was the only explanation. During our joining, when I had drained the lethal pressure from Kaen’s superheated core, his volatile, planetary energy had rewritten my very biology.
I wasn't just a fragile tourist anymore.
My cells had adapted, finding equilibrium with the extreme volcanic environment of his homeworld.
I was made to survive this—because I was made for him.
Ahead of me, less than fifty yards away, Kaen knelt in the center of the burning stone shelf, his glowing core casting a brilliant, blinding light through the falling ash.
I ran toward him, my feet flying across the hot stone, driven by the absolute, defiant devotion that had permanently rewritten my soul.