The side plates rigged to the abort sequence exploded in a perfect line, each charge setting off half of a second after the last. The small gunpowder charges exploding to the rear of the craft finally reached a halt as the side plates of the starship fired off perpendicularly. Giant piston sliders extended engines from the main fuselage, behind where the side plates used to be. The 7 intakes on the front end of the giant engines began to scream, taking in air denser than that of Kerbin's. Within 3 seconds, the engines kicked forward as part of the abort sequence.
The altimeter read 67km above sea level, and fortunately, rising. The unfortunate other 3 kerbals standing the cockpit (Jebediah included) soon found themselves glued to the back of the admittedly pretty massive room. The speedometer read 5021m/s. Rodfrod found difficulty in following his directions to keep the navball steady. His hand shook violently as he slowly slid the ball downwards to escape the atmosphere. The navigations computer recalculated their descent as it grew into a large sub-orbital hop. The abort sequence switched from 70% throttle to 100% throttle, as part of the automated STEADLER Corp. "Hope You Don't Die" brand emergency throttle-up-and-jettison-everything sequence.
Within 1 minute, the huge ship reached apoapsis as weightlessness took over the passengers once more.
That feeling of tingly funniness was shattered in an instant when the main plates and heat shields ejected off the craft. The exposed, naked mess of trusses, docking ports, and fuel lines glinted in sunlight for the first time in nearly 4 years. 6 landers, 4 satellite probes, and 2 deployable, stationary bases (Complete with mining drill and empty fuel tanks), and 6 rovers detached from the docking ports, leaving everything in the ship but the cockpit empty.
The satellites did what they did best; floating around, sending signals, recieving signals, and dropping important phone calls with corporate powerhouses in the middle of important phone calls that could have potentially "their big break."
The landers repositioned themselves with their reaction wheels, all of their thrusters pointed toward respective retrograde markers and ready to turn them on at moments' noticed. The rovers followed suit, their lander comrades as rudimentary heat shields. The bases, however, had their own heat hull casing, much like the ship did. They were to explode off as well, when the time was right. They would have no problem during re-entry and they both sported about 12 parachutes each and small LV-909 thrusters, cleverly hidden in the hull.
The scattered crew sat tense in their seat, waiting for the extreme pressure on their bodies that occurs right after weightlessness. The kerbals significantly lacking in their courage on their KGCST (Kerbal Generalized Courage and Stupidity Test) bit their metaphorical fingernails in their spacesuits, simply awaiting their crafts to tear apart and expose them to the harsh, fiery exercise of re-entry.
It had only been 20 seconds since undocking, and the kerbals stood vigilantly next to their individual abort buttons, hoping that STEADLER Corp. was kind enough to make sure that the abort sequences worked on the individual crafts.
Jebediah, Rodfrod, and 2 other kerbals sat in the starship cockpit and soon undocked as well. The only advantage over the other craft that they had was the fact that their cockpit was built to survive re-entry, heat shields or not. Even if the parachutes failed and ripped themselves off of the cockpit, and the landing gear malfunctioned, only half of the command module would be completely and utterly obliterated.
The atmosphere thickened as the grand total of 15 craft stabbed through the air, catching fire and surrounding themselves in a brilliant orange glow. The friction wore off space-proof paint and chipped the tagging of the Kerbonauts that thought it humorous to leave their names on their craft. Many landers' integrity was weakening and slightly, ever so slightly, bending inwards. The rovers following behind the landers cut through in the air with relative ease, their "friends" plowing through the majority of the harmful atmosphere for them. The bases were completely fine. That's all that needs to be said about them. Like really, I can't find anything motivational or interesting to describe about them for you. Seriously.
The most dangerous part of the atmosphere had been cleared with no casualties, and thankfully, none of the craft had sustained notable damage. The landers deployed their legs and the bases popped off their heat shields. The radial decouplers popped them off with small charges as the heavy squares and rectangles flew sideways, narrowly avoiding the landers and rovers. The rovers moved out of the way, as to not hit the landers on their way down and all 15 craft throttled up roughly 20%. After about 40 seconds of 20% thrust, the combined force of retrograde thrust and aerobraking had slowed them down to maintainable 21.6m/s. They were going to touch down near a beach, 2300 meters above sea level.
Within 3 seconds, all 15 craft began a suicide burn until they reached 500 meters above sea level, in which the repeatedly switch their throttle to 5% and killed it. Everything contacted light, at only 2.4m/s.
Nobody died. Hoping works(?)