With a mere six hours to go, every movement cut into his already limited time as he desperately cut and patched the CNSs and any nanoweave he could find with the pod's onboard laser, forming it into a parachute and a rudimentary set of airbags. Aman could practically feel the counter ticking down as he worked - carbon nanotube weave was well-known for its resistance to cutting and damage of any sort. The patches he had to work with were merely overlaps, temporary replacements to a unified, integral weave. It would have to do.

All too soon, that counter reached zero - the designated hour had finally arrived at last. Mars was no longer a disk, but a ball. A very large ball. Crashing into it would be really, really bad. Aman, trying not to panic, struggled to recollect his thoughts. His pod was ready to rumble, his straps to his seat worked, and his suspension setup within would hopefully aid his survival on impact.

The airbags and shield had both been tested successfully, at least as far as he was able to - Aman could never truly test the shield out properly; what little he could do involved taking three samples of the refined material and using a blowtorch on it for fifteen minutes to see how it would do. They all passed the test successfully, but that flame would be miniscule compared to the gargantuan blaze his pod would make during reentry. The shield would be an ablative one, designed to rip off of the structure as it slammed through the atmosphere, taking away the extreme heat of reentry from the pod - or so he hoped.

Engrossed as he was in his last minute fixes to ensure his survival, Aman found himself startled when his Pod's radar beeped loudly, tearing his attention away from what he was doing.

What he saw made his heart stop for a fraction of a second as he realized the implications. The Capella had arrived in time to save the day - but at least one party was uninformed and disgruntled. Ceres Mining Operations, upset with the whole affair, had no choice but to let the matter drop as Roma informed Aman of the bad news.

"THEY WHAT?!" Aman roared.

"It is not our fault - the Martian government made this decision independently, without our consultation." The AI replied, impassive as ever in the face of Aman's rage.

"You realize what this means? Nukes in orbit? They could start a damn war with those types of things!" He paced back and forth like a caged animal, the various scenarios of what could potentially happen rampaging through his head - and the potential fallout for him and his family. "Not to mention the hundreds of thousands, if not millions affected by the fallout! Thousands of satellites are blown to smithereens - they can't use their orbits for years - if not decades. Their space elevator would constantly need repairs, and that's if they're lucky! How could they be so... so.. stupid?!"

"Your solar sail, while impressive and truly surpassing any reasonable odds, may or may not pilot the asteroid away from a probable collision course with the Martian surface." Roma gave a sigh, perhaps the first modicum of expression given by the AI, hinting that there was something just slightly human underneath the mechanical exterior, before she continued. "There is still a 60% chance that the asteroid will hit the planet. The Martian government was not willing to take that risk - at least not without the Capella. They also conducted several tests with other habitability groups and their AIs, and concluded that the long-term effects would be miniscule with an adequate and realistic contingency plan, and decided that this was the best option."

"And how long did you know about this?" Aman snapped.

"We were not notified by the Marian government until roughly ten minutes ago. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. They must have ordered the Capella to go beyond the 0.2g recommended acceleration - if my calculations are correct, they may have accelerated as high as 0.7g."

"What was their top speed?"

"If they started from rest, their maximum speed would have been just under 0.4% light speed at the halfway point - about 11916 kilometers a second."

Aman grinded his jaw momentarily to keep it from dropping at the mind-boggling speed that he'd just been presented with - he was still mad, and it wouldn't do to show such astonishment on his face.

It would drop less than half an hour later though, this time in sheer terror.

The crew of the Capella had loaded all their remaining fuel three hours before - fifteen hundred two kiloton micro-nukes - to the escape pods and any landers that they could find. Aman could see them leaving the Capella, heading for the crater the initial explosion had made, seemingly a lifetime ago.

As he strapped in and conducted a last-minute flightcheck, the Capella gave him a five minute warning. Aman, absolutely nervous at the thought, hands shaking, detached his pod two minutes later.

The seven minutes of terror had begun.

The mishmash of ceramic, metals, and nanoweave scorched through the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere. As he descended, a shockwave boomed out from above, violently shoving the pod towards the Martian surface.

Around him, the fires of re-entry burned the pod's exterior as it rattled and shook so hard that Aman was terrified it was going to come apart kilometers above the ground. As it was, it was a miracle that the pod had stayed together as well as it had... But the hardest and most dangerous part was still to come, for landing a pod such as this on the Red Planet was never an easy feat at the best of times - there was no liquid water to land in, only solid, sandy ground.

WARNING!...WARNING!...WARNING!

Aman's eyes flicked towards console one last time, barely visible in the rattling, shaking pod he was surrounded by. The series of explosions, while successfully obliterating the asteroid, still left some large chunks in its orbit - one of those chunks had hit his parachute compartment, allowing only a partial release. The question was... would it be enough?

The fear that Aman had originally felt was now making itself known. Why him? Why did it have to come down to this? Why did he get to burn up in a fiery explosion while everyone continued their normal lives? Why did it have to be him who wouldn't get to see his family once more?And yet... as angry and as panicked as he was, Aman eventually found himself smiling - part of him was relieved that he had made it this far, to see his home, with the colony his wife and daughter resided in barely visible over the horizon. At last, it was over, and whatever happened now was left to fate. They would be safe. More than anything, he wanted to hold Angela and little Monica in his arms, and never, ever, let them go.