Void Star by J.P. Yager

back down into the passenger compartment and wound their way back toward the front. As they did, Nathan shouted over PA. "Ruveran ship inbound."
         Trev passed the top step and buckled himself back down. "Fire's out."
         "Good, because we have other problems." Nathan pointed to the giant blip that had reappeared on their radar.
         The radio started crackling again. "Captain Sutherland, this is Commander Argum of Breaker IX . After what we have both witnessed, we do not want to lose another ship, yours or ours. We just want the data pad, and then you may go. Believe it or not, our intention is to use what's on the pad to stop that anomaly."
         Nathan scoffed.
         Trevor knew his uncle would never agree to anything with Ruvera. Nathan was battling them every day somewhere in his mind. They had taken away his life, his family, and his world, and all the training he had ever received was geared to fight them. He would rather sacrifice his life to help kill as many as he could, than to submit to them. Usually, Trevor was all right with fighting Ruvera, but after the bloodlust Nathan had just displayed, he wasn't so sure anymore. It was like after years of running from the fight, he was ready to reengage them, killing others like himself and Kaida to get his revenge.
         "What's that?" Nathan nodded toward a white-and-blue mass they were floating toward—or, more accurately, was floating at them.
         Trevor looked it up on the star map. "Marked as a hybrid-type planet named Frosterrene. By all accounts, it's a giant ball of ice flying through space with its own gravitational pull and thin atmosphere. It's experiencing a massive blizzard, planetwide."
         "That's where we're going then."
         Trev wanted to object, but his uncle seemed to be himself again, back in calm control. "We're not going to be able to escape that way."
         "I'm not trying to escape."
         Kaida just sat back and watched Boost roll out of the cockpit. He must recognize the next part of the plan already.
         Nathan paused at his controls and looked out over at the giant speeding ball of ice. "Here we go."
         The Wrath lurched forward again, spinning toward the spinning planet.
         The radio crackled at the first sign of movement away from the Breaker. It was the Ruveran female commander. "Captain, I heard you were a reasonable man. Sorry to see that's untrue."
         The Breaker port doors fired open by the thousands. The sleek little jets pinged out and engaged on the their Tiger-37. Automatic countermeasures fired off as the fighters' weapons volleyed at them.
         Kaida peeked at the back ship camera to see open space fill with their fighters. They were still a long way off, but the missiles coming at them were closing in fast. She turned it back off.
         "Boost, use the wall," Nathan called over.
         Trevor hated the wall, and for a good reason.
         Boost fired it, and behind them, a force-field emitter brought up a large, solid barrier. Like its name, the force field grew into a large wall in space. The forward series of weapons from the fighters hit it. The force of the impact engulfed the missiles that impacted plus the incoming weapons still coming up from behind them. The power of all of it created a type of cosmic explosion that detonated everything at the middle of it, and then the force of it reached their ship.
         The tidal wave hit the Wrath , and they rode it into the atmosphere of Frosterrene. Snow and ice hit them and formed across the glass. The temperature inside the cockpit immediately dropped as they flew into the planet's atmosphere.
         Gusts of strong wind carrying sleet were blowing them all over the place. Nathan grasped the yoke, utilized all his training for crash landings, and aimed his craft.
         Trevor watched gratefully as the second large grouping of missiles died in the atmosphere, probably falling