My entire world condenses into a raging inferno of red and orange.

Super-heated air pummels the outer shell of my starfighter, licking my bubble canopy like a fire-breathing dragon that wants to swallow me whole. The fuselage rocks with reckless abandon, shaking like it's going to rip apart. I plunge toward the ground, losing altitude by the second. I would expect a thousand different alarms lighting up my instrument panel, blaring alerts of my predicament—like I don't know—but strangely, my dashboard remains silent and my display screen indicators all read rows of the number nine. Airspeed: Mach nine-nine-nine. Oxygen levels: nine-nine-nine. And Gravity Block: nine-nine-nine.

When my ship first malfunctioned, my suit's life support took over. I'm thankful for that, but I could use some help with Gravity Block. I'm not going Mach nine hundred and ninety-nine, but the extreme G-forces mash my face so flat I can feel my skin splaying over my cheekbones.

I know what's happening because of my Flight School training. Gravity is pushing blood into my brain. My vision blurs around the edges. Soon, I'll go blind and lose the ability to save myself. I'll die in a fiery crash that will obliterate my body and my ship in an instant. I have to think and figure out how to get my starfighter flying again.

Regardless of what kind of weapon struck my ship, one thing remains clear. Its effect short-circuited my instrument panel and shut everything down.

The surface of Mars looms large in the forward view of my bubble canopy, glowing red with the intense heat of reentry. I know what I have to do; I have to eject, and I have to do it soon if I want to have time to slow my fall enough to survive. Fortunately, I'm plummeting at the correct angle with the bottom of my ship absorbing most of the heat, my nose pointed slightly up, as if I could swoop down and land. But at this speed, I would blaze a burnt trail all the way to Olympus Mons. My landing gear would disintegrate or get smashed to smithereens. I could eject at this angle, but I'm going way too fast. My neck would snap from the extreme velocity.

Who cares! If I hit the ground, I'm dead anyway.

I yank the eject handle.

Nothing. That's right, the ship's computer is offline. The ejection system needs it to operate the canopy release and to fire the seat from the cockpit. But I have power. The dash display is lit up, even though it's a jumble of nines across the screen.

My starfighter increases speed to Mach something. One thing I know; it's faster than I've flown before. I must be going over Mach four.

The cockpit shakes me so hard my teeth rattle with the intensity. My vision grows darker around the edges. I'm still alert—I'm not passing out—I'm going blind. I have little time left before it's too late.

Reboot!

The word streaks across my mind like a lightning bolt, a thought scrambled in my brain, but breaking through the madness. I need to perform a system reboot on the ship's computer system. That should fire the engine and help me regain control.

I recall from one of my flight classes that a hard-wired cable runs behind the seat in the cockpit, hidden behind a long panel. But it's connected to an old-fashioned emergency button as large as my palm. It's within reach, but right now, the G-forces have pinned my hand to the side of my leg. The big red button, when pressed, disconnects the ship's electrical systems from the battery backup and from the power supplied by the engine. Engineers had installed it in the ships back when starfighters went into space as an extra safety precaution. Only rare circumstances require a pilot to use it, like now. A polycarbonate case protects the kill switch. Depress the button to kill all power. Pull it up to restart everything. It's only for life-and-death emergencies.

My starfighter continues its plunge toward the Martian surface, rattling and rumbling with air turbulence and G-forces.

I peel my right hand from my thigh and inch it toward my hip. Gravity makes it feel like my hand is magnetically drawn to my body. If I pry it an inch from my leg, my forearm slams back down. My goal is to pull my hand away and reach behind my seat. The location of the emergency button was intentional by design to keep pilots from accidentally severing power from their starfighters. I know what I have to do.

With all the strength I can muster, I jerk my arm away from my hip. The gravitational force that pushes down on my hand provides tension as I pull away, like I'm pulling against a rubber band during PT training. The back of my hand slams against my seat near my shoulder. All the while, my ship drops like a meteor, losing altitude at an ever-increasing rate, the ground rushing up to meet me. But I still have time.

There's one more move, and it may hurt.

I yank my forearm from the seat and aim it toward the gap between the interior wall and my pilot chair. My hand swings down, brushing past my hip on its way to the emergency kill switch. My thumb strikes the clear case, which protects the button. My scream fills the inside of my helmet. That hurt intensely. More than my thumb, but also my shoulder, and not just from the pressure itself, but from the sudden change of my arm's position and the backward angle it's now pinned down with.

The clear case flips open with ease because of the way the G-forces push it backward. My fingers crawl toward the kill switch, feeling their way around like a blind spider. With the case open, I touch the big round button. Press it. Nothing. The backward angle makes it difficult to get leverage, but I muster the strength and push it again.

The dashboard display turns black. It worked. It cut power to the ship's electrical systems. If I hold the button down, it won't reboot, but when I release it...

What?! The power didn't cut back on. Why?

Because the button remains depressed even without my touching it.

The fuselage shakes with more intensity the closer I get to the ground. A glimpse through my bubble canopy reveals the rusty surface growing closer with each passing second. Based on my previous flight experience, I'd say I'm ten thousand feet and falling. At my rate of descent, at any moment, it'll be too late to save the ship or eject. Truth is... I should eject now to give myself plenty of time to catch enough wind to avoid plastering my face to the ground.

Behind me, G-forces wedge my hand between the seat and the interior wall. My heart pounds like a jackhammer, my breath tight from the pressure squeezing my chest. Once again, I wiggle my hand loose and walk my fingers toward the emergency button. Gripping the round knob around the edges, I pull it up to reengage the power supply. It nudges up a fraction of an inch. I try again. This time, I jerk the knob with all the leverage I can find, and the button springs back into its original place, reconnecting electricity to the ship's computer.

The dashboard screen comes to life, with all the indicators returning to normal.

The altitude numbers decrease rapidly, dropping as the starfighter loses its battle with Mars's 38Gs.

Gravity Block comes back online, and I sense a slight feeling of weightlessness, even as the ship plunges. I pull back on the control stick, trying to keep from crashing. I don't want to lose my starfighter. The altitude plummets below five thousand feet. On the screen, a red line shows my last chance to correct the ship's free fall.

One glimpse at my airspeed and my eyes jolt open wide. Mach five... faster than I've ever flown, over twenty-five hundred miles per hour. I'm going to die.

No! I have too much to live for.

I yank back harder on the control stick, raising the nose of my ship incrementally, the aerodynamics of the fuselage and wings scraping at the thin air, struggling to bring the fighter out of the steep dive. My gaze falls to the ejection handle between my legs. I don't want to pull it; I don't want to lose STF-07. If I do, I know they won't let me graduate. I must save myself and my ship.

I pass the red line on the dashboard display... the last possible chance to pull my starfighter out of the nosedive. According to the computer, there's nothing I can do now to save my ship. During all of this, it hits me that no one has radioed me since I rebooted the electrical systems. That must mean the pulse of light from the plasma missile had fried my comms. I'm going to die, and no one will hear my last words... or my screams.

Ejection handle. Now! Do or die.

I yank it and the bubble canopy bursts free, filling the cockpit with a tornado of wind whirling around me, exposing my suit to Mars's low atmospheric pressure. A split second later, my chair rockets away from the ship. An instant after that, my parachutes deploy, three of them, jerking me to a much slower descent, but not slow enough. I remember what Apollo did when he ejected. He unbuckled his chair and watched it fall away from him. I do the same, and the downward drag on my body lessens.

An alarm inside my suit warns me I'm descending too fast. It recommends the backup chute. I release it and feel a jerk.

In the distance, my starfighter strikes the ground and explodes. My chin drops in defeat as Mars's atmosphere smothers the flames.

Finally, after a breathless, pulse-pounding fall, I strike the ground and everything goes dark.