Galaxy of Exiles book 1 - The Empyrean

Chapter One

'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.