The seat had separated from Naysha during the tumble, its small thrusters spent, and it drifted away on a path of its own. Naysha reached for it and missed.
"Flores ejected!" a voice called on the command channel. "Sector four, I saw her seat go. She's out in the open."
"Can anyone reach her?" Helmar asked.
There was a short pause before the answers came, one after another, each of them some version of the same thing.
"Negative, I'm pinned."
"Too hot out there, Major. There's a whole group between me and her."
"I can't get a lock on her suit through all this debris."
Naysha listened to them while the stars and the planet and the fire went on spinning around her, and she understood what every pilot on that channel already understood.
She was going to die out here.
Her suit had small maneuvering jets on its back and at its hips, meant for drifting back to a ship after a hull breach, not for flying through a battle.
