Chapter 20 Chapter Eleven

The "Squid" rolled away from the hull, and the video showed that two figures in space suits did not have time to jump on the "Squid", and a third grabbed the antenna that saved Kassad.Kassad roughly knew where the thruster controls were, and he pressed them frantically, causing all the dome lights to come on.All holograms dimmed. "Squid" started the wildest tricks, tilting, rolling, sliding sideways, and took out all kinds of collars.He saw the Ouster roll over the overhead compartment, appearing for a brief moment on the forward monitor, then becoming a tiny speck on the aft monitor.The guy was still shooting here while he, or she, was getting further and further away.

Kassad struggled to stay awake as the "squid" continued to roll violently.Various audible and visual alarms attract his attention.He pressed the thruster switch and felt it activate.Presently he let go again, for he felt that two forces were tearing him apart, not five. From the random monitor, he saw that the torch ship was getting farther and farther away.Great, he didn't doubt that the Destroyer's battleship could kill him in an instant at any time, and it would certainly do so if he approached or threatened it.He didn't know if there was any weapon on this "squid", and he wasn't even sure if there was something bigger than a lethal weapon on it?But the commander of the torch ship would definitely let an out-of-control transport ship get close to him.He thought the Ousters already knew the ship had been hijacked by the enemy.He wouldn't be surprised if a torch ship suddenly destroyed him in an instant, maybe a little disappointed, but he wouldn't be surprised.At the same time, he was thinking about two emotions: curiosity and revenge.They are typical human emotions, but it is not known whether they are Ouster emotions.

Curiosity, he knew, could be easily overwhelmed by prolonged pressure, but he felt that in a semi-military, semi-feudal culture like the Ouster's, vengeance must be deeply embedded in it.All things being equal, Kassad had no chance of hurting them any more, and had little chance of running away, and it looked like Colonel Federman Kassad was going to be the prime candidate for their autopsy rack, he thought. Kassad looked at the front screen, frowned, and unbuckled his seatbelt to see the overhead compartment.Although the spaceship is still rolling, but the degree is not so strong.The planet seemed to be getting closer, a hemisphere filled his "head", but it was impossible to estimate how far the "squid" was from the atmosphere.He had no idea what the data on the screen meant.We can only guess what their orbital speed is, and how much shock they will withstand when re-entering the atmosphere.He glanced at the wreckage of "Merick", and he knew very well that they were very close to the surface of the planet, only about five or six hundred kilometers away.And it is in some kind of relay orbit, and then the landing spacecraft can fall.

Kassad tried to wipe the sweat from his face, but the fingertips of the loose gauntlet touched the mask, and he frowned.too tired.Hell, he was in a fugue state a few hours ago, and his body was pretty much dead the ship weeks before that, for sure. He didn't know whether the world below was Hyperion or Gardon; although he had never been there, he knew that Gardon was more populated and would soon become a colony of the Overlord.Hope that's Garden. Torchship dispatched three assault craft.Kassad had seen them clearly long before the stern camera took an image out of frame.So Kassad held down the push button until he felt the ship roll faster, toward the wall of the planet above, before letting go.There is nothing else he can do.

Three Destroyer assault boats caught up with the "Squid", and at this time, the "Squid" had also reached the atmosphere.The assault boats were undoubtedly armed, and the Squid was now within range of them, but someone in the command line must have been curious about the out-of-control Squid.Probably outraged. Kassad's "squid" was not designed to be aerodynamic at all.Like most ship-to-ship vehicles, the Squid can play with planetary atmospheres, but if it plunges too deep into the gravity well, it's doomed.Kassad saw the red warning light after re-entry and heard the ionization signal of the active wireless communication channel, and he suddenly wondered whether it was a good idea to fly such a spacecraft.

Atmospheric drag stabilized the squid, and Kassad felt the first momentary tug of gravity as he checked the console and command seat armrest, praying that the control circuits were there.A screen filled with random noise showed a landing craft with a blue plasma tail, slowing down.The assault boat suddenly climbed higher, this is actually an illusion, and skydivers will encounter similar scenes when they watch others open their parachutes or unfurl their sails, and they all have the same reason. Kassad had other worries.Looks like there are no parachutes, no ejection seats.Every military spaceship has these intra-atmospheric escape facilities, which have been around for eight centuries, when all-space flight on Old Earth was just developing to the surface of the atmosphere.A ship-ship aircraft may never need a planetary parachute, but the ancient fear written in the ancient law is hard to die.

Maybe it was just theory, Kassad found nothing.The boat was still shaking, still spinning, and starting to heat up.Kassad unbuckled and moved to the stern, not sure what he was looking for.Suspension bag?Ejection chair?Or a pair of wings? However, there was nothing in the soldier transport area, except for the driver's body and a storage box not much bigger than a lunch box.He fumbled in the box for a while, and what he found was not as big as a medical tool.No flashy gear. Kassad could hear the rumble of the squid as he dangled from a pivot ring as the ship began to disintegrate, and by now he had all but accepted the fact that the Ouster wouldn't waste money and ship space on low Probability escape equipment on.And why would they do that?Their lives have been spent in the dark intergalactic; their conception of the atmosphere is only eight kilometers of pressurized tunnels in the city of cans.Kassad's "Bubble" helmet's external audio sensors began to pick up the frantic whistling of the air coming from the shattered transparent cover of the hull and stern.He shrugged, he had gambled enough, he should lose.

The "squid" was trembling and bouncing.Kassad heard the sound of tentacles being torn off the bow of the ship.The body of the Ouster was sucked up, and flew out of the shattered transparent cover, like ants sucked away by a vacuum cleaner.Gripping the pivot ring tightly, he peered through the open hatch at the control seat in the cockpit.To his surprise, they were so old that they seemed to be replicas of early textbook spacecraft.Now, the outer parts of the spacecraft began to melt, and they roared through the transparent observation shield like clouds of lava.Kassad closed his eyes, recalling the structure and layout of the early spaceships he had learned at the Olympiad School. The squid begins its final roll, and the noise is unbelievably loud.

"God bless!" he gasped, a cry he hadn't heard since childhood.He scrambled toward the cockpit, braced against the open hatch, and looked for a grab on the deck, as if scaling a vertical wall.He was climbing a wall! The "squid" spun, then stabilized, and began a death dive with its butt forward.Kassad climbed under the weight of three times gravity, knowing that if he missed his footing, he would suffer forever and every bone in him would fall apart.Behind him, the atmospheric howl turned into a piercing scream and finally a dragon-like howl.The troop compartment began to explode violently, flashing with flames.

Climbing up to the command chair was like climbing over a protruding rock on a cliff, while two climbers swayed with his body in their arms.He clutched at the seat pillow, but the clumsy hand guards made him break out in a cold sweat, and he was hanging upright now, with the blazing boilers of the troop bay beneath his feet.The spaceship tilted suddenly, and he swung his legs and jumped into the command seat.Now, the monitors are all dark, and the transparent dome overhead is burnt a sickly red.He stooped forward, his fingers groping under the command seat, in the darkness between his knees, finding nothing.Wait...that's the handle.No, Almighty Christ and Allah... that's a clasp.Just like something in a history book.

"Squid" continues to disintegrate.The transparent cover of the overhead compartment was red hot, and liquid plexiglass dripped in the cockpit, splashing on Kassad's clothes and mask, and he smelled melting plastic.Simultaneously with the disintegration, the ship began to spin.Kassad's eyes suddenly turned pink, then dimmed, and finally he could see nothing.With numb fingers he pulled the seat belt tighter...tighter...maybe he got scratched in the chest, or burned through with the molten plexiglass.Its hand was back on the buckle.The fingers are so clumsy that they can't grasp... no.pull! too late.With the last scream, flames erupted, the spaceship completely disintegrated, and the console was disintegrated into countless small pieces of shrapnel, speeding rapidly in the cockpit. Kassad was slammed into the chair, then bounced out.into the center of the flame. come down. Kassad was vaguely aware that, during the fall, the seat had ejected from its own containment field.The flames were only centimeters from his face. Flames came at him, kicking the ejection seat out of the Squid's hot slipstream.The command seat streaked across the sky, drawing a trail of blue flames.A microprocessor controls the chair to spin, creating a disc-shaped force field between Kassad and the furnace of surface friction.When he started to slow down from a height of two thousand meters under eight times the gravity, he felt as if a giant was sitting on his chest. He opened his eyes with all his might, found himself curled up in the heart of a long column of blue-white flames, and closed them again.He saw no signs of parachutes, sling packs, or other speed reduction devices.It didn't matter, he couldn't move his arms and hands no matter what. The giant on the chest shifted, and it became heavier. Kassad realized that the "bubble" above his head had mostly melted, or had been blown away.It's unbelievably loud in my ears, and that's okay. His eyes closed tighter, it was time for a good night's sleep.